On Distant Worlds: The Prologues & Colibri. Brian Gonzalez
gift from a time when resource production had actually been adequate for their needs.
“Let’s go,” hissed Tony. Jennifer turned to make her way back to the trail, and as she passed by the last frond-plant on the edge of the border between trail and scrub, that’s when she came face-to-face with the Enemy.
It had climbed the frond-plant and was hiding in the hollow where the plant began unfurling its hawser-like stalk into huge star-shaped leaves. It was a juvenile, too small to be a first arriver; it had to be a recent hatchling out on its own. It was curled up in a ball and shaking, terrified by the gunfire and bloodshed. It was black and gray, and had a series of dark spots on its shoulders and a black diamond on the back of its head. Jennifer froze; that diamond shape was intimately familiar to her. She knew that marking well. The Enemy saw Jennifer and tried to hiss at her, but it was a terrified half-effort; no real sound came out.
“Kill it,” said Tony, arriving behind her and catching sight of the animal.
“It’s a diamond,” Jennifer said. “It’s probably not a threat to us.”
“It could breed,” said Tony. He placed the muzzle of his rifle into the hollow and with a single ear-shattering blast reduced the terrified Enemy hatchling to biological samples.
Jennifer fought the bile that rose suddenly in her throat. Jennifer fought the tears which sprang hotly to her eyes. Tony didn’t notice or if he noticed, didn’t care. They made their way back to the defensive emplacement in silence.
There were two larger attacks and several skirmishes over the next several hours, but the Last Standers were never in serious danger. Several weeks of flight had strung their pursuers out over several kilometers, so the Enemy, not patient enough to wait for reinforcements, kept attacking in small and manageable numbers. No more Enemy showed up with rifles, though one showed up with a discharged handgun and stood in the trail clicking it repeatedly at them until Jessie cut him down.
It was almost 1600 hours when Aram Lewitt came hustling down the trail. “About time,” said Anders as the biologist, red-faced and breathing hard, knelt beside him behind a boulder. “Are we ready to move out?”
Aram nodded. “I think it worked. We’re as ready as we’ll get.”
Jennifer wondered what that might mean but then Captain Anders called for suppression fire and retreat. The Last Standers spent half a minute pumping rounds and sound blasts into the foliage down-trail, temporarily scattering the latest grouping of Enemy, then double-timed it back to the head of the trail, with Tony and Jessie rear-guarding their retreat and firing occasional single shots into the bushes.
When Jennifer saw what Aram had done, it made her smile.
The rancher had not just burned a path across the living gully for them; he had scorched out several narrow paths, each with twists and short, dead-ending turn-outs. Several paths led into the deadly tendril-mat but only one led to an exit across the other side; the others ended a couple of meters short.
It was a maze. Or if not an actual maze, at least a partial labyrinth. It took Jennifer a few seconds to trace the safe path across with her eye; if it took a human several moments it would take the Enemy, closer to the ground and far less intellectually capable, far longer. Nor would the Enemy automatically flow through the safe path once the first of them found it; each of them would attempt to solve the puzzle on their own. Some Enemy would trickle through quickly but in small numbers, and it could take dozens of hours before the majority of them made it across. It was brilliant. The Last Standers would largely keep their lead time but without allowing the forward elements of the Enemy horde to lose contact with them.
Exactly within mission parameters.
“Aram,” said Captain Anders, “If we ever have a civilization again, and if that civilization ever makes medals, and if you and I both survive that long, I’m giving you a medal for this.”
Aram winked. “You could give me some extra ammo and call it a medal,” he said.
The suggestion was ignored. “Hoist ‘em and move out!” yelled Anders. “Remember to step high over the spine-line! Step high over the crack! Do not stop to take pictures! Do not stop because you’re scared! The gully will eat you! Move out!” Pairs of Last Standers lifted and shouldered the equipment yokes, everyone adjusted their personal gear, and the band of humans made their way into the living gully, Aram leading the way and Jessie on rearguard.
As they passed through the labyrinth the gully reacted to their presence. The tendrils were magenta-hued and resembled nothing so much as grotesquely elongated but pencil-thin arthritic human fingers with far too many joints. Each “knuckle” was a nerve node and also contained a venom sac. The venom was both a powerful paralytic and an acid; the latter was because it also served as digestive fluid. The mat displayed a fractal growth pattern; the tendrils grew from larger versions of themselves and all the living tendrils sat atop layers of their dead ancestors, giving the mat its bulk. This particular gully was so well-established that the mat was thigh-high in some areas and the oldest dead layers were already calcifying.
Burning a path through a tendril mat kills the nerves for dozens of centimeters down the line of its nervous system, so it was not the nearest parts of the mat which reacted to their passage, but rather the interior of the organism. Beyond the blackened stumps, past the nerve-dead but otherwise undamaged parts of the mat which sat inertly like a photographic still, thousands of tendrils arose and slowly flailed, feeling around, seeking prey, defending the colonial organism.
Ordinarily, only the tendrils nearest the gully’s prey would move, but Aram had done a lot of damage to the organism and it knew in some dim way that it was under attack, so every living tendril was in motion. It was a surreal feeling to pass through this silent activity; it was a little like being underwater while the tide rocked sea-grass; it was a little like being prayed to by a crowd of supplicants with very long arms. The gully was randomly exuding venom and the smell filled the air, like rotting flesh covered in honey; cloying, repulsive, and attractive.
When she got to the volcanic crack and high-stepped over, Jennifer glanced down into its depths but did happen to catch sight of a thrope.
As the Last-Standers safely exited on the other side of the living gully Jessie left behind three buried booby traps equidistantly spaced over the last five meters of the path. The first few Enemy to solve the puzzle would win the prize of getting to feed the living gully. Actually, a lot of Enemy would probably end up feeding it, so at least the gully would end up getting some badly needed nutrition after taking so much damage. It was a shame they had been forced to burn through such a magnificent old colony.
Thirty meters behind Jessie, the first few Enemy were starting to straggle out of the grass. Encountering the gully, they came to a stop and snarled and chattered. One hopped up and down angrily, another picked up a rock and flung it across the gully at the humans, but without much force or accuracy to it.
“Let’s go,” said Captain Anders, demonstrating what he meant. Tony followed him, then the others. As the bravest of the Enemy tentatively started moving out into the scorched pathways, the Last Standers disappeared into the foliage.
Karl Edgar Nassim
Last Human Standing, the Foreword
88 A.C.
I’m writing this because I have to do something but the number one thing on my list, killing myself, is against the tenets of my religion.
The number two thing on my list, indulging myself in high-grade pharmaceutical escapism, is likely to lead to my death, whether through overdose or malnutrition or simply forgetting my geriatrics treatment, and so at least for the time being I am considering that as philosophically tantamount to item number one. However I reserve the right to change my mind about either or both of these points with one possibly self-delusional justification: it might be the only way to test if I’m already in Hell.
It’s among the most fundamentally frightening