Third Rock

by S E T Ferguson

  Fawn walked next to them, keeping a close eye on Heming. Beryl followed behind them, with Camp next to her. The dog seemed to have accepted his failure to find the trail, taking up his normal position at Beryl’s ankles instead of leading the group.

  As they approached the far shore, Heming started making some noises, though he didn’t open his eyes or form anything that sounded like actual words. He also started writhing, and Beryl thought he was reaching for his legs, which Vlad had beneath his arms.

  “Does anyone else see that? It looks like Heming has something wrong with him.” Beryl said. Iris and Vlad stopped where they were, holding Heming between them.

  “Considering he is passed out and bleeding all over me, I am pretty sure something is wrong with him,” Iris replied.

  “Thanks, Iris, I can clearly see he is hurt.” No one missed the sarcasm in Beryl’s voice. “I meant, something besides the obvious. He looks like he is reaching for his leg to me.”

  Fawn stepped back from Heming’s side. From there, she could get a full view of Heming. “Keep moving to the shore, guys. I’m just going to see if there is something else. With all that blood, I wanted Heming out of the water more than I wanted to do a full examination right here. But there could definitely be something more than the obvious wrong with him.”

  Fawn stepped back toward them after walking a few steps just observing Heming, heading straight for Heming’s left leg. As Iris and Vlad continued to carry Heming, Fawn lightly ran her hands over Heming’s leg. When she reached his ankle, Heming groaned loudly.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Vlad said.

  “That’s because it isn’t good,” Fawn replied. “Get him to the shore and I can take a closer look.”

  Silently, the group made their way to the far shore. Arriving there, it seemed like a return to something familiar, though not in a good way. It had only been a few hours earlier when they had been in this same location, attempting to determine whether they should cross the river

  Fawn directed Iris and Vlad to place Heming on a patch of grass beyond the rocks that dominated the river’s shore. The two did as told, and Fawn knelt near his head with her backpack. From it, she pulled a first aid kit.

  “Let’s patch up the problem we know about first, then I can check his leg.” Fawn pulled a washcloth and a bandage out of the first aid kit. “His head is already bleeding less, so that’s good. Vlad, go get me some water so I can clean this off a bit before I wrap it up.”

  Vlad stepped back to the river, filling his water bottle with the clear water. Iris had assured them that the water bottles themselves purified the water to something drinkable, without any pills or anything else. Beryl just hoped that also meant it made the water clean enough to clear out a bloody wound. While Vlad got her the water, Fawn turned Heming’s head so she could get a good look at the wound.

  “This head wound is a pretty superficial. The blood makes it look worse than it is.” Vlad handed Fawn the bottle of water. Fawn gently wiped the blood off of Heming’s head with the washcloth, its white fabric quickly darkening with blood. Iris then helped Fawn wrap the wound in some sort of gauzy material, which seemed to immediately staunch the bleeding. “Now, let’s see what else could be wrong.”

  Fawn started examining Heming, her fingers seeming to dance over his body as she checked every inch of him. When she reached his left ankle, Heming groaned loudly and his eyes fluttered, as if he was in such pain it was going to make him regain consciousness.

  “That’s what I was worried about.” Fawn seemed to be speaking to herself, but it was loud enough that everyone else heard her.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Vlad asked.

  “It’s his ankle. It’s broken.” Fawn pulled her hands from Heming’s body, and looked up from the ground at Iris, Vlad, and Beryl. “He’s not going to be able to walk anywhere.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “What…the fuck…happened?” Vlad was sitting next to his brother two hours later when Heming finally regained consciousness enough to form a coherent thought.

  Vlad was not surprised that thought involved swearing.

  “Good to see you are as eloquent as always.” Vlad smiled at his brother, who tried—and failed—to return the gesture.

  “I wouldn’t want…to disappoint you.” Heming’s words were coming in pieces, but Vlad couldn’t tell if that was grogginess or pain. Hearing Heming’s weak voice, everyone came to see what was going on. Vlad looked at their faces, and realized they were all relieved to hear Heming again. “But really…what…happened?”

  “You forgot how to walk,” Iris kidded. “You don’t remember taking a fall back in the river?”

  “No.” Heming tried to sit up.

  “Put your head back down,” Fawn ordered. Heming looked surprised to get an order from Fawn, but he did as he was told without being asked twice. “You stepped on a rock that wasn’t sturdy. You fell and got knocked out. You’ve got a rather large cut on the back of your head, but it wasn’t deep. The only major effect from that is, you’re going to have one heck of a headache if you don’t take any pain medication.”

  Fawn paused, and Heming took it as a chance to talk. “What else? You’re…you’re not telling me…something else.”

  Fawn glanced at Heming’s ankle. Vlad could see she didn’t want to tell him the other— worse—news, but she took a breath and just got the unpleasant task out of the way. “It’s your ankle. It’s broken.”

  “Well…that sucks.” Heming closed his eyes, as if he was in pain, even though Vlad knew whatever Fawn had given Heming was likely killing any physical pain. If it wasn’t, he would have realized his ankle was hurt without being told. “Have you figured out…how you’re getting me out?”

  “I voted for leaving you here,” Iris said.

  “Asshole.”

  “We figured we would wait for you to wake up,” Vlad said, ignoring the banter between Iris and Heming, though he was happy to hear it. If Heming was already joking with Iris, the ill effects of the bump to his head were probably minimal. “Once you’re up for it and Fawn lets you, we’re going to see if we can get you on your feet. It might make a difference in what we decide.”

  A few minutes later, Fawn let Heming try to stand up. On either side of Heming, Vlad and Iris had lifted him up, his arms draped across their shoulders.

  Even with the pain medication, as soon as Heming put his foot down, he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. He told them the pain wasn’t too bad, but everything about his face suggested otherwise.

  “Having carried you across the river, I can say from personal experience that we don’t want to carry you all the way out of here,” Vlad said as he and Iris lowered Heming back to the ground. “And you aren’t walking out on that ankle if you can’t even put it on the ground without pain.”

  “We need to get you back to Rediviva,” Iris said. “I want to get that ankle set correctly. Plus, on the ship we have technology to get you better as fast as possible. Down here, the best we can do is make you comfortable and keep things from getting worse.”

  “What about finding Whit?” Heming asked.

  “We don’t need you for the search. But we are going to need you going forward, so I would rather be down one person here on Libertas than to have you suffer long-term problems that keep you from helping us when we get to Earth.”

  “Got it. I’m expendable for the time being.” Heming looked up and down the riverbed. “How about you all go back to the Bird and leave me here. If you give me some food, I can sit tight while you find Whit, and then once you do that, you can come back for me.”

  “Did you not hear what I just said? You need to get back to Rediviva and get patched up,” Iris said. “I’m going to suggest that you stay here with Fawn while the rest of us head back to Whit’s compound. We can get the Bird and pick you up. Then we just have a short hop up to Rediviva, where you can get patched up. While that happens, the rest of us try to figure out where Whit is on this insane pl
anet and form a new plan for finding him.”

  “Iris, I want someone else here with me if we’re splitting up,” Fawn said. “If something happens while we’re here, I need someone else around to move Heming. I can’t do that by myself. Plus, we still don’t know what else might be in the woods with us. Heming isn’t in any shape to get away on his own if we get surprise visitors of either the human or animal form.”

  “I can shoot just fine.” Heming tapped the handle of his gun.

  “I don’t doubt that, but what if the situation suggests getting away from the threat is a better option than killing it?”

  “We’ll cross that hurdle if and when that unlikelihood arises.”

  “No, Heming,” Iris said, “Fawn is right. You should have someone else with the two of you. I’ll stay. Vlad and Beryl, you take Camp and go back to the compound. You’ll move quickly and you’re both familiar with forested terrain from Columbina. Vlad can pilot the Bird back here, and I’m strong enough to move Heming on my own if necessary.”

  “Do I even want to know how you’ll do that?” Heming asked, hearing Iris’s last statement on moving him.

  “Probably not. And I don’t want to have to do it. But I will.”

  Vlad stood up, already anxious to get moving. Beryl jumped up after him. “You two are good to go?”

  “Yes,” Vlad answered, knowing he could speak for Beryl on this statement. “We’ll be back later tonight.”

  Vlad slung his backpack over his shoulders and waited for Beryl to do the same. Even Camp seemed excited to get moving, already leading the way back to the path through the woods.

  “Don’t rush. I would rather you came back safely than quickly,” Iris replied.

  Vlad listened, but didn’t pay attention as he and Beryl set off. If they didn’t find Whit first, the consequences …well, he didn’t want to think about that. All he knew was that they just needed to find him and do so before the Civitians could.

  *

  Beryl twirled the aquamarine bracelet on her wrist as she walked behind Vlad. The emerald she wore around her neck was stunning in part because of its clarity; she could look through it and anything on the other side appeared almost unmarred, except for turning a brilliant green color. Long ago, whoever had cut it had formed it into a long, rectangular shape. Back on Earth, when things like emeralds had been valuable, this style had been called an emerald cut.

  The aquamarines on her wrist, though, were nothing like the gemstone around her neck. The stones in the bracelet were round and smooth. Unlike the gem around her neck, the twenty-four stones making up the bracelet were not transparent, but their surfaces and interiors were instead colored with clusters of different, light blues. They looked so different from the emerald, it was hard to believe the stone around her neck and those around her wrist were all the same mineral, with the same chemical composition.

  “Do you have any idea what the riddle means?” Vlad asked. The two of them had been mostly walking in silence since leaving everyone else behind, expending their energy on getting back to Whit’s compound as quickly as possible, rather than chatting. It was a familiar and comfortable silence on a planet that was anything but familiar comfortable.

  Now, though, they were almost back to the compound. Beryl could tell the woods around them had thinned, as if they were regularly stripped of underbrush. With the woods growing less dense, they no longer had to worry about using up valuable energy pushing through them.

  Even better, there was still enough daylight to get back to Iris, Heming, and Fawn. With their lack of communication with Rediviva, they needed to be able to see the three of them in the woods if they wanted to find them. Once it got dark, they wouldn’t be able to find them—particularly if anything in the woods or water lit up with luminescence.

  “If I did, I would have told everyone long ago,” Beryl said. “I feel like it’s something obvious, though. Like I’m missing something I should be seeing.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Vlad’s voice reassured Beryl. Ahead, Beryl saw the top edges of the fence around her father’s compound. Vlad smiled as he spoke again, teasing her. “Because if you don’t, you know we’re all screwed.”

  “Great. Put the fate of humanity in the hands of someone who once nearly died from a hamstard bite,” Beryl joked. With the compound in sight, things finally felt like they were going their way for the first time that day. A little joking seemed not just appropriate, but like a relief after so many things had gone wrong.

  Beryl, Vlad, and Camp covered the distance between them and the fence quickly. Vlad opened up the gate in the fence for Beryl and Camp. Walking through the gate, from the jungle to the relative civilization of the compound, Beryl felt a sense of relief, like she could let her guard down just a little.

  Vlad immediately headed for the Bird, parked outside one of the storage buildings.

  “Wait,” Beryl touched his arm. “I want to check the house. I know it’s only a small chance, but I just want to make sure my dad hasn’t come back or left another message. We have some time before it gets dark out there. The Bird is going to cover the distance between here and there in a matter of minutes.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Vlad turned toward the house, with Beryl and Camp following. “It’s doubtful, but as Iris said, he could have doubled back this way when we lost his trail.”

  As they approached the home’s front door, Camp stopped.

  He didn’t growl or bark, but something had either spooked him or given him a reason to pause. Without the translator, Beryl was at a loss to figure out which. It could also be something else entirely. She had learned what many of the sounds and gestures he made meant over the years, but this was not one she ever remembered seeing, let alone one that she recognized.

  “Is Camp OK?” Vlad asked. So he had seen it, too.

  “I think so. He’s not growling or doing something that suggests he thinks there’s a threat. Maybe he caught a sniff of Poydras or Whit and is trying to figure it out.”

  “You’re sure it isn’t a threat?”

  “Have you seen how he reacts to a Vos? Or how he reacted to the Caterkillers? That’s what happens when he knows there is something dangerous. This is something else. I’m not even sure he knows what it is.”

  Beryl followed Vlad to the house. Camp trotted along next to Beryl, though he still looked slightly unsure of the whole situation.

  “Ladies first,” Vlad said, opening the door for Beryl and motioning her through the door ahead of him.

  “And who says chivalry is dead?” Beryl smiled and stepped through the front door of the now-somewhat familiar home. She walked through the entranceway into the open, main room of the house.

  Everything was familiar from having been there before, but something seemed off to her. Beryl looked around the room, as if she could see something she didn’t even know existed or might exist.

  And then she saw it. On one of the side table next to the couch.

  “Vlad,” she whispered, hoping she was wrong, “Did you leave a gun here?”

  “Of course not,” he said, loudly. “Why would I leave a gun here, where it would be useless? And why are you whispering?”

  “Because we’re not alone.” At Beryl’s words, Vlad’s eyes grew wide.

  Camp, though, turned around and barked once.

  “She’s right, you know,” a familiar voice said from behind them. “You’re not alone.”

  Beryl turned to see what Camp had barked at, even though she knew what she would see from the voice.

  There, standing in the living room, with guns pointed at them, stood Wolf and three of the other Civitians.

  It did not appear as if she and Vlad were going to be getting back to Iris, Heming, and Fawn any time soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Welcome back,” said Wolf. “We didn’t think we would see you again this quickly, or we would have cleaned up the house a little better.”

  Beryl looked at the four people in fr
ont of her. One of the three men was the giant man they had met on the Civitians’ ship, along with Wolf and a third man whose name she couldn’t remember. The only woman among them stood there without a gun, though she had pulled out a large knife that struck Beryl as too large for anything practical, even killing something or someone at very close range. The knife in the woman’s hand was a knife meant to intimidate more than anything else.

  It was doing a pretty good job at that, Beryl thought.

  Neither Beryl nor Vlad had to be told to raise their arms in the air in a gesture of surrender. Camp, too, seemed to realize his best course of action was not to fight. He laid down at Beryl’s feet, putting his head on his paws.

  Beryl knew, as she knew Vlad did as well, that to even reach for their guns in this situation would invite the Civitians to fire their own weapons at them. Beryl was not interested in dying, so she did what she could to prevent that from happening at that exact moment.

  Not that she had much hope that her life would be terribly long at this point, but she would take whatever time she could get.

  The woman with the knife slipped past them and retrieved her gun from the table. Instead of going back to the rest of the group, though, she stood next to the table where Beryl had first seen it, cutting off any chance for Beryl, Vlad, and Camp to try to get out of this situation by running that way.

  Not that Beryl had been considering running, but now it was definitely not an option.

  “There,” Wolf said, “now the place is clean and we can offer you a proper welcome.”

  Wolf nodded, and the giant man and the one whose name Beryl couldn’t remember moved toward Beryl and Vlad. The giant man took Vlad and the other, smaller man took Beryl, grabbing their backpacks and weapons before patting them down in a search for anything else dangerous on them.

  Beryl hoped they wouldn’t find the small knife she kept in her boot. Unlike the woman who was behind them, this was a useful knife. Not that Beryl had much chance to use it as a weapon. Mostly, she used it for purposes unrelated to fighting. More than once, it had pried a flower off of a tree for her mother, or picked a fruit growing in the woods.