Second Wave -- 29

Chapter 29

I kept guard while the humans slept. Dec was an interesting creature. His mind was extremely strong despite the damage inflicted by the vision-beast. I wondered what the next day would bring, and then my mind gradually slipped into a reminiscence. I recalled events in my earlier life.

It was the most cherished day of my life. I wouldn't give up those memories for anything. It was the day my intended had finally agreed to become my full mate. Keta and I had been born in the same year. We had both studied under the same teachers and we had grown up together. True, she had often favored Rakutan, who was my main rival in both the hunt and in the eyes of the fighters of our tribe, but she had chosen me.

You must understand that we, the people of Tukoli, our beautiful planet, do not call ourselves by a particular name. We are just “The People,” the only creatures on the planet capable of rational thought. While it's true that the stench-beasts live in communal hives and cooperate to a certain extent, theirs is not a rational level of mentation. They have in-built, instinctive behavior patterns that lead them to defend their hives in group action, but they do not think. No other animal on our planet can actually think as we do. You might object to this statement by mentioning the vision-beast. It has a high degree of mental power and can easily entrap prey by mirroring the prey's inner desires back to it. However, that is simply a predatory action that requires no deeper level of understanding.

We are the people blessed by Tukola, our wonderful, blue sun. It gives us life. Its heat drives the storms that bring the rains. The rising heat on the plains causes the wind, which is the primary part of our weather. The wind may be hot, but it provides us with a degree of cooling during the hottest part of the day. It blows the scent of our prey towards us and ours away from our prey.

We speak mentally, but we do not have a communal mental life. Each of us is separate and individual unless we choose to become as-one, an action that only mates take and sometimes not even mates. Each mated pair has that option. They can blend their mental lives together into an inextricable wholeness. Some do not go that far, either through fear or because they aren't that tightly bound.

It is a fact that we mate for life, yet some of our mated couples act as individuals save in the matter of creating and raising young. Others make the blending step and become almost a different level of creature. They are the ones who give us a higher level of guidance. My parents were such a couple, yet Keta's parents were not tightly bound.

She knew that I desired her, but I believe that the example of her parents caused her to hesitate. She spent her early life being friends with all and not exclusively with one male. This was the usual way that non-bonded individuals acted. They would eventually mate with another when their season was upon them and that mating would lead them into an unmovable pattern wherein they would only mate with the one that they had first chosen.

Our life is hazardous, and we are often injured or even killed by other animals or accidents. Those who do not bond mentally will survive the death of their mate with little problem. Those who do bond mentally normally do not survive their deceased mate by many days. Something in them just breaks, and they cannot go on – usually.

I thought of Keta and I growing up together. Both of us mastered the skills necessary to hunt our prey and to live in happiness on this, our world. My only worry during our youth was that she seemed to often favor my rival, Rakutan. He was as large as I and, perhaps, truthfully, more skilled at hunting. I did not like him because his judgment was often too hasty. That habit of being quick to decide often led him to take risks that were unnecessary and had, at times, led him to endanger others of our tribe.

His poor judgment once caused him to attack a baby night-stalker, thinking that he could slip in and kill it before its mother knew what was happening. He was leading a small group of other youths, and two of them were killed by the mother before they could get away. He did not manage to kill the baby either.

When pressed about this mistake, he airily stated that the others had come along of their own volition and their fate was not his responsibility. This was one of the reasons I did not like him. The other was the favor that Keta often showed to him. I believe that he assumed that she would be his.

On the other hand, I had desired her companionship throughout my life, starting at an early age, although I was not sure that she valued me.

As we became adult, I grew strong and heavy with muscle. My razor-sharp claws and strong teeth were weapons that I learned to use with great efficiency. I was the best fighter in the tribe and the second-best hunter behind Rakutan.

The day came when I was hunting a borbori, a large and dangerous grass-eating animal that is armed with an unlikely set of sharp tusks. I had followed it for a good fraction of the morning and had made sure that it was lying up in a thicket at the edge of the jungle. I made use of the wind and carefully scouted out the best way to attack the animal.

I'd decided to wait until it came out for its mid-day feeding and then to jump it from behind a clump of grass that bordered the only path into the thicket. I was lying there, waiting, when I detected an incredibly alluring odor blowing downwind. It was Keta, and she'd come into her first season. The wind also blew the scent of Rakutan, and this was something that I could not countenance. I thought for a moment about what to do, but the two were rapidly approaching my position.

I stood up, and then I could see that she was running before him, and he was herding her away from the resting place the tribe had taken the night before. A certain amount of coyness is usual among our females, yet it seemed as if she were running much harder than she would have if she wanted to be caught. Nevertheless, he was the fastest in the tribe and was gaining slowly.

As I stood up, she sighted me and turned directly towards me. I sent a warning, “Watch yourself, there is a borbori here!”

She swerved a bit away from the direct line she'd been on that would have taken her right in front of the area I'd indicated, and that swerve almost allowed Rakutan to catch her. She looked at me with an appeal and sent, “I cannot allow him to catch me. It must be you and no other!”

At that moment, the borbori, alerted by the scent and sound of their headlong approach, came rushing out of the thicket and stopped with its hair standing out all over its body. It looked huge and angry, and it immediately sighted Keta. It let out a deep snort and charged directly towards her.

The sudden appearance of the massive creature coming directly towards him caused Rakutan to reverse directions, calling out as he did for Keta to run behind him. I'd known that he was lacking in judgment, but now I also knew that he was a bit of a coward, too. To give him credit, the borbori was a monster of its kind, and its popping out without warning would have frightened almost any creature.

Nonetheless, Keta simply swerved out of its path and continued in my direction. It focused upon her as she approached and altered its course to strike at her. By now, I was moving as fast as I could, and as the borbori neared her, I launched myself desperately at its hindquarters. I managed to hook my claws into one of its thighs, tripping it. It went down and rolled, coming back in a fighting position with its tusks aimed directly at me. I leaped high and just passed over its thrust. As I did, I lashed out with one paw and caught the rock-hard hide that covered its fore-shoulder. That grip held, and I whipped around and yanked it over on its side again. After that, it was just a matter of biting, avoiding the tusks, and wrestling the animal around until I could catch its throat in my jaws.

As I finished the kill, I became aware of Keta rubbing against my body, and her thoughts were ones that I could not, in decency, pass on. It was too intimate. Suffice it to say that we became mated and bonded that day. As I say, it was the most memorable day of my life, and I think about it often, wishing that I could relive the happiness of that hour.

When we returned to the tribe, bearing chunks of borbori, Rakutan had told the elders that we'd both been killed. From that time onward, he bore the name of “Deserter.” As one who ran away from members of our tribe in the face of danger, he gradually drew apart and eventually left, opting to live a life of solitary wandering.

The memory of that wonderful day is always poisoned by the memory of Keta trying to defend our child against the charge of a night-stalker. We'd been traveling along the jungle's edge, and one of the invaders' flying craft had approached. Since they seemed to delight in shooting at my people, we'd set off at a fast run and descended into a nearby valley for cover. The craft had disappeared, but as we'd rounded a corner in the boulder-strewn cleft, we'd stumbled upon a resting night-stalker. It hadn't fed recently and was immediately after us. Those creatures don't stop until they've caught their prey or are convinced that it's unobtainable. Our people normally avoid them, but we'd been distracted by the flying thing and had made a fatal mistake.

It cornered the three of us in a rocky vale. We were backed against an unclimbable cliff and trapped. I'd attacked immediately and had been thrown by the creature, landing upon a ledge of the cliff, dazed and unable to even stand. I did, however, have a good view of the night-stalker smashing and devouring the only two beings that I loved.

I believe that I went insane then. I was so stunned that I could not move, and the sight of their deaths was more than I could bear. One moment, she was an intimate part of my thoughts, and the next, there was a huge void as if the center of my being had been ripped out. There was nothing there! And, nothing there where my child had been either!

I don't know what happened next. I eventually became aware that I was limping across the grasslands in a direction away from our tribe. I knew both my mate and child were no longer alive. The only thing I could sense was their absence, and a great sense of futility filled me. I wanted nothing more than to die myself.

This state persisted for days, and I became weak. Finally, I stumbled upon the carcass of a recently deceased food animal that had broken its neck in a fall. The smell of its body was more than I could bear, and I ate and began to regain my strength. Over the next days, I hunted and rested and recovered. My mind was still a place that alternated between madness and sanity, but my body was becoming what it had been before the attack.

I had no desire to see any members of my tribe, and so I wandered for many days through the seasonal change from warm south winds to hot north winds. I tried repeatedly to come to grips with my loss. As the days progressed, my sense of failure and loss faded into the blur of simple existence.

I was walking across an open clearing, thinking of Keta, when I saw a movement on the far side of the area. I raised my head and then shook it to clear my eyes. It was her! I called, “Keta!” but there was no response. Even so, there she stood, looking at me with her beautiful eyes. I instantly ran towards her. As I approached, I could see that she was preparing to greet me as she'd always done in the past. I dashed up and horribly was caught by a damnable vision-beast. It had indeed been too wonderful to be real!

I started trying to sever its many tentacles and was having some success, but the things are very hard to kill. While you are biting one head off, the others clamp down and tangle your legs with their incessant writhing. It was beginning to look as if I might not escape when there was a sudden puffing noise from in back of me, and something struck the beast's body. It moaned and released me all at once, and I leaped out of its grasp.

The next thing I knew was that it mentally attacked a strange creature standing with others of its kind. The vision-beast's attack was not unknown to me. If enough of the arms are left on before they die, the vision-beasts can mount a stunning mental attack, and this one was very powerful. I sensed the creature's startled response and then was amazed as it parried much of the attack.

That was how I met Dec and his group.

He was mentally very strong and I found his aura attractive. After we'd been together for a day or so, I realized that he was somehow filling a void in my mind where I'd been left empty from the death of Keta. I didn't explain that to him, but his mind subliminally clicked with mine and gave me a renewed sense of purpose.

I resolved not to leave him and his small group. They'd somehow become important to me, and I sensed that I could live again by accepting his quest as my own. In addition, we had a common enemy – the invaders who had tried to take our world. From what I understood, Dec offered my people the possibility of destroying those evil creatures and I wanted to become part of that effort. I felt that saving my people would somehow make up to me for losing Keta. I knew it was irrational, but there it was, anyway. I was staying with him.