by Ginger Booth
“Thought we could pile the pterries in that corner,” Wilder suggested, his pointed finger shifting as they flashed past it.
“No.” Cortez back-handed him again. “Effing calm down! Park over the middle. Sheesh.”
She rocked to his abrupt stop 90 meters up, over the precise center of the lot. He really did fly well.
“Here, Mom?”
“We can’t pile them in a corner because the sonic poles are there,” she explained. “We need a pile in an open spot so we can torch them.”
“Point,” he conceded. “Hey, can you grab the rhino with the grapples?”
She studied her console, and the rhino. She commed Sass to ask, then transferred to Abel, who used the shuttle more often to pick up cargo. They needed to get within 3 meters of the carcass. But if they tipped the shuttle just so at dead slow, and violated the sonic margin… “Got you, sucker!”
“Wait,” Wilder interrupted her. “Can you push with the grapples? Like shove it out the barrier?”
“Maybe. We won’t be able to grab it again, though.”
“Try it,” he insisted.
“Get us half a meter closer,” she directed. Then she set the grapples to shove at maximum.
The barrel-shaped beast didn’t clear the sonic field. But it did move far enough to excite the neighborhood. As Wilder drew the vehicle back to a healthier margin, and reoriented to face the rhino, the forest began to thrash. He turned on the front spotlight to watch the show. First a few speedy cat-sized creatures darted in to grab a literal pound of flesh. Then came a couple slower armored creatures. Those nosed under the dead beast and hunkered down to feed. These all appeared clever enough to avoid the sonic boundary.
Cortez turned on the external aural pickups. Mostly they heard the crash of plants and leaves.
Then the first big monster arrived, 4 meters tall at his central hump, bending trees nearly in two as it edged in. Also heavily armored, this guy clipped his tail on the sonics and went berserk. Now the armored critters dug out and fled in panic.
Cortez tuned a dial on the sound, translating first higher, then lower sounds into the human aural range. Sure enough, ‘humper’ was bellowing in outrage at a wavelength too low for human ears. “And that’s why the hunters wear earphones,” she hazarded.
“Kind of a mish-mash, aren’t they?” Wilder returned. “Like the ages of dinosaurs and mammals all mixed together.” Naturally, the youth of Mahina Actual studied Earth’s natural history more than its politics. Science was relevant to the city’s terraforming mission. He pointed toward a shoulder-high striped one that suddenly puffed out its – feathers? – on end and grew twice as wide. Something sprayed out from underneath. Another mid-size monster recoiled and bit at a third creature, despite having been deeply engaged in feeding on the rhino just then. Between camouflage, flailing tails, feathers, crests, claws, teeth, flashing eyes and flying gore, with half a dozen diners elbowing in to the feast, it was getting hard to track individual monsters.
A higher-pitched bellowing approached. Several of the mid-sized creatures flattened, then hastily slunk away in panic. “This should be good,” Cortez murmured, entranced. Wilder adjusted the shuttle backward another few meters.
A 10-meter-tall demon broke out of the woods. It toppled a tree across the sonic boundary. Wilder’s quick reflexes just barely escaped the shuttle getting clipped by its heavy fern-tipped boughs. “Giraffe-osaurus Rex!” he dubbed the latest critter in satisfaction. “He’s got to be the apex predator.”
“Does he?” Cortez argued. “That neck doesn’t look very strong. Oh, crap. It’s climbing on the tree!” A dog-sized speedy-tier beast nimbly danced through the fallen branches, apparently insulated from the sonic barrier. “Back out!”
While Wilder hastily extracted them from the spot, Cortez shot the dog-alike with the shuttle’s laser. Then she called in the heavy artillery. While the shuttle cowered in a corner, Sass torched the fallen tree from Thrive’s bridge using the rock-cutters.
“You two are having entirely too much fun out there,” the captain opined. “Learn anything?”
“The wildlife is a blast!” Cortez assured her. “Wish we could go out with the hunters.”
“Good idea,” Sass agreed. “Both of you. Just not yet.”
“Copeland working on that?” Wilder inquired. He flicked off the headlight, which seemed redundant with the bonfire. In black silhouette now, looming creatures of nightmare cavorted by the blaze. But now they stayed outside the perimeter, enjoying the fur-fly and the feast. “Would he have time to add a sonic gun to the shuttle? I think we could use both, laser and sonic.”
“The chief is on vacation,” Sass replied.
“I don’t get it, cap,” the sergeant confessed. “Respect and all, but why give him time off now?”
“He’s stressed out,” Sass returned. “In space, we could offer a helping hand. Here, he needs to connect with strange new people to work with them. Same for all of us. But Cope and Eli did not hit it off with the locals. So they need to unwind, get happier, and then come back to the problems fresh.”
“Yeah?” Wilder returned. “So when I’m stressed out –”
Sass snorted. “I let you take my shuttle out to hunt monsters. Enjoying yourselves?”
“And how!” Cortez agreed with relish.
“Glad to hear it!” Sass encouraged them heartily. “Don’t dent my ride. And no more dragging the bodies outside the perimeter. That was too educational. Just make a tidy pile, so I can incinerate them from here. And try to finish up in an hour, OK? Remember we’re short on fuel.”
“Roger and out, cap,” Cortez acknowledged, and cut the comm. “We have a fun boss!”
“Dina – look!”
She was right. The weak-necked giraffe-osaurus lay dead, a pack of crocodile-minotaurs having taken advantage of the blazing distraction to topple it. More than that she couldn’t discern among the heaving fighting throng at the feast. “Being a hunter here must be epic!”
“Right? Maybe we should stay.”
That brought her up short. “Stay?” Leave the Thrive? Be free again? Her face warmed. She wondered if the Denali would ask for her criminal record, the one that sentenced her to the orbital.
“We haven’t visited the city yet,” Wilder said casually, banking the shuttle around to the pterry-pile on top of the containers. “But we might like them. Think about it.”
“Yeah.” The second thought that leapt to mind was that her lover might bail on her. You want to stick with Sass? No problem. See ya! She blew out between her lips.
“What got you all hacked off?” Wilder demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Then grab some birdies! You heard the captain. We’re on a time limit.”
Cortez got busy, and tried not to think about staying on Denali, or being left behind again.
7
Eli beamed at his young crew-mates when they ambled into the study area around 10:30 the next morning. Did he detect relaxation and happiness in the tough engineer? An extra bloom on the third officer’s pastel cheeks?
Apparently so. Aurora crooned, “Oh, relief from sexual tension makes everything brighter, doesn’t it?”
That broke the spell of joy. Ben glowered at her. “Eli, does she read our minds?”
“Bakkra,” Eli replied sourly. “She reads your bakkra infestation.”
“Bloom,” Aurora corrected him without offense. “Or patterns.”
Of course without offense. These Denali trained themselves into a steady meditative state of it’s-all-groovy, aided no doubt by the euphoric and hallucinogenic pearly peach and lavender shades of bakkra painted all over them. Of this much, Eli was certain by now.
In this dome, he corrected himself mentally. In the agricultural domes, the in-dwellers were bakkra-free. The hunter domes cultivated the fierce reds and golds of the aggressive emotions, and protective black, not the blasé yoga om favored in the ‘cosmopolitan’ intermediate dome. They called them domes,
at least. Traversing the slopes of Waterfalls, the greenhouse-like structures favored corridor shapes, which occasionally bridged each other, or dove below an underpass. The three sub-communities were more tightly interwoven than he originally thought. Some of the close-approach corridors seemed intentionally designed for inter-dome visiting. For the people only – inter-dome microbe sharing was shunned.
“Ready to work?” Eli invited Copeland eagerly.
“No, I dropped by to see about a doctor,” Cope said. He chose a stool and sat heavily on it. “My feet hurt.” These he wore bare, instead of the light thong sandals on everyone else. They looked swollen.
Ben hovered nearby him, in a cute fashion that Eli expected was doomed the moment Abel caught him at it. “We think he may have greenstick fractures in his feet. From the gravity. And he was standing for hours on the way down from orbit, too.”
Aurora rose gracefully, holding up a languid hand to interrupt the flow of information. “I’m not a doctor. But I can bring you one. Wait here.” And she sauntered away with the most enchanting gait.
Eli and Copeland enjoyed watching her go, by far their favorite aspect of the Aurora nanny experience. Ben lightly punched Copeland’s arm to break the spell.
“So you’re really doing vacation?” Eli asked dolefully. “I guess your feet hurt.”
“They’re not so bad,” Cope claimed. “We learned to swim yesterday. They call it the ‘dead sea pool.’ So heavy in salts you can’t sink. The bakkra hate it. See, it reset my colors.” He shyly spread his arms for display.
Eli noted his colors were shifting somewhat toward Ben’s dome-standard palette. But he pointed out, “You still have cat whiskers.”
Copeland glanced at Ben with a quirked lip. “Someone reset those.”
“I think they’re cute,” Ben confided. He still sported hand-prints on his own chest – revenge, perhaps. “We graduate to the freshwater grotto today. If the doctor thinks it’s OK.”
The engineer confided, “I’m terrible at relaxing. But this time I might just manage it. I’m even starting to like the people.” He and Ben shared a bashful smile.
“Alright, that’s it,” Eli declared. “I’m switching domes. I’ll ask Zan if I can join the hunters.”
Cope started to say something, but Eli cut him off. “I know! I was a space cadet on the way in. I wouldn’t have survived our stroll through the woods without you. That needs to change. Look outside the windows –”
“It’s night,” Ben pointed out. “For another couple weeks yet. Then the horizon starts to lighten for like an hour a day. Summer builds from there.”
Eli pursed his lips quellingly. “The hunters go out every day. I want to experience a vibrant, full ecosystem. And –” He hadn’t thought of this part until just this minute. He leaned forward intently. “I bet the plant life has all sorts of anti-bakkra defenses. And if the hunters go in and out every day, they have more expedient bio-locks. And less fondness for hallucinogens.”
“Eli,” the engineer quibbled, “your passion for plants is why you can’t walk 10 meters without running into a tree. Or getting sonic-bombed. No offense.”
Eli scowled at him. “You’re at least as focused as I am.”
“Yeah, but I work with machines that can kill me. I pay attention to threats. I need my fingers, for instance.”
“Point,” Eli conceded.
“Let me talk to Zan,” Cope offered. “Tell him my concerns.”
“A hunter nanny?” Eli retorted. “Like Aurora for a different dome?”
Ben offered, “I think it’s very generous of the locals. And we do have an awful lot to learn about this place. I mean, think of Mahina. I hope Josiah found the Saggies someone to tell them to wear their sunscreen. How to seal the air at night, and cook supper with a protein printer. Stuff.”
The Sagamore enclave in Copeland’s hometown of Schuyler was new, just arriving as the Thrive left home, Mahina’s first off-world immigrants since Sass and Clay’s arrival over 60 years ago. The engineer’s mentor and friend Josiah was serving as sponsor to the reformed pirates in Saggy Town.
Eli nodded thoughtfully. “And the environment is more dangerous here. Point.”
Aurora returned with a shapely woman in tow, perhaps Eli’s age, whose body hues and patterning more closely resembled Eli’s than anyone else he’d spoken to. Except she had a charming sprinkle of red across her shoulders and decolletage. Without the hazmat suit, he didn’t recognize Dr. Tyler until she opened her mouth.
“Am I permitted to touch my patient this time without interference, Dr. Rasmussen?” she demanded.
Eli spread a hand Cope-wards in gracious invitation. “Lower extremities. Brittle bones. Mr. Copeland is a Mahina settler, attenuated by low gravity and under-nutrition, with probable radiation damage. And more immediate damage from high gravity and being tossed around the cargo hold during atmospheric entry.”
“My feet hurt,” Copeland clarified. “Swollen. My bones break easy.”
Tyler toted along a traveling medical kit on a wheelchair. She elevated its foot-rests and waved Cope to shift. Once he complied, she used a hand-held scanner to inspect both legs down to the toes. The three men all tried to watch her display, and got in her way, earning a glower.
Aurora took a tablet, synced it, and held it up on Copeland’s other side for their viewing convenience out of the doctor’s hair.
Clearly grieved by the need, Tyler asked a question. “I don’t understand this line on the femur. Excellent bone strength above it, much weaker bones below. What caused this?”
Cope replied, “Our auto-doc is working on my bone density. But I don’t have the patience to let it. That’s about where it ached last time I spent the night.”
“Auto-doc. Explain this technology,” she demanded of Eli.
He supplied a high-level explanation of the machine and how it worked, incorporating basic diagnostics, fluids and drugs, temperature, and nanite worker agents.
“We probably have one for sale,” Copeland noted. “But we’re short on supplies for it. Had an accident on the way here and lost half our cargo.” He added as an aside for Eli, “Ours is low on calcium after patching up Cortez. On my to-do list.”
“Amazing,” Tyler noted, with a hungry look to Aurora, who nodded. “I would be happy to supply you with calcium, of course. But first, your feet. You have six broken bones. And the left fibula – here – looks borderline. I’m amazed you’re walking at all.”
“Used to it,” Cope replied. “Got anything like aspirin?”
“I – yes.” She rifled through her box and brought out two bottles. “Aspirin, and calcium supplements. Our usual treatment for greenstick fractures is to stay off your feet and let them heal themselves. Eat well. Sit. Rest.”
“But can he swim?” Ben demanded. “At least in the dead sea pool.”
“If it hurts, don’t do it.” The doctor pointed to the display again. “Mr. Copeland, you’ve broken all of these bones before. Multiple times.”
“True.”
“How long would it take your ‘auto-doc’ to fix these?”
Copeland shrugged. Eli offered, “A few hours, probably. For all of them. Those are easy.”
“I see. Well, you’re welcome to drop by my clinic any time, Mr. Copeland, and see about stocking more supplies for your ‘auto-doc.’ I would enjoy that discussion very much. With or without Dr. Rasmussen.”
Her glance shot daggers at Eli. He rather enjoyed that, and the way her red shoulder freckles flared.
With a curt nod, she picked up her gear and left.
Eli mused to Copeland, “I think you added substantially to our credit rating.”
“Abel’s suggestion,” the engineer agreed. “I would’ve just asked to get my grav generator out of hock.”
“What was that?” Aurora asked, smoothly interjecting herself in the discussion.
Cope pointed, and Ben retrieved a sealed grav generator from their shopping bags of belongings, still with its
red tape to forbid opening the package. Ben handed it over, and the engineer frowned at it.
“Huh. Actually…” The plastic wrap was clear, and didn’t prevent Copeland from activating the device. He set it to cut Denali’s hefty field in half, and enjoyed a deep breath of relief for a moment. Then he handed it to Aurora. “Try hopping.”
She bent her legs to execute a cute little ballet jump, and startled as she rose half a meter, then landed softly.
Cope held out his hand to request the device back. “Guess I don’t need it cleared until its battery runs out.” He did turn it down, though, to only pare Denali’s 1.1 gravity down to 0.9.
“You’ve got this,” Eli told him. “I’ll take hunters. One week?”
“Sounds good,” Cope confirmed in satisfaction.
“He’s got what?” Aurora inquired.
Eli turned to her with a brave smile. “Copeland and I are done with book study. We’re hitting the field.”
“Don’t forget it bites back,” Cope warned him.
8
Ten days later, the hunters guided Aurora to the new spaceport in training. The forest was frightful as always. The unfamiliar shoes rubbed a blister, and the outer clothes chafed.
But she was intent on her mission, to embody a bridge between Waterfalls and these strangers from afar. She would secure their friendship, their goods, and continued trade. Thus she would earn her seat as a Selectman ushering Waterfalls into a new era of cooperation between planets. She tried to see this terrifying journey as an initiation, as when she became maiko at age 13, an apprentice geisha.
Of her pupils, Eli and Copeland, Ben and dear Clay, only Eli walked beside her now, otherworldly in his new hunter’s bakkra and head-gear. Cope and Ben returned home yesterday, performing the final acceptance test on their new bio-lock. This strange rectangular annex tacked onto the spaceship. The vessel itself already grew lustrous with unfamiliar hues of glistening bakkra.
The younger men had been working on the lock for days now, having completed their peculiar mating rites. Daily, Ben had pushed Cope throughout the cosmo domes to ask how everything worked. And they swam every day in the dead sea pool. They claimed these rituals held special significance for them.
