A green beetle-thing the size of a handball flew in my face. Startled, I knocked it away. It threatened battle with frenzied clicks of its little lobster claws. Then it flew off. Other more graceful creatures softened the evening. Diaphanous flyers soared through the air, their gauzy black wings edged in gold. They clung to my hair, covering it like a gilded scarf that lay over my shoulders and hung to my hips. When I waved them off, their wings tangled in my fingers and crushed. I felt like an ogre leaving them crippled on the ground, prey to the red beetle-tanks that lumbered along with chopping claws. So after that I let them stay in my hair. They covered it like a sheen of liquid.
The life here had beauty, shiny and vibrant. In some ways the creatures resembled large insects, but they looked stylized, as if they were made from delicate china and enameled in glossy colors. Some had iridescent wings. In human-standard gravity they would have been too heavy to fly. A few evoked crustaceans, their antennae and carapaces glimmering with jeweled colors. Airborne lobsters.
A skinny creature darted out of the trees, aloft on diaphanous blue wings, its segmented body as long as my arm. It came straight at me and I jumped aside, my pulse ratcheting up. It went on with no more than a high-pitched whine. After that I walked even more carefully. The next one might not be so tolerant.
I christened the animals “arthrops,” after the Earth phylum Arthropoda, which included insects and crustaceans. These creatures probably defined their own phylum, though, one unlike any human classification. I chose Earth because human life had developed there, though many of us had long been separated from our mother world.
Yes. Earth.
My memories returned gently, awaking like bubbles adrift in the air, their surfaces thinning, spinning, waning, until finally their contents dispersed in a mist of recollections. I had never considered Earth home, nor had my ancestors. Wè had been separated from our mother world for six millennia, through the rise and fall of empires, and then their rise again.
I hiked in a daze, my feet and skin burning from scratches. I tried to numb my mind so I wouldn’t think about how much it hurt. The sky turned scarlet and red shadows darkened the trees. Nanomeds in my body measured the gases dissolving in my blood.
Nanomeds?
Yes, nanomeds. They cruised my body, little labs the size of molecules. Different types performed different functions, such as catalyzing reactions, repairing bonds, or ferrying nutrients. They also analyzed the atmosphere. It had a low oxygen content, but enough for survival. I doubted this place just happened to fit human life so well. Biosculptors, those gender cousins of terraformers, had probably fine-tuned it. If so, surely people lived here. Somewhere. If I could just find them.
The night never truly became dark. The sky turned the color of dark bricks. Accompanied by the percussive songs of clicking, clacking arthrops, I clambered over ridges and mossy knolls. My neural compass kept me going in roughly a straight line.
The trees breathed hostility.
Startled, I came to a halt. I turned in a circle, straining to see. Only arthrops moved in the shadows. Was my mind interpreting this bizarre place as a hostile emotion? Saints knew, I was in trouble. I needed shelter, water, and food. Although this forest surely required vast amounts of water, I had found none, and my attempts to dig had brought up no more than a loam so rich its scent overpowered me. The water these huge roots tapped might be buried too deep to reach. The prospect of catching arthrops and drinking whatever fluids kept them alive made my stomach lurch, but soon I might have no choice.
Plunging on, I sought to leave this place of undefined anger. I pushed through a tangle of stalks, flags, and tripods—and ran smack into a gargantuan root three times my height. I couldn’t go around it; the ridge extended in both directions, plunging into masses of tripod bush. Dismayed, I stared up at its shadowed bulk. Did this forest have no end? My muscles ached. Gouges covered my arms and legs. Bruises purpled my knees. My feet were bleeding. But if I intended to live, I either had to backtrack or climb.
I exhaled. Then I dug my fingers into the moss-covered ridge and climbed, fleeing the antagonism that saturated the forest. Almost immediately, I lost my grip and slid to the ground. Steeling myself, I tried again. This time I made it halfway, higher, almost at the top—and the moss fell apart in my hands.
“Ai!” I tumbled down, languid in the low gravity, and hit the ground with a thud.
I bit the inside of my cheek to hold back my groan. Keep going. Drawing in a ragged breath, I climbed to my feet. Then I swayed. So tired. I looked for a better route, but the underbrush made too much of a tangle. With blurred vision, I peered at the root. It twisted through the trees, curving like the Fourier analysis of a complicated waveform, rippling, flowing, ebbing, swirling…
Rippling…
Riiiiippliiiing…
I wrenched back to reality. What was wrong with me? I felt as if I were coalescing, that if I didn’t hang on to reality, I would disperse back into nothing. As I was reforming, refinements added to my body and mind like translucent layers of watercolor paint laid over a picture. Or waves, ebbing in from Elsewhere. But waves of what? Existence? I didn’t understand. Yes, sure, quantum theory said all matter was waves, including human beings. But it didn’t work like this. People were solid. I felt tenuous. Insubstantial. So sorry, I seem to have misplaced the J=236 partial wave of an electron in my eyelash.
Pah. I rubbed my eyes. I needed to sleep.
The air vibrated with hostility.
I took a sharp breath. Stop it Air consisted of gas molecules. It had no emotions.
I tackled the root again, and this time I made it to the top. Hooking my arms over its edge, I stared out at the other side.
More trees.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I heaved myself over the top. Halfway down the other side, my fingers tired. I slid the rest of the way and crumpled into a heap on the ground. So weary. But I couldn’t stop, not now. I hauled myself to my feet and trudged off again, pushing through the brush, escaping that undefined menace. The shadows lightened into a ruddy predawn. I stumbled through a mass of tripods—
Saints almighty.
I had come out on a promontory of rock. The shelf extended for about ten steps in front of me and two on either side. Its sides fell away in vertical cuffs, far down to a lake. The water glittered in the crimson light as if its swells were lit with spectral fire. Forest surrounded the lake down there, dark and primitive, almost black. Nothing but forest Tripod trees covered the world. But what stole my breath, what made me stare, had nothing to do with lakes or trees.
I wasn’t on a world. This was the moon of a planet.
A huge planet.
It dominated the view. Even with only half that giant orb showing above the forest, it spanned the horizon. The topmost edge of the disk reached a third of the way up the sky. It smoldered. Bronze bands striped it, their turbulence visible as storms wracked its atmosphere. It had to be a superjovian planet, almost massive enough to be a star. It glowed only with its heat of formation, hut that was plenty. It lavished fiery light on this moon.
Planet and moon were almost certainly locked face to face, which meant that monstrous, glowering world would always stay on the horizon, forever setting. The planet was probably mostly gas; otherwise, its tidal forces would have ripped this moon apart. Given the moon’s small size, it had to be dense to have even this low gravity. The horizon was so close, I could see its downward curve. The trees looked like they were falling off.
Day came fast. A halo appeared at the edge of the gas giant. Suddenly the tiny parent star rose past the planet, a bead of white studded like a diamond into the lurid sky.
“‘So is the splendor of what nature has wrought,’” I murmured, quoting a poet I had long admired, though I only just now remembered. Splendor or no splendor, I wanted to be away from this place and its undefined hostility.
The lake reminded me of my thirst. Could I drink the water? Another memory stirred; the nanomed
s in my body had a limited ability to make antidotes. I could further improve my chances by boiling the water. I knew how to make a fire. Well, in theory, I knew. It required friction, enough to ignite flammable matter. Whether I could actually manage it was another question. Nor would the moisture-laden plants here burn well, particularly with the low oxygen atmosphere. But if I could make a torch, it could also serve as a weapon.
All right. I had a plan: start fire, make torch, boil water, drink, cook arthrops, eat the nasty things, find people.
Rustles came from the forest.
I spun around, my hair swinging around my body, covered with glistening black and gold flyers. Shadows cloaked the forest, but light still touched its top. Clouds drifted among the luminous crowns, and mist curled around the shadowed trunks. It looked surreal, as if the tree tops floated in a world separate from the shadowed forest below.
Hatred!
I almost stumbled back off the precipice.
The arthrop clicks stopped. The world went silent. Waiting. Again I saw ghostly waves; back in the forest, they coalesced around a tripod tree, forming a human shape. It detached from the tree and moved through the dusk, gnarled arms hanging at its sides. I couldn’t see it well, but I felt its seething anger. I vibrated with it. My mind recoiled and then overextended, spreading too thin, ebbing …
Ebbing…
Ebbing…
Dismayed, I struggled to focus. Had the world gone crazy? My mind slammed down a barrier, muting the rage of the approaching creature. Until this moment, I hadn’t even known I could protect my mind that way.
It kept coming, tangled in its rage. As it left the forest, I saw it more clearly. Its shape was humanoid, but its torso was an armored trunk, its legs narrower trunks, its arms a tangle of long roots. Its face resembled tree bark, and its hair hung in a snarl of moss. With the cliff at my back, I had no place to retreat. My stomach churned.
The creature emanated fury. It came forward, closer and closer, until it stopped in front of me, its moss eyes staring down at my face.
“What do you want?” My voice rasped, low and husky.
It didn’t answer. Instead it grasped my upper arm and closed its other hand around my neck. My heartbeat hammered. With clenched fists, I pounded its shoulders and chest. Although it jerked, it kept bearing down on my neck, cutting off the blood flow. I clawed at its arms. As spots danced in my vision, I knew I had no time left. I was going to die.
No.
I saw only one chance. I stepped back—off the cliff.
The creature had one instant to decide; release me or go over the edge. Whether it actually chose or simply had too little time to act, I didn’t know. But we fell together through a chasm of air. I had a strange sense of suspension, as if we were drifting, undulating in this slow-mode gravity while we dropped past the cliff face.
Then I hit water, cold water. The impact tore me away from my attacker, and I plunged deep into the lake. With a hard kick, I slowed my descent. More kicks sent me upward through skirling, swirling water, but it wasn’t fast enough. I needed air In reflex, I gasped, sucking in cold water—
Suddenly I broke the surface, choking and coughing. Before I could catch my breath, arms grabbed me from behind. Thrashing in that air-stealing grip, I twisted around—and came face to face with a very living, very human man. No creature, this. The shock of hitting the lake had pulled my mind back from its limbo and thrust me into cold, human reality.
Water cascaded off his head. He had green eyes and dark hair that brushed his shoulders. His skin wasn’t bark, but he held his face as stiff and implacable as the armor on the tripod trees.
Then he shoved my head under the water.
Thrashing in his grip, I kicked his legs and arms. But I had too little strength to escape. Desperate, I planted my feet against his torso and pushed. It sent me upward even as it thrust him deeper into the lake. I just barely managed to break the surface, amid slow sprays of water.
The treeman exploded out of the water next to me. He grabbed my hair and jerked me forward, making me gasp. As we fought, water whipped around us, turned red by the sunset. The liquid sprayed up in great arcs, then fragmented into a rain of fat spheres, glittering like slow rubies. I choked, unable to gulp in air. Ai! I had to breathe. But again he pushed me under. Frenzied now, I twisted in his hold… needed air… lungs hurt… don’t want to die …
Suddenly I sagged, as if I had passed out. My act almost became reality, as I began to black out. Then, mercifully, his grip loosened. With a last surge of energy, I set my feet against his thighs and launched upward. This time I shot through the surface in a wild spray of water, coming out of the lake all the way to my chest, sputtering. Air
As I fell back, the treeman caught me in a deadly embrace that crushed out what little air I had managed to inhale. His muscular arms circled my torso. I tried to keep fighting, but my body wouldn’t respond, drained by too many hours of hiking with no food, water, or rest. My fists uncurled and my palms slapped the water. My legs dangled. I tried to kick free and my foot grazed his leg.
We stared at each other, our faces separated by a hand-span.
I felt his reaction, just as I had felt his hostility before. Seeing me this close forced him to acknowledge he was murdering a human being, one less protected than himself. He treaded water and we floated, staring. What he expected to find, I had no idea, but this much I picked up, as sharp as the chime of a crystal bell: he hadn’t expected the humanity he saw in my face.
My mind couldn’t absorb that I was about to die. The situation took on a diamond clarity, as if it were etched in glass, disconnected from me. I watched from beyond the glass, protected from the full impact of the events.
With no warning, he rolled me onto his hip. My trance broke and I gasped in misty air. My hip scraped against the rough cloth of his soaked trousers. He swam with a sidekick, holding me in a cross-chest carry I had learned long ago. No, learned about, in a holo on water safety. I knew many things, but only in theory. My life had been protected with almost fanatical thoroughness. Why?
Our legs dragged through the muddy lake bottom. The treeman heaved me to my feet and we stood in the shallows near the shore, the water lapping in low gravity breakers that swelled to our knees. As I gulped in air, a stitch of pain jabbed my side. My whole body felt the pounding of my heart. The treeman stared at my face, his hands clenched on my upper arms. Whatever he saw, it stirred in him a disquieting mixture of fury, desire, and confusion.
Twisting hard, I jerked free and sprinted for the beach, a thin strip of eroded rock next to the promontory. The lake whipped around me in languorous swaths, swirling up to my head and drifting through the air in sparkling lassos of water.
The treeman caught up in two steps. As he yanked me to a stop, I socked his jaw. He dodged the blow, but lost his balance in the process. In a surreal silence, we toppled to the beach, only half out of the lake. The slow fall kept my head from cracking open when it hit the rocky ground, but it still struck hard. My ears rang with a hollow clang, like a cry of desperation. I didn’t feel pain yet; I couldn’t take in the sensations flooding me, all tangled in fear.
The treeman pinned me on my back, my legs and hips in the water. He held my arms clamped to the ground, kneeling over me, straddling my hips, his body silhouetted against the gas giant that smoldered in the sky behind him.
He had such a strong reaction to what he saw that the image burst from his mind into mine. I lay below him, breathing rapidly, my eyes huge from terror, my skin pale. Rips showed in my shift where the cloth had snagged on plants in the forest. One of my nipples poked through a ragged hole. Soaked with water, the cloth had become translucent. I didn’t need the empathie skills I apparently possessed to know what he intended next.
Except he didn’t move. I caught only threads of emotion from his mental turmoil; the barriers that protected his mind were even stronger than those that most people instinctively raised to shield their thoughts. But I picked up enoug
h. He couldn’t go through with it, neither the assault nor the murder. He longed for vengeance with an intensity that burned. I had no idea what he thought I had done, but even now, when he believed he had a long-desired revenge within his grasp, he could go no further.
I swallowed. “Don’t kill me.”
He answered in a language I almost understood. It resembled—what? Chays. Chay? Shay. Yes, Shay, an obscure tongue used on a few frontier worlds. The name came from tza, an ancient Iotic word that meant cleverness.
Clever or not, right now this Shay wanted to kill me. I searched my nodes for Shay words and came up with, “Understand not.” Less than scintillating, but it would do.
He spoke again. “****.”
“Understand not,” I repeated.
“**** Manq?” he asked.
“Again?”
He spoke more slowly. “Manq, are you?”
“No.” I had never heard the word before.
“Who, then?”
With him holding my arms, I couldn’t point at the sky. So I indicated it with my chin. “Out there. Skolian.” It was true, I realized. I was a citizen of the Skolian Imperialate.
“**** Skolia,” he said.
I felt like a computer trying to access data in the wrong format. “Understand not.”
He shortened his sentences. “Lying, you. Here Skolians never come. Hunter, you are.”
I had no idea what he meant. “Me no hunter.”
He shook my arms. “Liar”
“Not lies!” My voice vibrated with his shaking.
His anger mixed with another emotion, erne harder to define. Grief? “Kill you, I need not. Just tie you here.” He gestured to our surroundings. “Opalite, she will finish.”
Attuned to his mind, I understood what he meant—and wished I didn’t. Opalite was this moon. If he left me bound here on the beach, I would die from starvation and exposure. I didn’t see how someone his size could perceive me as a threat. Low gravity grew big people and he was no exception. If he found me strange, I had no argument with that, given this bizarre situation. But why the hatred? Despite the many gaps in my memories, I had no doubt I had never seen him before this day.