Hunted (Eden, #2)

by Louise Wise

  She stared at him wordlessly. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  ‘A baby will have a big effect your health. It is already,’ he said. ‘You’re physically sick and tired—’

  ‘It’s natural,’ she cut in. ‘I knew you’d be shocked. I mean, I was. But I’m struggling with what you just said. Destroy our baby? Really? Is that what you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Jenny spun round to face the synthetic window, made from the innards of Fly’s decaying spaceship, which was now a heap of tangled metal hidden beneath the planet’s fast-growing undergrowth, then she pushed past him and left the cottage with a hefty slam of the door. She wrapped her arms around her middle, wishing she’d thought to grab her fur poncho, and went down the hill towards the river. The boat was bobbing on the surface.

  Destroy the foetus.

  She knew Fly sometimes mixed up his human words but they’d spoken in Jelvia. He’d said ‘Destroy the foetus’ in plain Jelvian. She climbed down the grassy bank, and got into the boat. She rowed to the other side, working off her anger on the oars.

  The river was narrow, but the depth was unmeasured. It flowed at a steady pace, and if you allowed your mind to wander, it would be easy to let the river take the boat towards its rapids, and where the original Taurus crashed; its shell probably in pieces now at the bottom of Eden’s vast ocean.

  On the other side, Jenny grabbed the gun, always kept beneath the seat in the boat, and climbed up the boggy riverbank. She tied the boat to a wooden post Fly had erected years ago. Matt had carved his initials in the post: Matt woz ere. Year dot.

  That had been the joke; Planet Eden the beginning, and ‘year dot’ the beginning of their calendar. They had lived in the 22nd century—2136 to be exact, and human advances had allowed people to travel out of the solar system for the first time. ‘People’ being Jenny, Bodie and Matt. It hadn’t gone exactly to plan!

  Astra scientists discovered a planet, its size, oxygen, chemical balance almost identical to Earth’s, and there was a scramble between the nations to send trained astronauts. But the UK won the vote and Bodie, Matt and Jenny were selected to travel billions of light-years to study Eden, and place probes on the surface so Earth could watch it evolve from afar. Only they encountered a crashed alien spaceship and its lone survivor: Fly.

  Straightening, she looked back across the river. Fly’s tall figure stood on the top of the hill. The wind tossed up his long hair and it whipped around his face. He looked every inch a warrior as he watched her. Why did he react like that about her pregnancy? Shock, yes, but that? It wasn’t normal. She gave an emotionless laugh. This wasn’t a normal environment. Fly wasn’t human. But it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d reject his own child.

  As he began to walk down the hill towards her, she turned and jogged towards dryer ground where the buggies were kept. She didn’t want to speak to him. She felt as if he’d physically slapped her, and all she wanted to do was go somewhere quiet and lick her wounds—and prepare herself for the fight she would surely have for her unborn child.

  It would’ve been quicker for her to reach the buggies by taking a shortcut through the forest, but she skirted the dark and dank trees. Eden harboured many animals; the most usual were the wolves. Not really wolves, but their call sounded similar to a wolf and Jenny had labelled them as such.

  Recently, Fly had deduced that there were two kinds of ‘wolf’: the natives, which favoured walking on four legs, and the honnards who walked as upright as Fly and herself. Apart from their stance, both sets of animals had thickset, hairy bodies and flat humanoid faces that both fascinated and repelled her.

  She stopped with a jolt of surprise as, a short distance away, she saw a young wolf. Its hair was golden and sparse on its body. It was enchanting—it looked no more than an eighteen-month-old toddling child. Jenny had never seen a young native before. She crouched so not to appear as a threat, but the creature didn’t seem worried. She took in its humanoid face, blue human eyes and human ears either side of its head.

  Jenny sucked in her breath. She couldn’t believe this little humanish creature would grow up to become a hairy, smelly, howling native. Wolf or honnard, she wasn’t sure.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. She kept her face void of emotion.

  ‘Chuff-chuff,’ the little native said. It opened its mouth wide as it ‘spoke’ and vapour puffed around its face. It didn’t have many teeth, Jenny noticed.

  Something was watching her. She could feel a penetrating glare to the side of her head. She didn’t want to look, but felt she must. The cub’s mother was sitting against a tree and its shadow had been hiding her from Jenny. Of course, a native this young wouldn’t be far from its mother! Usually they never left their burrow.

  Jenny rose slowly, as did the native. It stood upright, and looked well-balanced on two legs. This was a honnard that Fly had explained were evolving people. First-people or not, Jenny’s hand reached for her gun as the native reached out a hand for her cub and pulled it towards fleshy breasts that bulged from the tangle of hair on her chest.

  ‘Chi-Chi,’ the honnard said. Her voice was muffled because her face was pressed against the top of the cub’s head. ‘Chi-Chi, Chi-Chi.’

  Jenny didn’t dare turn her back, but edged away slowly. The gun was suddenly slippery in her hand. ‘Easy, girl,’ she said in a soft soothing voice. Who she was soothing, she didn’t really know. ‘I’m not about to hurt you or your cub.’

  The native hugged her baby and the small animal squeaked as if in protest. If Jenny didn’t know any different she’d have said the female native was acting shy. The only other time she’d encountered natives first-hand was when they were trying to kill her, and shyness was certainly not part of their character back then. They were the four-legged kind, the non-honnards, she reminded herself, but this female was just as hairy and probably had just as many sharp teeth and claws. She continued to sidle away.

  Her other hand circled the whistle tied around her neck, and she was ready to blow into it to summon help from Fly, but there was a decent gap between her and the honnards now. She broke into a run; glancing over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being chased. But there were no slap-slap of the strange native footsteps, and no sight of the she-wolf.

  She reached the buggies. One was the space buggy, the other completely manmade. Or Bodie-made. She climbed into the first, and with its roof above her, she felt protected. But the female honnard and her cub hadn’t followed—neither had Fly. He’d have reached her by now, if he had. Feeling strangely hurt, she put the car into motion towards the warm caves—so-called because of the underground geysers, which spurted out heated water that formed a warm lake inside the cave.

  Jenny had deduced that the planet’s main heat came from underground.

  There were pockets of heated geysers dotted around Eden’s plains, and Jenny believed there was a network of hot springs below its surface. She was certain the springs, which flowed into the ocean, was the reason the planet wasn’t always completely frozen.

  The road was fine dust with sparse tufts of grass that littered the plain. She passed grazing animals so huge they’d make an elephant seem like a baby. The creatures posed no threat though, and those that did she would shoot. She was quick with the gun now, and didn’t think she’d be shy using it if her life depended on it. She thought back to how pathetic she was in the beginning; on how, when she made a fire for the first time, thought herself brilliant. She gave a snort. Had Fly not been there she’d have curled up and died.

  Had Fly not been there she’d be back on Earth with Bodie and Matt. Celebrating their success, doing celebrity interviews, living the high-life… but the thought of going back filled Jenny with dread. Despite their argument, she was happier here. It was her home.

  A large shadow fell over the buggy. Eden had a binary star system and its shadows were unlike those on earth. Used to them now, Jenny ignored it, but a loud squawk accompanied the silhouette and made her stam
p on the brake. With the windows built in, she couldn’t buzz it down, so she opened the door and peered up at the sky—her gun poised.

  Nothing was there, and the shadow was gone.

  Eden had birds and flying insects, large butterflies in particular, but nothing that could have made such a huge shadow. The sky was cloudless. Jenny pulled the door shut and continued to drive.

  She pulled up outside the cave, and taking the gun, she gingerly stepped inside. Sometimes, animals used the cave because it was warm, but today it was empty. Jenny tucked the gun away and continued further into the cavern. The deeper she went, the warmer it became. She knew the path well, and when the light cut off she continued to move forward with one hand on the cave wall to guide her.

  The wall curved round and then the light came back in pinpricks of sunlight as it glinted in from the holes in the ceiling. It was like walking into a jewel, and Jenny never tired of its beauty.

  The centre of the lake bubbled like a Jacuzzi as hot geysers spurted upward to fall back into the pool.

  This was where she and Fly finally began to trust one another. Where she fell in love.

  On the orange rocks, beside the lake, was evidence of their last visit. They’d brought mattresses (they’d taken many mattresses from the cabins in the old spaceship, and most were stored in the barn) and left them on the rocks rather than keep taking them back.

  Jenny sat on one, pulled up her knees and stared into the bubbling lake as the steam warmed her chilled body. Winter was fast approaching, and soon the land would be covered with a blanket of snow.

  Fly’s jealously was absurd, but with Matt and Bodie he had reason—the men were equally jealous of the other. A baby wasn’t a threat. A baby was a baby—innocent and theirs.

  She pulled off her battered boots and rolled up her handmade trousers, and went down to the lake. She sat at the edge and lowered her feet into the water. The water felt hot at first, until she became accustomed, and then it was bath-warm.

  The burning tears in her eyes caught her by surprise, and then she couldn’t stop them.

  Maybe it was hormones. Maybe it was because she missed Bodie and Matt more than she let on, or maybe it was because she knew she didn’t have the strength to fight Fly and his insane insecurities any longer.

  Chapter Three

  Fly watched as she climbed out of the boat. She turned to glare at him and he swore he could see her beautiful eyes flash from where he stood. He called her name, but his voice was taken by the wind, then she began to run and slipped out of sight among the looming trees.

  It hurt him that she thought he’d want to kill their baby without good reason. He wasn’t the same person he had been. She knew that—at least he thought she’d known.

  He swam across the river, and pulled up the other side as he heard the engine of the buggy fire into life. He began to run after her, but stopped as the buggy raced off through the spiralling dust.

  ‘Chuff-chuff.’

  He turned and saw a female honnard clutching a chattering baby against her chest. The young were not able to hold on themselves, and were reliant on their mother for everything. This youngster wasn’t a tiny baby, although much too young to be away from the safety of its settlement. The mother looked up at Fly with evident fear in her yellow eyes as her baby chattered; the baby’s eyes were the typical blue before they lightened, and they stared at him without concern.

  Fly glanced back to check the direction Jenny was going in, and then turned back to the female native. But she’d gone. She’d taken her chance and slipped away while his head was turned. He hadn’t recognised her, but then he didn’t have much to do with the nursing honnards, maybe he just hadn’t noticed her before.

  He looked back in the direction of the buggy until he was certain of its path: the warm caves, and then headed through the dark wood, using it as a short cut to follow Jenny.

  Jenny had obviously misinterpreted his concern over her pregnancy. Although, he had every reason to be concerned.

  A male Jelvia was venomous, and although they only developed this toxin in puberty, a male baby would be growing the toxic pulps in his throat and they leaked in the womb. It caused little problem with Jelvian women other than allow her to realise the sex of the baby, but to a human? To Jenny? The poison would kill her.

  Jenny was everything to him. She’d shown him happiness and fulfilment, and he didn’t want it to end. She relied on him for her survival, but without her there was nothing, so in a way, he needed her just as much. Her pregnancy was a quake—it had shaken his world and he could see it collapsing if he didn’t do anything to stabilise it.

  He ducked under low-hanging branches and followed the well-worn path towards the caves. Of the female native, there was no sign.

  At the edge of the wood, Fly watched as Jenny’s distant figure entered the caves. But instead of following Fly turned away. Even from a distance she’d looked distressed and Fly felt she’d want space to gather her thoughts.

  He back-tracked towards the lair of the native-wolves. When he entered the den the natives greeted him with their strange ‘chuff-chuff’ chatter and fawned around him with wide teeth-together smiles. They were smiles that would terrify Jenny. A smile that wasn’t a smile. It stretched across their hairy faces and reached parts that weren’t possible on an ordinary person.

  The lair consisted of several burrows, which they all shared when the weather became too cold, otherwise, only the mother and the pups would use them. Pinned to a tree close to the hideaway was a stick doll of Jenny. It had been erected only recently; probably the same time as Bodie and Matt had gone back to Earth. Maybe they thought she’d sent them on their way using some kind of magical powers?

  He looked around the group and counted them: fifteen. Until a few days ago, they’d been forty with a mixture of honnards and wolves. Fly had found many native settlements but this group had accepted him as one of them.

  The upright species, honnards, appeared to be able to reason and act more on their thinking, and they seemed to be farming the four-legged native wolves and using them as hunters or trusting them to look after their young. He once thought the tribe consisted of a single evolving group and only recently recognised they were two varieties of people who readily mated with one another. The result was a hierarchy generation of upright honnards born. Fly guessed the four-legged native wolves would soon become extinct.

  The natives ‘chuffed’ at him, and one stood upright, its short and stocky body barely up to Fly’s chest. It dropped back to all-fours as typical of its species. One moment man, the next animal.

  Snapping of twigs made Fly turn, and two honnards came into the camp, walking as easily as men. One of them was ‘Bo’, named after Bodie. Bo was the first native he’d made friends with, and he was the one to teach Fly that the natives weren’t his enemy. He held genuine affection for the man-animal.

  Bo held a spear and on seeing Fly, he jabbed it towards the treetops, which disappeared into the damp fog of the sky. ‘Ji-ji, chuff-chuff,’ he said. Fly liked to think that ‘Ji-ji’ was the name they had for him as if they understood the concept of a name and were trying to speak it.

  The other honnard also poked at the foggy sky with its spear. Unlike Bo’s greying body, this one was black.

  Fly looked around at the other natives. They had been watching Bo and the other honnard’s actions. There was anxiety in their eyes.

  ‘Ji-ji,’ Bo said.

  Fly looked over, and Bo held out his arms, thick with hair, as if to invite Fly for an embrace. Fly felt a strange sensation that he was trying to tell him something important.

  ‘Kernuff, Ji-ji,’ Bo said. He jabbed at the sky again with his spear.

  ‘Kernuff, kernuff,’ the other honnard chanted.

  Bo made a grab for Fly’s upper clothing, and Fly was about to knock his hand away when Bo’s eyes, unthreatening and anxious, stopped him. He stood still as Bo pulled down the neckline on his fur poncho to reveal a necklace.

&nb
sp; Jenny had made many necklaces over the years, but this was his favourite. It consisted of seashells and a lock of her hair. She had a similar one, with a lock of his hair.

  ‘Chi-Chi,’ Bo said. He covered the necklace back up and stepped back. ‘Kernuff.’

  His words were almost sad. Fly looked around at the watching natives; they were all looking at him.

  Then Bo turned and began to walk away followed by the other honnard. They stopped at the threshold and then looked back, their meaning obvious. With a final glance at the remaining natives, Fly began to follow.

  It would pay to see what they were up to. He might even find out why the group’s numbers were falling. If another species was killing them, he and Jenny could be in danger.

  It was low ground and the forest floor was boggy and slimy, but he had no trouble keeping up with the honnards. In fact, he was hurrying them along, keen to get back to Jenny, but then he realised they were heading in the direction of the warm caves anyway.

  The ground became harder the deeper the honnards took him into the jungle, and Fly was on the verge of branching away from them towards the caves when he saw a hairy body of a native pinned to a tree. First glance, he thought it was a hunt impaled and left there as a gift to him, but on approaching, the two honnards grew agitated, and it became apparent that this was the first time they’d seen it.

  It was the body of the female honnard he’d seen with the chattering cub and she was pinned there by spears. Her throat had been slashed, and she’d been left to bleed to death with one of her hands around a spear in her belly as if she’d tried to tug it out.

  With strange noises in his throat, Bo pulled out the spears, and helped by the other honnard he laid the dead female on the ground as Fly scouted around for the cub. There was no sign. It may have wandered away and become lost, or whoever killed the mother, had taken the cub.

  Fly returned to find the honnards had covered the body with twigs and leaves. Bo straightened and seemed to chat angrily at Fly. He jabbed him in the chest with a long clawed finger.