Just about all Caralys can do, as the two of us begin to sway together in a sweet slow dance, is continue to murmur reassurances. Just about all I can do is rest my head against her chest, and close my eyes to the sound of her beating heart. Just about all we can do together is stay in this moment, putting off the next one as long as possible, and try not to remember the dogs, the hateful snarling dogs, caged for now but always thirsty for a fresh taste of blood.
“The mere absence of war is not peace.”
Our Human
At its onset, Barath’s expedition to capture the beast Magrison consisted of one Human Being, one Riirgaan, one Tchi, and Barath himself, who was a Kurth. All were hated outcasts from their respective homeworlds, with nothing in common but their monstrousness in the eyes of their peoples, and their common greed for the bounty on the head of the even greater monster they sought.
Half the party died within their first few days in the rain forest. The Tchi, an effete disgraced academic of some kind, contracted a lung infection and was inconsiderate enough to confess his sins while writhing with fever. “I was a monster!” he cried. “I betrayed my oaths! I subordinated macrotext! I faked understanding of thematic unity!” It was almost a relief when the Tchi’s spirit left him, midway through another anguished iteration of his transgressions.
The Human Being lasted only a few days longer. He had been a fugitive serial rapist, who before his sudden illness had enjoyed regaling his companions with detailed descriptions of his attacks on females of his species. Barath had endured these boasts but had trouble understanding why the human’s deeds were crimes. After all, sex for the females of the Kurth was never voluntary the first time; it couldn’t be, as they needed to be stalked and taken by force in order to enter heat. Rape was just part of the Kurthian biological imperative, accepted as necessary by both sexes. Human Beings seemed to have a different biological arrangement. Barath gathered that the species loathed those among their number who violated its spirit, but still couldn’t see why a species as notoriously insane as Human Beings would make such a big deal over a simple breach of etiquette. Given time, and sufficient boredom, he might have pressed the human for further explanation. But then the human ate the wrong thing, or stepped in the wrong puddle, or did something else to encourage one of the many diseases that lurked in the jungle, and soon he, too, was gone.
This left Barath alone, save for his maddening final companion, Mukh’than. The Riirgaan had been sold to him as a learned guide who had been living in the Irkiirish jungle because that was the best way to study its fauna—not as a half-mad, unwashed exile squatting in the bush because no other place would have him. Either way, the lizard-face might have known the terrain and the natives as well as Barath’s sources claimed, but he had all the personality of a pustule about to burst.
Barath almost killed this last companion the morning he discovered the parasite sucking at the soft meat between the armor plates on his right hind leg. It was a scaleworm, two claws long, glistening with the natural anesthetic the species uses to numb its hosts, and ready to burst after what must have been hours of feeding on him.
As Barath popped a claw and began to carve the beast from between his armor plates, Mukh’than watched with the unreadable fascination that had always so deeply annoyed Barath about Riirgaans. “You had better hope that’s a female. In that species, the eggs are produced by the female but injected into hosts by the male. If that’s a carrying male and he’s had a chance to unload, you’ll soon have hundreds of the creatures burrowing tunnels through your body. It isn’t pleasant, nor is it quick. Just last year, I came across an infected Bursteeni who lingered an entire rainy season as he was eaten up from the inside.”
Barath wanted to pop all twelve of his claws and give himself a pleasant little lesson in the finer points of Mukh’than’s anatomy. Instead he just lowered his head and proceeded with his impromptu surgery.
Mukh’than said, “You should clean that wound.”
Barath grumbled. “You should mind your own business.”
“You hired me for my guidance.”
“And I’m beginning to regret my choice.”
“If you want to find this village, I’m the only one who can help.”
“That’s what you say. And yet we seem to be lost.”
“We are not lost,” Mukh’than said. “We—” Then the skies rumbled, and he said, “Ah.” Before the torrent could begin, he pulled Barath’s sleepcube from his pack. The tent unfolded, expanded, and became a passable shelter for two, though the exterior canvas was already discolored from long exposure to the acidic Irkiirish rain.
“In terrain like this,” he continued, once they were both inside the shelter, “it can be difficult to judge distances. Rivers change courses; tree cover changes shape. Even hillsides erode, reform, pick and choose their own topography. Too, we are using outdated intelligence, fifteen cycles old; for all we know, the entire village might have died out or migrated elsewhere. You were told this. You should show more patience.”
The Kurth had a special treatment for people who urged patience at times of great urgency. It involved spikes and the careful placement of weighted stones. But Barath refrained. “I want the Beast. I want Magrison.”
And Mukh’than nodded: one of several gestures his race shared with the race of the hated fugitive they sought. “So do billions of others.”
Our Human remains huddled in the simple hut he built in the time of my firstfather’s firstfather’s firstfather, but we would know he was there even if the simple thatch walls were thick enough to muffle his hacking cough or his one-sided arguments with the many imagined ghosts of his past. We would know even if he wasn’t too old and weak to wander far from his place. We would know even if his alien flesh didn’t exude a rancid-fruit perfume subtle enough to tolerate but distinctive enough to serve as a constant reminder of his presence. We would know that our Human lurked inside the hut even without all these other reasons. We would know because the world around him ripples with the weight of the burden he carries.
Barath and Mukh’than were hours into the next day’s travels, sloshing through a mulch of stagnant water and fallen vegetation, before Barath violated the oath he made to himself every morning and asked the loathsome Mukh’than, “How much further now?”
“Not far at all,” said Mukh’than.
“That’s beginning to sound like a fresh name for not knowing.”
“Only if you have not paid attention,” Mukh’than said. “Have you not seen the natives who have been tracking us for two days?”
Another trick of the Riirgaan’s ego: withholding this basic intelligence until Barath’s failure to notice emerged at its most humiliating. Barath rose to his full height, craning his neck to lift his armored head off the recess built between his broad, muscular shoulders. He saw nothing: just the stagnant water up to his lower set of knees and a dim hellish landscape littered with heaps of organic refuse. It was the kind of terrain a creature could hack through or burn through, but not see through. So he surrendered some more dignity: “What kind of natives?”
“The kind we’re looking for,” Mukh’than said. “Trivids.”
There were three sentient species native to this world known only as Nameless: invertebrate jelly-things who drifted in its oceans, four-winged fliers who frequented the air above its poles, and the rarely-seen Trivids, who were native to this rain forest that dominated this region Irkiirish. None of the three had technological civilizations; nor did they have much contact with the illegal human mines that represented this sorld’s only substantial link to interstellar commerce. Before this moment, Barath hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of any of them. But he’d been hoping for Trivids. “Where?”