We sat in the jungle and drank the local disgusting beer. Me, and Jim,
and the machines operator, and a couple of guys from our crew. Delivering goods
to Tau-Callipso has never been easy. The ocean creates giant cyclones, storms,
hurricanes, and landing in the jungle becomes impossible. But this time we were
lucky. I passed the package I brought Jim from his mom, and asked how they've
advanced over here in the time I've been away. After all, you don't tell your
former school friend that his sweetheart is hanging out with another, as long
as you can delay that moment. Neither do you tell him that his dog died of old
age. No, no. Not straight away.
So, they built an almost
normal landing strip for us. That I saw. A couple of new babies born in the Colony. A few people lost to poisonous plants that nobody could've warned them
about. Local fauna classified, named and one species almost tamed. It's not
edible, of course, but it could be useful one day. If the claws are trimmed
off, it looks almost like an opossum. Wonderful, I thought. Anything else?
-A story happened here, Jim drawled, almost without taking his lips off
the bottle. –shall I tell you? –I nodded. The air was so heavy, and sticky,
that I wondered, how they survive here. I wouldn't. Worse than Southern China
in the summer.
-You know the Wall? The place we call the Wall. Of course you don't, you
only see the ships and the air base. It's in the depth of the jungle, and every
living creature avoids it. Of course, we didn't know it in the beginning. We
just saw a side of a mountain that was bare of all plants, not even moss grows
on it. Just bare rock. Greenish-brownish, very rough, something like silicon
and bits of copper in it. So, we
wondered, and came there one day with our equipment. Radiation – normal.
Electro- magnetic radiation – like a whole TV tower. Beta-waves- crazy. You get
the picture. Then we start coming closer, and Captain Grant – you know, the one
who came here with his teenage son and nobody else –the one whose whole family
got killed back then - disappears. I could've sworn the wall swallowed him. I'm
telling you, Richie, gone, in seconds. Like whoosh- and pop- and gone. And then
we all step back, of course. And when we step back, we see – Richie , I swear
to you! –we see his face and hands sticking out of the wall. Looking like
silicon, too, greenish-brown like the rest of it. He's engulfed, as we call it
now. How's that?
-Incredible, I say. -So, you held a funeral and carried on?- I couldn't
quite gather why he was telling me this. So, another form of death. Besides
radioactive eels, and spitting transparent spiders, and tentacles and poison
glands, and strangling trees and fuming pits. After everything I've seen as a
delivery man for the Allaince, this was hardly impressive. I could've told him
another dozen stories like that without straining my memory in the least.
-That's not it, Richie, -he says, and fills up my jar again. Are you
listening?
-Sure, I say. Have I got anything better to do, till there is another
opening in the asteroid belt? Absolutely nothing. –Shoot away, I say.
-So, yeah, we did make him a funeral. And his son was ever so brave, and
didn't cry, at least when we were around. We all said speeches and like, and
praised him to the sky, and said good bye. And life went on – but the boy –
Robby –started sneaking to that wall. To look at his father's profile again.
Once he sneaked away at night, and we nearly got eaten looking for him. Wanna
see the Wall?
-Sure, I say. – Why not? It's just a dream of mine to plow through
sticky jungle with god-knows- whats lurking in it.
So we start for the Wall, with Jim providing more stories as we slice
our way through the moving and breathing wall of yellowinsh-green plants in
front of us.
-
Look, - Jim points out a
herd of some stripy creatures, chewing some fruits with strings on them - those
stripy things – we call them zebras, even though they are purple and yellow and
look nothing like a zebra – we have never seen any babies in that population,
only mature animals. They are the greatest mystery on this whole planet. Only
one gender, and nobody knows –
And then we hear a scream. A human scream.
Coming from the area of that mountain, where the wall was. So, of course I grab
my gun and run, as fast as I can. I look up, and I see Rob, the Captain's son,
running and then rolling down the mountain, and one of those flat creatures after
him, and after the flat one runs another beast with a trunk like an elephant,
but in the wrong place, and hair all over him, about the size of a tank, and
spitting fire. Not a friendly one, let me tell you. So I aim, but can't shoot,
because I'll hit the kid, sure as day.
-
Any ideas?- I scream to Jim, as we are running, very
slowly, through the sticky mess.
-
Run! Run! -He pants.
Oh, the jungle stories. There is
one unfolding in front of us, and who knows if we come out alive, and if we'll
be able to tell it by the fire with a mug of beer. Or others will tell it at
our funeral.
We are nowhere near enough to make it in time. And I see Robbie rolling
off the mountain, landing not near enough to be absorbed, just like his dad,
but near enough, and then the crocodile creature lands smack on top of him.
Robbie is knocked unconscious, and bleeding from his mouth, and then the
creature begins to tear at him. Luckily he was wearing a leather jacket, and it
took time to chew through. I'm sitting there, trying to aim, with my hands
shaking, and I see him being mauled. I see more people running to him, but
they're having to deal with the elephant, or whatever they named him. And then,
out of the corner of my eye, I see the wall behind him change texture, and I
lower my gun. It goes transparent, hazy,
there are waves and ripples on it. It's blue-ish and hollow inside, like a
cave. With sparkles like that, beautiful, really. I see all the animals that were caught up in
it and frozen, and I see poor Captain, standing there. And – I know you don't
believe me! – he starts walking. The Captain breaks through, and walks right
out of that wall! The statue starts
moving, walking, slowly, robot-like, to his son! He was alive in there! For
this whole time! Have you ever heard of such a thing? A whole month! He walks
to poor little Robbie, and kicks the beast in the eye, or the tentacle he has
there, and the thing clambers off Robbie and turns to him, and then I shoot
him. The beast, of course. And then we all finally get there, and grab the
Captain and his son, and carry them both right to the doctors.
Later, much later that day, the Captain and son, and the whole crew of
the station, and my co-pilots, are sitting inside, and we are looking at the
man who survived a month without food and water, inside a Wall. Somebody jokes
that had it been 40 days, we'd be able to call him Moses, but a month is barely
enough. His face is thin and hollow, but his eyes are shining, just like in
those days when he was still training us to endure anything that could be
survived. We are all waiting to hear his story. He is very weak, with his voice
barely audible, but he can talk. We all hush, and he begins.
-
Are you ready? So, the news
number one is.. that Wall – it's alive!
And intelligent!
At the word "intelligent" I nearly jump out of my skin.
Whaaaat???? The third intelligent life to be found outside the Earth – and on
this dingy planet of hurricanes and not much else? I grab Jim by the sleeve. - Are
you in earnest? An intelligent what? The Wall? The Captain's voice is drowned
by everybody shouting, jumping, jostling each other.
-I swear,- he says, -I am sane, and I mean what I say. When I got "absorbed" it felt my
brain waves and kept me alive. And established some kind of a contact with my
brain, directly. I heard its voice in my head, it asked me questions about
where we all came from, how life
developed on Earth, and what we are doing here. And when Robby was attacked, it felt such pity
for him, got flooded with my pain , it just had to let me go. I heard you guys
organized me a nice funeral, - the captain chuckled. I thank you muchly. So, it's a "she". "She" is an
intelligent being, who managed to somehow preserve its race after some kind of
cataclysm hit the planet thousands of years ago. There are lots of them in
there, with one ruling the rest. Their life span is very short, about twenty
years, by the time here. Whereas on the Earth we need two to reproduce, on
Tau-Callipso it somehow takes three. And – you are not going to believe this! –
the males do not possess intelligence, lost it as a result of mutations and
easy life in the jungle. They are hardly
above animals. They know when to come to the Wall, and then a miracle takes
place. When the planet was hit, another mutation deprived the females – those
who now live in the mountain – behind the Wall – of any kind of a body, almost.
They kept the molecule that works as their DNA, but the 'males' nearly killed
them out, before they found a refuge in the safety of the Wall, the third
gender adapted to carrying the "females". Some technical invention
allows them to watch the planet while being safe. Not sure yet, how. That's why
any creature that comes too close gets immobilized, and eventually dies. So –
they have the "males" – just body and not much of a brain – and one kind of a "female" –
all brain and no body to speak of. And the Wall – the third gender that
protects them from each other. Not sure how intelligent that is, yet… it acts
as a communicator. They barely need any food, and all their processes have
slowed down almost to a standstill. Have you noticed that there are no baby
"zebras", ever? – oh but of course you did. I forget you've all had the
best training, - he chuckled again, and
stopped to get some more air. He was breathing with some effort, still, after a
month of not moving. They grow inside the Wall… it's their birthing sanctuary.
Then the "females" stay, and the others go into the jungle. And every few hundred local years, a new Wall
is born, and then there is another colony. Come, let me take you there. It
knows us now, and won't "engulf" humans anymore. – it's waiting for us.
Captain got up, but he still needed to be carried. – I explained to them what we are and why we came
here. They want to help us, and we must help them. – he kept on talking, but I
wasn't listening anymore. I'm about to meet an intelligent life of another
kind, for the very first time. A very, very different kind… We plow through the
sticky, sickly dendrites that try to grab every part of me and hold it forever.
Eventually I have enough and pull out my folding knife. "No!" – Jim
grabs my hand. – Didn't you hear what he said? They are watching us! They want
to make sure we mean no harm. If you start just chopping around, they will not
trust us! We now must ask permission, before we chop a tree, and they show us
which ones are ready to go, from old age or disease. It's their planet!
I'm wondering how I could've been so careless. This is the age when
humans have finally learned to appreciate each other, after there were almost
none left. Maybe that's why now we are mature enough to encounter another kind
of life? "I'm sorry", I mumble, to none in particular.
I stand in front of the rough, ancient Wall. It's exactly as the Captain
described it, bare and full of animals' profiles, and has bits of copper in it.
I guess those must be their nerves, or sensors, or however the Wall feels for
the little creatures hiding in it. Alive and intelligent. I put out my hand and gently rub the stone.
It's warm. I feel my heart welling up, and almost spilling over. My eyes
tingle. Silicon – based life, that scientist predicted so long ago. Here it is…
I'm so full of joy, and some of it is coming from elsewhere. "I'm
here", I say in my mind. "And I've been here for such a long
time" – a voice answers in my head. It's not words, but I somehow hear. I
feel tears on my cheeks, the joy is so great, it just can't fit inside me, it's
burning, expanding, swelling, and I feel the Other's voice in me, and feel the
warm stone getting warmer. "Tell me about the place you came from" –
she says without words.
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