Chapter 2

On the wrong side of the river on an unknown planet.

The boy awoke with the sun coming up over the mists in the direction of what would soon be his course of flight. He was eager to face his second day of travel following along the bogs in the center of the downs.

His first night spent out on the downs had been cold. However, after he’d found a dry section of turf with a large hummock to lay his back against the boy made a nest of grasses. He piled the grasses deep and his efforts protected him from the ever-present cool, night breeze. However, twice during the night he was startled from his sleep under the mound of long grasses.

The first time, the explosive beating of great wings not too far away woke him. He heard the squeals of a mersal rat or some other rodent or small animal attacked by the feathered night hunter. The sounds had slapped him awake to the darkness around him. He blinked his eyes open and saw up above his nest the night’s dark veil, broken by the twinkling sprays of grouped and scattered Swongli hanging in the blue-black bowl of the sky.

Without consciously thinking about it, his present location in relationship to the location of his clan’s territories had drifted into his waking brain. The calculations his father had drilled into him over countless night-sky lessons helped him effortlessly identify the seven major Swongli he’d been using to navigate during this entire unplanned test of his abilities. Those lessons from his sire also gave him a reckoning of the approximate distance he needed to travel to return home. As long as the boy could view the Seven Sentinels up in the night sky, he would know where he was and, approximately, how far he had to go to return to his people.

That is, once he found a way to cross the deep and wide living water he knew as the Toolie River.

The second time, he was awakened by the repeated and faraway howls of a wolf call that flitted into the edges of his dreams, finally breaking into his slumber as he nestled under his grassy cover. All around him, grotesque shapes seemed to be looming up from the scattered hummocks surrounding his grassy bower. The faint silver, quarter-light cast down by Jaypai made for a weird landscape until the boy came fully awake.

Now that he was alert, and not hearing the phantom wolf calling again, the boy decided the ghostly sounds had been Jaypai’s doing. Turning his head on his grassy pillow, the boy had watched the sliver slice of Jaypai hanging a third of the way up the wild starry, starry climb of the arcing-trail Jaypai followed this time of the season. Part of the boy had memorized the track followed by the invisible skyvine that Jaypai climbed along each evening. The silver slice of Jaypai seemed to float suspended in the deep blue-black of the heavens. The boy admired how what he could see of the small one was set-off by the glittering Swongli scattered and clustered above as they looked down on the actions, struggles, and dreams of all men and beasts.

Then, the boy saw it up in the heavens. Its path came into being just over Jaypai’s crescent shoulder. A flashing, long greenish-white trail of sparking fire streaked across his vision as a star fell from high in the night sky. Then the tail of fire turned golden. Feeling his hackles raise at the mystery, the boy said the proper words in his mind: Welcome new man to this good earth. May you survive to complete your fall. May your crimes in the unbound heavens be forgiven by the spirits of this land in exchange for the coming labors you will perform to absolve the errors of your previous ways. May your living make the clan who joins you to them proud of the happenings this night. The boy felt awe in what the spirits had just allowed him to witness for the second time on his unexpected journey.

The shamans of the tribes told the story at each congregation on the night of the summer solstice so all who heard knew that the first men came down to this land from the stars in streaking blazes of fire. Storytellers also crafted yarns about why individual Swongli had lost their grip holding them up in their dark, high places. The boy’s favorite tale was about one Swongli who’d been reaching down to earth to try and up-root a bog apple bush with one hand. When his remaining fingers securing his place in the heavens had slipped, the Swongli had plunged down from the night sky.

During the congregation, clan elders sang songs recounting what different Swongli had done to offend their brethren, who then judged each wrongdoer out of their heavenly ranks. The most powerful story the boy felt, was the song of the Swongli who, looking down on the good earth and the dream realms of the people, had fallen in love with a young woman of the clans. That Swongli had decided to send a bolt of lightning to ignite a dead tree near the girl’s camp.

By sending the lightning, the Swongli figured the girl’s clan could capture the element of fire for themselves. With a fire to sleep near, the girl would no longer shiver in the cold of the night. If she did not shiver, she would dream deeply and then the Swongli could visit with his love in her second life of dreams. The girl could also learn the joys of cooking meat and other foods over the flames. Her clan would gain the protection of fire against the beasts hunting members of the clan at night. Knowing these things, the Swongli had sent the lightning. From his gift, the people learned to tame sacred fire.

Still, sacred fire was a precious, but cantankerous, thing. Each camp always kept the sacred fire fed with wood so it would birth a deep bed of red-hot coals. Banking the fire on deep coals before sleeping meant the people of the camp could easily coax up the sacred fire from the bed of coals in the morning. Also with sacred flames in the fire circle at night, a brand of woven sticks used to cage tightly packed, dried grasses at the end of a stout length of limb was an easy torch. When a person thrust the cage into the coals, the dried grasses would ignite. The flaming torch could light the camp, or frighten off large, dangerous beasts.

However, if the sacred fire departed from all the fire rings of a camp for whatever reason, calling the fire back into being was a great labor. While the boy’s camp had never suffered their sacred fire dying-out completely, the boy had seen their shaman use a special stick with the tip pushed into the notch of a hardwood block to summons new fire for sacred ceremonies. The holy man would repeatedly spin the stick between the palms of his flattened hands to invite sacred fire to eat upon the special tinder heaped at the base of the hardwood notch.

If all else failed, the elders of the unlucky camp could send a delegation to a nearby camp for sacred fire. The delegation would carry a sanctified, horned bison skull full of pith and special, dried barks as tinder. Since all the different camps in his people’s territory were members of the tribe, the boy knew they would share a bit of their sacred fire with their unfortunate brethren.

However, they would also talk to other camps about such a calamity. By the summer congregation, many if not all of the camps from the attending clans would know the shame of the camp that let their sacred fire die. During the full turn of the seasons attending the death-of-sacred-flame, it would be difficult for any man of that unfortunate group to attract a suitable bride from outside his own camp.

During congregation, tribal customs allowed the disavowal of an already arranged mating match if one of the two people betrothed was from an unlucky camp whose fire had died. In addition, the honor of leading the great hunts during congregation would go to the three best hunters picked by the combined hunters’ guilds from members of camps that had maintained their luck over the last turn of the seasons. Relatives would commiserate with kin living in the humiliated camp, but would not offer to take them into their own camp for a full turn of the seasons, or until the next falling Swongli was seen by the night watchers of the clans.

A Swongli in disgrace and falling in a trail of fire from the heavens would burn the shame from any disgraced camp by turning the camp’s spirit animal from the trail of humiliation and back upon the trail of grace.

Even a child could tell you that as each Swongli fell from the perfection of their position high up above, the falling star would burst into the most sacred of flames. The Swongli deemed worthy by this world then burned all the way to the ground as the flames cleansed the Swongli as well as any camp seeing the sparking path of the trial-by-descent. The trial-by-descent was a special sacred event, for the cleansed Swongli would then rise up from this earth, a new man. That new man would come among the known men on this world and walk among the people of the clans. The most powerful shaman of the clans could not say what knowledge this new man would bring to the people.

And those Swongli who fell short in the earth’s judgment found their fire fell short of that same good earth. However, the earth’s judgment on each of those ejected from the heavens left behind a blaze of glory to mark their night passing before they were consumed in the white-hot trail of sparks across the heavens.

The shaman ingrained in the clans the knowledge of these things with their recited legends of the Swongli. In knowing these things, the people learned it was better to try and fail in each of their individual struggles, than to not try at all. Because even if no one else among the clans saw, or watched, or learned of a person’s efforts, the Swongli saw the works or failures of each and every person on the face of this good earth.

Knowing these things, the boy hoped he reached the Toolie safely and would find a way to cross. By his return to his family, his camp, and his clan, they would learn of his struggles and of his efforts as he related the tales of his travels and adventures around the camp’s sacred fire in the evening.

However, the boy knew that if he failed to return, at least the mute Swongli above would see his plight and his efforts as they watched over him now. In that way, if one of those watching Swongli ever transgressed the order of the heavens and be cast down to reach the good earth and becoming a new man, then that new man might remember the tale of the boy and his travels—the tale of Ureeblay. Ureeblay’s story might then yet return to his clan in the words spoken at a campfire, as the people listened to the words spoken by that new man.

Looking up at the night sky, the boy hoped it was none of the seven major directional Swongli that ever transgressed or slipped and fell from the heavens above him. His lessons from his sire about those stars had seemed so long and involved, with so much for the boy to learn. Ureeblay was unsure how he would relearn his relationships with the night sky if one of the known lights of the Seven Sentinels above were to disappear from the moving evening patterns he already had memorized and now knew so well. If one of the seven were to fall, it would be as if a beloved uncle had passed from his camp and his life.

Comfortable under the grasses of his nest against the hummock, looking up at all the bright Swongli overhead in the blue-black bowl of the night sky, Ureeblay knew how much he would sorrow the loss of one of the Sentinels. It would wound him almost as much as the loss of his sire.

The boy shook off his maudlin feelings and gazed up at Jaypai in the Swongli-spangled night as he remembered the first lesson his sire had taught him. It was almost as if Ureeblay could hear his sire’s deep voice saying in his young mind, “For this, all the clans know—Father Sun in the morning and Weepai, when she travels the night, both rise from the same direction eternal. Only Jaypai, the small contrary one, rises from where the sun goes to sleep. Only Jaypai follows his own way to bed. The wise men say, my son, even when Jaypai is not seen lighting the night sky, he will always be there looking down upon you.

“They say,” his sire had told him that first night, “that Jaypai guards those who are out of their bodies and living their second life in their dreams, as we all do when we sleep, my son. Jaypai sees the acts of those who would do things in darkness they would never do in the light of Father Sun. And for those willing to sit and listen long enough, Ureeblay, I am telling you right now that Jaypai will, although grudgingly, teach you how the animals talk among themselves in the night when no men should be about to hear their secrets.”

Soon after that memory, Ureeblay had fallen back asleep.

The next time he woke from his twice-interrupted slumbers, the boy got up from out of his grassy nest, ready to face the new day. Ureeblay had rubbed his underarms well with dewy mosses, as well as his legs, arms, and chest to clean his body and mask his own odor, as his smell would carry on the breeze. Then he gathered his quiver with his caster and two lightweight spears. He pushed his long, black hair into a new tail behind his head and tied it with his soft leather strap. With his travel kit completely settled on his body, he moved into the dawn, feeling the chilled dew wetting his travel-hardened, bare feet as he slipped silently through the grasses and over the mosses. He listened to the small birds calling to rising Father Sun as they flitted from hummock to hummock through the light morning mist.

Not more than a four hands of paces from his night nest, the boy found the shredded fur and gristle of the night hunter’s meal in the grass near another big hummock. The silver-grey-tipped hairs and dark roots clinging to the scraps were all that was left of what must have been a large, plump, knee-high lesser babbit, also called a grass babbit by his people.

The night hunter had not even left behind the long-eared head. The smell reminded the boy of his hunger. The scraps of torn fur reminded the boy he must continue to move toward the Toolie lest those who hunted him tear at his own skin and flesh for his temerity to be thieving a sliver of frozen lightning sent down to earth by none other than a Swongli.

Perhaps, Ureeblay thought, he was the one who the Swongli wished to help that night they let him see the first star fall from the heavens. Whatever the logic in heaven had been, it was Ureeblay who had prospered from the trail of fire that night by the river deep in Hurstmon territory. Although he did not see the new man who had made it all the way to this good earth, he had found his sliver of frozen lightning at the site where the new man landed.

Who understood, the boy asked himself, what the Hurstmon knew of the ways of the heavens and the judgments and actions of the Swongli. He knew they had hunted him since that night. However, he did not intend to be in a position that he would speak with a Hurstmon, himself, to ask those questions. For the Hurstmon would most likely answer his questions with the flint tips of their lances.

The boy popped his smooth suck-stone into his mouth and then he fingered the horn handle of his flint blade. Ureeblay ran his palm over the big travel pouch hanging from his belt, feeling satisfied with its placement on his hip and thigh. He looked around to the limits he could see of the surrounding downs in the early dawn light. He made sure his quiver strap was comfortable over his shoulder. With a little snort of anticipation, the boy started to lope along between grassy hummocks and patches of gray-blue heather, and wide areas of thick mosses and a few patches of wild flowers. He trotted quietly along and his eyes took everything in. All the while Ureeblay was hoping to find a seep for water as he headed down the immense, green swale toward the Toolie.

From time to time, the joy of moving through this new landscape would intrude on his ability to keep watching for threats as he traveled. This was partially due to the one fact his mind came back to; that, dangling from the leather plait around his thin neck, he possessed the cold hard shard of frozen lightning. With each stride, he felt it bounce against his growing chest inside its thin, hide sleeve—safe under the little tie-down flap. Each small impact made his feelings sing with pride and growing confidence as part of his attention focused on that soft thumping on his bare skin.

Then a bird would flush from the edge of a heather copse and startle him back to proper vigilance. Once, his subconscious would see a certain arrangement of leaves and branches and think, bog apple bush! So far, that most unlikely vision had only been wishful thinking on his hungry body’s part. Ureeblay knew he had a very good chance of startling a lesser babbit out of the grasses or the heather. With his quick, nimble reflexes, he felt he had better than a good chance to nock one of his light, feathered spears in his caster and taking down a fat, fleeing babbit.

He hadn’t seen, smelled, or heard any sign of his pursuers in three days. Ureeblay did not think any members of the Hurstmon tribe hunting him would dare to venture across the last wide, long bog he’d managed to cross. There had been thin sheets of green water standing in places through that bog. The water had been too uninviting for the boy to consider trying to drink, no matter his thirst. In addition, he knew that fever spirits often hid in such water, waiting to enter into the body of the unwary.

Vigilant as he traveled, in the distance on either side of his snaking way and at least a day’s travel to his right and to his left, he could just see the tops of the ridges that were shepherding this boggy landscape he traveled toward the huge valley of the Toolie. After moving into the breaking morning, Ureeblay had noticed that the further he traveled toward the Toolie the firmer the surface of the grassy and mossy swale was getting under his running, bare feet.

He had loped, then walked, then loped again for three travel lengths in the almost cold, unfolding morn toward the rising Father Sun when he found the seep in a small but widening depression of shorter grasses and mosses. This was more that just a dew catch he told himself. He decided to follow the growing seep, as it seemed the depression channeling the moisture was becoming a ditch in the long, but shortening shadows cast by Father Sun’s golden morning light.

Having not traveled along the depression very far, the thirsty and hungry boy found the seep becoming a tiny flow of gathering water. Then it became an actual moving, three–finger wide runnel along the verdant decline. After following along the rill for a quarter of a travel length, his luck was holding as the ditch now held a tiny clear stream of flowing water. The course took a small turn to the right, and there was an actual pool a full stride wide, with a span of cress growing to one side. In the exposed soft peat at its verge, there were the footprints of small animals who visited the spot to drink.

Testing what breeze there was in the slowly warming morning mist; Ureeblay put his suck-stone away and placed his quiver with his last two, small spears and his spearcaster well clear of the wet grasses and low plants. Then he turned and knelt, making sure his hair didn’t dip into the small pool as he cupped the refreshing, peat-tasting water into his mouth. He took two good, cold swallows—smacking his lips followed with a long ahhh. Reaching forward, Ureeblay pulled a handful of cress and watched the resulting peat from the tiny roots muddy up the little pool. The water slowly cleared as the disturbed soil flowed down the tiny stream. Removing the roots off the crisp cress, he stuffed his harvest into his waiting mouth.

Oh, what a tangy joy! He munched on his meager break fast meal. He took in his surroundings as he slowly chewed. He noticed that now, this part of the swale angled steeper toward the valley of the Toolie. He should be able to see the valley soon he thought, once the sun climbed up over the highlands on the far side of the great river.

He judged those heights were less than a hand of days travel distant from where he stood, if he could find a way across the deep wide Toolie. Ureeblay felt that in the time it took him to trek half a travel length, Father Sun would clear the hanging morning mists and illuminate the meadows, the wild grain tracts, and forested expanse of the glaciated basin of the Toolie valley.

He continued to thoughtfully chew the tasty watercress and look about. The far ridges to his left and right seemed higher now. In the angling light, he could make out on their slopes the darker blue-black splotches of what would be pine breaks; the dark-grey brush; the green-yellows of grasses and grains, and the dark greens of forests interspersed with stone outcroppings and tumble-downs.

Ureeblay moved away from the tiny stream and the pool, chewing and then swallowing the cress. When he’d gone what he thought was a safe distance, he freed his flaccid young man-part and aimed his stalk up at an angle. Once again he experienced the simple joy of the voiding pressure as his piss arced up and the fell on the far side of a waist-high grassy hummock. He would show Crosof and Achinay who had the best pressure when he saw those two sorry friends of his again; he chuckled to himself. Well, he admitted, if he managed to return to the territories of the clans. What was he thinking, he asked himself; when he managed to return home. With one last contraction of his groin muscles, his stream finished.

Shaking his young stalk dry first, he tore out a handful of grass and wiped before putting his part away inside his clout and getting comfortable. He leaned over and vigorously wiped his hands along the cool, thick grasses. Then Ureeblay hurried back for another drink and two more heaping handfuls of cress. One for his mouth and one to take in his free hand while he picked-up his quiver. At the first chance, he would find a way to contrive a way to carry water along with him, he told himself.

Slowly chewing, he checked the tracks pushed into the fine peat around the tiny pool. There was a long print of a lesser babbit’s hind foot. On the other side of the short pool, there was the distinct mark of a heavy seeragle’s talons. Three deep marks spread out forward and one mark from the rear talon behind printed the fine peat where the huge raptor had hopped up to the water for a drink. Ureeblay wondered if the seeragle that made these tracks was the same night hunter that had wakened him last night.

Casting his focus further around the small pool Ureeblay found there were enough minktus tiny fore and hind prints for a cat and her kits to have been out last night hunting salamanders or bog voles and causing chaos with their playful joy.

Just as Ureeblay turned to go he noticed, back just far enough from the drinking spot for the short grasses to start thickening, the right hind paw print of a small wolf. The boy judged the wolf to be only a full four seasons grown by the size of the print, or it was truly a runt. In addition, the paw impression was no older than last evening by the springing-back edges of the small exposed pocket of peat, which displayed the print. That was odd, he thought. One that young should be with the pack. He immediately cast about for larger tracks but saw no other prints of wolves anywhere.

Chewing his shrinking mouthful of cress and looking all around with squinted long-seeing young eyes, the boy started off again. He made his way slowly at first as he continued munching the tangy, succulent leaves and tender stems. Then as he swallowed and refilled his mouth with the last of his morning watercress, he broke into the length-eating lope that never seemed to over-tire his young weedy legs.

Third Mission, outbound aboard the Federation space vessel DSE Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

Two days after I won Juliet’s incredible IOU, I returned to my compartment after my duty shift. I had just removed my service-ribbons plate from my shirt and then changed out of my Class E-2 duty uniform. I’d gotten into an off-duty tee shirt, light-grey warm-up pants, and a zippered, warm-up jacket with my proper rating blazes and name patch on it. I put on a fanny pack, hooked my POC on the belt, and I then put on a pair of running shoes. I started out of my quarters.

As the hatch rolled smoothly back into the bulkhead, I almost ran into none other than the diminutive crewmember Blaugelt. She was standing in my hatchway for some reason. And I nearly knocked into her.

“OH!” she gasped, but she didn’t take a step away from me. She was deep in my personal space, with only a few centimeters between the two of us.

“Ah ... ah, yhou are... , Setzsvhell?” she asked in an incredibly young-sounding voice, looking up at me.

I took a step back from her. The first thing that struck me about Blaugelt was her thick accent. She made my name sound like Setzsvhell when she asked her question.

My second impression was just how much, up close, she looked like a startled, young, curly copper-haired, very young teenager. She could easily pass for a fourteen-year-old dressed in borrowed clothes. A quite well endowed, young teenager, I could tell through her overly large off-duty shirt.

S.W. Blaugelt also had the deepest-blue eyes I think I have ever seen.

Coming out of my shock at nearly running into her, I got the impression that S.W. Blaugelt had dressed-down, I suspected, to de-emphasize the charms of her chest. She was wearing a quite loose-fitting, light-grey, long-sleeved shirt. I noticed the cuffs came down onto the backs of both her hands. Her name patch over her right abundant breast and her NG rating blazes were in place, so the shirt was hers. The dark-grey trousers she wore fit much better, showing her slim hips and the hints of curves down to her pant-legs, going into the tops of her slip-on, ship boots.

I was still so surprised at almost running her over that I didn’t say anything. In addition, I couldn’t figure out why she would have any reason to be standing here, outside of my compartment down here on Seven Deck. I figured I would let her explain herself.

She glanced down the passageway to her right and then back to her left before she looked up at me again with her deep-blue eyes. She shook her head just a little, sending her curly, copper-colored hair jiggling against the bottom of her aristocratic jaws. She was barely controlling what I would call a fidget, with her hands clasped together in front of her belt buckle. I also noticed the crew-issued POC she was required to wear by regulations, was nowhere in sight—unless she’d clipped it to the back of her belt.

The very next thing that had struck me was her voice again. For her small size, her voice matched exactly. She sounded girlish—not squeaky, but hinting that she could break into nervous giggles at any time. From what I had heard so far, I couldn’t place her accent for a second or two. Then I realized her accent was vaguely similar to ones I’d heard in several of the political thrillers and action movies in my Earth media collection. Especially those Earth movies from the 1970s and 1980s depicting bad guys from a country called the Soviet Union.

I shook my head and really looked at her face. I was shocked to remember that she had asked me a question before I went off on a tangent of my own. I realized that she was waiting patiently at the open threshold of my quarters for me to answer her question.

S.W. Blaugelt bounced slightly on the balls of her feet as she gazed up at me with her dark-blue eyes peaking out from her long eyelashes. Her half-closed eyelids were nicely spaced on her very young-looking, aristocratic face. Her bouncing again translated to her coppery curls, giving them little springy wobbles down just below her well-defined jaw line. She had no baby fat on her face at all. She had high cheekbones with a smooth, creamy complexion, generous glossy lips, and a dainty, straight, aristocratic nose.

Returning my searching gaze, she raised her left arm and rested her hand on the gasket-surround of the open hatchway close to my right side. Her movement gave me a feeling she was boxing me in. Then I noticed her loose, light-grey shirt didn’t quite hide her ample breasts with one arm up like that.

“Ahhhh, yes,” I told her, aware I’d been staring at her, and taking another step back—now just into my quarters. “Yes, I’m G3 Jameson Sitwell. And you ... are S.W. Blaugelt. That is, if I may be personal—Anika, correct?

“Lost?”

“No-mmm-yes, ah, you may be using Anika.” the girl said rapidly in her accented voice, which I found I actually enjoyed listening too. The focus of her eyes darted from my face, down my body, and back to my face. She grinned at me. “I must be telling, you are being first person on Ship ... using first name, after asking of permission. Good manners. Yes?”

“My Mother would love to hear you say that about me,” I heard myself mumble to her.

“Also ... no ... ah, I am not lost. Gowno ... may ah, I ... be coming in?”

She gestured quickly with her right hand toward the interior of my compartment. Then she dropped it back to her side. She bounced on just her left foot now as she leaned against the gasket-surround of the open hatchway and watched my face.