Dark smoke clouds bulged up into the sky, spiraling above the fire. A sickening smell reached my nostrils. My throat tightened and my stomach cramped to the size of a small stone. I pressed my lips together, closed my eyes, and used all my willpower not to vomit.
The next moment, the wind changed, and I could breathe again. I shivered.
I looked at Peter.
“The smell?” I said through my teeth. “Is it because he’s Senthien?”
Peter shook his head. “Nah. It’s the same for Humans. It’s just the Human body being burned.”
I shivered again.
When the song finished, people started leaving.
“Do you want to stay longer? A few people need to be here until the end, to make sure the fire doesn’t spread. You can stay with them, if you wish,” said Peter.
I took a moment to answer.
“Yes, I’ll stay.”
I turned around to see J behind me. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me, gave me a sad smile, and then bowed his head low.
After forty passes, there were only a few people left. Mike was to my left, Peter to my right. J was behind me and so was Tania.
The fire was dying out.
“Dora,” Mike said, looking at the coals, burned wood, and ashes, “the trip we’ve planned to the city is scheduled for tomorrow.” He looked at me. “We would still like to go, because of the river. You remember?”
“Yes, Mike. I remember.”
“I know it is difficult right now for you, but we would still like you to join the expedition. Could you, please, still go with them?”
“Yes, Mike,” I looked at him. “I have agreed to it. I will go.”
I was standing on the bridge leading to Tania’s hut, leaning on the rail and looking down at the green vegetation below me.
Tania stepped out of her hut and walked toward me. She leaned on the rail too, making sure she left enough space between us.
“The dinner will be ready soon.”
“Thank you,” I said and attempted a smile. “I… I am sorry… I do not know how to make food.” I looked at her. “At Uni, there is a machine that does that for me. But it is far less tasty than what you make.”
Tania smiled gently. “Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”
There were a few moments of silence while we both gazed at the sun setting behind the horizon of the rainforest.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel healthy, Tania. Thank you.”
“Yes, but how do you feel—inside?”
I took a few moments to reflect. “I do not know. I thought Stevanion would recover. I thought he was getting better.”
She nodded. “I understand, but I know that sometimes people appear to be getting better just before death strikes. I don’t know why,” she said and shook her head. “I just know it happens like this sometimes.”
I was silent.
“Dora, there was nothing you could have done. You know this, don’t you?”
I still stayed silent. I was not sure.
“Mommy, Dora, the dinner is on the table,” said Lemony from the entrance of the cottage.
“Thank you, sweetie, we’re coming,” said Tania.
I pushed away from the rail and started walking toward Tania and Peter’s hut.
“Dora?” Tania said.
I turned to look at her.
“There is something I think you should know. I don’t know if it will make sense to you or if it was just the fever kicking in, but…”
“I do not understand what you mean,” I said.
“I’ll just tell you what Stevanion said and you can decide what to make of it, okay?”
“What did he say?”
“Half an hour before he died, Stevanion had a really high fever, and he was talking in his sleep. I couldn’t understand any of it,” she said and shook her head. “I went to get fresh towels, but when I came back he was awake. And alert. He looked at me and… and he said, ‘Tell her I have seen it. Everything. I understand it now. Thank her for choosing my name.’ And then—he died.”
My eyes were wide open.
Stevanion had a Vision.
“Did he say anything else?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, that was it.”
I nodded and looked toward the forest. This bridge was a bit higher than the rest of the forest, and through the gaps between trees, I could see the tops of the tree crowns, like stormy waves, a turbulent surface of a forest ocean. It looked beautiful with the setting sun.
I have seen it. Everything, he said.
Everything—what?
Everything about the Humans? About me? Or something only related to his life?
“Does this mean anything to you?” Tania asked.
“No.”
“Do you think he meant you, when he said ‘tell her’?”
“I do not know. As I said, I did not know him all that well. Perhaps he meant someone from his own life.” My gaze was still far above the forest. “But I do not know anyone from his life, so I can not tell.”
I looked at her, and then shrugged and looked back to the forest. “Maybe he was not all that lucid…”
“Yeah, that could be. Well, anyhow, I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you for telling me, Tania.”
She smiled, then stepped forward and entered her hut.
I closed my eyes and silently recorded Stevanion’s Vision on my nanoprobes for the future.
I wish I knew what he’d seen.
I opened my eyes. The sun had just disappeared behind the horizon, and the air immediately became cooler. The soft orange hue of the last sun rays on the trees changed into a dark green, almost black, and it covered the forest like a carpet of soot.
I pushed myself away from the fence and walked toward the hut.
I wish I knew…
Chapter 12
There was a lot of commotion around us while we were getting ready. Children were laughing and people were talking about what this trip might bring. Some of them even brought a few small items to the group, like bracelets or lucky charms. They hugged, shook hands, kissed. Everybody was excited. And somehow among all this commotion, all the good wishes, I felt alone. This was for the Humans in the group. This wasn’t for me.
I pushed another small bag of medicinal herbs into my backpack and paused. I closed my eyes. In my mind, I could still smell it: the burned flesh, as if the stench still lingered in the air. I shivered.
“Dora, you’re coming?” asked Patrick.
I opened my eyes and pulled my hand out of the bag.
I nodded, picked up my backpack, and joined them.
We walked for more than three hundred passes with only short breaks in between, and my legs were beginning to hurt, but I didn’t say anything. I pressed on with the others, trying to stay close but still making sure I was at the very end. J and Frank were just in front of me, carrying large backpacks. They were talking to each other, but every now and then I saw J looking back. I guess he was making sure I was keeping up. I was curious what they were saying, so I raised the level of my tympanic audio enhancers.
“Do you think we might find some reptile delicacy on our road?” I heard Frank say.
“I doubt it. Unless we make an extra trip up the Falls River.”
“But you went upriver a few times, didn’t you, J? You caught a few, right?”
“Yeah, I did. Twice. Once with Peter and once with Lars.”
“So, how did you catch them?”
“We sat up a trap, made a tight passageway out of wooden stakes, put the bait in it, and waited. Once the beast was in, it’s very difficult for it to reverse backward fast enough. We got both of them with spears. You don’t want to go any nearer than that,” J said. “It was a wild fight, though. Strong animals—they don’t give up.”
“I bet! Well, I only enjoyed the fruits of your labor. They do taste mighty fine, don’t they?” Frank said and nodded at the same time.
J grinned. “All right then, we can go on a hunt on our way back. That way we can also bring some for the village.”
“And what shall we use as bait?” Frank said more quietly, turning his head in my direction.
J stopped in his tracks and pushed his index finger into Frank’s chest, growling, “Don’t you ever say anything like that!”
“Hey, J! It was just a joke, just a joke! Take it easy, man!”
“It’s not funny, Frank.” J moved on, perhaps realizing he might have slightly overreacted.
“She’s not bad bait, you know,” Frank said in a mischievous tone and continued walking.
“Stop talking!” J hissed.
“Hey guys, what was that about?” Peter said, hiding his laughter. “Seems like some stag fight.”
J narrowed his eyes and picked up his pace, lengthening his stride.
I fell backward a bit, realizing there must have been some double meaning in their talk, but I wasn’t able to interpret half of it. I didn’t know what the bait was, nor what would make a good one.
Stupid. Such great powers of deduction, if only I knew what the premises were.
After another one hundred passes, we stopped.
“Let’s camp here,” J called out. “We still have about an hour until nightfall, but we are coming close to the gorge and I don’t want to miss the edge in the dusk.”
He rolled his backpack from his shoulders and it slumped down on the ground. Everybody else did the same. They all started unpacking.
I knelt down and removed my backpack too.
J came to me carrying a bag and set it on the ground next to me.
“Do you want me to give you a hand setting up your tent?” J asked in a low voice.
I looked up.
There was a sudden thrilling jolt somewhere deep in my chest. I had dreamed of him so many times, but I never really grasped that my dreams would turn out to be Visions. That I was seeing the future, and that he was actually here.
“I appreciate your offer to help, J, but I am certain I will be able to do what the rest of your team does to the same extent,” I heard myself answer, my tone cold and flat—and so different from what I felt inside.
His shoulders dropped.
“Yeah… okay… whatever.” He waved his hand once, then turned around and walked away.
Oh, why did I say that?
Why couldn’t I say what I really thought? I was furious at my Senthien voice and my Senthien behavior.
Yes, I want help. And no, I don’t know how to set up my own tent, thank you.
But three hundred and ninety two years of persistent and relentless conditioning created behavior patterns that could not so easily be erased.
I pulled out the tent from the bag and looked at the numerous folds and layers of thick beige fabric. I opened it and folded it and opened it again, then sighed.
I lifted my head and looked around. The others had already set up a skeleton structure inside and had their tents upright.
I sighed again and bowed my head low.
“Hey!”
I looked up.
J was back.
I smiled within.
“You’ll need to use these.” He knelt down next to me and took out several straight wooden poles that were wrapped inside the folded tent.
“There are small nodes on top of these poles, see…” He pointed to the end of the wooden pole and stretched the material over it until the node found a little hole. “Like this.”
He pulled harder on the fabric and continued, “It holds well, and you can stretch your tent upward.”
Then he looked at me, his dark eyes fixed on my green, and for a moment, I didn’t see anyone around us anymore. We looked at each other for what could have been an eternity. Then his gaze fell to my lips, and my heartbeat inevitably quickened.
He swallowed and then quickly stood up. “Ahem… I’ll set up the other side, all right?” he said, then walked to the other end looking at the ground.
My thoughts were a mess; I couldn’t make any sense of them at all. Looking back in his direction, I only managed to say, “Thank you, J.”
He looked back at me and smiled.
It was the smile. The one I saw in my dream. It was warm and gentle, and—as in my dream—it made me happy.
“You’re very welcome, Dora.”
Peter and Rick collected the firewood, and by the time it started getting darker, we were all sitting in a circle around a pile of coals and a few remaining flames. The potatoes and meat, covered in large-grained salt, were cooking under the burning coals.
I was starving. Food made in a food processor was highly nutritious and gave me all the necessary ingredients for healthy survival, but the taste the Old Earth Humans had in their cuisine was simply out of this world—which, when I really thought about it, it really was. It was out of my world.
I needed to continuously swallow as I looked at the mesmerizing patterns of red veins glowing on the coals, thinking of the food underneath. How embarrassing, I thought, to succumb to such a basic instinct. And yet how could I not, when it was so delicious?
Once the meat was done, Frank cut it into slices and handed it over to the others. J gave me a fork and a knife, and I copied the others as they peeled off the salt from the meat.
I inhaled the aroma.
Fabulous!
I took the first hot bite.
“Good?” Peter called out over the fire.
“Mmm, yes, wery,” I responded with the food in my mouth. Everybody laughed. This, I realized, was my first spontaneous answer that did not sound so typically Senthien.
I smiled.
“J, how long to the city?” Frank asked as he stabbed another potato.
“I reckon we need a day and a half, so not much longer. However, I would like to check one of the side paths I saw last time we were here. I’m not sure what’s up there, but it looked like an old road. Could have been a large paved road before, but most of it is gone now. Perhaps it’s only an animal path, who knows. But I’d like two or three of us to go, see if there is anything of interest to us.”
He stopped for a moment as he bit into a cooked potato crust.
“I didn’t get to check it last time,” he continued. “And I think we are making good time and have enough food with us to do the detour. So, to your question, Frank, we should get to the city in two, two and half days.”
“Mmm. Good,” Frank acknowledged as he munched on his meat.
“I’m really curious about the computer system! Must be awesome!” said Rick.
“We’ll find out…” said Frank.
“If we manage to enter the building in the first place,” said Simon.
“Aye,” said Peter. “And, if that awesome computer has an equally awesome power source.”
“I do wonder what type of power source that would be,” Patrick continued. “It might be something very different from what we used to know.”
“Dora,” Peter said, turning to me. “How do you produce energy in Uni?”
Still finishing my last bites of meat, I now resumed my Senthien front. I was communicating knowledge: finally something I was good at.
“There are several ways of producing power in Uni. It depends on the planet. For example, on Senthia, we mainly use solar power. The solar cells are embedded as very small chips on the branches and leaves of engineered trees. There is a very specific pattern of chips, so these trees are highly symmetrical and identical to one another.”
I put the meat skewer on the floor, deciding that I’d had enough.
“This kind of solar cell was developed by the Descendants, though. I do not think you will find anything like this on Old Earth.”
All eyes were fixed on me. They were all silent, their faces a mixture of surprise and wonder. This was probably the longest talk they ever heard from me. As soon as I realized that, I looked down, deciding to eat some more.
“Wow, something different.” Simon was the first t
o snap out of his silent awe. “What about other Descendant worlds, then?”
“Geothermal power is used on almost all worlds. Some worlds also use the bulk movement of gasses on a large scale.”
“Movement of gasses?” asked Peter.
“Bah! Can you imagine the smell?” said Frank and all of them burst out laughing.
I looked at the group in confusion. I did not understand their reaction at all.
Once they calmed down, J asked, “What gasses are you talking about?”
“That depends on the home planet. Usually it is the breathing air with hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen.”
“Ah, you mean the wind!” exclaimed Rick.
I looked at him. “Yes, wind, but also gusts, squalls, or gales. All of these are bulk movements of gasses, and they are all used for power production.”
“Sorry, Dora. Our Old Earth terminology is coming back,” said J. “So, what other energy sources are there in Uni worlds?”
“The thermal energy of organisms is used as well. My skinsuit, as well as my E-band,” I said, raising my left arm up for them to see it, “can be partially powered by my body heat. But that is usually done on a small scale.”
“Can you imagine how much energy Jessica Donovan’s skinsuit would generate?” said Frank with a sly smile.
“Oh, Frank, get a grip,” Patrick said and shook his head.
“Come on, she’s hot! Or… was hot.”
“Perhaps she got a ticket to space—who knows? Maybe there’s an entire Descendant species that all look exactly like her,” said Simon.
J shook his head, and then turned to me. “What power did people use just before the Evacuation? Were there big changes, do you know?”
“From what I remember from my history recap classes, they mostly used fossil fuels and biomass, but gas movement, solar power, and hydropower were growing in significance.”
“What about nuclear power? Still in use?”
“During the twenty-first century, large-scale nuclear power plants were used less and less, and instead were being replaced by nuclear microgenerators, which were developed to be portable.”
“Portable? Really? How big are they?” asked Peter.
“Fairly small. They are cube-shaped, about a quarter of an IP in length. Newer versions are even smaller.”
The Senthien (Descendants of Earth Book 1) Page 13
