As they trek on, the thick humidity of the forest is supplanted by searing dry heat.
The whistling becomes progressively louder and more distinct. By the time they approach a brightening ahead, the sound has increased to a howling, high-pitched shriek.
The leader halts the band and, accompanied by the man and the other hunters, advances cautiously toward the bright, deafening scene ahead.
The very air around them changes as they approach the source of rising sound. It becomes richer. So rich the man feels he is breathing in pure oxygen as his lungs relax at the lesser effort their pulmonary function requires.
They emerge from the canopied forest into a wide clearing fringed by charred, blackened trees whose tops are bent back onto the deep forest around them. The open ground is black and lifeless, reaching from the scorched trees a great distance to the lip of a deep, seemingly bottomless crater. Whose exhalations create a blast-furnace around it.
Super-heated air is spewing angrily skyward from the crater’s core, barring closer approach.
The central flue of the crater is a widening cone of exquisitely polished diamond surface, projecting a bright rainbow of vivid colors into the air above. The heat-blasted, circular break in the forest canopy opens onto a circumference of curled, withered fronds at the crown of the blackened trees.
The man is perplexed. The leader is not.
The man does not know there are craters in the arctic tundra of this moon, inhaling the icy polar air. The leader is reminded of his encounter with them now, and of his narrow escape from their irresistible pull.
Neither suspects the full truth:
That this equatorial crater is part of a global respiration system.
Inhaling cold air at the poles.
Circulating it through a global network of subterranean magma caverns.
Exhaling it in these super-heated columns of rising air at the equator.
Had he known this truth, the man would again marvel at the unique planetary nature of this tiny moon.
As a living, breathing organism.
Chapter 15. The Terror Birds
Returning to the band, the leader motions them in a direction that will bypass the crater. But they cannot avoid its high-pitched whistling. The unsettling din persists throughout the day and into the darkness.
They stop for the night near a stream that is black as pitch. While the stream’s bank is open and unprotected, there is a large, round heap of deadfall on its far side, away from the shoreline.
The leader springs to the crest of the deadfall and discovers a circular mound of spongy lichens in its center, bordered entirely by a bulwark of highly piled limbs. He is relieved the company will sleep safely in this natural haven.
He could not be more mistaken!
The company settles down in the protective embrace of the mound, but sleep will not come. There is no escaping the unremitting whistling noise, and they spend the night in anxious wakefulness.
Their restlessness will be their salvation this night.
As the evening shadows thicken into inky blackness, the company senses the first stirrings of the nest. At first, the man attributes the sensation of subtle movements to the stress of witnessing the crater’s searing heat and the angst of being surrounded by the whistling sounds they cannot escape.
Then, a razor-sharp beak pokes skyward from the bottom of the nest, probing this way and that.
Crying out in alarm, the man springs to the rim of deadfall as beaks break through the surface of the nest in every direction—probing and snapping.
So intent is the company on these unexpected attacks, they fail to see the greater threat approaching from the darkened forest beyond.
As imminent danger awakens his limbic brain, the man turns to see several menacing, bird-like creatures nearing the nest.
They bear an uncanny resemblance to the Terror Birds (Titanic walleri) that tyrannized earth’s Pliocene Epoch and which he encountered in his university studies on evolutionary biology. The creatures here are very different, both in acuity and in coloration.
Bereft of both the optic nerve and the otic system that confer sight and sound, they are both blind and deaf. But their olfactory acuity compensates in their efficiency as predaceous hunters, and the adults are homing in on the alien scent invading the nest of their young.
The approaching predators are half again as tall as the man and run on two segmented legs with four-toed claws, but they lack even vestigial wing-stubs and are flightless. Their feathers are the same shades as the forest foliage mottled with lichens, a camouflage that renders them virtually invisible when still.
Their most prominent and fearsome feature is the long, broad, razor-sharp beak that dominates their hatchet-shaped head. And their powerful, heavily muscled jaws furnish enough force to snap a heavy limb of deadfall asunder in one clean slice.
When the man cries out, the band dashes over the edge of the nest to confront the approaching creatures. The leader and his two hunters spring from the rim of the nest onto the nearest adult birds. As one hunter is nipped savagely on his thigh, they manage to rip out their throats.
The fatally injured birds scamper aimlessly, their severed heads lolling to one side, attached only by a few cord-like tendons. Their antics remind the man of the chickens his Aroostook County grandfather decapitated for dinner at the farm.
Eyeless and deaf, the remaining adult creatures are disoriented by the frantic movement around them and, as a body, retreat into the gloom of the forest.
Seizing the opportunity, the company plunges into the blackness on the opposite side of the nest, away from the stream.
As the bird-like creatures return for another attack on the intruders in their nest, they find it deserted, their chicks unmolested.
Unpursued, the company press on through the remainder of the night. Leaving both the bird-like carnivores and their whistling world behind.
By dawn, the forest has reclaimed its quiet stillness, and the company pauses for rest.
Moving away from the zone of whistling craters, and the desiccating aridity of its super-heated atmosphere, the oppressive humidity of the rainforest returns with brutal force.
Again, the man is depressed by the drear wetness of the place.
In the silence, he detects a faint, gurgling noise and motions the leader in its direction. A short way from the resting band, they find a noisily bubbling brook. Stepping onto the slick, smooth stones dotting its surface, they stoop and drink greedily. Making their way back onto the opposite bank, the man notices small finned creatures and other fish swimming lazily in placid pools beside the brook’s churning channel.
The brook is cool and refreshing, and the flesh of its finned creatures and fish is filling and delicious.
So absorbed are they in their meal, the company does not at first notice the remote tree-line, limned by bright light, at the far edge of their vision. Across the broad perpendicular stream that is this brook’s destination. The stream flows in parallel with the march of the backlit tree-line as far as the eye can see.
The man is first to notice the far distant tree-line, and he points excitedly in its direction. But the lengthening shadows of a new night blot out the faint image, and the leader motions the band to fall out along the brook’s open bank.
The retreating shadows of a new day find the company refreshed and rested and, upon waking, the man sees the leader and his band staring and pointing at the clearly visible tree-line on the horizon ahead. Pausing only long enough to drink, the band moves out at once in the direction of the distant trees and the stream that flanks them.
Even the drizzle raining steadily from the leafy canopy above cannot dampen the man’s spirits.
The rainforest floor is clean here, and the dearth of low-growing vegetation speeds their progress through the more open terrain.
As they approach the stream, the leader makes an unpleasant discovery.
There are several nest-mounds lining the stream’s n
ear bank, and the leader quickly looks around to see if there are any adult Terror Birds in the vicinity. Seeing none, he bids the band to proceed cautiously and they soon are assembled on the shore between the stream and the nests.
That is when disaster strikes!
The stream is inviting as it slips languidly past the assembled band, but the man wonders if its black, impenetrable surface belies a depth they cannot cross. When he dips a foot into the water at the shoreline, he receives an unexpected and lethal response.
A creature as black as the depth it inhabits breaches onto the stream-bank next to him, narrowly missing his retreating foot. Glancing down, the man beholds a creature unlike any he has encountered in this world or his own.
It is three feet of wriggling black monstrosity.
Two knob-like protuberances are set on top of its stout stub of a head, but closed black lids veil their purpose. Below the knobby appendages is a row of long, curved, needle-shaped fangs. Six muscular legs support the creature’s weight, and its scaly webbed claws display an adaptation to its watery realm.
Its tail is as broad and stubby as its head, distributing its weight evenly and enabling the creature to use its perfectly balanced center of gravity for both strength and stability. The most singular feature of its tail is the long, needle-shaped spike at its end—a fitting complement to the creature’s frontal fangs.
Slowly turning its head in the man’s direction, the creature blinks open large, green cat’s eyes and lunges toward him.
Jumping away, the man is alarmed to see the rhythmic, heaving rise and fall of the creature’s sides. As he realizes, at once, this monster can breathe out of water. Putting them all in great peril.
Then, the creature barks.
Suddenly, more of the creatures rise out of the black depths of the stream. The company bolts away from the shoreline and, with the amphibious monsters close on their heels, race back between the nest-mounds.
Into even greater danger!
Having passed the nest-mounds, the company find themselves alone. Ignored and forgotten.
Instead of pursuing them, the amphibious monsters have scaled the sides of the mounds and are arrayed on the rims, their cat’s-eyes fixed on the spongy centers within.
With the first almost-imperceptible stirring of the nests’ surface, one of the creatures dives into the spongy mass. Emerging with its jaws clutching a screeching chick. Pulling it apart and greedily gulping its scaly legs, feathers, beak, bones and flesh. The grisly scene is repeated as other amphibious monsters drop into the nests each time they sense the slightest vibration.
Sickened by the carnage, the man turns away only to see death and destruction hurtling toward him!
A large flock of Terror Birds are racing toward the mounds from the opposite direction. Trapping the company between their razor-sharp beaks and the needle-shaped fangs and tail-spikes of the creatures assaulting the nests.
The leader and his fellow hunters gather the band into a defensive formation to meet the attackers head on. But the Terror Birds behave in a way the leader could not have anticipated.
Instead of attacking, they race past the company and pounce on the amphibians, chopping downward with their hatchet-shaped heads and slicing flesh with their razor-edged beaks. Soon, not a black creature is stirring and, indifferent to the company's presence, the Terror Birds are distributing the carcasses in the nests among their eager, ravenous surviving chicks.
They ignore the departing travelers, who strike out in a direction parallel to, but at a respectful distance from, the amphibian-infested stream.
Leaving the nest-mounds far behind, they follow the stream until night falls and darkness forces them to halt. While the band sleeps, the man becomes restless and awakens in a dream-like state.
He is surrounded by a veil of blackness. Broken by a multitude of lights lancing through the darkness from brightly-lit lanterns that seem to dance in the air. As he strains to make out their details, the ghost-like forms of silvery apparitions appear. Holding out the lanterns and beckoning him with their free arms.
Rising into the darkness, the man follows the specters to a bend in the stream, where its narrows are bridged by a rocky overhang above the flowing water. The silvery figures form a single file and, with lanterns raised to light the way, cross the overhang to the other side.
The man’s sleep-state deepens as the lanterns wink out and blackness reclaims the night.
When morning returns, the man awakens to find the leader and his two hunters again in earnest conference about how to cross the carnivore-infested stream and reach the tree-line beyond.
Approaching them, the man motions urgently in the direction he followed in his dream. The leader signals to the band and, as one, they strike out in the same footsteps the man followed in his dream, guided by the bright, airy lanterns that lit his way.
After a short march, they near the bend in the stream, and the man points excitedly at the rocky overhang bridging its narrows. Soon, the entire company is safely across the stream and traveling toward the distant tree-line.
Brightening rays of light break through the narrow interstices between dense, towering trunks.
Chapter 16. A Different Universe
The rainforest floor remains smooth and uncluttered. Speeding their progress toward the edge of its canopied realm.
The leader sets a brisk pace. Motivated, the man supposes, by eagerness to escape this gloomy, steamy forest.
The man lags behind the band, unable to match their stamina and endurance. It is the downside of being a sprinter among marathoners in each full day’s journey. He has become accustomed to the band forging ahead while remaining in sight.
Not this time.
He is perplexed when the band disappears through the vertical columns of light in the tree-line ahead. Leaving him behind in the gloaming. He hastens to the row of towering trunks and squeezes into the bright light between the nearest two.
Stepping into a wholly unexpected scene in a wholly different universe.
For the first time, his stoic, stalwart companions show fear—naked and raw!
The entire band huddles closely around the leader. All stare skyward in awe. The expressions of fright are primal and palpable.
Following their gaze, the man is astonished at how the firmament has changed
.
Gone is the second sun.
In its place is a colossal violet-red-yellow oval whose truncated end on the far horizon gives it the appearance of the narrowing end of a hen’s egg. The massive celestial body covers nearly a third of the visible sky. And its vivid colors are straight out of an Andy Warhol floral screen-print.
The man knows what the band does not. That it is the leading edge of the giant exoplanet, whose image is distorted by refraction in the moon’s atmosphere. And that the missing dwarf star is simply hidden beyond the horizon.
While the leader and his band fear no terrestrial creature, they are starkly terror-stricken by the threat above them.
The furry bipeds see the empyrean image as a violet-red-yellow monster. A malevolent demon that has swallowed one of the blood-red spheres that greeted them on the frozen tundra when they abandoned their polar world.
They fear the formidable size of this monster that occupies so vast a dimension of sky. And they fear for the remaining blood-red sphere it stalks overhead.
Leaving the band to their fearful observations, the man takes a more practical view of their situation as he scans the landscape ahead.
It is endless, lifeless desert as far as he can see. Broken only by serpentine ribbons of verdant swales bordered by narrow margins of prairie scrub.
Everywhere he looks, the rays of the visible sun reflect the shimmering surfaces of the lakes and rivers that feed their green borders and give them life.
These green belts and the prairie-like stretches of stunted, desiccated brush are dotted with small, scattered herds of the aurochs-like bison he first encountered in the high reeds
shortly after landing on this moon.
Despite the presence of water, the surrounding desert terrain is utterly devoid of greenery beyond the narrow, verdant belts of high, bright-green reeds and greying brush bordering the rivers and lakes.
Again, the man marvels at the paradox of plentiful water under cloudless skies. But this is arid desert, not the rainforest with its sump pits. A new uncertainty gnaws at him.
He does not know the lakes and rivers are replenished by deep underground streams flowing beneath cap rock.
He does not know these subterranean aqueducts are fed by the river caves he visited in his detour through the geode-lit corridors beneath the earth.
He does not know the rivers and lakes are contained by impermeable mudstone.
He does not know the stunted growth on the prairie stretches is itself sustained only by surface evaporation from these waters in this zone where no rain falls.
As he surveys the broad, open landscape, the leader approaches him and—with a look of despair and warning—points skyward. The man responds with calming motions and reassuring gestures, pointing instead to the green-and-grey fringed waters in the distance ahead.
When the man sets out toward the largest and farthest lake, the leader beckons to the band and they follow in stride. It is nearly dark when they arrive at its shore.
Fearful of remaining in the open in this darkening, unknown place, the man motions the leader toward an opening in the high green reeds along the bank. Nodding assent, the leader steps through the opening into a wide area of bare ground flanked by the dense, tightly packed reeds.
It is in this protected space the company spends its first night in the desert.
The sun is just beginning the climb toward its violet-red-yellow host above when the man finally awakens to a queer sensation—a feeling, actually, that he and the exhausted, still-sleeping band are not alone in this reed-fringed glade.
While it is still very dark, there is enough dim light to reveal the same uninhabited space the company bedded down in the night before, and the man cannot account for his unease.
Paradox Moon: The First Book of Regenesis Page 9
