Legend of Earth
Chapter 4: The Podland

The men were hiking the land again, and Amper kept his eye on the sky full of clouds. The wind and rain had been invigorating, but what would it take for there to be a storm? Shhah had mentioned thunder, so it does happen. She’d also mentioned squirrels, but although the legends suggested there were many of them, neither of the men had seen one yet. Amper made a decision to bring up a book on Earth Legends and review what seems to be true and what might have disappeared. Maybe over the centuries, the nature of these things had changed and they weren’t quite the same as legend remembers – like humans. They were trees now. How had that happened? He’d have to ask Shhah next time.

He relayed his dream to Mygs, and just like the last communication, the parts not having to do with Mygs’ origin were officially noted in the log. An asteroid had been encountered some ways off southeast of their position seven years ago. It could have affected the weather patterns so that storms were less likely, perhaps. Both men were quiet as they kept a steady pace, each taking pictures and sometimes pointing-out things to the other. They speculated on the shapes of leaves of each tree.

Some of the leaves seemed like regular tree leaves, recognizable from the ancient texts about Maples and Elms and such. But every once-in-a-while they’d see a tree with strange-shaped leaves that had no label. Soon Amper had a list of shapes: five-pointed leaves of Shhah that he could only suppose from her mist-tendril, the crescent-moon leaves of Mrrl, the frame-shaped ones where Mygs first heard a tree thump, they saw leaves that grew like rings or ohs off of their stems, leaves that were the shapes of eyes and had fibrous protrusions along one curve while the stem looked like a long teardrop coming off of the middle of the other curve. There was even a tree with three-dimentional pyramid leaves: Amper picked one off, apologizing to the tree he was sure was a nemectis, and opened it up to replace fibers lacing the inside. The aroma coming from it was spicy. Mygs picked one off of the forest floor beneath the nemectis, and when he tried opening it, the dry, darkened leaf walls crumbled apart. The lacy fibers were gone inside and the aroma was sweet.

It was while Mygs was initiating homebase that evening that he saw the first squirrel. He heard it first, the clicking of claws along a tree trunk nearby. He was startled first, and looked around for Amper, but he had gone to relieve himself behind a distant rock formation. Mygs turned on the dermiscreen camera that was hooked up to his iriscope, so whatever he saw was being recorded. He scanned the nearby trees. He heard the scurrying again, and saw movement. Touching the dermiscreen, he zoomed-in on the area of movement. The squirrel’s tail could be seen twitching behind the trunk, then it disappeared with the clicking-scurrying sound again.

In another instant, from the other side of the trunk, the squirrel scuttled to the front of the tree and looked directly at Mygs, its red, furry body as long as Mygs’ arm from shoulder to wrist, and all eight of its legs gripping the bark in alarm, a gorgeous, gray-lined tail twitching with intimidation. Mygs thought back to the little bit he knew about squirrels. The books had said four legs. And the picture showed that it was half as long. This was like two squirrels together with only one head and tail, but twice the body length and number of legs. Also, the four middle legs seemed to be smaller, like they were the object-manipulation legs that would ply open a nut while the four “outer” legs were plump with the muscle of traveling and climbing.

“What happened…” Mygs whispered, manipulating the zoom so that the squirrel could be seen from afar again, the nature of its movement and size more evident in the context of the surrounding trees. Suddenly the creature chattered loudly, seeming to scold Mygs for staring. It made quick scrambling movements along the tree while saying its piece, then snaked up into the branches.

Mygs turned off the camera, and proceeded to make sure it was saved in the archives under the date and term “altered Earth squirrel.”

“Was that a squirrel?” Amper’s voice asked incredulously from behind Mygs as soon as the creature disappeared.

Mygs continued to save the information. “I think it was. I had it on iriscope, it’s recorded and saved.” He looked up from his arm and turned to his friend. “Squirrels aren’t supposed to look like that, right?”

Amper shrugged, his brows raised, “And trees aren’t supposed to have hearts.” Now they both knew there was no limit to the strange things they’d see on Earth.

“I wonder what else has changed so drastically,” Mygs glanced once more into the squirrel’s tree from which leaves were dropping. “Do you suppose it’s the radiation from the Crostus?”

“That seems most likely.” Amper started setting up the campfire they’d been ritually creating at each site. The kitchen in the homebase was almost completely unused. He was aware of the dark clouds creating a wet breeze through the trees, but was determined to be out in the Earth weather until it was unbearable. He still hoped to hear thunder.

“Are you going to sleep out here too?” Mygs half-smiled at the fascination his friend had for Earth experiences.

“I just don’t want to miss-out on anything.”

“Amper,” Mygs shook his head, still smiling. “You’re probably having the most Earth experience anyone can have at once.” He took supplies into the shelter, leaving Amper to replace the wood for the fire.

“Everything but thunder,” Amper muttered.

When Mygs came back out to the fire pit, he was tapping his dermiscreen. “Command says the sonar map is showing a large anomaly under the ground up ahead. It’s a pocket.”

“Isn’t there a huge grove of dead trees in our path?” Amper remembered examining their map. “I’ll bet it’s there. The trees must not be getting enough nutrients above the pocket.”

“But how did they grow there in the first place, then?”

Amper huffed and shrugged. Another mystery of old Earth. They might know once they reached the grove.

As they watched the trees that night during dinner, both men wondered about the squirrel. They talked about it, joked, and decided to call it “Octosquirrel.” They talked then about the legends of the octopus that used to live on Earth in the oceans, and maybe they still do. Or did they change the other way from the squirrel and now have four legs? What if they’ve evolved to live out of the water and now resemble humans more than the plant-like evolution of Earth humans do. After a while the friends became quiet, and the fire crackled low. Mygs excused himself and went into homebase for the night, cautioning Amper to do the same.

But the breeze felt so inviting, as cold as it was. Amper huddled into his impervious polyfleece jacket, under the thermal blanket that was wrapped around him. He listened to the rustling of leaves, and was sure he heard the clicking of the octosquirrel scampering to his home tree for the night. Moments before he drifted off to sleep, he heard the muffled thud of a tree-heart pumping nearby. What’s the nemectis name that goes with that thump, he wondered as he entered the darkness of Shhah’s communicating world.

“You’re approaching the Podland,” Shhah said as the familiar smoky lights of her presence became visible. Amper could feel the comfort of her being, her understanding and wisdom and empathy. Amper felt that she was becoming a dear friend. “You have no idea what your friendship means to me,” Shhah said in response to what he was experiencing. He turned yellow and brown with the happy realization that there could be no lying. “What is that? About not communicating?” Shhah edged with orange. “You were just thinking…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amper’s yellow brightened. “It doesn’t matter here. I don’t think you would even understand. What is the Podland?”

“The trees grew there, they thrived. But one day there was a tremor and a part of the ground they’re on fell down – into the ground. There’s a huge hole under the trees. Little by little the ground fell away from the trees’ roots, landing far beneath them for about a flight-and-a-half around.”

“Flight?” Amper asked

“According to a blackbird’s one-day flight”

Amper thought of the map showing the dead tree grove. It was perhaps one-and-a-half kilometers square. Birds would fly farther than a couple of kilometers in a day.

“We use blackbirds to measure,” Once again Shhah knew what he was thinking. There was truly no hiding anything. “They’re not like other birds. Their feathers fall out as they fly, so they can only fly so far each day. The feathers regrow by morning, so they can fly again.”

“I never heard of a bird like that in the Legends. So it’s not as far as a regular flight would indicate.”

“Yes. Not like other birds that can fly continually.” She turned from white to blue smoky light. “The roots of the trees of the podland had intertwined as they grew, so now that the ground is gone, the trees remain where they have always been, now just hanging in the air with nothing but a pod of space beneath them. We lost Kllsh when that happened.”

“Kllsh is a nemectis that lived in the podland before it fell?”

“She’s there still, but dead. She’s nearly in the middle. There’s a story about how the tremor was begun by her when she was denied the affection of another nemectis, Oocu. It’s a local legend.”

“How long ago did the trees die?”

“Oh, many many years. Hundreds. Few of us exist who knew Kllsh. Oocu is very old and doesn’t communicate well.”

“Thank you, Shhah. Your information is always helpful.”

“I am always happy to help,” she beamed yellow and pink. He hadn’t seen pink before.

He woke when he felt his face being splattered on. It was raining, and the rain had dripped down the tree under which he was sitting, culminating at the bend in the branch above him. The wind had died. Once again there was no thunder.

Amper stood and waddled into the homebase with his blanket. He stripped off the wet clothes and turned on his heated cot, falling into a dreamless slumber for the rest of the night.

The following day, after logging his dream-communication with Shhah and trying to spell the names of the nemectes she’d mentioned, he helped to pack up camp as he relayed the information about the podland to Mygs. Mygs said he already got a response to the new information, and Command okayed an extra day during which they were to explore and record details of the pocket to the safest extent possible.

“They want us to try to x-ray the dead nemectis if possible,” Mygs told Amper.

“She’s in the middle of a hovering dead grove!”

“The mass looks huge,” Mygs examined his dermiscreen. “The roots may have made a stable network of paths to get to her.”

“I say we take out the drone and have it scan her.”

“Quit being a wuss,” Mygs grinned at his friend. “We’re here to have as many Earth experiences as possible. You’re into Earth experiences. You should be all for it.”

“This is creepy, though,” Amper said hesitantly. “It’s dead. It’s like the legends of the graveyards filled with human bodies. This is a graveyard of trees – one of them partially human. And we’re supposed to examine her… carcass.” He hefted his pack and pushed the hover homebase to get it going.

“Okay,” Mygs’ brows rose as he grinned and found their heading. “We’ll drone the examination.”

They set the homebase on “auto proximity hover” and covered the fire pit, though the rain of the night before rendered it cold anyhow. By late afternoon that day, they were looking down at the northwest edge of the grove, which sat at the bottom of a hill. An expanse of dead-white wooden trunks and branches stretched over the shadow of a hollow about eight meters deep. They could see the hint of newer trees that had grown in the bottom of the cavity. Some tops and branches grew through the holes between pale roots of the ancient, dead tree network.

“I see her,” Mygs said, nodding to the grove. Amper scanned the area.

“Where?”

“The biggest one. There –“ Mygs pointed toward their right, into the middle of the podland. “She has the biggest spread of branches, and her trunk has reddish pink streaks.”

Amper saw her. “That’s quite a ways in. Hopefully the drone can make it.” The signal that would feed the drone might not reach from the grounded edge to the dead nemectis. Amper sighed. If it wasn’t going to reach, he knew he’d be the one going in on foot. He had the communication with the natives, so Command would insist that he be the one initiating anything that has to do with any of them. Even dead ones.

“Lets replace a campsite,” Mygs suggested, and they made their way down the hill to a sheltered spot near the podland.

Drinking a mug of tea near sunset, Amper stood at the edge of the pod, idly scanning for a way in to explore the floor of the fallen ground. By the time Mygs came to join him, he’d actually decided where he’d begin walking the roots to get to Kllsh in the hovering dead glade.

“I saw a gentle incline south of us while gathering wood,” Mygs gestured. “It leads to some boulders in the pod, and we can probably pick through the trees from there. The shade-growing trees are small and not difficult to move around.”

“Should we test the drone’s reach before sending it in? Or do that tomorrow.”

“We’ll do that first thing in the morning. Amper, I was thinking,” Mygs gazed out through the forest of white trunks and branches. “If a ‘flight’ is actually only about one-and-a-half kilometers, that asteroid is only about seventy-five kilometers from here, not half a world away. When we’re done here, if Command doesn’t tell us to, I’d like to volunteer that we go take a look and catalogue it.”

“We don’t know where it’s from,” Amper pointed-out. “It could be contaminated or radioactive.”

“Command can scan for that. We have immugel we can put on to guard against any infection, anyhow.”

“Maybe.” Amper sighed. “One thing at a time here, though.”

“Right.” Mygs and Amper each sipped their tea.

“Isn’t it something how the sun goes ‘down’?” Amper muttered quietly in the growing dark and coloring of the sky behind him. “It’s not. It’s not moving according to the Earth. The Earth is moving, but it looks like the sun is. How do we not feel this massive planet moving?”

“Like Persevere,” Mygs pointed-out. “We spin for the gravity, but we have Day Rooms rather than a sun. It is amazing, that giant light orb in the sky. We’re witnessing a legend. A myth even – according to the Mythads.”

Amper huffed at that. “I wonder what they would say about this.”

“They would say this isn’t Earth. That we’re wrong. It’s another planet that we’ve mistaken for Earth because Earth never existed.”

“I’ve never understood that extremist sentiment.” Amper shook his head.

Mygs nodded. “We don’t have to. We’re living the real life here.” He sipped the last cold sip of tea in his mug, then crumpled it and dropped it so it would compost into the ground. “Lets get some sleep, we’ll be up first thing in the morning testing the drone.” He turned to head back, but put a hand on Amper’s shoulder. “Come to terms with having to do it yourself, Amp. It might come to that.”

Amper took a sleep aid, and rested dreamlessly.