Entropy first contact, p.17
Entropy (First Contact), page 17
“Why?”
An old, leathery hand slaps his face, sending his head reeling to one side. Welts form on his cheek in the shape of fingers. Blood appears in the corner of his lip.
“You do not question the first among us.”
It takes all of Anuk’s will not to draw his knife and slit the old man’s throat. Nothing would please Anuk more than watching as the elder’s blood soaked into the grass, but he’d be banished. And what is one alone in the forest? A meal. Together, they have strength. Together, they can ward off even jaguars. Alone, they’re easy prey. But Anuk has foreseen this moment. He knows what he’s doing. His friends may shrink in the fields, cringing as he is criticized and castigated, but Anuk is setting a snare in the trees. He’s winding a thin strand of hand-wound rope into a circle, tacking it in place in the limb of a sapling with a few loose twigs. He’s pulled down a branch, setting it taut, tying the line in place, balancing the tension with the twigs pinning the loop of rope in the snare. When the pigeon lands and forages for berries, it’ll lower its head, the bird will bump the twigs, and the snare will release, the branch will snap back into shape, and the rope will tighten around the bird’s neck. And that’s the irony of a snare. It’s not his hand on a spear or the taut pull of a bow that kills the bird; it’s the creature’s own carelessness that takes its life.
Anuk has set his snare.
The elders may not realize what is happening in the village. His brothers may not understand. They may look at him with shame, but Anuk is hunting something with more strength than the jaws of a caiman, with more guile than the scales of an anaconda, with more stealth than the wide paws of a jaguar.
Anuk is hunting a god.
And Anuk is determined to prove that no gods exist anywhere at all.
The first elder speaks with disgust, spitting on him. “You are a child.”
He’s wrong, but Anuk doesn’t care. He’s not upset by the comment. For him, this is all a game, a ruse, an act, a feint. In his mind, he is throwing a stone to distract a guard around another tribe’s camp, forcing the man to look the wrong way as he creeps through the shadows. Anuk rises from his knees, gritting his teeth, ignoring the pain imprinted on his cheek. The elder stands defiant. Muscles flex in anger.
All eyes are on him, as Anuk knew they would be. This is what he was counting on. He is the distraction he sought.
The snare is set.
The elders may live in denial, they might be content to hold to lies, but Anuk is not going to live in fear. They all know that the gods have come in the form of men. Spirits walk among them; only Anuk refuses to believe in gods. He’s heard the elders talking around the fire in the dark of night when all are asleep. They worry about the stranger among them. He comes and goes like a ghost. They have heard similar rumors from other tribes. They listen to the stories told by the women in the fields about a man who doesn’t belong, a man without any heritage, a man without any sense of fear. The elders have heard testimony of how he disappears among the trees. They’ve tracked him. They’ve seen his footsteps stop in the mud, as if he were lifted into the sky like a bird taking wing.
Anuk, himself, has seen the other at a distance when hunting. His gait is unlike that of anyone else in the village. And he disappeared into the thicket before he could be approached. Being a skilled tracker, Anuk was puzzled by the way the footsteps stopped mid-stride. It was as though the other had been plucked into the air.
They think he’s a god, a real god and not one of their lies—and that is why they fear him.
Anuk will not rush to such a conclusion.
Anuk sees the lightning in the storm and fears not. Anuk feels the heat of the flames roaring within the village fire and has respect, not fear, for the sparks leaping into the night. No man can hold fire in his hand, and yet man has tamed fire, keeping it in a pit, using it for light, warmth and cooking. And this man, this stranger, he too is natural. He is no god, for there are no gods. Anuk may not understand who or what he is, but he’s not afraid of him. And now, he’s set a snare. Now, he’s laid bait before the intruder. Now, he’s given him the opportunity to act while the elders and the tribe are distracted.
Shadows move on the edge of the meeting hut.
The bird is in the tree, foraging for berries. Its neck brushes the twine, and the snare is sprung.
“I will leave you now,” Anuk says in a soft voice, but the elders are still enraged. They’re confused. They’re angry with him, but none of that matters anymore. His quarry has taken the bait. The hunt is on. His prey is on the move. Anuk must go.
“You ask too much from us,” the first elder says, taking him by the upper arm.
Anuk disarms him. He rests a kind hand on the elder’s shoulder, saying, “You have done well, thank you.”
“What???”
“You have played your part, now I must play mine.”
The three elders are baffled, as are the workers in the fields and the children watching the commotion.
As Anuk walks away, another hunter, Martang, emerges from the forest with a dead pig. The children see him and rejoice, knowing they will eat the rich fat and chew on sinew long into the night. Martang has no idea what has happened. He’s excited by his kill and the way that raises his status within the tribe. He cheers for himself, and the others cheer along with him. The elders are confused. They’re unsure what they should do, so they do nothing at all, and that suits Anuk.
Without making it obvious, Anuk slips away. Rather than heading for the huts, he keeps to the shadows, staying out wide, crossing the field and following the edge of the jungle as he circles the camp, keeping his eyes on the meeting hut.
Already, the stranger has left the communal hut. Like Anuk, he keeps to the shadows, carrying the wounded man from the sky, with the young woman following him. Anuk loses sight of them as he passes behind another hut, but he needs weapons. Two spears lean against the outside of a grass hut. He lifts them without making a sound, holding one in each hand. His feet seem to glide over the rocks and stones on the ground. Coming around the side of the hut, the other is gone. Anuk’s heart races. He sees the young woman from the sky. She stands in front of a large tree on the far side of the clearing. A tangle of vines crisscrosses the jungle along with strands of nettle, making this section of the forest impassible. She steps up, but rather than stepping around the trunk of the tree, she steps through a curtain of light. There’s a shimmer, and she disappears.
Anuk runs.
His heart thumps like jungle drums within his chest. He hunches over, keeping a low profile as his thighs drive him on. Anuk holds the spears down by his legs, dodging branches and twigs in the grass, desperate to avoid any noise that would give away his approach.
He reaches the old tree. It looks like any other tree in the forest, rising high overhead. Birds call from the branches above him. With the tip of his spear, he touches the trunk. The bark has blackened with soot. Long ago, lightning struck the trunk, killing its heartwood. Termites have hollowed out the burned middle. When he is on a long hunt, Anuk will use trees like this to sleep for the night as they offer shelter from the rain and protection on all sides but one. A sharpened spear will keep even a nosy jaguar from inquiring too closely at a burned opening. Sometimes, deer will sleep in such hollows, and Anuk questions what he saw moments ago. Perhaps he’s mistaken. He steps into the narrow gap and taps his spear against the back of the inside hollow. It passes through the wood as though nothing were there.
Anuk steps into the hollow tree. His arms bump against the narrow inside of the trunk. The entrance is low, barely wide enough to crouch as he steps inside. Come at it from an angle, and it would be impassable. What looks like a fold in the old trunk at the rear of the hollow opens with a shimmer of light.
Cautiously, Anuk steps within the shadow of the tree looming overhead, and suddenly, he’s on the other side. Astonished, he turns and looks around. He can see back the way he came. On either side of him, the hard wooden trunk rises in the air, but there’s nothing before him except a thin veil of darkness, and yet he can make out the forest beyond. It’s as though he’s stepped inside a cave. To Anuk, it feels as though he’s stepping through a cloth curtain covering the entrance to a hut.
He can hear voices speaking softly. They’re barely audible over the insects and the calls of birds in the jungle. Anuk doesn’t understand the language of those who fell from the sky, but they seem to call to him.
“Not a god,” he says quietly to himself, steeling himself for the kill.
Anuk will earn the respect of his tribe. He will capture the other. The stranger is no ghost or god or spirit, of that he is sure. If he has to, Anuk will kill the intruder. Either way, he will have the elders bow before him. Using those who fell from the sky has allowed him to bait the stranger as though the intruder was a jaguar sniffing the bloodied carcass of a pig hung from a tree.
For a moment, Anuk crouches, unsure what to do next. Up until this point, he had a clear plan. Now, the future is hazy. He can walk through the rear of the hollow tree, but to where? Back into the jungle? That doesn’t make any sense. Why not just walk around the tree if the goal was to escape into the jungle?
The voices… They’re coming from above him. Anuk looks up. It’s difficult to see anything beyond the tangle of vines and leaves, along with the limbs and branches of trees around him reaching for the elusive sun somewhere up above the canopy, blocking out the light.
“Perhaps he doesn’t disappear,” Anuk mumbles to himself. “Perhaps he flies. Perhaps he climbs.”
The young native looks for handholds on the trees, but there are no low-hanging limbs.
“If he can walk through a tree, perhaps nothing is as it seems. Perhaps he can walk in the air as well.”
Anuk stands and steps up. His foot finds a firm surface. Ripples of light echo outward with the colors of the rainbow. Emboldened, he steps up again. With each step, a shimmer of light supports him. Anuk climbs higher, ignoring the lies told to him by his eyes, trusting the truth beneath his feet. Slowly, the jungle floor falls away. To his amazement, he’s up with the birds and the monkeys. He watches them in awe, seeing distant trails winding through the undergrowth beneath him, knowing this is the way they see him as he hunts them from the shadows.
Before long, Anuk can no longer see the village or even the jungle floor. Leafy green bushes and trees stretch beneath him. Above, the canopy sways with the wind. Sunlight flickers around him. And then he sees them.
Anuk is surprised by how comfortable he has become with the steps of light. Each time he steps up, the light below fades, leaving no hint it was ever there, but he fears not the fall. Anuk fears nothing.
Above, he sees the young woman talking to a man. They’re on some kind of mat, but it has not been made from animal hide. The seats are unlike the logs used in the village. He creeps closer, climbing higher. To his surprise, she’s not talking to the stranger. She’s talking to one of the bodies he saw strewn over a tree, half-lying in the mud, rotting on the forest floor. How this man has been brought back to life is baffling, and for the first time, Anuk feels fear. His heart races. He stops where he is and listens even though he has no hope of understanding the strange words drifting on the breeze.
Death doesn’t worry Anuk. He’s killed. He’s seen others kill. He’s watched animals die. He’s seen children die. He’s seen women fall into the endless sleep when the blood of birth fails to cease. He’s seen young men die from cuts and scratches that left their arms swollen and red. He’s seen the old clutch their chest and tumble to the dirt, only to be buried where they fell. But he’s never seen the dead come back to life. This is a power no one on Earth holds, not even the shaman. As much as Anuk doesn’t want to admit it, this is the power of a god.
No, not a god, a devil, a demon.
If this power were in the hands of the gods, why would they not bring all back to life? To choose just one is fickle, capricious. It’s an abuse of such strength.
With soft steps, Anuk creeps higher, still holding a spear in either hand.
Life comes from death, but only in the form of one generation rising from another, not in the dead returning to life. Such power is unnatural. It reverses time. It defies the sanctity of life itself. If the dead can be raised, what value does life have?
Anuk grew up playing a game called Barthok, where colored stones were tossed into a ring of rope on the ground. The goal was simple. Knock the other person’s stones outside the circle of rope. At the start of each turn, the number of his stones within the circle gave him the right to throw additional stones. In this way, the game would be balanced before becoming lopsided, with one person slowly dominating all others. The game would end when only one person had stones in the ring. But then it would start again, and that’s something that Anuk always found perplexing—annoying. Victory would be stolen from him as the game was reset. He wanted to revel in his win, but his brothers wanted only to start again, and starting again made his victory meaningless—hollow. To his mind, raising the dead is resetting the game. It’s cheating. If it is not for all, then it is evil. Like starting another game of Barthok, it dismisses and demeans the value of life itself, making life trivial.
Anuk is angry.
His life is important—sacred. And he will fight evil. He will protect the tribe.
He steps up, unnoticed by the others. The young woman has her back to him. The previously dead man is pointing to the far side, missing Anuk’s approach. As Anuk’s dark skin is covered in dried mud and scraps of leaves, he blends in with the rainforest. Shadows flicker across his body, making him appear more like a tree limb than a human.
On the far side of the opening between the trees, the man with the broken leg sits on a ledge of shimmering light with a woman beside him. His leg, though, looks fine. It no longer has a brace strapped to it, and there’s no blood.
Anuk doesn’t recognize the other woman. She wasn’t among the bodies he found on the ground, but several bodies were mangled. Perhaps she is one of them, and she, too, has been raised from the dead.
Anuk steps up level with them. Light shimmers beneath his feet, and this alerts the dead man. The ‘other’ must catch the flicker of light on the edge of his vision. He turns toward Anuk with a look of terror on his face. He’s a demon, but Anuk is not deceived. Anuk already has one of his spears raised, held high over his shoulder. With all his might, he throws his spear. It strikes the man in the center of his chest and plunges through him, pinning him to the chair. Light explodes from the man’s body, not blood. His face is frozen in astonishment, staring down at the wooden shaft protruding from his ribcage.
Within a heartbeat, Anuk has flicked the other spear between his hands. Without breaking his stride, he throws it at the woman seated on the ledge. The spear catches her in the lower neck, and she, too, explodes in a shower of light. Her torn head lolls to one side, which is something he didn’t expect. Spears pierce rather than sever like an axe, but her head has been cut almost clean off her body, leaving only a thin trail of skin and light connecting it to her shoulders. Lifeless eyes stare sideways back at the forest. The spear is lodged in what should be the spine of her neck, but there’s no blood or bone, only a tangle of glowing fibers.
Both bodies slump forward with spears sticking out of them. Around the spearheads, though, there’s lightning instead of blood. Sparks spray through the air. Crackles of blue light arc out of the wounds, connecting with the invisible floor, causing it to light up as though someone had stepped there.
The man with the broken leg springs off the ledge. Anuk is distracted by the showers of light erupting around him. He’s never seen light behave like water before. Before Anuk can react, the man from the wreckage grabs the table in front of the young woman and wields it like an axe. He brings it crashing down on Anuk’s head.
Anuk crumples.
Pain bursts within his skull. Blood sprays from the side of his face as the table, too, explodes with light.
Thousands of strands of lightning ripple over Anuk’s body, causing his muscles to seize and his legs to shake. He falls to his knees, convulsing. Saliva drips from his lips. The last thing he sees is the crackling edge of the broken table swinging toward his face again as the man holds it like a club.
And then the world goes dark.
Jungle
“We find the wreckage. We take photos of it. That’s it. That’s all. Understood?” Major McCallum says, sounding like her high school math teacher. The inflatable fast boat noses in toward the thick jungle. As they approach the bank, trees loom overhead, and the illusion of safety they had on the open river evaporates. The nose of the boat rides up onto the muddy beach and tucks in beneath the canopy. The aluminum hull nudges the mud and comes to a halt.
Lisa nods but can’t bring herself to reply. Her emotions are running high.
“If he’s there, we’ll bring him home,” the major says. “But we can’t comb the jungle looking for him. You understand that, right? We get in. We get out.”
Again, Lisa nods. This is the best she can expect, the best they can do.
Specialist Gonzales cuts the engines. Major McCallum jumps from the bow onto the bank with a rope in hand. He ties the boat to the trunk of a tree. Gonzales hands him four packs, which confuses Lisa. McCallum sees the look on her face and clarifies.
“Oh, you’re a pack mule, too,” he says, grinning. “Once we go in there, we are on our own. With only five of us, there’s a change of plan. We’re taking in water and ammo. And lots of it. Enough to ensure we get there and back safely. Speed is of the essence. We’ve got purification tablets, but I don’t want to rely on them.”
Lisa nods in agreement.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’m good.” Lisa jumps from the inflated front of the boat. Her boots sink into the soft mud. She’s been in the jungle enough to know about the misery that lies ahead. The other two soldiers follow behind her. She notices the major doesn’t bring his MK17 SCAR, taking an M4 rifle from the boat instead, probably so the ammo used between them is interchangeable. But she wonders about the wisdom in not having as much firepower as possible.
