Chapter 8

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

Ureeblay was making good time hiking down the terraces in the warm light of Father Sun.

His pack frame was holding his woven grass basket, filled with an unheard of bounty of bog apples. He had lashed his firewood bundle as well as a small bush of coarse-sage to the frame. He was happy for the most part with the way the frame distributed the load on his shoulders and back as he walked along through the grasses and down the inclines at the edge of each terrace.

He had his filled, new water bag made of pig stomach sometimes bumping moistly against his lower chest. His meat carrier was full and rested nicely against his quiver on his left lower side and hip. Ureeblay had his armed spear-caster in his right hand and resting up against the crook of his arm.

Most importantly to the growing boy, he could feel the treasure of the frozen splinter of lightning in its thin hide sleeve hanging from the leather plait around his neck tap against his breast bone from time to time. It was a comforting reminder of how mysterious and generous life could be when the spirits smiled upon him.

He didn’t think the land he was descending through could really be considered a bog downs anymore since it was higher than the valley floor he was approaching. In the direction of the Warm to his right and the Cool to the left of his line of travel, Ureeblay could make out the tops of both far ridgelines through the slight bluish haze of distance. As he began to descend into the curved valley of the Toolie, Ureeblay saw the ridgelines were actually high, stone bluffs topped with pines.

To the Warm of him, in the distance on his right, he could see, over the bluffs, the almost indistinct winged shapes of what must be sunagles. He told himself that these floating birds must be huge examples of that particular tribe of winged hunters. How else could he see them so far away and at such heights? Ureeblay stopped and stood where he was, watching those huge birds as they gracefully rode the wind, looking for prey.

Perhaps the sunagles were just patrolling their territory, the boy thought, or just flying high for the pure joy of it. The largest of the group at the height of their circular lifting glide almost seemed to reflect the rays of Father Sun from its motionless outstretched wings.

With a shiver the boy realized he was too big for a single sunagle or a flock of them to attack. At least, he hoped so. Besides, the clan storytellers always gave those predatory huge birds roles of honor and an aloof dignity when they were cast as characters in some of the teaching tales.

Turning back to study of the valley, he could now see the river valley arced away from him far to his right, which was upstream, as it also curved more sharply away from him closer downstream to his left. Both curving palisades of bluffs on this side of the valley were much more obvious now that he’d almost cleared the terrace downs. The boy could see the peaty landform he’d traveled had pierced down into the valley from between the higher rising land. The boy had thought these were ridges but now they seemed to be parts of a good sized plateau above this side of the valley floor.

There was very little valley floor on the other side of the Toolie. Just past the banks of the river the forested hills began rising up, but still not ascending as high as the land on this side of the wide river. Many days ago the boy had seen mountains capped with snow in the distance.

Let the Hurstmon have this side of the Toolie, the boy told himself. Well, Ureeblay thought with an exhaled sigh, someday maybe he could return and finish harvesting the remaining two direction roots of the middle bush as well as those other two bog apple bushes. He shrugged his shoulders under the weight of his loaded pack frame and started downhill again.

When the boy had first come ashore somewhere upstream from where he was now, he had made his way up a smaller river valley that fed into the Toolie. He had stayed near that watercourse as he traveled deeper into Hurstmon tribal lands. It had been easy to hike along the small valley and the river provided him with fish to catch. Luckily, he had climbed out on that forsaken log with his travel pouch on as well as his spear caster and quiver of shafts. Among other things in his travel pouch, he always kept his fishing twine and the white-owl talon his sire had fashioned into a fishing hook for him as his solstice present two congregations before.

At the time he had no idea how to get back across the wide river. He had not wanted to ponder that problem either because it depressed him to think about being on his own and far from home. Being a boy who’d survived nearly drowning, he’d felt maybe a little bit immortal after a few days. Enough so, he thought he just might travel into the lands of the Hurstmon before trying to find a way back over the Toolie.

Ureeblay had heard hunters and sometimes fishermen tell tales around the night campfire of seeing Hurstmon on the other side of the deep, wide, blue river. The boy knew neither the Hurstmon nor the Clan had ever acted aggressively to each other before. However, the wide Toolie had been between the two groups whenever they spotted each other. Who knew, was always a question raised around the campfire, what might have happened without that barrier in the way?

But other than having heard tales about these Hurstmon living across the Toolie, he’d never seen a Hurstmon before his surprise adventure began. So what would it hurt to go further into their lands, he had thought at the time.

That had been two double moons ago. Now the boy had a much better idea of what it was like to actually see a Hurstmon. More Hurstmon than he ever wanted to see again, even if it had only been five who were after him. That he was sure of, Ureeblay told himself.

But now, down below him in the sunlight, maybe a travel length away, finally he could see the start of a rolling band of forest that spread to his right and left. The boy knew from observations he’d made from higher up that this barrier of trees was about half a travel length across. This landmark, this barrier of woods, seemed to delineate the transition from this last mild downslope from what had been the bog downs and terraces, now gently melding into the valley floor. Once on the floor of the valley, Ureeblay figured it looked as if it would was at most a hand plus two travel lengths to the Toolie. He could do that in two days of easy traveling.

Beyond the different leafy canopies of the mingled woods, he knew from watching the valley as he descended toward his immediate goal, there were a combination of grassy meadow areas and belts of ripening grains mixed in with an occasional copse of trees and other groups of woods and a few huge cane berry breaks.

Scattered on this side of the undulating valley floor were a few small conical hills. Some were wooded, or partially treed, with other hills just grass covered. He had even saw a great herd of bison, appearing first as a few slow-moving, almost unnoticed, black and brown specks emerging from a thick verge of forest far upriver and then slowly becoming a tide of animals, further swollen each time the boy reached a vantage point to see that distance.

Snaking out of the trees a good ways to his right, the boy had saw exposed sections of what must be his traveling stream, now a good-sized creek. The creek bed wandered around the base of higher ground and filled sinks, creating small brush-rimmed ponds here and there out a across the valley floor on its journey to join the Toolie.

As he continued his hike through the grasses toward the wide barrier of the river, from time to time he had the distinct feeling on the back of his neck that he was being watched. But every time he had turned around, there was nothing to see but the surrounding countryside and no scent out of the ordinary in the warm air. The breeze coming down from his line of travel had been overcome by a stronger breeze which seemed to blow from right to left following the direction of the flowing Toolie along the valley.

Before the boy went to sleep this evening, he planned on a good long study of the Swongli overhead in the night sky. Being able to see the constellation of the Seven Sentinels and studying their relationship with other location Swongli would the key, Ureeblay knew. By observing those Swongli in the night sky he could figure out just how far down stream he was from the point he had originally stumbled ashore. He also would figure out how far he had traveled on that floating log before it had dumped him into the shallows on this side of the Toolie.

He shivered at the memory of his utter shock and then terror when he went completely under the blue water. He had thought he was doomed to drown as he fought the drag of the current ... When the soles of his soaked, calf-high moccasins made solid contact on the sand and gravel of the riverbed, he realized the true depth of the wide river at that point, close to the shore

Trying to push off the riverbed for the surface, he had actually stood up to find the Toolie came to just below his dripping elbows. It hadn’t helped his panic when a school of small fishes thought they should gum the skin of his legs to see if something good to eat had fallen out of the sky.

Now Ureeblay was starting to move into a mix of waist-high patches of long bladed dark-green grass. As he trudged forward, he began encountering more and more tall flowering weeds of several types he didn’t recognize. Their scents were pungent, as well as damp and peaty.

His bare feet suddenly sank to his ankles in the mucky, squishing wet. With each step he took, the soil became more marsh-like. He could see standing, green water surrounding the stalks and stems of all the vegetation. He hoped the severity of the footing did not become so bad he would need to abandon his chosen line of travel, which was straight ahead for the band of forest marking the valley floor.

The tall plants surrounding him slowly changed types, but their size continued to hinder his progress. His travel was afflicted with sodden footing for several more hands of strides, and then his bare feet began to discover firmer footing.

Then, off to his right from the direction of the high bluffs, maybe a half-day’s hard hike away, he heard a deep humming, buzzing vibration that seemed to oscillate between two tones, up and down.

A bullroarer! The boy knew what that supernatural droning sound was!

A bullroarer was an arm-length piece of wood, carved thin and flat. Once someone centered and bored a hole near one end and tied a long plait of strong hide cord through the hole, they had a bullroarer. When a trained man spun the wooden blade around in a circle over his head, or vertically in front of his body, that action made the bullroarer sing through the air.

By varying the speed of the spin by lengthening or shortening of the cord, the bullroarer found its modulating voice. A trained man created higher or lower tones in specific patterns, which were the mysterious words of the bullroarer. The spirit tool’s voice would then throb and call down the attention of the spirits of the air and sky, and draw up the spirits of the earth and the water. Only the shaman knew the full potential of the bullroarer.

With that power, the clan’s shaman used the bullroarer in ceremonies to gain the attention and the approval of the spirits. They also used the far-ranging tones to communicate with other shamans who knew the secrets of the bullroarer’s language. Such a deep mystery in such a simple manmade thing, Ureeblay thought as he listened to the modulating sounds coming to him over the breeze.

Then a second, higher pitched droning came to the boy from the same direction. Together the sounds seemed to interweave and harmonize sometimes there was almost a dissonance that made him ache to be closer to the source of the sounds. But the sounds were not in any rhythm or cadence he’d ever heard before. Having been exposed to the language of his clan’s bullroarers during important ceremonies since he was a baby, he’d become somewhat accustomed to their range of expression. Even if he didn’t understand the content of the information being transmitted, the sounds he was hearing now was like a familiar but foreign language to his ears and his head.

What he was hearing was deeply unsettling. He stopped walking through the increasingly tightly clumped, waist high plants and looked all around his position. He felt very exposed, almost as if anyone up on either of those distant bluffs could watch him moving. He was close to the first group of trees below him. As he started toward the tree line he suddenly heard an answering bullroarer from his left, coming down from the high bluffs, which he could see maybe another half-day’s travel away.

He pushed his equipment-encumbered way through the thickening, high grasses and plants, feeling the soil beneath his bare feet beginning to firm up. Now he was sure the bullroarers were carrying on some sort of a conversation across the distance between the two separated points of the plateau. He had a sinking feeling that he was hearing two groups of Hurstmon and wished he understood what their calling to the spirits, or to each other, foretold.

At least, Ureeblay told himself, he hadn’t felt he was being watched since he’d entered this annoyingly persistent stretch of vegetation. He knew he was leaving a trail behind him that a blind, old person could follow, but he really wanted to get into those woods he was heading for.

The sound of the two bullroarers to his right faded away. Ureeblay noticed immediately, still looking around him as he pressed on though the resisting vegetation. The singing slat of twirling wood far, far across the distance to his left continued its majestic deep vibrating reply. Around him, the boy saw nothing to alarm him any further.

Still, he felt the sounds of the bullroarers were driving him forward. It was almost as if the sounds of the eerie, calling songs were game-beaters and he was the intended game. At least the sounds encouraged him in the direction he already wanted to go.

The boy was approaching the beginning of the woods when the last, deep, undulating sound in the distance ceased. Ureeblay realized the day was coming on to late afternoon. The growing boy felt he had acquitted himself well, so far as his day had gone. He only wished he had gotten though this afternoon without hearing the mysteries of three bullroarers. That experience left him feeling very ill at ease.

To take his mind off the feeling, he took stock of his new mode of travel using the pack frame to porter his new wealth. Ureeblay decided he would need to do something about the reinforced grass cordage digging into his shoulders from the weight of his pack frame. One of the crosspieces of the pack frame, when he turned from his waist to look around, rubbed uncomfortably across the small of his back. He thought he could do something about both of those situations. However, first he had to get out of this marshy section of ground and get clear of the peat mud that seemed to be sucking the moisture from his bare feet.

The closer he approached the shelter of the overhanging canopy of the guardian woods, the easier his path became. The tall grasses and plants began to thin as the soil became almost hard. Once he was within a spear cast of the tree line the grasses and plants were only calf high for the most part. He moved through a few clumps of tall grasses displaying multiple long stems topped by long fuzzy green heads that looked like the bushy tail of a pouch-cheeked oaken-skirrel. Other than bringing that thought to his mind, the clinging grasses he pushed out of his way were of no use or value of any kind that Ureeblay could see.

Finally entering the band of woods, which seemed to guard the edge of the valley floor, Ureeblay passed through successive layers growth. First low brush and plants were taking up any space available between the trunks, which themselves were young and slender and stretching up, battling for the blessings of Father Sun. As he carefully picked his way into their cover, he encountered waist high brush and woody plants, which had robbed the smaller growth of sunlight. The closely interspersed trees grew in thickness and height.

After that he found his way into the late afternoon deep shadows of the woods. He was moving silently on a roughly straight course between the hardwood trunks. Underbrush appeared only in dispersed clumps where dappled sunlight filtered under the full canopy. All around him there was a thick layer of decaying leaves and twigs that made up the forest floor.

From time to time the growing boy detoured around some clumped bushes and plants that preferred dim sunlight. He began noticing a few ancient, rounded stones, green with mosses and gray-blue with lichens where the smoothed rocks pushed up through the leaves. Some of the random stones were hip high. It was almost as if the forest had grown up in a boulder field ages ago.

The boy didn’t know that several ages past a great ice mass had covered this whole region. As the glacier receded, the deep valley of the Toolie was exposed and filled with stone aggregates, ranging from smoothed massive boulders down through rocks, gravels, and sands.

Birds called around him as he walked under the high boughs. Ureeblay smelled the moldy scents, the rich earthy textures, and from time to time he detected a nutty smell of some kind that stirred his hunger. He could see a group of oaken-skirrels chattering at him from the shadows. The bush-tailed critters were near their bowers high up in the gray-white bark of a grove of oaken trees to his left. He paid them no mind as his path continued into the beginning of a small slump of land in the woods.

From somewhere back in the oaken grove, the boy could hear the grunts and oinks of flats-pigs. His scent must not have reached them. From the sound the boy was hearing, one of these flats-pigs was quite large. He knew that boars could be very aggressive and dangerous. Ureeblay picked up his pace while remaining as quiet as possible.

As he moved across the forest floor, the boy was inquisitive about what there was to see. Here and there were several different kinds of woods wildflowers, springing up through the leaf-cluttered short grasses and ground-hugging plants. Most of those flowers seemed to be in the process of flowering. The boy recognized none of the plants as edible or of any herbal value.

Then again, he hadn’t paid all that much attention in the past to what plants were used for—unless he was putting it into his hungry mouth. He recognized some food plants that he liked, and some mushrooms he’d known his sire or mother preferred. If a plant might directly contribute to his immediate comfort, Ureeblay could sometimes spot the shape of leaves or stalks, or might know how to dig the tubers or roots. And the boy did know very generally that some plants could be used for specific things in healing or tanning or producing certain colors for dyes.

Other than a name, he often would have trouble recognizing the plant as it grew. Ureeblay had only paid attention when he had smelled and tasted the processed end result: the shaman’s work or the healing woman’s success or his mother’s cooking. That, too would have to change he told himself. He could be passing a needed source of nutrition or healing with each step he took deeper into these woods and have no idea what he was missing.

The route he was taking continued to follow a trough through the trees, the stones, and boulders. The way was developing banks of mossy ground many good paces to his right and left on either side of his passage. The further he trailed between the rising banks of trees, the more obvious became the evidence he was following a drainage course, as leaves and twigs were in some places reefed up from past rain run-off.

At some points the run-off had washed away the rotting leaf mulch clear down to expose the tiny white root bulbs of some of the wildflowers in the black soil. Here were some exposed stones, and there were a succession of tiny banks of deposited sandy loam as the run-off encountered a big tree root and the slowing water dropped its load of eroded soil. In two different places a large exposed roots growing up out of the black soil had diverted the flow a few paces. Some places a good-sized rounded rock had resisted the determined flood of storm water.

Now the little gully the boy followed through the woodland in the early evening turned to the right as the floor descended lower and the rises on both sides moved further away. Now there were more and larger stones and even some boy-high boulders strewn throughout the surrounding forest floor. From time to time, an unseen warble or twa-tweet would sing out as Ureeblay entered what some bird might consider its territory. And then with a flutter of almost silent wings the bird would flit away into deeper branches.

After a while in the softening light, a second small wooded drainage gully joined the one Ureeblay followed, coming in from his right. The earthen banks below the confluence were higher than before. However, he could still see over them into the larger forest. He remained vigilant to the surroundings near him and to the limit of his sight into the majestic mix of shadowy trees. His pack load was beginning to bite into his shoulders.

As Ureeblay was looking for a good place to make camp for the evening, he realized he would have to put off his planned study of the night sky if he did stay in the woods. He pondered what would be his best course of action? Should he find as safe a camp as he could here in the shelter of the woods? He would have an easier time finding firewood. Or should he continue to travel through the woods and out into an unknown open meadow as night fell? That way he could observe and listen to the Seven Sentinels of the Swongli as they told him his position now compared to his position when he’d landed on this side of the Toolie.

His present course, following the drainage gullies, was taking him somewhat diagonally across the band of forest. When the little forested valley he followed took another hooking right turn around a good-sized wooded knoll, the boy smelled and saw the creek gurgling along its small boulder strewn bed several spear casts away. Here the forest floor seemed to level out and the boy hoped it would head directly toward the river.

Ureeblay decided to cast his luck with this new traveling companion by following along beside its waters. After all, he asked himself, had this water not given him respite from his thirst and cress to break his fast? Had its first little pool not shown him he would encounter the lucky spirit wolf, which had saved his life? Had the stream not given him a reason to stop and clean the flats-pig and produced the amazing bounty of bog apples and the means to pack them? And these waters would eventually lead him to the banks of the Toolie, he knew as certainly as water runs downhill.

The Swongli would be in the night sky to be studied tomorrow evening. Unless the heavens were hidden by cloud cover or rain.

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

With all the evidence processed and the second donk departed, the remaining Marines pulled down the last of the yellow plastic tape that surrounded the large crime scene. I had a young woman under each arm, I was feeling very good about myself. Only I was surprisingly hungry as I walked with Anika and Beatrice toward the open cargo hatchway at the back of the Hydroponics Department.

“So, I am hungry,” I said, as the three of us turned left out of the Hydroponics Department. I would not even consider the breakfast bars in my uniform pocket as an option after the four or five mouthfuls of lasagna I had earlier. I dropped my right arm down to Beatrice’s lower back and rested my hand on the lightweight dark-blue coverall over her sexy hip. I could feel her soft flesh underneath as the thin material moved across her skin. “What do you ladies say?”

“I be thinking, naughty husband-to-be,” Anika said, putting her right arm around my lower back and looking at me and our new friend. “Beatrice, under coveralls, not be wearing bra. Not be wearing panties. Knowing of this with own eyes. Bea Bea being naughty girl. Yes?”

Beatrice sort of bumped her side into mine saying nothing and turning her face forward, but slightly down. I gently rubbed the thin material over her hip in a larger circle, feeling the uplift of the top of her right buttock under her coverall. Her bottom was threatening to be magnificent under my fingertips if I let them wander where they wanted.

“Yes, my soon-to-be feisty wife,” I told Anika, and pulled her closer to my left side as we walked down the big cargo passage toward the open collision bulkhead. “That is being a naughty girl. Even if it isn’t her fault she’s not wearing ah ... a bra or panties. And, I am hungry. So, what are you getting at?”

Just then, there was an annoying NEEE ... NEEE ... NEEE ... NEEE... from somewhere behind us. Anika and I stopped dead in our tracks and Beatrice took a step forward, my arm on the small of her back and my clutching hand on her right hip sort of turning her into my side. Behind us yellow lights started to flash from the overhead.

“That’s just the warning the cargo hatch will be cycling closed,” Beatrice told us with a giggle. “So somebody who doesn’t know better initiated a full closing procedure. Good thing my immediate supervisor isn’t here, or somebody would be getting a lecture.”

Then, from behind us and down the cargo-way, we heard the electric hum of a big motor coming from the jungle side of the huge cargo hatch. That was followed by the squeak of clean tires on clean decking. We turned and watched the last Marine donk smoothly roll out into the cargo corridor.

We moved to the side, even though there was a huge amount of room for them to have gone past us. Clearing the hatch threshold, the donk slowly moved in our direction as the big hatch doors slipped out of the bulkheads on either side and closed relatively quickly. The blinking yellow overhead lights ceased.

The Marine driving the donk pulled it to a stop next to us. By the single black chevron pointing up his camo sleeves, he was a PFC. There were only three Marines riding on the donk with the driver. All the Marines wore their POTs with the visors slid back along the crown of their helmets. They were facing out from the donk in their separate compartments on either side of the big machine.

I saw both Marines in the inset bucket seats on this side had assault rifles made of composites on their knees. With no chevrons on their sleeves at all, they were lowly Privates. Both ARs resting over the men’s thighs looked to be 5.56 millimeter. Each had a low-profile laser emitter unit attached to the front of the top Picatinny rail of the rifle. The emitters were low profile and below the sight line of the very cohesive electro-telescopic sight unit mounted further back over the receivers of each rifle. I saw their ARs had an LED focused illumination unit attached to the bottom rail in front.

I knew those sight units synced to the data processing comp that was part of the Marines’ POT helmet system. With the data visor down a Marine would see the comp command bar inside of the visor. Commands could then be initiated by blinking at the menu item with their dominate eye, just like a mouse click. Under the correct menu, a command would place a 3D video feed from the electro-telescopic sight unit on inside the visor. A Marine could stick their assault rifle around a corner or over a wall, not showing anything but one hand in the process, and still sight and fire the weapon.

I felt firearm lust in my heart for a bit. But the 5.56-millimeter rounds the Marines would have in their magazines in order to conform to the present humane ammunition mandated by The Hague Conventions didn’t do anything for my trigger finger.

Then I noticed Corporal Milner wasn’t onboard.

“Mister Sitwell,” the driver addressed me, I couldn’t help but notice freckles over his long nose and fair cheeks. “I’m PFC Vespa, and Corporal Milner said we could open our two extra personnel compartments and give you guys a ride, if you’d like one. We’re going up to the Barracks, but we’ve got our own Hub up there. Get you where you’re going real quick. Our lift cars move with priority routing.

“And, ah, G5 Sitwell ... all of us...” and he indicated the other Marines sitting down in their very comfortable looking bucket seats with a slow swivel of his eyes, making contact with each one. I saw the Marine in the front seat on the other side of the donk had her right arm up on the flat surface above her inset personnel compartment. She wore a black chevron and I figured the young black woman had to be turned awkwardly so she could look at us over her shoulder that way.

Then she dropped her right arm back into her compartment, her shoulder flexed, and she swiveled her bucket seat to the forward position with a click. Now I could tell she was looking at us without having to twist her upper body around so much.