Chapter 15: At Ease

The next morning the colonel came to visit me, no doubt because Sister had told him I was finally awake. “Sir!” I said, struggling to get to my feet.

“At ease,” he said to me and I sank back, reluctantly. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice giving me the lie.

“I see. Well, we hope to have you up and going in no time. Your new family and your sister will need you.”

My new family? Who…? But he went on, “It will be a bit of a change for you, of course,  living with Pathfinders, but don’t worry, we’ll hold your spot open for after you partner, if you want still want it. As a Pathfinder’s son  you will have that open to you too.”

A Pathfinder’s son? Suddenly I realized who they were talking about and looked at Uncle Andrew, who was standing behind him, looking at me. I handn’t even dreamed of this, but it made sense. Since my partnership, even is she wasn’t here, Uncle Andrew was my closest relative. But that meant, that meant I would have to leave my dorm! All of my friends and all my other Uncles and Aunt.

I noticed the Colonel looking at me. What must he be thinking! How could I be a soldier if a little thing like a new assignement got me all upset?

“Thank you, sir,” I said, which seemed to be the best thing I could say. “Sir,” I managed, after a few seconds, “Sir, do you know what happened?”

He looked at Uncle Andrew, who said, “We told him everyone died, but not how. Indeed, I’d like to know myself.”

The colonel sat down next to me on the floor of the hut. “Well, it was incredible. We will have to change all of our procedures. You know that this planet has almost no metals. Well, in general that means that high technology is very difficult. So we thought our shuttles were safe.”

“But this genious class, and we killed him, by the way, this genius class invented himself this tube, made entirely out of plant material, and shot a high explosive charge out of it. He had to have been standing in just the right place, and had incredible aim, because it went in the door of the shuttle, killing everyone except you and Justina.”

I lay back, and the others started talking about other things, plans and things, but I decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was going to kill these genius class aliens. Whenever I could find the time I would go out in the jungle…

—

“What are you looking up, Carl?” Sister said to me that evening, after the colonel  had eaten with us (I stayed on my mat) and left. I had gotten out my computer tablet.

“Weapons,” I said. “Primitive weapons that we can make here.”

“Carl,” Sister said, but Uncle Andrew interrupted her,

“That’s an excellent idea,” he said, and I flushed. “The son of a soldier, stuck with some Pathfinders, helping design appropriate technology weapons. A great idea. Do you have anything?”

“Well, I have one,  that was used in just this kind of environment, but it needs something I don’t have.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Uncle Andrew asked me. “Maybe I can help.”

“I need a drug that affects The Enemy,” I said.

“A what?” he asked, coming over and taking the pad from me.

“It’s called a blowgun,” I said, feeling foolish now. “It’s a long pipe and you blow a sharp stick out of it. I thought it might work, but I need some kind of poison to put on the end of the stick. I’ll keep looking.”

“Why?” Uncle Andrew said, “This looks good. Your Sister can help you with a poison for aliens, can’t you Aliyah?”

“I… I suppose so. We have a lot of information on their biochemistry., But you don’t just want a poison, do you? You want something we can make here.”

I nodded. “Well then,” she said, “you will have to help me with my work. You will need to go out and get me samples form all of the plants in the area: their leaves, stems, flowers, and fruit. I will test them for what I need to make you your poison.”

I looked back and forth between them, but they didn’t seem to be making fun of me. “OK,” I said. “Can I do that, then?”

Uncle Andrew sat down next to me. “You’re a partnered man. You need to decide what you should be doing. I outrank you, but there is no reason for me to boss you around. If you are out gathering plants, for your Sister’s work, which is vitally important, and finding out more about our environment in other ways, and you write that up properly in your reports, then you will be doing a vitally important work.”

I stared at him. Dad had never said anything like that before! But maybe pathfinding was a different kind of job from soldiering, more independent like. “OK, I’ll get started,” I said, staring to get up.

“Hold on, soldier,” Sister said. “First of all I’m not letting you out just yet. And secondly, you need to study my files so you will know what I already have.”

I was too tired, really, to go out anyway, so this sounded good, and I booted up her files and spent the rest of the afternoon studying them. We had roast Juvie for dinner, which was great, and I fell asleep, almost happy.

“Where are you going?” Sister asked me, the next morning, when I got up early and, pulling on my shorts, started for the door.

“To look for plants,” I said to her,  pulling a knife and a pistol from the rack by the door. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but Uncle Andrew pulled her back down into bed and I walked out of the door.

It was nice to be outside, after so long being  inside. And it wasn’t bright yet, either, not that it ever got that bright this deep in the jungle. I walked along the web to the nearest tree, where I clung to a branch and walked along another one. This wasn’t as  hard as it seems, because they were big fat branches for the most part, and their were vines everywhere.

I knew Sister would have collected from around here, so I went off toward the main trunk, worked myself around the trunk, and continued away. I went two whole trees away before I stopped and started looking around. At first I cursed myself, because I had forgotten to bring a collection bag. Then I rememberd my survival classes and, pulling off some thin vine, wove myself one. When I got done I looked at it. It wasn’t the best, but I would do better tonight, at home, while I was resting.

I looked at the plants around me and, seeing a dozen types that hadn’t been in the catalog… including, ironically, the small vine I had made by bag out of, I started collecting.

“Carl!” Sister said to me, three hours later, when I came in. “Where have you been?”

“Collecting,” I said, putting my bag down.

“Well,” she said, partially mollified, “that is a nice collection. But did you bring anything to eat with you?”

“I… no, I forgot, I said, embarrassed. “But there was plenty to eat. There was some of those red berries that you have checked out, and that round smooth nut thing.”

“If you go out again without food,” she said, “I won’t say anything about water, here, because it rains all the time; but if you go without food, I’ll use you to test out the bugs that I have determined are edible.”

She said this while holding out a jar that had a variety of bugs crawling around in it, and I blanched. I mean, we knew we had to eat those, at least in sim; and sister had actually told me that the colonists would need to make some of them part of their diet, but…

I saw her grinning at me, and decided to pay her back. “You’re right, Sister,” I said, “I should have known better.” I reached out to the jar and, before I could change my mind, pulled out an enormous beetle and popped it in my mouth, chewing loudly.

“Oh!” Sister said, as bits of leg and shell sprayed out, “Oh, Carl, how could you! Oh, that is so gross!”

I swallowed, and laughed. It felt terrible, chewing, but it tasted kind of like chicken. I did take a drink right after that, though, and was glad to eat the Pack stew that she had saved for me from breakfast.

‘Bye,” I said, an hour later, but she was having none of that.

“Nap!” she said. “You may be some big grown up soldier, but I’m still your doctor. Nap!”

So she made me lie down, and took Justina out to do some collecting with her. I lay down, vowed I wouldn’t sleep, and woke up three hours later. “I’m going out again,” I said to Sister, who was working at her lab stuff. She turned around,

“Ok. Go a different direction this time, and get samples from the trees too. You got lot’s of vines and all, which is great, but I need to examine the trees, too.”

“Yes… yes, ma’am,” I said, reverting to military speech, since this sounded like a military order insead of Sister (or doctor) stuff. “I’ll be back later.”

“I’ll save dinner for you,” she said.

These shorts were horrible in the rain, I thought to myself as I walked along. They got wet, and stayed wet, rubbing up against my skin in a very irritating way. And besides, they aren’t natural. I’ll have to look up some natural materials to make clothes from, or ask Sister if she knows if anyone is working on that.

This time I took samples all along the way. There were so many plants  here that even with Sisters big collection I still found new ones, ones she didn’t have, every few feet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was really helpful. If I got the plants, then Sister could spend all of her time analyzing them.

These shorts were sooo irritating. I looked around. No one could see me from the house, and there was just my Sisters and Uncle there anyway, who didn’t care, so I took of the shorts and hung them up on a broken branch, leaving my belt, with the pistol, knife and collecting bag in place. This was better, and, taking care to remember where exactly I’d left them, I continued along.

After another couple of hours I came to a really cool spot. Two separate branchs, big branches, had grown together, with two more right above them, a rare combination. The vines, taking advantage, were growing all around the branches. I came up to them and pushed aside the vines, crawling into the space between the branches.

It was awesome. It was kind of dark, but some light still came through the curtain of branches all around. And the branches above blocked off almost all of the rain. I lay back for a minute, reveling in the dryness. Not that I was dry, exactly, but it was nice not to be in the pouring rain or drizel that was constant here.

I got quickly bored, though, and lay down on my stomach to look out. Looking down I could see the jungle floor in a couple of spots, which was rare. I squished around, this was amazing. I could see the jungle floor in a dozen areas! I was so impressed that I kept moving around and looking and then, to my glee, I saw an adult alien.

It was just sitting still. I think I had missed it the first time I had looked here. They weren’t all that easy to spot in the jungle, being of a kind of dull green, which fit in with all of the other greens. It must not have heard me, and I eased my  pistol out of it’s holster.

Now, if you’re used to projectile pistols, this next will sound silly. But this was a sonic-focused pistol, which was very accurate even at long distances if you knew how to use them… which I did, of course. I eased it forward, snapped open the laser targeter, and fired.

“Yes!” I muttered to myself as the adult dropped like a stone, it’s stupid alien brain fried into alien mush. I watched, and soon a Juvie came snuffling up, nervously. When the adult didn’t move it got closer and, finally deciding it was dead, began to feast. It was kind of gross, and I won’t describe it, in case any girls ever read this book. It had hardly gotten three good bites in, when another Juvie came by. Five minutes later, fairly well in, they were driven off by a pack.

And, no, I didn’t fire at them. You don’t. You never waste ammunition, not that the sonic pistol uses ammunition but the principle is the same, on Juvies or Pack unless you are going to eat them. The world was filled solid with Juvies and Pack. It was adults we hunted. And I was going to become a genius hunter. Well satisfied with my day, I put my pistol back, grabbed my sack, and went back to my shorts (which I did remember where they were, in case you were thinking of laughing at me for having to go back the Sister all naked).

“Sister,” I said, while scarfing my Pack stew an hour or so later while we watched Uncle Andrew draw us a picture of Justina. “Who is in charge of developning native clothing?”

“Ruth. Why?”

“These shorts are horrible to wear in this weather,” I said, “I was wondering if we have developed anything else.”

“There is a bark that she is recoomending,” Sister said. “It takes a bit of work.”

“Well, I have time, evenings,” I said, and, as soon as the stew was done I got out my computer pad and looked it up. The next morning I got up early and went looking for the tree it had mentioned. I found one and cut myself a strip of about four feet long and one foot wide. I put this, along with my shorts, into my new blind area and, naked except for my belt, went out to get some more plants. And insects, Sister had told me she needed more insects too.

This was glorious, really. It was pouring down rain today, but since my shorts were off there was nothing to bother me there. I think all of the adults were finding the rain annoying, but I loved it. And there seemed no end of plants, or insects.

I was just thinking about going back and getting dressed when I saw it. There were very few straight plants on this planet, and fewer hollow ones. I was down near the floor, however, when I saw a whole clump of plants that were both: about an inch wide, and hollow, and perfectly straight. I looked around. Juvies woudlnt’ bother a human, but a pack would, and an adult certainly would. Besides, there were local animals that wouldn’t mind a nice raw leg of human for a snack.

But there didn’t seem to be anything around, so I snuck lower. I grabbed one, from a nearby branch, but it wouldn’t come out of the ground, so I had to go lower, almost into the muck itself.

Now, I haven’t ever told this story to Sister, so you have to keep it to yourself. The clump was just a little to far away so I had to really reach out to get it. Which to do that I had to put my foot on this rock or log or whatever it was. I’m sure you know what happened. It wasn’t a rock, or a log, it was a crocodile type creature. And I scared it. So it moved, which scared me and dropped me right in the water.

The next few seconds were the longest of my entire life up to that point. Which is to say I moved faster than I ever had before, and it seemed I was moving through molasses. I fell in the water, as I said, but I managed to keep one hand on the tall hollow reeds and so my head didn’t actually go in the water and I swung myself up the reeds, kind of with both hands until I could shove my feet in, jamming them between the various reeds and pulling myself into the clump.

Which seemed like it took forever, like I said. But it must have been just a few second because, when I got up and got turned around and drew my pistol I saw the crocodile thing, which was still thrashing around and turning itself toward me. When it got around it stared at me with an expression on its face that was truly funny to behold. I was a lot bigger than it was, or heavier anyway as it was so long, and it probably thought it was being attacked.

I looked around, but I still saw nothing, so I carefully cut off (and they were hard to cut!) several of the reeds and, using a vine that was growing among them, lashed them to my back. Then I very carefully climbed up a clump of reeds until they kind of bent over toward the tree and I could grab a branch and haul myself up.

“What on Earth do you have there?” Sister asked me, a couple of hours later, when I trooped back into our hut.

“Stuff,” I said, which annoyed her. But really, she was always asking me things, and I wanted to get to work not to talk. I laid down my carry bag on her table and took my stuff over into a corner.

I looked at the reed first. It had these dividers every few inches down the tube which I would have to get rid of. I could just use the laser cutter, of course, but that would be cheating. I needed to figure out how to do it with local materials. “Sister,” I asked, “do you have some kind of strong acid I could use to clean out these partitions?”

She waved me over and I showed her the reed. She looked at it, looked at me, cocked her  head to one side the way she does when she is thinking, and said, “Well, I might, but I don’t think that is what you want to do. What if you took a long stick and poked a hole through them, then took a really tough vine, maybe with some, well, we don’t have pebbles…”

“Bones!” I said. “We have some hard bones. And pull it back and forth, you mean, and wear it smooth. Thanks sister.”

I set the reeds aside. I would find a good stick for the poking tomorrow. I picked up the bark I had cut off and looked around. The girl had said that I needed to rub it against something, both directions, to make it really flexible. Suddenly I grinned and took up my reed.

“What are you doing, Carl?” Justina said, some minutes later. I had the reed propped up against my feet and had my bark, which I had put around the reed, and I was pulling it back and forth.

“I’m making myself a new pair of shorts,” I said. “Except it won’t be shorts, it will be what they call a ‘loincloth’.”

“But what are you doing?” she asked again, confused.

“I’m pulling this back and forth over the reed to make it soft. I go this way,” I said, stopping and wrapping the bark the other way round,” and this way, so it gets really soft and flexible.”

“Oh,” she said. “Can I try?”

“I’ll get you some, tomorrow, and you can make a skirt out of it.”

“Oh, ok,” she said, and then asked, “How long do you have to do it?”

“Just a few minutes,” I said. “At least the first day. It says I should do it every day.”

I stood up and took off my shorts, and, with everyone watching me, put the cloth on. “Get me a bit of vine, will you ‘stina?” I asked  her and, when she came, I made myself a quick belt with the vine. “TaaDaa!” I said to the room in general. Uncle Andrew clapped and Sister came over and felt at the fabric.

“Well, you look like a regular native right out of the books,” she said. “I think you should work on that fabric more, though, it seems like its still a bit rough, and will rub a bit. Good job, though. Where did ou find the material?”

I took it off and started on the rubbing thing again, “Oh, East about half a mile. You’ll recognize the tree, its the one,” I laughed and held up the material, “with bark like this!”

“And you’ll make me one?” Justina asked, again.

“Yes, ‘stina,” I said. “Could you get me some more of that stew?”

—

I wanted to scream in frustration. I was a man now! I had a partner, and a job, and was going to be a soldier, and Sister had me over her knee for teasing Justina, her hand wailing on my naked backside. I didn’t scream though, but gritted my teeth and hated her. Hated her for treating me like a little kid that needed a mother. Hated her for trying to be that mother.

Finally she was done and she let me go. I reached down and pulled my cloth back on and walked outside without a word, picking up my belt and my blowpipe without a word.

My blowpipe was finished, after a week of work, and I was working on another one of evenings. I had finished Justina’s skirt, which had thrilled her, although she almost never wore it, preferring au naturel most of the time. She wore it whenever we had company, and when Sister made her put something on, like for meals.

I was now working on the darts for my blowpipe. The computer had had several ideas, things people had used in the past, and I was trying to make one of them work. I had found a really good material for the dart itself, long thorns form one particularly nasty vine. But the dart needed something at the end to help stop up the pipe, to allow my breath to actually push it, and to help guide the dart in the air, so it didn’t just tumble but went straight.

I had found s omething which worked really well. I had killed this lizard, and he had this thing on his throat, this loose light skin which it used for making noise. I had killed one of them and figured out a way to attatch it to my dart. It had flown really well but Uncle Andrew had pointed out that I only was able to make two darts from that one lizard so I would have to kill a whole ton of those exact lizards to make more darts. So I had a few of those darts, but I just used them for practice.

My eyes smarting from tears that kept trying to come out I went to my hideout and sat. But, after I didn’t see anything for a half an hour I decided to try something different, and climbed.

We didn’t have any birds on this planet, which was a shame, as it was a great place for birds, they would have loved it here. I climbed and climbed, higher than I had ever been. This was great, and it almost helped me forget how mad I was at Sister for spanking me.

The flowers here were awesome. There were flowers all in the jungle, of course, but they were incredible here. The air was fresh, clear, and bright… and filled with insects buzzing from flower to flower. It was a rare hour without rain right now, and even most of the clouds were gone so I could see, in one or two spots, the kind of blue sky we had had back on the desert planet.

Not wanting to get in trouble I started to collect plants and things, flowers with vines. Flower after flower with their vines. My bag filled up and I started on another one. Sister would be happy with me after this, certainly, I thought, not even trying to blink back the tears. After all, no one could see me.

I looked up at the blue. The blue which hid my real family, my dorm, with all of my other aunts and uncles, where I had grown up, where I had always lived. Why did I have to live here? Sister was trying to be my mother, and she couldn’t be four years older than me, and hadn’t even brought first her first child.

A lizard poked his head out from behind a nearby clump of flowers, and I had to laugh it looked so funny. I grabbed at it with my hand and it darted away, leaving me with a handful of flowers.

I was about to let go of them when something about them struck me. They were incredibly tough. The petals formed kind of a long, tapered cylinder and they had come off the plant easy enough, but they didn’t come apart from each other and…

I put them carefully into my new bag, and reached for my belt, pulling out a dart, one that didn’t have an end. I took a flower out of the bag and, my hands almost trembling, took a small thread out from my belt pouch and, very carefully, tied the flower onto the end of the dart. I held up the result. It looked like it would work, it really did.

I got out my blowpipe and carefully put the dart in, aimed and… Yes!! I missed what I aimed at, but it had flown straight and true. The flower had stayed on and hadn’t come apart. “Sister!” I yelled, starting down and ignoring the fact that, a good two miles away in the jungle there was no way for her to  hear me, “Sister, Uncle Andrew, I did it!”

—

They watched as I shot dart after dart at the practice log I had set up at the other end of the hut. “Good job!” Uncle Andrew said, and Justina clapped and cried out with each shot.

“Will they last, do you think?” Sister asked.

My heart sunk a little. They were just flowers, after all. Everyone knew that flowers faded. “Does it matter?” Uncle Andrew asked. “He says there are hundreds of them, so he can get them new whenever he needs them. And besides, he picked these hours ago and look a them.”

“That’s true,” Sister said, running a flower through her hand and rubbing at to see if it would come apart. They are remarkably tough for flowers. Good find, Carl.”

“By the way,” she said, “I am coming along on your poison. I have one that I want you to try. It’s a combination, actually, of two different poisons. One of  them is a sleepy drug, that we get from that nut, you know the one.”

I did indeed. It was from a really cool plant that I had found. There was this nut growing in the middle of the plants leaves.  I had been on a gathering expedition when I had seen a lizard crawl up and eat the nut. It had looked kind of startles, and then sleepy. And then, while I watched, fascinated, the plant had slowly closed around the lizard. You can bet I had (carefully!) gathered a nut to give to sister.

“I boiled that down and the result should make Aliens almost as sleepy as the lizard, even with the small dose from your dart.”

I nodded, but what good did that do? I didn’t want sleepy aliens, I wanted dead ones. “The second poison,” she continued, “I’m a little less sure of, which is why I need you to test it, or to capture me a Juvie to try it on. It’s a bleeding drug, or and ‘anti-coagulant’ drug.”

“It will make them bleed?” I asked, picturing this little spurt of blood from my dart. That didn’t seem very effective… just sleepy and bleeding, but maybe it would do.

Sister laughed, “Not the kind of bleeding you are thinking of,” she said, “although it will do that too. It will make them bleed inside, in their brain and lungs. It will kill them. And it doesn’t affect humans, as we have a different coagulation pathway, so it should be safe on the darts. The sleepy drug will make you sleepy, though, so be careful.”

I thought about it for a while and then started looking things up  on my comp. Captureing a Juvie… I’d never done that before. How could I do that?

—

“Sister! Uncle!” I yelled, startling a dozen lizards into scurrying away from me. The Juvie struggled in my arms, trying to bite and scratch me. I had it by its legs, but it was threatening to curl around and get at me. My trap had finally worked, but I hadn’t thought  about how hard it would be to get the silly thing back to our hut!

“What on Earth!?” Uncle Andrew said, a few minutes later from above me. “Why don’t you just kill it?” he asked, dropping down next to me and getting out his knife.

“Sister wants one alive!” I said, mostly evading a nasty scratch.

“Oh, to be partners with a doctor,” Uncle Andrew said, grinning. “Here, let me tie it up.”

We all carried several loops of this tough vine and, after a few struggling minutes he finally got it tied down. “Let me get a stick,” he said. “I’ve seen pictures of animals carried that way. A few minutes later we had my struggling captive tied down to the stick and we started the long climb up to our hut.

“Oh, wonderful!” Sister said when we arrived. Then she saw my scratches and my ‘wonderful’ capture had to wait a while while she doctored me all up with all sorts of new salve made, if I rember correctly, from some berries or something.

“Well, shall we give the poisons a try?” she asked, finally, as my last scrache was washed and salved.

“Shall I shoot it?” I asked, reaching for my blowpipe.

But Sister laughed, “No,” she said. “I need to do it with a needle so I can measure exactly how much I put in. Let’s try the sleepy drug first.”

We all watched, even Justina, as she drew up some drug in a needle and went over to the Juvie, who was still struggling against its bonds. Uncle Andrew and I went over and held it down for the couple of seconds that it took to give the shot, and then the Juvie relaxed, almost instantly.

“Well, that part worked,” Sister said, kind of kicking at the Juvie, with no response. We all stared at it. It was past merely asleep; if it hadn’t been breathing I would have thought it was dead. “I put very little in, too; I think your darts should do as well. Now we just have to see if the next poison will work.”

She got out a bottle, and mixed something up, all the while looking back at the Juvie. “What is with that thing?” she asked. “I didn’t think it would work that well!”

She finished and put some of the mixture in a needle, still shaking her head. “Wow.” She injected it and, seconds later, the breathing stopped, and blood started coming out of the Juvie’s nose. “Wow,” she repeated. She looked at me, “I think we have your weapon.”