Shattered Bonds (continued)

There was a native [alien] word for “grandfather”, but it escaped her for the moment.

Kora? Koora? Koola? Kona? No, that’s coffee, she remembered, and desperately wanted some.

She turned toward Grimes. “Is there a jeep available?”

The young man frowned and checked a hand-written list. “There’s an ATV . . .”

Wendy suppressed a groan. She despised those things. They were open and dirty and hard to handle and steered like a driving a cow through mud. Some people loved them; she did not see the attraction.

She glanced over at Shanta. The [alien] was quivering with barely-controlled agitation. Wendy sighed. It could take a while to locate a working jeep and, technically, this was probably not considered official colony business.

“Fine . . .” she conceded unhappily and scrawled her initials on the sheet.

“It’s just over there.” Grimes nodded toward the small storage pen toward his left. “I’ll unlock the gate.”

Wendy, trying not to grumble under her breath, took hold of her case again and followed Grimes. Shanta trod along next to her, the [alien]’s small feet seeming to barely touch the ground with each step.

Grimes swiped his magnetic key over the lock. It took two tries before it disengaged. He held it open for her, allowing both Wendy and the [alien] to enter. Wendy secured the case in the cargo pod while Shanta leapt into the open storage basket.

At least I won’t have to share the seat . . .

She strapped on the helmet and checked the controls and gauges. It seemed to be fully charged and, unlike many of their vehicles, none of the controls appeared to be jerry-rigged in order to keep functioning. She activated the headlights, watching as they cut a white path through the darkness. Pressing the ignition switch, she heard the reassuring hum as the engine powered up. Glancing behind her, she saw Shanta happily nestled into the cargo basket, her ears and eyes expressing clear delight for the exciting voyage ahead.

I’m glad someone is enjoying this . . .

The vehicle moved forward, slowly at first, traveling smoothly over the lightly paved surface that led out of the compound. That did not last long. The terrain quickly became uneven, littered with half-buried rocks and large roots. Wendy throttled the power back, but not quickly enough to prevent her teeth from being rattled as she hit the first obstacle. The vehicle bounced, hard, on its oversized tires. Wendy tried not to clench her hands around the steering controls. More than once, she had arrived at her destination with her fingers cramped and nearly locked around the control yoke.

Fortunately, the trip to Shanta’s village took only a few minutes. Wendy was grateful that rain had not been in the recent weather pattern. Maneuvering the vehicle through a sodden terrain added a new set of challenges to the journey. Being stuck in the mud once during a torrential rainfall had been more than enough times for her.

She dimmed the lights as the dwellings of the village came into view. The engine was quiet enough that it might not rouse those of the [aliens] that were slumbering. The noise from her passage through the foliage was another matter. She cut power to the engine, allowing it to coast to a stop. Her hands, though, never left the brake controls until it was firmly stopped. Shanta scampered past her, having leapt down while the vehicle was still decelerating, stopping to chatter at three other [aliens] who waited outside what looked to be one of the older structures.

Wendy climbed from the seat of the vehicle, feeling in the muscles of her legs how tightly she had gripped the seat with them during their ride. She unfastened the medical case and then moved toward the small group of [aliens]. One of them in particular eyed her as she approached.

She was able to distinguish Shanta from the other three. She was not entirely sure how, as all of them had similar coloring and shading. If she really analyzed it though, she decided, she could probably figure out why. She studied the other [aliens] quickly, seeing if recognized any of them by name. In the dim shadows of the night, she could not be certain. It was not that they all looked alike to her, but it was difficult to tell them apart in the dark. The [aliens], on the other hand, seemed to suffer from no such limitations. That they could always recognize her, regardless of the time of day, always made Wendy a little uncomfortable, making her feel as if she had forgotten to sufficiently bathe or something.

The [aliens] continued to huddle as she approached and came to a stop before them.

Am I too late?

Shanta stared hard at the sky and then at Wendy.

“Come,” she said, her voice barely audible.

Without waiting for Wendy to acknowledge her, she turned and went inside the structure. Wendy followed her, forced to stoop low to enter.

The interior was heavy with shadows, dimly lit in placed by smoky candles and what Wendy guessed was some kind of incense. Its aroma made her want to both cough and sneeze, but she managed to suppress both reactions, reducing them to a slightly sniffling of her sinuses.

Maybe it smells good to them, she mused, swallowing to moisten her throat against the acrid, drying scent.

Rentu was laid out on a mat on the floor, nearly in the middle of the room. Wendy bit off a gasp as when got a clear view of him. Had she not known who it was supposed to be, she doubted that she would have recognized him without considerable effort.

The barely animate assemblage of sparse ashen fur and thin bones bore little resemblance to the aged, but still lucid [alien] she had first met. Although he had shuffled along with a staff ever since Wendy had known him, there had been no doubt of his reason and intelligence. Now, there remained little more a withered husk. Wendy saw to her surprise, that he still breathed—neither steadily nor easily, but he still breathed.

She did not need her diagnostic scanner to know that there was nothing more that she could do.

“Can you help?” Shanta asked her, the word warbling slightly.

Wendy continued to stare down at Rentu, watching his ragged breathing, afraid that the moment she looked away that she would hear the death rattle that was common even across species. Finally, she looked at Shanta, her chest tight.

“There’s nothing you can do?” Shanta’s question was just as much a statement.

She nearly shook her head, but stopped the motion, knowing that it meant something else to the [aliens].

“Do you have any ratara root?”

Shanta’s face formed an expression of sadness. “Yes,” she replied quietly. Her eyes moved toward Rentu and then back at Wendy. “Then it is time.”

Wendy swallowed hard past the lump that had grown in her throat. She tried to will away the tears that formed at the corner of her eyes.

I barely knew him. But he was still . . . life.

Shanta shuffled over and conferred in whispers with the others. Two of them glanced independently toward Wendy, their expressions unreadable in the darkness. One went over and retrieved a bowl from a low table. He (she?) brought to the other [aliens] for inspection and then, apparently having received their approval, carried it to Rentu’s withered form.

Other [aliens] began to file into the small shelter, gathering in a rough oval around Rentu. They were silent as the [alien] administered the extract. Wendy could remember its aroma: sweet and spicy—nothing at all to most of the medicines she had been subjected to as a child. The [alien] tilted the bowl, letting several drops fall into Rentu’s open mouth. Rentu coughed, swallowed, and then lay quietly once more.

A soft chant began among the gathered [aliens]. Even as many times as Wendy had heard it, she still could not quite follow its cadence. It seemed to shift suddenly throughout, as if following a musical scale radically different from the human one. Paolo had told her that it was atonal, but she still did not quite grasp what that meant. He had tried to explain it to her, but they had gotten distracted . . . by other activities. Her cheeks warmed at the vivid memories.

Bad girl! she scolded herself. Be respectful. Pay attention to what’s going on.

Having erotic thoughts during funeral rites, or at the scene of death, was not unheard of. From what she had read, it was a surprisingly common phenomenon. Although some might think of it as perverse, it was theorized that it was a primal reaction—an immediate, instinctive urge to continue the propagation of the species when faced with death. Despite the rationalization, Wendy still felt embarrassed to find herself succumbing to it.

Another thing I can blame on my pregnancy, right?

The pace of the chant was slowing. The voices of the [aliens] had dropped to a level barely above a whisper. As Wendy listened, it faded beyond her hearing. She only knew that it had ended when the postures of the [aliens] changed.

Peering through the gathered [alien], she tried to examine Rentu’s body. As she expected, it was now still. As Shanta had told her, Rentu’s gisa had been released. Now the formal burial process could begin.

The [aliens] moved as one, turned and filing out of the room in a single line. They did not speak to one another. Their eyes aimed toward a point ahead, but did not seem to be focused there. Within a few moments, Shanta and Wendy were left alone with Rentu’s body.

She wanted to say something, to express her condolences, to find some way to help. She knew, though, from past experience that this would was now a private matter among the [aliens]. The human colonists had, on occasion, been allowed to observe, from a distance, but were not permitted to participate directly in the rituals. Of course, Wendy knew from seeing the historical archives, that they had been observed a number of times by some of the original remote drones.

Gathering her medical case again, Wendy hesitated. She wanted to give Shanta a reassuring touch, but knew that was now taboo until her obligatory period of mourning was completed. Casting one final glance at Rentu’s remains, and then at Shanta. Wendy left the small house.

She shivered as she approached her vehicle, wishing she had brought more than her robe. Her skin felt damp and clammy, telltale signs of the approaching fog storm. She was certain that she had plenty of time to return to the compound before it arrived. They were typically slow-moving, the heavily moisture-laden air being difficult for the air currents to move. She secured the case automatically, without thinking about it, and climbed onto the seat.

The headlights and indicators glowed back to life at her touch. The engine hummed to life and she slowly turned the vehicle back toward the colony, hoping she could avoid a few of the nastier obstacles on the journey back.

#

Returning to the colony, she headed for the communal dining hall rather than trying to go back to sleep. She knew that she would just toss and turn instead, both from already having been awake and from worrying that she would oversleep. In addition, she needed to urinate something fierce. Between the bouncing of the ATV and the effects of her pregnancy, it was all she could do to hold it in. In addition to having one of the community’s public bathrooms, it was also an around-the-clock source of coffee.

Several minutes later, her bladder emptied and a steaming mug of coffee before her, she sat at one of the tables and tried to shake off both the cold and her growing sense of melancholy. It would be some time yet before even the earliest of the early birds arrived for breakfast. Those who were on rotation to prepare it would be there first, of course, but even they would be permitted another few hours of sleep.

Wendy paused for a moment then suddenly, trying to remember if she had drawn a rotation for that morning. No, she finally decided. She had done one a little more than two weeks ago. Not enough time had passed yet for it to be her turn again. Relieved, she sipped at the coffee and returned to her consideration of the various aspects of life and death.

So deep were her ruminations that she did not hear the footsteps behind her, nor sense the presence of someone standing across from her until their shadow changed the pattern of light playing across her eyes. She looked up from her mug, more distracted than startled, to find Pasquale regarding her from the other side of the table.