A Replant Day Carol
by John Vester
Illustration by Janet Aulisio
The lorry-load of monsters shocked Andrea Forman out of her memories. Jonathan, in the back seat, shouted excitedly. “Reptants! Look at ’em all!”
“Settle down, Jon. You’ll wake your sister.”
“OK. But when is Replant Day, Mom? Can I kill one this year?”
“We’ll see, honey. Listen to your music. It’s going to be a long drive.”
Following her son’s eyes, Andrea saw hundreds of writhing, demonic reptilian/arachnoid nightmares, each in its own small cage, cages stacked layer on layer, row on row On Earth, such a cargo might sport a contrail of feathers, or pine needles. Here—nothing. Just baleful looks from each pair of evil eyes.
Eyes that still seemed to her more innocent than they should. Andrea’s thoughts drifted back to her first year on Phoenix. A lifetime ago, it felt.
She smiled as she remembered her first impressions of Bill. Just another horny backwoodsman, she’d thought. But he’d been so sincere and dedicated, so eager to meet an Earther. She ’d grown weary of die attentions of the many strong, silent pioneer types who daily invaded her loneliness. Bill was different with his confident, unrushed approach to life, the light in his eyes, and the smile always ready to dawn on his strong, solid face. He had deeply felt commitments to cultural and social precepts Andrea only vaguely understood. A fifth-generation Phoenixian, there was an incredible depth to his convictions. She had found it compelling.
She recalled the replant ritual, when she had first confronted an infant reptant through the sights of Bill’s tranquilizer gun. Regardless of the rite’s function in the lives of the natives, this bloody ritual killing had been, for Andrea, a ceremonial admission into the community—a symbolic letting go of Earth. The detestable things she’d had to do to the animal’s body afterward had caused the ceremony to degenerate, for Andrea, into empty motions. But her determination to be part of Bill’s world, and to provide for their first child, already growing within her, convinced Andrea to grit her teeth and get through it.
She blinked and returned to the present—to the grid work of goblins still next to the car.
“Either speed up, Bill, or slow down and let it pass,” she snapped.
It broke her heart to see Jonathan’s smile fade with the lorry-load’s tail lights. Replant Day. How she still hated it. This year it would be even worse.
“This time I get to do it. Right, Dad?”
“We’ll see, son. Just relax now. Get some sleep.”
“David Filpos did it last year, and he was six and a half, like I am—”
“OK,” Andrea cut him off. “We’ll talk about it later. Replant Day is still a few weeks off. Give it a rest!”
Funny, Andrea thought, how you know, as you say something, that it’s wrong, hurtful, damaging. Like a bad throw that you know is off target, even before it leaves your hand. Jonathan’s face—the furtive look toward his father, the glance at Andrea, the damping down of the light behind his eyes—only confirmed what she already knew “Sorry, honey. It’s been a long day. Rest now” She cupped his cheek in her hand for a moment. He closed his eyes, with a pouting smile.
When, she wondered, will the day come when healing would no longer be so easy for him? Would she recognize it? Would she herself, by then, be past hurting in this season of joy?
She stared wordlessly at the oncoming road, eager for the numbness of its hypnotism. But her memories re-materialized, like ghosts, their wicked dance superimposed onto the dwindling day.
How could she have been so wrong about the romance of being a frontier wife? Life on this new world hadn’t been the total return to wilderness she’d imagined. It was, instead, an awkward limited edition of terrestrial techno-culture, pinned, like a gaudy brooch, onto this rugged, ragged burlap shirt of a world.
The planet’s abundant, vast, pristine wilderness did not beckon to the humans here. They cowered behind their fences to protect themselves and the sacred wild-lands around them. While there was safety in the homes and lands carved timidly out of the wilds, danger was always close, and fatal.
Andrea’s thoughts escaped to Earth… home… humane holidays… the familiar in nature and in the reassuring roots of a normal life. To have given it all up for a day maddening hours too short, a year that was too long, a sky too purple, a night infested with bric-a-brac moons and alien constellations! These she could bear. What had happened to Earth’s cultural heritage had been harder to adjust to. “A clean start,” they had all said. “No returning to Earth.” There was nothing to return to. Earth, in any meaningful sense, had been lost by coming here. Relativistic time dilation effects had swept all she’d left behind into the void of time. Andrea sometimes saw her own past as a child’s toy, flushed down a toilet. Gone forever.
So, she’d been told, there was no reason to match and mingle with Earth’s religions, ceremonies and observances. To be sure, Earthers continued to bring their beliefs with them. They preserved their particular holidays and rituals within the cultural enclaves that naturally formed. But the position of the consensus culture (the government) was to recognize none of the imported religions or belief systems officially. What they did recognize was an odd mix of Jainism and Deep Ecology that had evolved here since the first, almost-failed human beachhead. It was considered best, Andrea had been told, to let customs and annual commemorations grow naturally from Phoenix’s human history. More relevant, they said. More comforting.
Oh, they were certainly glib, those orientation people. But they overstepped when they talked about “comfort.” None of them remembered, as Andrea did, the comforts of home, and hearth, and family at Thanksgiving or Christmas. And now, so many years later, their platitudes seemed especially vapid. None of them had lost a child, as Andrea had, to Phoenix’s hideous mascot.
Anna had just learned to walk. Andrea was pregnant with Jonathan. The normal house-proofing that is part of parenting on any planet was one thing. The securing of the yard against the escape of a baby into the “wild-lands” had been something else entirely. Andrea and Bill had been thorough, especially since there was a large reptant tree growing not fifty meters from the west edge of their property. As dangerous, people had warned Andrea, as having a swimming pool in your backyard.
Much as Andrea resisted, fragmentary images assailed her of that warm summer afternoon.
Anna outside. A quick trip into the house for some food. A shriek penetrating faintly into the kitchen. A mother’s moment of dread, then relief knowing it was not Anna’s voice. Bill’s violent flight from the house, gun in hand.
Following. Over the fence into the wild-lands. Arriving in time to see Bill shoot a full grown reptant in the tree. Seeing a shapeless bloody mass fall from its fang-like mandibles before the monster succumbed to the fast-acting tranquilizer and fell from the tree.
Feeling her mind close, staring at the familiar red ribbon tied into angel thin blonde hair on a small decapitated head.
Feeling the gun in her hand. Vaguely aware that Bill had given it to her and then running to the tree. Neighbors beginning to appear, holding her and comforting her. Keeping Andrea from running after Bill. Offering the senseless consolation that the reptant can’t eat any part of her daughter.
Bill lifting the reptant’s body from Anna’s remains. Stripping off his shirt and using it as a bag, collecting every piece of her, his hands and arms sticky with blood.