The Ninth Circle

by R. M. Meluch

  “What has a mammoth to say?” Glenn asked.

  Patrick shrugged. “He might be telling another herd the grazing is good over here. Or he could be giving the saber tooth report.”

  He pocketed the omni, moved up to walk next to their she-mammoth’s head. He fell into her slow rolling gait. Imitating her, he moved his arm like a trunk and plucked a handful of seed-topped grass.

  Patrick Hamilton was socially inept among most humans, except other scientists. But he had a special connection with most aliens. Maybe because he took an interest in aliens. He was an intellectual snob and a pedant. He found most human conversation tedious, and it offended people when his eyes glazed over while they were talking. He liked the puzzle of deciphering alien thought and speech. He paid attention to what aliens said and made an effort to understand them. And aliens didn’t know how juvenile his conversation usually was.

  “Hey, spicy hembra, is this where all the hot mammoths graze?”

  The she-mammoth lifted her trunk to snuffle his head. Her large hairy nostril breathed him in. Then she curled her trunk around the grass he held in his hand. She took the grass from him and tucked it into her mouth. Chewed with broad flat teeth. Her stubby tusks moved with her chewing.

  She exhaled sweet oaty breath.

  “I hope this doesn’t mean we’re hooked,” said Patrick. “I’m happily married, you see.”

  Glenn noted the “happily.” A significant word there.

  The she-mammoth gave a little chirp.

  Glenn smiled at the tiny sound. “Was that her? Did she do that?”

  Patrick nodded. “That’s all we’ve got on record for mammoth vocalization. I knew they could do better than that. This.” He drew his omni from his pocket and showed her the chart of bellowing low-fi noises. “This. This is their language. Maybe.”

  Glenn gave him a puzzled look. “Maybe?”

  “The question is whether it can be called language,” he qualified.

  “There’s a wide fuzzy gray line between language and animal communication. My mammoths fall solidly in the fuzzy zone. They don’t create. But they do communicate.”

  “Your mammoths,” said Glenn. “I thought they were Dr. Szaszy’s mammoths.”

  “Szaszy likes to think they’re his mammoths.”

  “You’re stepping in his field,” said Glenn.

  “Szasz deserves stepping on. The mammoths are wasted on him. He never bothered to listen to them. This is a language. And I think I’ve isolated a few actual words. Predator. Water. And I think there’s a difference between big water and little water. This is little water right here.”

  He nodded at the creek that fed the larger stream. The she-mammoth dragged her trunk in the clear running current.

  “I’m pretty sure big water means the river way down below camp. They also have sky water.”

  “Rain?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  Their she-mammoth companion moved away from the creek. She looped her trunk around a bunch of wheaty grass and made an unmistakable gesture of offering it to Patrick.

  “For me?” Patrick said with a terrified smile. “Really?” he took the offered grass. He glanced at Glenn, unnerved. “It’s probably only polite to eat it, hm?”

  Glenn could tell that he wanted her to talk him out of it.

  Instead she said, “Are you carrying a panic button?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give it to me.”

  In case stabs of poisoning came over him, Glenn could signal for help—though she was not sure how fast the LEN would send out a rescue party.

  Not the answer Patrick was looking for. “You mean you want me to do this?”

  “John Farragut has been known to swallow alien substances not to give offense to aliens,” Glenn said.

  “I’m not John Farragut,” Patrick said.

  Glenn said nothing.

  Patrick said, “You didn’t pick up the obvious straight line. You must still love me.”

  “Eat your wheat,” Glenn said.

  “Or maybe you don’t.”

  “Well, I can’t volunteer to eat it for you. She’s your girlfriend. And she’s getting testy.”

  The hembra pushed Patrick’s hand, the one holding the wheat, to his face.

  “Smells good,” he said, weakly hopeful.

  A tasty smell usually meant something was edible on Earth. This was not Earth. Perceptions here were likely skewed.

  Glenn gave his shoulder a hard pat. “Bon appetit.”

  “Okay then. If I keel over, we get to see how good a doctor Cecil really is.”

  His body visibly tensed. Patrick bit into the seed heads.

  He chewed gingerly. A look of mild surprise relaxed his face. “This isn’t bad.”

  He swallowed. Paused cautiously as if listening to his stomach.

  “How do you feel?” Glenn asked.

  “Good!” said Patrick, surprised. He gathered up some more seed heads for himself.

  Glenn smelled his breath. The crushed seeds gave off an oaty, wheaty, sesame aroma.

  The scent made her mouth water. She hoped her nose was not mistranslating the alien smell.

  “This is going down easy,” Patrick said.

  Glenn already knew that local flora had many proteins in common with Earth and that some of the native plants were edible. But she and Patrick didn’t know which ones. And ingesting alien organics was not the generally accepted way of conducting a composition analysis. You could not judge alien organics by terrestrial measures.

  Well, you could, but you could also be dead.

  After hours of wandering with the mammoths, anxiously monitoring Patrick’s vital signs, and listening to her own stomach rumble with hunger, Glenn asked, “Anything hurt?”

  “My legs,” Patrick said.

  Not a surprise. Patrick was no athlete. This hike was the farthest he’d walked since she’d known him.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Great, actually. You?”

  “I’m hungry!” Glenn snarled along with her stomach.

  She gave Patrick one last checkup. His heartbeat was regular. His pupils looked normal and he wasn’t sweating. His energy was good. Better than hers.

  As they’d been walking, he had peeled the husks off a bunch of seeds for her. He emptied a pocketful of them into her cupped hands. She wolfed into them, chewing blissfully, her head full of wheaty, oaty, sesame scent.

  As soon as she swallowed, she felt a subtle rush like carbohydrates hitting her bloodstream after a long fast. She gave a happy moan.

  “Know what this means?” Patrick asked.

  Glenn guessed, muffled, her mouth full, “New food crop?”

  “Means we don’t have to go back.”

  The adjutant in the outer office advised Admiral John Alexander Farragut, “Sir, your father is here.”

  Mohammed was a whole lot less surprised when his mountain knocked on the door. That had been expected. This just could not be happening.

  Not a phone call. Not a messenger.

  Your father is here.

  Himself.

  Justice of the State Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the admiral’s father was the supreme master of his domain. His Honor waited for no one. You wait on His Honor.

  His Honor was waiting in the outer office.

  Had anyone scanned this being’s retina and checked his DNA before allowing him on base?

  This could not be good.

  His Honor had made the first move.

  Admiral Farragut shot across his office to open the door for himself. “Sir.”

  As soon as he saw the man, Admiral Farragut knew he was real.

  Justice John Knox Farragut nodded and advanced through the open door, his back straight but with an unfamiliar humbled air. His ambivalence was familiar. So was the resentment. But his enormous pride was crushed down to a civil calm.

  Admiral Farragut was an incorrigible hugger, but he resisted the impulse to embrace h
is father. His Honor had crossed the abyss first. The son left him his personal space.

  His Honor’s alpha superiority had slipped by coming here. He trudged into the admiral’s office and sat heavily.

  Admiral Farragut’s first fear came out of his mouth, “Mama?”

  His Honor waved that off. “Your mother’s—” He stopped before he could say fine. He said instead, “Your mother is your mother.”

  But something was very wrong. The trouble had to be one of the admiral’s twenty brothers and sisters or his fruitfully multiplying nieces and nephews. Or else something was wrong with the Old Man himself, who looked beaten down.

  His Honor’s hollow gaze wandered, spied the baby under the admiral’s desk. He slid from his chair, hunkered down with one knee on the floor to pick her up. He gave her a sad smile, like someone grieving while holding a new life between his hands.

  Bad news wasn’t going anywhere.

  His Honor looked into the button-nosed face, the petal lidded eyes. Managed a sad smile. “Now who is this?”

  His Honor had been at Admiral Farragut’s wedding—mainly because Mama had threatened him with all the devils of hell and her eternal wrath, which seldom seen was nonetheless terrifying, if he did not attend.

  Father and son hadn’t seen each other face-to-face since.

  The admiral introduced the infant, “Your grandbaby. Patsy Augusta.”

  “Patsy. For your Grandmama Winfield,” His Honor said approvingly. “And Augusta?” Of course he couldn’t place that name.

  “For a Roman.”

  Not approving. “Why would you give any child of mine a Roman name?”

  “Sir? She’s my child.”

  And here we go. The back went stiff. The familiar glower returned to the blue eyes.

  And just as quickly faded. His Honor backing down.

  It was terrifying.

  “Who died?”

  “No one. No one died,” said His Honor. Didn’t seem surprised by the question. With some reproach, he asked, “I can’t come see my son and my grandchild?”

  Yes. When entropy reverses itself and time runs backward. When little Miss Muffet invites eight-legged guests to tea. When all the laws of nature break down.

  “You’re always welcome, sir.”

  His Honor talked for a while. About family. And when he decided it was time to go, he gave his son a huge heartfelt bear hug on his way out, his eyes tight shut. He thumped his son on the back. “My boy. My boy.”

  Immediately he was gone, Admiral Farragut contacted Central Intelligence. “Can I get a personal data excavation—off ledger?”

  “Since it’s you, sir,” said the agent.

  Admiral Farragut said, “Can you find out if my father is dying?”

  The chart on Patrick’s omni spiked.

  “Uh-oh.”

  The mammoths’ lazy shuffling became restive. Ropy tails switched. Ears flapped. Trunks lifted into the air.

  The bull Long John held his ears straight out to the sides.

  Moving shadows swept across the highland meadow. Glenn looked up, shaded her eyes against the sun.

  The silhouette of a wide wingspan circled the meadow. Then another. More of them in soaring spirals.

  At first Glenn thought the lowest one was diseased, because of its naked, peeling head, but they were all like that. All of them had featherless heads, sloughing skin, and tattered rags of black feathers.

  Back home, a naked head indicated a carrion eater. But there was nobody dead here on the meadow.

  The circling birds had large horn beaks with hooked ends. They circled, croaking. More and more of them.

  They spiraled up instead of down. The highest could see for miles up there.

  Or be seen.

  The mammoths picked up sticks and clods of dirt with their trunks and threw them up at the ugly birds.

  “Tattler,” Patrick named them. “Air jackal. Oooh, nice shot.” As a dirt clod found its mark. The bird folded up in midair and tumbled tail over beak.

  It recovered with an ungainly flapping before it could touch ground, where mammoths were moving in, seeming intent on trampling it.

  Glenn was confused. “Jackals? Why are they gathering? No one is dead.”

  “Yet,” said Patrick.

  “Will they attack?”

  “No. If tattlers don’t find carrion on their own, they get someone else to kill something for them. The tattlers find a buffet and call in sabers to kill it so the tattlers can feast on leftovers.”

  “Mammoths?” said Glenn, incredulous. “Anything can spot mammoths. They picked mammoths? Why not pick something easy, like Bengal tigers?”

  “Mammoth babies,” Patrick said.

  Chubby, chunky, clumsy, plump mammoth babies cuddled together, crying pitiably. Their mothers tossed their heads, frantic, squeaking.

  Glenn looked up at the ominous birds. “What does this mean?”

  A roar sounded from the tangled vegetation beyond the meadow. Another roar, very leonine, answered from the trees bounding the opposite side. Another roar of something hidden circled behind the herd. Roars kept repeating from the six o’clock, nine o’clock, and twelve o’clock positions.

  The chart on Patrick’s omni was scribbled nearly solid. He pocketed it and took Glenn by the hand.

  “Means we’re about to be attacked by sabers.”

  10

  MAMMOTH TRUNKS LIFTED and lowered. Mammoth ears flared straight out.

  The sabers were moving in a wide semicircle. Glenn couldn’t spot them but knew where they were from the movements of the mammoths’ eyes.

  Glenn had her splinter gun out. Of course she brought her gun. She had it on her always, slung across her back under her jacket, out of sight. As Patrick was with his omni, Glenn was with her gun. She slept with her gun. Even though it was coded for her exclusive use, she never left her weapon where anyone else could get it.

  She wasn’t wearing gunsights. Targeting would be tricky here.

  But the target sounded big.

  Patrick was the expert on Zoen creatures, but Glenn was the expert in combat. Patrick listened to the saber roars and whispered, “Are they herding us?”

  “I think,” said Glenn. The sabers had the mammoths hemmed in on three sides. The open direction would feed them down into the stream where it tumbled down the steep rocky vale in the direction Patrick and Glenn had come.

  That had been a hard slippery climb with treacherous rock walls on both sides.

  “The predators are trying to spook the mammoths into the pass,” said Glenn, frightened for the herd. “The mammoths won’t be able to maneuver in there. Patrick, they’ll kill themselves on the rocks.”

  “I think my mammoths are smarter than that,” Patrick said. It sounded more like a wish than a belief.

  But the mammoths did refuse to be herded.

  The hembras were gathering up their young and hustling them into a tight group right here in the open meadow. All the adults formed a defensive circle around them, tusk-side out.

  Patrick nodded up at the horn-beaked tattlers. “Tattlers have a symbiotic relationship with sabers. The saber is the only thing that will attack a mammoth.”

  “Sabertooth cat?” Glenn asked, gripping her gun, trying to get a look at what roared from the underbrush.

  “More saber. Less cat,” said Patrick just before a thick trunk encircled him and swung him up into the air and deposited him into the middle of the defensive ring with the babies.

  Another mammoth shooed Glenn back there with him. The big living hose pushed her along with a stern touch, move it, move it.

  When the trunk stopped pushing her, Glenn was trapped inside a circular wall of colossal feathery asses in the company of the keening babies. Tree trunk legs shifted and stamped. Mammoths snorted. Ears flapped. Skinny tails twitched.

  The tattlers circled lower, uttering harsh squawks.

  A baby mammoth looped its stubby trunk around Patrick and tucked him between its forelegs
and hugged him, shivering.

  Patrick pushed downy feathers out of his face. Said, “I think I just became someone’s dolly.”

  Glenn moved around the ring, peering out through the forest of moving legs.

  She spotted a motion of large shapes at the tree line.

  They burst into the open.

  Through moving legs and waving feathers, all Glenn could see of them at first were the sabers themselves, dirty ivory horns, straight as lances, flying at the mammoths.

  Mammoth heads tossed, brandishing stout tusks.

  The sabers stopped short of the thrashing tusks. They dodged, circled, feinted again.

  The predators were bulky. Muscles like living building blocks moved under gray skin. Outsized heads seemed to be all mouth. They wielded two sabers. One saber jutted from under their tiny eyes, the other, stouter saber extended from their wide, armor-boned chests.

  The chilling crash of tusks against sabers made Glenn drop into a crouch. Snarling and thrashing thundered from all sides. Glenn caught glimpses of retreating sabers.

  The mammoths repelled the first charge.

  Glenn had a horrible feeling that the sabers were only testing. They stabbed to find a weak point.

  And they edged back in.

  Glenn couldn’t get out of the living fortress. The mammoths pressed together, side to side, swaying, crushing weights.

  Glenn dropped down flat on her belly with her splinter gun aimed at ground level.

  She looked down the barrel, trying to line up a shot for what might come. The mammoth legs were in constant motion. Their long feathery coats waved between Glenn and the targets.

  The sabers paced with abrupt turns, in and out of view.

  Glenn had no shot at all.

  She jumped back to her feet. She holstered her gun behind her back, ran up to a mammoth haunch, seized two thick handfuls of feathers and scaled up its rump.

  The ropy tail slapped her. She crested the mammoth’s rear, and crawled up its back onto its neck. She hooked one arm over the root of one ear to keep it out of her way, and she set her sight on a saber. Fired.

  The saber flinched as the splinter pierced its hide and lodged in its ribs. The saber snarled at the sting.

  Glenn pulled the second stage trigger.