Chapter Three: The Locals — Part 4

Time on their new world, which the locals vocalized as Antans, and which Susan and her people had come to love, was rapidly losing importance. The normal processes and ravages of time were lost on watching the young ones grow into adult, and the adults grow literate. People were all doing their own thing, and there was limited but continuous contact between the local spider-like aliens and the humans. Closing in on the fourth year, the limited contact started to change. Susan found herself braving the swamp at least twice a week. With each trip she learned something new, sometimes about the world, and sometimes about herself.

She learned, for instance, that the world had a voice. It hummed in her blood, her bones, her cells. Every tree, every plant, even the air she breathed had within it one all integrated voice. Susan couldn’t hear it as well as others of her tribe, and careful discussions with C’rona led her to believe that C’rona couldn’t hear it any better than her. But there it was, humming along, sometimes using Robert as a conduit, sometimes acting more as a feeling of the world around her. Despite his ability to hear and relay the essentials of that voice, Robert’s identity wasn’t pushed out of the way or limited. Rather, like all the others who weren’t Susan, the voice kind of just made quiet, hopeful suggestions or observations, which, over the course of weeks or months, created ideal conditions for those who listened.

A’joshi was the messenger to Susan from C’rona. His presence, early and so close to the beginning of the fifth year, could mean only one thing. “Leader C’rona would like to speak with you. It’s a matter of great importance.” A’joshi said to Susan, so excited he bounced nervously from leg to leg.

As A’joshi had grown, he had learned to mimic the sounds and speak the language of Susan’s tribe. he hadn’t learned to coordinate his body so well yet, and his was growing faster than his nervous system could keep up. Susan dodged him as he cantered into a wall. A’joshi had come bursting into her cabin, a cacophony of nervous motion and youthful energy. A’joshi had grown into something strong, something threatening and menacing, something entirely too clumsy for its size. The Antansi had no gender before maturity; A’joshi had grown to the stage where his gender was being defined. A’joshi had become a rather impressive male, still too young to be taken seriously, but male nonetheless. To keep his mind off of sex, as apparently it was out of season for Antansi, and such immature attempts as were made by youth had to be refocused, he was often sent as a messenger to Susan. Because Robert had suggested a trip, and Susan was just about to leave for the Antansi’s central city, A’joshi’s presence was hardly needed.

Of course, she didn’t let A’joshi know that. Robert, his face still as youthful as it had been five years ago, waited for her at the bottom of the tree. She led them all to her flat boat. It had been on a journey nearly a year ago that Susan learned she could focus her will through a living branch of a specific tree-like plant that reproduced by dropping pieces of itself into the muck. These broken off branches rarely died, as the air carried enough moisture and nutrients to keep them alive for decades without the need to take root. She focused now, and a bubble of her will pushed out one way, the resultant force causing the flat boat to move the other. It wasn’t long before A’joshi started to complain.

“They tell me nothing. Why have there been so many meetings? I don’t think I should be left out.” A’joshi, a terrible gossip, prodded Susan for more information.

Robert smiled wickedly at A’joshi, “Probably to protect you. You know how it goes. A messenger bearing bad news usually ends up a dead messenger.”

A’joshi’s front sensor palpi began to shutter nervously, and Susan swatted Robert on the head – a term of affection between them. She calmed A’joshi with a dismissive gesture. “What’s there to tell? C’rona and I discuss all matters of importance together. This is something more important than usual is all. Now sit still while you’re in the boat, unless you want to pick your way back through the marsh alone.”

Robert was silent as Susan pushed the boat into the mist at the edge of the central city of the Antansi, bringing it into the muck and silt that passed for ground. The people of Antans were a carefree lot, and he hardly worried as Susan waited for yet another conference with C’rona. Robert spent the hours of meetings sitting in the boat, writing notes in a journal he had made completely by hand, from the bound cloth cover, to the oddly hewn pages, to the pen with its ink within. In the presence of absolute freedom and responsibility, the souls of the poets, musicians, and writers crept out of their hiding places and took new positions in an open society. Robert was one of the writers, and in writing he found a sort of peace he had never known on Earth. Within five years Susan had seen to it that every person on Antans could read and write, and with that newfound knowledge the citizens of Antans developed well beyond their old cogs in the Cynosure. Her people were content and blossoming into a powerful tribe of thinkers. Susan tried to listen to the inkling of peace Robert often wrote about in his journal, while C’rona worked her way across the village to speak with her.

All she could hear right now were the worried thoughts that came with millions of worried thinkers, all of who were thinking about the news of an inevitable invasion. She had been asked to wait at the shore, probably because C’rona would be passing by on the way to her home. Antans was a sentient world, Susan was sure of it. It had chosen to swallow their ships rather than let them hurt it or the native life. Yet it had not chosen to swallow them. Like the Antansi Natives, they had become its caretakers and protectors. She heard the hum in her staff as she waited. Like all things on the planet, it was partially symbiotic, though its voice wasn’t so strong until it was growing. So long as she held it, it gained strength from her, and occasionally it would bloom and flower and go to seed. It was starting to bloom while she sat there, its personal hum one of content and fulfillment. Like anything that passed for vegetation on Antans, its wordless voice was almost always one of calm acceptance.

The stick gave Susan some considerable strength. With her walking stick Susan could telepath privately to an individual, and with it she could deliver powerful, telekinetically charged blows to any creature threatening her. She could also focus her energies and move the boat at mind-numbing speeds haphazardly across the marsh, though today she had chosen not to. As she had practiced and gotten stronger, Susan had gotten faster, and found herself far less fatigued, no matter how hard she pushed herself.

Susan knew that her abilities were dangerous, but not for the reasons that most would consider. Psychokinesis and telepathy were traits of the cursed; people found capable of even the most limited expressions of such abilities were killed, often on sight. Earth had been all but diminished to the material, corrupt, and mundane, those who understood the concrete world and exploited it. Susan brought her mind back to the moment, where she stood on her boat, waiting on calm waters to be greeted by C’rona, while considering the message C’rona had not sent. C’rona’s people had been watching intently, waiting, really, for the approaching horror. That time had come, and with it came the potential for disaster.

He had set himself down on the boat bottom, book in hand, starting to write, but today found he couldn’t. “I guess it was fun while it lasted.” Robert said, sensing Susan’s worries

“We’re still breathing. I think the Antansi have an idea. I’ve been listening to Antans, and it seems relatively unconcerned.”

“What should the planet care? It’s not like we’re its creation.” Robert said, twirling his hair between worried fingers.

It seemed odd to Susan that Robert was losing his connection with the world just as she was gaining it. “It cares.” Susan insisted, “We’ve cherished our freedom, and the price to pay is now at hand.”