A Glibertarians Exclusive: A Glibertarians Exclusive: Riding the String II

A Strange New World

Kchtiktak looked at his mate Krrik with some consternation visible in the angle of his crest feathers. These… creatures had emerged from some sort of machine. They wore wrappings of some sort around their bodies, and one was carrying a container of some kind. Both had some odd growth on their heads, not really like feathers, more like the soft strands one found on some of the little scurrying animals that lived in the undergrowth, and which made for good snacking.

But these were obviously intelligent beings, not prey. They couldn’t seem to speak, though. They made some kind of oddly melodic, clipped sounds to each other; Kchtiktak supposed that was how they spoke to each other.

Kchtiktak turned his gaze back to the creatures. One of them had something in one of its front limbs; it had hands, of a sort, but they had no scales and no claws. In fact, Kchtiktak didn’t see any scales on any of the thing’s exposed skin, no more than feathers.

How odd they are.

Suddenly Kchtiktak realized what the object in the one creature’s hand was; a device for carrying water, very similar to what Krrik used to fetch water from the river, save that it was not made from cured honker skin but some other material.  Kchtiktak pointed one foreclaw at the thing and made a whooshing sound.

***

Anne dropped to her knees, sobbing.  “Will,” she blurted out, “they’re going to eat us. They’re dinosaurs, they’ll eat us.”

Will reached down for her.  “I don’t think so, hon. Look – that big one, he pointed at our bucket and made a sound like running water.  Do you think he understands what we’re looking for?”

The creature raised its red crest and dropped it again. It made the whooshing sound again, then turned and pointed towards the stream. It looked back at Will, then at Anne, then back at Will.  Finally, it raised one cupped, clawed hand to its snout, and lapped at the dry palm with its long, narrow tongue.

“He means there is water,” Will said.  He smiled at the creature.  “Look, Anne, he mimed like he was drinking.  There is a stream.  We can get water for the reaction chamber and go home.”

He helped her up.  Anne looked warily at the two… dinosaurs.  “They look like some kind of raptor,” she managed to say.

“Anne,” Will said in a soft, reassuring tone, “they’re not just beasts. They’re intelligent.  Look at the harnesses they wear and look at the staff the big one has.  Those were crafted.  These are civilized creatures.  The big one recognized the bucket and told us where to find water!  Come on – let’s get the bucket filled and get back to the Transiter.”

“All right.” Anne clung to Will’s arm as they walked past the two creatures that she could now think of only as raptors.

The two raptors followed at a respectful distance; their demeanor was curious but not threatening.  Whenever Anne looked over her shoulder, both raptors would do the strange head-bobbing dance they had done at first.

When they reached the stream, Will filled the bucket with clear, cold water.  “I don’t think we ought to drink any of it,” he said.  “Hard to tell what might be in it.  But the reaction chamber will filter out anything that can’t be converted, so should be OK there.”

“Fine,” Anne said.

“Here,” Will said. “Forget about them. Sit down for a moment. You’re awfully pale, hon.  Don’t come apart on me now.  Remember, I need you.”

“I want to go home,” Anne said.

“I know. But I can’t take you there yet.  We’ll be here a day or two.  May as well get used to it.”

The two raptors apparently lost interest and wandered away, splashing through the stream and disappearing into a grove of funny-looking trees a hundred meters or so away.

Will sat down beside Anne.  He chuckled.  “My Mom wanted me to go to medical school, you know.  Can you imagine me as a doctor?  Delivering babies, giving people shots.  She was pretty torqued when I said I wanted to study quantum physics.”

Anne leaned on Will.  “There’s nothing wrong with being a doctor.  Doctors save lives.”

“I suppose they do.  Kind of late to think about that now.”

Anne nodded.

“Come on.  It’s getting dark.  Let’s get back to the Transiter, get this water in the chamber, and get the cycle running.  Then let’s get some sleep.”

“Yes,” Anne said, “That sounds fine.  I’m sorry, Will; I’m sorry I almost fell apart on you.  I want to be stronger.  I need to get stronger.  It’s just that all this, well, we never even imagined…”

“Don’t worry.  We’ll be fine.  Everything will be fine.”

***

Back at the clan’s lek, Kchtiktak sought out their lek’s Elder, a frazzled-looking old male named K’tooktook.  He felt he needed advice about the strange creatures he and Krrik had encountered.

After the brief, traditional dance of greeting, K’tooktook invited Kchtiktak to rest by the fire. “What brings you to see me, son of my nestmate?”

“Nestmate of my father,” Kchtiktak began formally, “I have had an encounter with a new kind of creature, out on the grassland across the stream. It was unlike anything I’ve seen before.  I think they came from very far away,” he said and went on to describe the strange upright beings.

“Are they food?” K’tooktook asked.

“I do not think so, nestmate of my father,” Kchtiktak replied. “They are thinking beings, as we are.  If it is wrong to prey on each other as we are thinking beings, is it not wrong to prey on other thinking beings? We prey on honkers, and on the little scurriers in the brush at times, and sometimes the clans come together to hunt the great long-necks of the plains, but they are not thinking things.”

“There are no other thinking things but us,” K’tooktook pointed out, using the name the species called themselves, “no others but the Flock.”

“There are now,” Kchtiktak objected.  “And they brought their nest with them.  We saw it, Krrik and I. It was very much like a great egg, but shining, like water.”

K’tooktook considered that.  “If they have set a nest there, they will not be going away.  I will send runners for the elders of the three other leks in our valley.  It will take a day, maybe two, for them to journey here.  We will meet here, at our lek, nearest the strangers.  Together we will decide if they are to be prey or not.”

***

Two days later, Will looked at the ribbon gauges for the reactor for the thousandth time. “Maybe another hour,” he opined. “Then we can go home.”

Anne had suffered another panic attack that morning when one of this world’s strange beings had approached the Transiter; Will thought it was the larger of the two they had encountered on the first day, but there was no way to be sure.  Will held Anne and comforted her until the strange being, after walking slowly around the Transiter several times, ran off.

“See? They can’t get at us in here.”

The day ticked by slowly.  Will went outside twice to take care of natural necessities, but Anne couldn’t be convinced to leave the Transiter.  Then, towards afternoon, as she was looking out the port:

“Will.  Look.  Those things are back.  Look, there must be twenty of them!”

The creatures rushed at the Transiter, all bearing staves similar to what the creature on the first day carried.  They swarmed the device, stabbing at it with the staves. One big one with a red crest flecked with white found the hatch and was trying to pry it open as Will watched in the viewer, making him wonder, why didn’t I bring a weapon?

He looked at the panel. A green light suddenly snapped on. The recharge was complete.

“Anne!” Will barked.  “Get into your seat and buckle in!”

He had long since reprogrammed the navigation console to retrace their transit from low Earth orbit.  He punched up the program and hit the Execute key.  The blackness-that-wasn’t-black surrounded them as they rode the String away from the strange world.

***

Kchtiktak stood, wonderstruck, looking at the place where moments before the great shining egg-form had stood.  He had come earlier, alone, to try to warn the strange beings of the Lek-Elders’ decision, but they had not been in evidence; now they were gone.

“Where did it go?” K’tooktook demanded over the gabble of excited voices of the Flock.  “What happened?”

“They left,” Kchtiktak said, belaboring the obvious.  “Not food, after all, it seems.”

***

Come over here from over there, girl
Sit down here. You can have my chair
I can’t see us goin’ anywhere, girl
The only place open is a thousand miles away and I can’t take you there
I wish I’d have been a doctor
Maybe I’d have saved some life that had been lost
Maybe I’d have done some good in the world
’Stead of burning every bridge I crossed

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it
Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s just a memory
Tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be
And I need you, oh, yeah