War World: Discovery

by Discovery v2 lit

  Its serrated stalks sliced open exposed flesh, allowing its sticky leaves to cling over wounds. We later found out that some workers were using the stuff as makeshift adhesive bandages. Unfortunately, the sticky stuff, clear and odorless, worked like some snake venoms, breaking down proteins in the skin and blood. Anyone with the stuff on them developed ugly purple masses of pulped tissue. Blood poisoning can result, and the affected areas must be cut out, and quickly.

  Allergic reactions are also not uncommon, including anaphylaxis, which can result in quick, gasping death. I knew about that one because I’m allergic to bees, which, by the way, we’d imported, too. Without bees, few Earth plants can cross-pollinate. Fortunately, the tough African/Penn State hybrid was thought capable of colonizing any planet, so there was little worry on that account.

  As for stickyleaf grass, our medics figured it out and explained it as a cousin to acid-secreting firegrass, but only after several emergencies left more than a few of us injured. One child, fierce and curious, had placed a sticky leaf on one of her eyes and another had been eating them and died.

  It was our first warning that Haven could, indeed, be very specifically an alien world into which we were the trespassers. After that, we were all far more careful to take nothing for granted. Not even the soil in which I dug seemed as inert.

  It seemed a trial of some kind, and I endured it by working even harder. I made the acolyte house extra secure by creating a zigzag entrance just big enough for one large man at a time to crawl through.

  Nor was my dread of predators entirely unwarranted. A large part of our supplies, after all, consisted of the embryos of various foraging creatures which we’d let loose. Once populations of these herbivores and omnivores thrived, we’d introduce the carnivores, a few of them, to act as predators and thus maintain a natural harmony.

  An Earth-nocturnal cat from the Negev desert called a caracal, for example, was thought to be perfect for the dim lighting and relatively rainless conditions prevailing over most of Haven. It might raise havoc with our poultry, but could save grain from vermin, too. The high deserts and rugged mountains of our new homes would seem like paradise to such creatures, I thought, but encountering one might not be such a blessing.

  Before any encounters might happen, though, there must be a thriving human settlement. On this world, man came first, bringing plants and animals with him and although the harshness of the climate was a shock to many of us, even an insult, still, it was our place to be cautious.

  In our hands lay Haven’s fate, and we strove to be worthy of such responsibility.

  In use lies ownership, and stewards of the land are keepers of the future, as our Writings tell us. On a more practical level, our church’s resources had been spent to get us here, and the supplies we had were very likely all there would be. Haven’s an out-of-the-way world, not on trade routes and, in fact, on the very rim of the CoDominiums interests and influences. And so we struggled onward. How fragile we considered our every possession, how gently we treated even stones.

  Our laying-out of the encampment proceeded at a measured and deliberate pace. A few of us might have hurried to escape the bitter winds or to gain privacy or other comforts, but haste would have created its inevitable waste and that might well have meant doom. Colonizing a world requires patience.

  Castell supervised us and kept us patient, and we remaining Chosen labored hard. We quickly patterned our habits so that there was always work being done, even as others rested. With only variable nights Haven invited such perseverance.

  In several of my sleepings we had a place that seemed familiar upon waking, and some of the quicker animals were beginning to take on proper forms, among them the chickens. I found out by almost trampling a dozen yellow chicks that hopped by just as I climbed the four steps up out of the acolytes house. To my look of surprise one of the genetics people said, “We let them breed a few cycles first, just to make sure.”

  “Then have you foodbirds?” I asked, my mouth watering.

  He nodded. “Many have died, yes.”

  “Waste not, want not.” Feeling lighter of step I walked toward my day’s duties. One of them was helping soothe the beasts to be slaughtered, by being among the chorus whose drones kept the birds calm even as the butcher graced each throat with his molecule-sharp, gently wielded blade.

  Reverend Castell declared it Yule Season when he heard that meat was available. We celebrated with feasts and exchanged gifts of song, dance and privacy. And our meals of roast chicken and eggs done many ways were, indeed, duly sanctified because we ate no meat that had not passed on its lifeforce first, and we ate no eggs that had not been candled and pronounced free of conception. Nature’s cycles were kept in harmony.

  Life began improving for us, as we harmonized with our new environment. Meetings were held again, as the work became predictable. Schools commenced classes. We sang, always we sang, and some began constructing instruments with which to enhance our music.

  Once, as I sat with a group around a fire in the town square, the sound of a lone harmonica drifted to us from the woods. “The outcasts,” someone said, and although a search was made no one was found. Tales of the many odd items smuggled from Earth began to feature in our rest periods.

  We contemplated the loss of regular dusks and dawns in one of Reverend Castell’s sermons, and it moved us to think of the sacrifices sometimes necessary when a better life beckons. On a more mundane level, shaving was largely forsaken because facial and body hair added another layer of insulation, something to be cherished on chill Haven.

  An influenza went through us at one point, bouts of vomiting and fevers and worse, but no one died from it, and we pronounced it ship-borne, a legacy of lesser times, simpler tunes, when we’d lived in Earth’s cacophony. Most negatives were blamed on Earth, while anything positive was a sign that Haven welcomed us, celebrated our arrival, and supported our efforts toward Universal Harmony.

  Several women showed signs of pregnancy in the first months, and all would soon, we hoped. I often wondered when we acolytes would be permitted to choose wives from the girls, and I confess that I slept but fitfully all too often as I imagined this twelve-year-old, or that fourteen-year-old, naked and in my arms, her eagerness exactly matching mine, our knowledge equivalent as our bodies formed a chord.

  Even Reverend Castell took a wife, Saral. His wedding was quiet and private, and she radiated both calm and good cheer when she stepped out of his house the morning after they’d plighted troth.

  It was many sleeps before it dawned upon me that Saral was the woman who’d very likely been raped in the bunk beside me, during transport, and I could not help wondering if the Reverend had wed to save her from possible prejudice. Perhaps it was another of his lessons, too.

  For a while we got along well and bound ourselves in peace, but then the intruders came.

  III

  After a dozen Earth-months on Haven, I could go in shirtsleeves, and my body had filled out until I was bigger than Reverend Castell himself.

  Walking between the rows of plastic-covered furrows, I crossed one of the fields north of town. The trick of covering the plants to create mini-greenhouse effects had increased our second crop yield by seventy percent, so I watched my feet, remembering clumsier days.

  In my left hand I carried three small animals, all dead. They’d been discovered by three of our outlying farmers and I was taking them to the doctors for analysis. One looked like a salamander, green with red spots along its flanks, but it had a soft membrane across its forehead, and its eyes were multiplex, like a bee’s.

  Another of the animals I’d seen alive, it had a fur-like covering that scraped off like moss, four legs, and twin tails with bristles at the end. Those bristles were more like tiny barbs, and caused swelling. I knew because I’d kicked one once, at the edge of a corn-crop.

  Coming down the hill I had a good view of the lake. Its beauty inspired me with pride at our world. Boats bobbed near the shore I approach
ed, while our wharfs, now numbering three, showed much activity as nets were repaired and boats were sealed. We used resin from the pine-like trees for a natural sealant, even inside our houses. It dried to resemble a plastic. Those trees, whose sap ran outside their trunk, added layer after layer in a seasonal cycle we had yet to parse. Resin could be harvested in liquid form, and kept pliant by heating or it could be peeled in sheets.

  I waved, but the small figures could not have seen such a gesture, if they saw me at all.

  That’s when thunder sounded, a rare sound on Haven. It was rarer still from a clear sky showing only sparse, high cirrus clouds, so I squinted upward, perhaps subconsciously recognizing the sound.

  A glint became a glitter, and then the spot swelled and I drew in a sharp breath. My pace increased, and soon I was running.

  No one on the shore or in the boats seemed to notice and I wondered if the sound had been baffled from their hearing by the very hills on which I now ran. My gestures and shouts did not carry far enough.

  The spot had grown now. Blunt at the snout and wide in the beam, it was obviously a shuttle. Even as I glanced upward again the wings extended farther to let it achieve subsonic speeds without tumbling.

  I had to skirt a stand of oak-like trees, then cut through some more of the pines before I got another clear view of the lake. Some of the boats were making their way to shore. Others bobbed in apparent ignorance.

  Increasing my pace, I grew light-headed. Thin air dueled with highland lungs, for I’d been raised in the Rockies, but my speed and rhythm suffered. The splash-ship was now big in the sky, and falling fast. It banked and I saw stains and signs of neglect. “Earthers,” I shouted, my anger surging.

  And then the last few boats began moving, their occupants rowing frantically, but it was too late.

  I stopped running on the crest of the final rise. The animal specimens lay behind me, flung in frustration. All I could do was watch, squeezing my fists until my knuckles crackled.

  The shadow covered three of the boats, but the splashship only struck one, driving it under almost gently. The old Navy shuttle plowed a wake, and our other two boats swamped, but I saw swimmers. That first boat, however, showed no signs of surfacing again, and in fact, we never even found the body.

  Looking left, I saw people running from town, and made out the tall, longhaired, bearded figure of Reverend Castell. He did not run. He did not even walk quickly. His pace was an angry, robotic stomp.

  Looking right, I saw a few other boats coming down River East. River South showed no signs of activity, but my elevation and squint were insufficient for clear sight.

  “It was slaughter,” I said, wiping tears I hadn’t noticed before. Drawing a deep but shaky breath, I started trotting down to the lake, vectoring to intersect Castell’s stiff-jointed stalk.

  When I came to walk beside and a little behind the Reverend, I heard him muttering. His eyes seemed calm, but he was grinding his teeth. With each step he took and let out a breath, as if it were some meditation. We reached the old wharf and stood on the worn planks as the splashship lowered propellers and maneuvered toward us. A few people stood in an open cargo hatch on one side, and they waved. None of the Chosen returned the gesture.

  Reverend Castell stood staring. His breath came in ragged gasps through his nose while his lips writhed as if wrestling. When a light breeze rippled a fold of his robe, he swatted at the moving garment as if meaning to tear it.

  The draft of a standard splashship is five meters absolute minimum, and a PanAmerican old-style shuttle requires more. The only wharf whose frontage had been dredged to accommodate such displacements was the old one, the one left by a CD geological Survey Team, the one we now stood upon. So it was that the newcomers came directly to us.

  Behind Reverend Castell and me the other acolytes formed up. We were big now and stood in a semicircle. None of us hummed or made any other harmonious sound. As for me, I avoided inner questions and simply looked to Reverend Castell for guidance.

  The splashship’s shadow covered us, conjuring chill, and then the ship itself slammed into the pilings and demolished a short dock we’d constructed. I steadied myself by taking a step but Reverend Castell never moved. He gazed at the quintet of ship’s officers standing in the hatch, his face utterly calm now, his hands hanging limp.

  “Ahoy,” one of the ship’s ground officers called. “Would you be Charles Castell?” He jumped down onto the wood planks and tugged down the bottom of his tunic before extending his hand. I saw that his ranks echoed Marine ranks, not Naval ranks, which theoretically meant he was trained in all sorts of ground-side deviltry, perhaps even by CoDominium Marines.

  Reverend Castell, ignoring the hand, said “Peace is ours to offer.” It was a formal greeting from the Writings, but his voice as he said it was strained and rough, as if he’d been crying.

  Dropping his hand, the officer said, “I’m Major Lassitre, and--”

  “Have you brought more of the Chosen, Major?” Castell asked. “More supplies, perhaps?” He enunciated every syllable with over-precise clarity, as if the sense of the words escaped him. It was more a phonetic mimicry of speech than true communication.

  Major Lassitre smiled. His hair, combed back all around and graying at the temples, glistened as he nodded slightly. “Sir, my orders are to set up air traffic control for a field splashdown zone.”

  Reverend Castell swayed backward a little, but caught his balance before I could move. “You killed one of the Chosen.”

  The Major met Castell’s gaze. “I’ve killed none of your flock, Reverend; they committed suicide if they rowed under us, and I’m not authorized to stand around chatting in any case. We have shuttles coming down in four hours, and I’ve got work to do.”

  Turning on his heel, Major Lassitre waved to the other military people at the hatch, and they formed a chain and began handing down packs and field communication units.

  Reverend Castell stepped toward the Major and touched his arm. “Major Lassitre, may I direct your attention to that island?” He pointed at the big, wooded island situated somewhat west of the lake’s center.

  “What of it, Reverend? This wharf, if my briefing was correct, is CoDominium built and owned.”

  Castell swallowed and blinked once; slowly. “The island features prominences at all four quarters, and would serve as an excellent control spot for directing splashdowns.”

  “Sergeant,” the major called to one of the men, who at once stood straight and said, “Sir.”

  “Take a zodiac and reconnoiter that island; it may be a more functional control point.”

  “Aye, sir.” The sergeant saluted, detailed three men to accompany him, and opened a panel on the shuttle’s side. From it he took a heavy package which, when he pulled a cord, inflated into a keeled boat almost as large as our wooden ones. One of the sergeant’s men attached an outboard motor, and they zipped away with much noise and too many fumes.

  Throughout these proceedings Reverend Castell stood mute, but as the zodiac dwindled in the distance he said, “Major, what is going on?”

  At once I dismissed the faintest hint of pleading in his voice as a trick of my hearing.

  “At ease,” the Major told his remaining soldier, who at once actually took out and smoked a cigar. To Reverend Castell, Lassitre said, “Havens about to get quite a population boost, sir. We’ve got three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-three more Harmonies for you, sir, and another eight thousand and five miners, merchants, and the like.”

  “What?” I blurted, unable to assimilate the numbers he’d mentioned, let alone grasp their situation.

  Glancing up at me, the Major grinned and looked me up and down more carefully. “Big one, huh? You’ve the makings of a fine marine, young man.”

  “I’m at peace,” came the rote reply, but I noticed how he made himself sound as if he were a real CD Marine, and not just a transport company officer.

  “Of course,” the Major said, tone neutral. “If yo
u call it that.”

  During this exchange, Reverend Castell simply continued to stare at the Major, as if neither he nor I had said anything.

  Redirecting his attention to Castell, Lassitre tossed a thumb toward the sky, to indicate a transport in orbit. It would be over us again in a little under four hours, I knew, remembering our own few orbits. “I forgot how isolated you are here, you had no warning, did you?”

  “Haven belongs to the Church of New Universal Harmony. My father purchased settlement rights just before he died.” His hand went to his chest for a moment, then dropped. “My people have sacrificed everything Earthly to come here.” Reverend Castell spoke quietly, as if reciting from the Writings. “We’ve no further need of Earthly things. The Harmonies are welcome, but the others--”

  “There are families aboard, sir. Men, women and children. Your church didn’t have the funds for a second expedition, so shares were sold. We can’t expect you to like it, but it’s completely legal. And besides, isn’t charity part of your pacifist creed? Or at least basic hospitality?”

  Castell took a step back from Major Lassitre. His eyes widened. He took a deep breath, and I winced, expecting a loud sermon to begin. How dare this infidel remind our leader of his own creed’s duties? Instead, though, Reverend Castell let his breath out slowly and said, in a conversational tone, “Was the trip hard on them?”

  At once Major Lassitre’s body language relaxed, and he smiled. “Some died, I won’t lie, to you. You’ve been in the transport ships, even converted liners; you know how it can be.”

  “Squalid,” Castell said. He, too, smiled, but with no relief there, no shared referents.

  For myself, I could not understand our leader’s attitude, his sudden relaxing. Had he conceded the CoDo’s right to usurp his authority on Haven? Had he acceded to their right to rescind all those costly permissions?