Legend of Earth
Chapter 8: Terranaut Trials

They camped within a half-day walk of the waterfall. The homebase was traveling the river, so the men unrolled their beds and made a fire in a spot they cleared of shrubs. An octosquirrel watched them with interest, and with their aquathermics activated at sixty-five degree comfort, they would stay safely warm. They drank soup for supper and discussed the human issues of emotional illness and synapse disorder as they might manifest in nemectes. Amper had felt the last nemectis’ strange presence, just as some humans can be uneasy around people who, if described, would sound normal, but when experienced would be a little “off.”

“Most cases with humans,” Amper postulated, “the issue has to do with genes. Bi-polar parent begets autism kid. How would this happen to nemectes?”

“Do they have parents?” Mygs peeled a stick while absently staring into the flames. “What are family units for nemectes?” He looked up at Amper. “Shhah hasn’t spoken of any siblings or origin trees or anything?”

Amper shrugged and shook his head. “No. But the subject of love has come up.”

“Really,” Mygs’ tone matched his crooked smile and rising brow.

“Geez, Mygs,” Amper couldn’t help but smile. “I meant the story of Kilsh and Ookoo. Kilsh was sick about not being able to have his affection.”

Mygs nodded his chin at Amper and returned his gaze to the fire. “So if there’s love, there must be a pairing of some sort.”

“That’s my guess.”

“How.”

“There, I have no guess.”

The evening was uneventful but noisy. Not with animal calls, but with rustling and shuffling. Just as the men were putting things away to get their sleep, they heard in the distance an eerie, low rumble of thumping along with the breaking of twigs, shrubs and branches. Something big was making a path through the trees. Alarmed, the men took stock of where they were according to the movement, and when they noticed how close to them this thudding was, causing the ground to shiver, they gingerly made their way toward the river –where they would be heading the next day.

In the darkness, they smelled the dirty, musky odor of platafants before they saw the moving dark blobs pass behind the trees ahead of them. The odor was sharper than when they’d encountered the basic, heated wet-fur smell of the one that attacked the Legendbound.

Amper wanted to say something to Mygs about how something seemed to be wrong, apparently spooking them. He didn’t know the animals’ habits, but thought it strange for them to travel in packs at night. This was a major movement, not one or two of the herd out foraging. But the rumble was pretty loud, and the quiet of the forest seemed nearly sacred this night. He didn’t want to yell to Mygs and break whatever spell was going on. The terranauts snuck back to camp.

“Something is happening,” Mygs said before Amper could.

“Do you think it’s just the herd? It feels like all the animals are subdued but restless.” Amper looked around himself in the darkness, indicating all creatures.

“I think it’s the whole forest.”

“Should we take turns looking-out?”

“We’ll put the proximity and thermal alarm on.” Mygs’ face lit-up dimly as he poked at his dermiscreen. “We both need our sleep for tomorrow, but we can’t be completely off our guard, either.”

With that, the men burrowed into their sleeping sacks and tried their best to get rest. The agitation of the tree under the cliff, and of the platafants, kept Amper’s mind sizzling with wonder. But before the clouds parted and showed stars between the branches above, he was in the darkness of communication.

“You’re farther sunrise than you were,” Shhah stated. “You’re well on your way to the asteroid.”

“I hope so,” Amper admitted. “It’s not as simple as just going from one place to another.”

“I don’t think that’s simple at all. I had a dream once that I could do that, and it was amazing.”

Amper’s tendril of existence glimmered yellow-edged. “I take these things for granted,” he said. “I met The Dawning since speaking with you.” Amper watched Shhah’s smoky arm of thought flare orange and bright white, with ripples of yellow.

“What did he say! You are so fortunate!”

“Well, he was kind enough, until the subject of Mygs came up. He referred to him as a stellasensus, and likened him to the other animals who got their intelligence from the asteroid. He thinks they’re evil and doesn’t trust Mygs, so I don’t think he trusts me either.”

Shhah’s mist turned purple and gray, and edged green for Amper.

“So it’s true,” Shhah indicated. “There has been communication about animals that know unnatural things, but mis-translation has happened among us before so I wasn’t sure.”

“Mygs and I saw proof of them on our devices, and we saw a bridge over the cliffs.”

“You SAW a bridge?” her smoky tendril curled like a reaction, and turned gray and brown. “Over the cliffs? Like the way a creature sees a predator – with eyes?”

“Well – yes. Is that amazing? Aren’t there bridges of trees that fall across creeks here? Animals walk across them… What do you consider a bridge to be?”

“Across the creeks… would be a bridge…” her smoke unfurled and turned white with understanding, and yellow with humor. “We refer to bridge as a personal understanding between two nemectes when they have interest in each other. It’s a state of mind – or heart.”

“It’s a state of intimate connection,” Amper said, now understanding. “But what we saw was a rope-and-wood bridge that was built by intelligent creatures in order to walk across.”

“The what – stellasensus? That’s what he thinks Mygs is. Intelligence from the stars?”

“Yes. We have to figure out how to get The Dawning to trust us before he replaces some way to destroy Mygs.”

The darkness in the room began growing gray. Shhah’s tendril became brown and blue. “Amper, I’m sure you’ll replace out how to help Mygs, but right now you have something else to deal with.”

“What?” The room glowed like a bright-cloudy day.

“Earthquake…”

Amper started awake, not like he had a startling dream but as though he became instantly aware and un-sleepy. “Earthquake,” he muttered without meaning to. It was the last thing she’d said. Then he realized that the unsettling lack of voice of the animals, and restless fluttering and shuffling and tromping through the woods, was fauna’s natural indication of the atmosphere of a coming earthquake.

A fog had landed in the trees, and Amper stood with anxiety. “Mygs,” he said while he scanned the visible foliage as though the earthquake was a snake that could slither out and bite him at any minute.

Mygs sat up on his elbow. “What’s going on?” He looked around, too, rubbing his eyes quickly to wake up.

“Earthquake.” Amper started rolling his bed.

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“It’s about to happen. The animals were unsettled because they could – “

He stopped when he heard the rumble gather quickly from a distance, and Amper couldn’t tell whether he’d heard it before or after he felt the first minute tremors. The trees around him shivered a little, but then as he was knocked to his knees with a jolting roar, some of them seemed to arc back-and-forth to keep up with the jostling of the land. Mygs tried getting on his knees to let his legs do the moving and keep his torso steady, but he ended-up ducking and weaving as a small tree uprooted and a branch fell near him.

Amper dodged the tree, too, and heard the crackle and moan of one or two of the older trees becoming dislodged nearer the cliff, adding their rumble of toppling to the unreal roar of the land rippling and jarring. After the earthquake had been going a few seconds, another separate, resounding boom – from beyond the river – signaled more twisting in the terrain. The land was changing, the flora shifting and the animals of Earth were being reminded that their world had many life-changing moments that couldn’t be ignored or avoided.

The terranauts received an alert from Command, inquiring about their wellbeing because the 4.6 earthquake had been detected on their scanners. Mygs reported their experience, and then was told that they should stay in secure areas because aftershocks were imminent. Command then sent Mygs a file. Subsequent quakes had been mapped in the energy spectrian, and Mygs looked the report over quickly. “Seven minutes,” he said to Amper, who nodded as he looked around the debris and yet-standing trees for potential hazards during the next rumble.

Persevere didn’t experience quakes created by tectonic plates, but they did experience waves of energy from passing meteors or any Cloud of Potential that drifted into the biocurrent. These were the energy of potential life where stars would eventually be born, akin to the biocurrent of life-continuance. The Clouds of Potential drift through the universe like energy/emotional storms made-up of a series of “turmoil hurricanes.” One or two Clouds had disturbed Persevere over the centuries, helping the scientists to construct an energy spectrian that can fairly accurately guess future pulses of energy off of the first one felt. The earthquakes were subject to the reading as well.

“It’s more stable here than by the river,” Amper deduced. “We should just stay put, I think. Was that the biggest one?”

“It looks like another, slightly larger one will happen in about ten.”

“Let’s get all our things in one place – over by that large log.” He and Mygs rolled their beds and secured their packs, bunching them all together next to a log that would keep most branches from falling on them.

“Iriscope on?” Amper asked Mygs.

“Right. Got it.” Mygs nodded, and he and Amper stood next to separate trees in their camping area and waited. The small shock came on time, lasting about thirty seconds. In the few minutes between that one and the next, which was supposed to be the biggest, Amper saw a sturdy branch leaning on a fallen tree and decided to hold it, one hand gripping each end, ready to deflect any branches that may fall on him.

The rumble was evident just before the quivering could be felt. The shaking seemed to hold at a strength below the first earthquake’s, but a few seconds into it, the quaking suddenly shocked up to a startling jarring of land and crashing of trees. Mygs watched the horizon where he could see tree trunks wavering, and one or two breaking. He thought he saw a gush of water spurt up from somewhere closer to the river.

Amper saw one or two trees in the distance, from which they’d come, that seemed to be swallowed and disappear. They weren’t leaning over and falling, but had their trunks eaten by the ground beneath them! He raised his hand, waving to Mygs, and pointed toward the disappearing trees, which were taking turns withdrawing into the earth from left to right. Suddenly, a limb above Amper snapped and fell directly onto his pointing hand. He cried-out, dropped his defensive tool, and held his hand next to his body protectively, and then had to let it go because holding it hurt. As both of his hands were occupied, one comforting the other, he toppled and knelt to the ground. By the time he hit the ground, the rumbling had stopped. Leaves and twigs fluttered and plopped to the ground while Mygs and Amper stayed still a moment. Mygs examined Amper with a cautious glance, then looked at the report on aftershocks. “Hold on…” he said casually, and a few seconds later a small shutter rumbled the ground.

“In ten minutes, about a 2.3,” Mygs stated as he approached Amper. “How bad is it?” He looked at Amper’s scraped and swelling hand, quickly discoloring. “Our med kit is rudimentary. The Healer is on the raft, so we just have antibiotic wipes, patches, coagulate, rigid tape and skinglue.” He looked around the area, and looked off to the distance as he made a decision. “Lets get to the river. You need to get that chilled somehow so it’ll quit swelling.” Amper’s good arm went around Mygs’ shoulders. “I’ll come back and get our things.” Amper wasn’t really listening. He was trying to keep his throbbing hand from moving while the shock wore off and pain began seeping into the nerves near the broken bones and bruised muscle.

Maneuvering over and under fallen trees, they braced themselves for the small quake as soon as Amper collapsed near the water. He winced as everything jiggled, and Mygs stayed on his elbows and knees to keep from falling. “That was it,” Mygs announced. “I’ll be back.”

He returned with their sleeping packs and food, and used a vine from a tree he’d passed to create a binding for Amper’s hand. Amper insisted that he could carry his pack, and slipped the pack’s strap over his head on one shoulder. As he did so, Mygs looked up the river, then downstream before staring upstream again.

“The raft hasn’t come this far yet,” he said, perplexed.

“It should be at the falls if not over by now- wait -how do you know?” Amper asked, noting that Mygs hadn’t looked at his dermiscreen for the homebase’s beacon.

“It’s just under a mile upstream.” Mygs turned to Amper, almost not noticing that he was confused, but grinned when he realized why. “I can replace anything, remember?” Amper nodded, smiling with amused awe. “If we get to it within two hours after you broke your hand, the re-gen can fix it. We can definitely make it in two hours –“ he looked at his watch. “Well, we got one-and-twenty.”

Amper nodded, resolved to ignore his discomfort. Then Mygs tore open a pain patch, and Amper let him adhere it to his hand without a fight. They trudged along the river, stepping over logs and rocks, while Mygs gauged where they were with his natural abilities of assessment. Animals with face-like spots on their back, frogs that looked and sounded as though they had hooves, and snakes that appeared like flowing water scampered and slithered from their path, but their typical recording and cataloging was put aside for their quest to get to the raft.

Finally they stood staring at the vessel that still held all of their supplies, including the kit with the Healer. It was on the other side of the river, stopped by a fallen tree, about eight meters from them across deep, turbulent water.

“Geez,” Amper sighed. “What else-“

“Naw,” Mygs stopped him from an exasperated expression, unloading his pack. “This can happen.”

“What, you have a plan already?” Amper lost his ability to focus and think ahead when his hand was broken. Now he only carried frustration and pain.

“You forget about the strap-strap?” Mygs glanced at Amper with a half-smile. “Your hand must really be griping you.” He pulled the karabiner of a dense rope that was woven into a strap of his pack. The shoulder strap’s rubber frame slowly emerged with holes as the strap-strap unraveled, freeing itself from the pack strap’s rubber grid. In no time, Mygs was holding a ten-meter cord that could be used for climbing, or lowering something into a hole, for binding to trees in order to hang things, or for tying a weight to one end in order to catch it onto something that has to be reached and pulled toward you.

“Give me… that stick there,” Mygs told Amper, pointing past him. Amper took a couple steps and grabbed the two-inch-round section of limb from the fallen tree it leaned against, but dropped it suddenly when it squished under his fingers like a rubber water tube.

“Agh!” His hand was splayed in surprise.

“What is it!” Mygs stood from his squatting position near his pack, ready to spring.

“It’s –“ Amper looked back at the branch, and it wasn’t bending any more since it wasn’t leaning on anything. “It’s like an arm!” He turned back to Mygs, flexing his fingers and reaching over to squeeze his own arm. “Squishy – like flesh.”

“What?” Mygs’ brow wrinkled. He strode over to it while Amper looked around for a possible reason. Mygs used both hands to lift it, and then adjusted his grip because the brown, streaked, nub-dotted branch wiggled with the change in position. Amper walked over to the tree it was leaning on and put his hand on it.

Patting it hard, it made a slapping sound. The knots and broken twig stems had receded like a candle into its waxy puddle, but the whole tree had the texture of a prone naked hairless torso. “I nearly expect it to be bleeding, all broken-up like this.”

“What is this? Did the wood transform for some reason?” Mygs tossed the small section into the air and caught it with an uncanny, weighted smack. “This is heavier than a branch this size should be. Like it soaked up water or something.”

“All of these are the same thing –“ Amper picked-up a finger-sized twig that fell limp in the middle, and he wiggled it as it dangled.

“Human limbs without bones,” Mygs muttered quizzically. He looked at Amper and shrugged.

Amper looked at him and tossed the finger-stick toward its torso and shook his head. “This place has so many things that no one guessed about.” He stepped toward another tree and picked up an arm-length piece of wood. “Here’s a branch – one that acts wooden.”

Mygs tied it to his cord, and threw it toward Homebase. He landed the branch-anchor on the farther edge of the raft so that when he pulled, homebase would roll off of the encumbering tree instead of pull off of it. The current caught the floating supply boat, which neared the shore where Mygs coaxed it toward them with the rope rather than letting it follow the current downstream. He unstrapped the supply pod that held the Healer, and in no time Amper’s hand was mended. A sensory bandage was adhered to the back of his hand to balance-out any residual pain.

Deciding to keep the Healer with them, the terranauts strapped the air-cushioned supply pod shut, and let the homebase and raft float away toward the waterfall.

They watched it only a moment before following along the edge of the river.

Amper asked, “Did Command name this river?”

Ahead of him, Mygs nodded, “E239-b. It’s a tributary to E91”

Amper shook his head and laughed. “Scientists,” he muttered. “Do they hold any sense of humanity? I often thought they were just cos-bio cyborgs.”

Mygs looked back and smiled. “One of the cos-bio lieutenants had to correct himself when he absentmindedly referred to it in the com as ‘The Psychopath’.”

“Ho-boy – Psychopath! You know why?”

“Looking at its image, I figure it’s because it curves back-and-forth so much, changing direction a lot. If a person’s brain did the same, they would be a psychopath. We’re near its end, so haven’t experienced the changing directions a lot.”

“We did follow a couple of curves in the raft, though.”

Mygs took the next moment to dictate their experience with the fleshy tree parts into the daily log. They passed the place they’d come to out of the woods, and Mygs announced that the place that the fall dropped-off was a half-mile ahead. Sure enough, they began to hear the rumble only a few minutes later, and the view in front of them divided into two parts: the terrain right in front of them where the river tumbled, and the distant field of trees past the waterfall on the lower section of land.

They gazed at the huge difference in perspective, having never seen such a change in altitude on a surface. On Persevere, nothing on the surface was this high. Mygs reported to Command that they stood at the top of the falls, and would proceed down with caution. Command suggested that if they could make it to the other side of the river somehow, there was a possible rappelling spot that would be easier than dodging half-toppled trees.

“The earthquake made everything out of place, so trees and rocks could be unsteady,” Amper stated loudly over the sound of the rushing river.

Mygs nodded, looking toward the fast water that crashed into rocks and rushed into depressions just before spilling wildly over the edge. “That easier path doesn’t matter if we can’t get across this. We may have to go back to…” Mygs was still looking out at the dangerous spray of water when he stopped talking. Amper noted his friend’s stunned pause and searched the river’s expanse to see if Mygs was looking at something, or just thinking while gazing off. Not seeing anything, he looked back at Mygs. “Amper – look.”

Amper saw the lip movements of the words, not hearing them with the din of a roaring waterfall nearby. He looked again, and finally focusing on the far side of the river he spied the rope Mygs could see, tied through a water-worn hole of a rock at the edge. The rope led into the river rushing by, and upon scrutiny he noted a number of bobbing wooden beads the size of fists trailing from that rope to a spot in the forest on their side.