Second Wave -- 27
Chapter 27
The Sim-tiger set a rapid pace at first, but then, finding that Whistle and Erin were having difficulty keeping up, it slowed. As we exited the small forest in the bowl-shaped depression and started across the veldt, it kept pace with me, walking companionably nearby. This gave us time to exchange information.
I had no difficulty mentally communicating with the Sim-tiger, but when I tried to summon Whistle to come up to where we were, I realized I couldn’t sense him. I stumbled in my stride and shook my head as if to clear it. I tried to push my senses outward and found that everything was muffled. I hadn’t realized it immediately after the vision-beast’s attack, but something about the assault had damaged my mental ability. I was, for the first time in years, mentally blind, and I didn’t like the feeling. In fact, I felt like I was missing a major part of me. I tried to rationalize the feeling. I’d lived the majority of my life with my mind unawakened, and this was no different, but I’d become so dependent upon my mental senses that it was as if someone had put a blindfold on me. It was extremely disconcerting.
The Sim-tiger had given me his name a few minutes before my upsetting realization. I tried to explain my difficulty to Kasm. His response wasn’t very reassuring, “Many times, the victims of the vision beast do not recover their voice or senses. It is very strong, and I was even ensnared by its wiles.”
The vision beast captured prey by reading its mind and sending an image of what the intended victim most desired into its awareness. The prey then usually walked right up to the hydra and was devoured. I remembered seeing Liz before I shot the thing, and it attacked with its full mental strength.
“What did it show you that allowed it to lure you up to it?” I asked.
I received a sense of anger at my question mixed with overtones of extreme grief. After a moment, Kasm answered, “My mate was killed by a night-stalker a year ago. I was thinking of her as I crossed the meadow, and suddenly, there she was...” He paused, “I was stupid. I knew she couldn’t be there, but I came too close anyhow.”
That was a very human-like emotional response. It looked to me like we had a lot in common with his species, at least mentally. Physically, he was about twice my weight, very muscular, and solidly built, though he wasn’t designed for speed.
I tried to make him feel better, “I, too, saw my mate as if she were standing right in front of me. If I’d been alone and on my own world, I would have walked up to her also.”
“Is your mate dead?” he asked.
“No, but she and my son are all alone in a wild place, and I’m worried that the invaders are coming back. They may be in danger,” I sent.
“You must protect them!” He was concerned. “I can see that fate brought us together, and I must help you. I have no one here and will never have anyone. We mate but to one during our lives. If your mate is in danger, I will help, even to the point of going with you to fight the invaders. I detest them!”
“I’m duly grateful for your aid,” I answered. Then I turned the conversation back to my mental disability, “You say that many do not recover from this type of blinding?”
“That is correct. My people depend upon our mental communication ability, and those who lack it are banished from our society. They live solitary lives in the wilderness,” he looked at me speculatively and then continued, “How do you communicate with me, and yet you say you cannot use your mind?”
“It’s strange. I have no difficulty understanding your thoughts, but my ability to sense animals and also to speak to my compatriots is lost. I hope that it will come back to me...” I trailed off, thinking of what life would be like without my ability.
“It may come back, although I’ve never heard of it happening. You are strange to me, and you may have strange abilities.” He seemed uneasy and obviously decided to change the subject, “Unless I’m greatly mistaken, you are using weapons that belong to the invaders. Is that correct?”
“Yes, we captured many of their weapons, and, in fact, the spaceship that we used to travel here belongs to them. We captured it.” I received a sense of renewed approbation from him. Then I asked something that had been bothering me, “How is it that I can understand your thoughts? You do not know my language.”
His answer was simple yet complex, “You can understand the thoughts of animals, can you not?”
“Yes, but their thoughts are simple and related to food or danger,” I responded.
“True, but you have also been able to understand the thoughts of your friends,” he added.
“That’s correct, but they speak my language, so I thought that was how their minds worked.”
He snorted, “In many ways, you are like a cub. You are very strong mentally, yet you do not know the first thing about mental talk. Know this, then. Rational beings are able to communicate rational thoughts. I have no spoken language, yet I could communicate with the alien invaders just as I communicate with you. You have had no problem previously communicating with your small furry friend, have you?”
“No, but I assumed that was because he spoke my language before I met him,” I answered. I had to pause momentarily as I walked around a thorn bush, but then I continued, “So, you would have me understand that all rational beings can communicate with thoughts. Now that I think about it, my mental ability was awakened by the attack of one of the alien invaders, a most powerful one. Most of my people do not have this ability.”
“Yours must be a strange race,” he commented.
“Perhaps to you, but not to me,” I mentally added a sense of humor.
He responded in kind, “Funny. My race would be strange to you also.”
“Will we meet others of your kind?” I wanted to be prepared if this were likely, but he seemed to avoid my question for a moment. Then he countered my question with one of his own.
“Tell me about your mate and son,” he requested.
“They are –” I paused in horror and then exclaimed, “I can’t remember what they look like!” As I strained to recall, I realized that large portions of my memory were foggy. The dream-beast’s attack was still affecting me in ways that had yet to materialize fully.
“Your memory is blurred, is it not?” Kasm asked gently.
“Yes! It’s like I’m trying to see through a dense fog!”
“That sometimes happens when the vision beast is particularly powerful. You are suffering one of the worst effects of its attack. You may recover your memories, but you will have to work at it. Only the most powerful memories are blocked. Unfortunately, they are also the ones that are most important to the individual. Your species may be able to fight off the effect,” he paused, suddenly uncertain. I don’t know enough about your kind to say.”
I had been thinking quickly and desperately, trying to inventory my memory banks to see what was missing. Then I realized that I probably wouldn’t know it was missing. It terrified me in a way that I’d never felt before. The thought of gradually losing my memories was worse for me than being killed quickly. I took several deep breaths to try and calm my panic.
Erin saw that I was upset, although she didn’t understand what about. She came over to me and put her hand on my arm, concern showing on her face as she asked, “Is there anything wrong, Dec?”
“The ropy-armed creature has damaged my telepathic ability and also fogged my memory!” I agonized. “I’m afraid that I won’t remember who I am!”
She said nothing but put her arms around me and held me in a gentle hug.
Kasm had walked on, and after a moment, I broke free, wiped my hand over my face, and followed. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I remembered that I had a wife who loved me, even if I couldn’t see her face in my mind. And I knew I had a son named Michael, so that was something. I just had to work at keeping my memories going somehow.
We continued in this manner: Erin walking by my side, Frank and Whistle following and Kasm leading. After about thirty minutes, Kasm dropped back and looked at me, “Have you recovered your memory?”
“Not much. It’s still blurry,” I admitted.
“It may take days for the effects to settle, so don’t worry. You may have sustained less damage than you think. Meanwhile, we have a problem,” as he thought this, he directed my attention to a copse of trees that we were approaching.
“Can you sense anything in the trees?”
I tried, but nothing came to me, “No, I’m not able, now.”
“There is a night stalker lying up in them. It is aware of our approach. Night stalkers do not like to attack during the day, but this one is hungry, and I believe that we will have to fight. Are your weapons ready? If they are not, our best recourse would be to run as fast as we can and hope that the sun blinds it.”
I checked my rifle. It held nearly a full charge and was ready to go. I shifted it in my arms nervously and then asked, “Is it going to show itself, or will it try to ambush us?”
“No, it comes now,” was his response.
There was a crackle of brush, and the taller trees farther back in the copse waved wildly. Suddenly, I saw the thing’s monstrous head moving toward us as it broke through the tall trees and shoved its ponderous body through the shorter ones.
We were about two hundred yards from the copse, and it was coming rapidly, walking with long strides on all fours. The front arms were nearly as long as the hind legs, and the entire beast must have topped twenty thousand pounds. It looked to be forty feet or more in length, and its gray-skinned skull was perhaps a quarter of its length. When it realized that we could see it, it let out a shrieking roar and accelerated rapidly.
As it cleared the tree line, all three of us, Erin, Frank, and I fired our rifles. The anti-matter weapons worked as well as they normally did, and the beast’s head, shoulders, and a large section of its chest disappeared. The corpse dropped with a thunderous crash that I could feel through the soles of my feet. Simultaneously, Kasm, who’d been preparing to run to the side, sent out a mental exclamation of amazement.
“Your weapons are amazing!” he thought. “Those things are almost impossible to deal with. My people just avoid them when we can.”
He paused and then sent, “It wasn’t alone. Be ready.”
There was a loud blatting noise coming from the trees, and we shifted nervously in response. Shortly, some of the bushes moved, and we got ready, but I paused as I sensed Kasm’s amusement, although he didn’t send me any thoughts.
A lighter patch of gray showed through the bushes for a moment, and then I realized that it was the snout of a baby night stalker. I say “baby,” although the creature probably weighed at least six or seven thousand pounds—at least as large as the largest African elephant. We kept our weapons aimed at it as it shuffled slowly up to the corpse of its mother and snuffled sadly around it.
“Kasm, should we kill it?” I thought that it might be a good idea. That would make one less of the dangerous things, but Kasm took the opportunity to let me know that his people had an ethos regarding their planet and all of its life forms.
“No. Let it be. It is old enough to survive on its own, and it will soon forget its loss. It is not a good thing to kill unnecessarily. All life has an equal right to existence. Who is to say which is more important, you, me, or that little one? If someone claims to have the right to assign importance and judge which lives or dies, that is the first step toward tyranny. In the experience of my people, none can claim omnipotence.”
I couldn’t help it. I was minded to compare his people’s idea about the baby night-stalker’s right to life unfavorably with the arrogance of humans before our civilization was mostly destroyed by the Pug-bears’ EMP. As a species, we have always been more than willing to assign lesser value to others’ lives. Take the numerous instances of genocide that our kind has perpetuated or the wholesale disposal of unborn babies for convenience. I didn’t want him to know these things about us; I felt ashamed, and I thought that we wouldn’t measure up to their standards. After an uncomfortable moment, I lowered my weapon, and the others followed my lead.
Kasm had been studying me and he sent, “I felt that you were worried about my judgment of your people.” He paused as I started to send a denial and then looked away before continuing, “Our people have not always lived up to this ideal, either. Our stories tell of times when clans fought other clans and whole bloodlines were destroyed. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I think that all peoples must go through this at times. It is not what you’ve done in the past, but what you’ve developed into and how you act in the present that matters.”
The Sim-tiger was a true philosopher, and I resolved to win his respect. I indicated that we should go and started moving to the left to give the bereaved baby plenty of room. The others trailed behind. We hiked on around the outside of the grove of trees and continued across the veldt. We could hear the baby night-stalker’s blaating cries carried downwind to us for a long time. It eventually stilled, or we got too far away to hear it any longer.