Entropy first contact, p.22
Entropy (First Contact), page 22
“I don’t trust them,” Jillian says.
“Who?” the major asks.
“Anyone.”
“Anyone?”
“Look at those idiots—all those toddlers running social media and AI. Would you trust them with this? Because they will jump on this. They will want this power.”
Being a pragmatist, the major reverses the conversation. “Wait a minute. You said the aliens were dead. Murdered. What do you expect us to do about that? I mean, why go back? Why not get the hell out of here and then reassess things? We could keep this quiet and come back with a proper expedition.”
“We were in shock.”
“Were?”
Jillian isn’t fazed by the major’s counter. “We fled, but we should have stayed.”
“Why?”
Jillian is still holding both the smooth rock and her damaged iPhone. She looks down at them as she speaks. “I think there’s still hope. Don’t you see? It’s the arrangement that determines usability. Like this, it’s a rock. Like this, it’s an iPhone. Same material. Different configuration.”
“Precise configuration,” Mick says.
“And you think you can resurrect them?” the major asks.
“I—I don’t know, but we have to try.”
“No, we don’t,” he replies. “We have to get the hell out of here—alive!”
“You don’t get it,” Mick says. “He used us as bait.”
The major is quiet, listening intently as Mick speaks with a quiver in his voice.
“We’re the reason they’re dead. All they were doing was trying to help.”
Jillian butts in, pointing at herself and then the forest, saying, “Trying to help us and the village.”
“And he used us to get to them… to kill them.”
The major says, “Look, I get that you feel bad, but this isn’t a solution. We could die trying to save them.”
“They died trying to save us,” Mick replies.
“They died during First Contact,” Jillian says. “We owe them at least a chance.”
Lisa splutters, saying, “This is… This is…”
“Big,” Mick says.
“That’s one word for it,” Lisa replies with a smile, loving the way he’s injected a little understated humor into the discussion.
“We need to try,” Jillian says, wiping tears from her eyes.
Mick says, “If we remove the spears, they might just stand a chance.”
Lisa asks him, “You seriously think they’re just going to fix themselves?”
“Why not?” Mick asks. “We do this all the time. Hell, they fixed my leg, but all they did was speed up a natural process. They took something that normally takes months to unfold and reduced it to minutes.”
The major doesn’t agree. Lisa can see he’s conflicted. He grits his teeth, wrapping his fingers over his lips. As far as body language goes, he’s not subtle. He wants to speak, but he’s preventing himself from saying the wrong thing. Lisa catches him glancing at his pack. He’s thinking about the satellite phone. At this point, there’s what he should do and what he wants to do. The others may not be able to see it—they don’t know about the phone—but Lisa understands the conflict raging within him. His sense of duty must compel him to report what he’s learned, but he’s listened to their reasoning and is at least pausing instead of reacting. Lisa has to say something. She doesn’t feel she can leave this decision to him alone.
She addresses him, saying, “There’s us. There’s them. And there’s the world at large, right?”
“Right,” Jillian says, but it’s clear she is oblivious to how close the major is to grabbing his satellite phone and talking to his command group, alerting them to what Mick and Jillian say they’ve found.
Lisa addresses the major, looking him in the eye, daring him to look away. “What are you going to do?”
Her choice of words is precise. You, not we. To his credit, he holds her gaze. His eyes narrow.
“I don’t know.”
Lisa says, “We need more information.”
“We do,” he says. “We need to make a proper assessment.”
“Yes,” Lisa says, picking up on his sentiment, understanding what he means. “We can’t phone this in before we know what we’re actually dealing with.”
“Oh, yeah,” he replies, and she can see he’s struggling with the absurdity of all he’s heard, unsure whether to believe the survivors or not.
Lisa knows it’s only now that Jillian and Mick realize that the major is in contact with the wider world. The two of them exchange looks.
The major nods without saying anything more. He’s thinking. He must be roleplaying a discussion he does not want to have with his commander. Calling his US base and telling them there are aliens in the rainforest would see him relieved of command. For Lisa, it’s intriguing to see how he defers to her as a civilian. He knows he should be sending this up the military chain of command, but she’s given him an out. He needs concrete intel before he escalates.
With a sense of authority, he says, “We go back. We document what we find. And we get out.”
Lisa nods, knowing these are roughly the same instructions he was given before they left Base Javari. He’s using that to justify his decision. This is as close to a concession as Mick and Jillian are going to get. Mick seems pragmatic, but Jillian is idealistic. From the expression on her face, she’s unsure where she should land, but she seems to accept that she’s got her way. For now.
Major McCallum presses the small button on the side of his throat, talking softly into the microphone, telling the soldiers the change in plans. If they reply, it’ll be with a single push of a button as they won’t risk uttering words that might give themselves away to the native hunting them in the rainforest.
The Hunt
Anuk slips through the jungle, shifting his shoulders between bushes, ducking and weaving with his hips, taking the most direct route through the vines and ferns, circling around trees towering over him.
He doesn’t need to see his quarry to learn about them. He needs only to listen to the forest. The surge and wane of insects and birds, as well as the alarm calls from monkeys, are like radar for him, giving him a sense of his bearing relative to the intruders.
Anuk’s bare feet are calloused, but they feel the texture of the ground passing beneath him. He crosses a track. Mud squishes between his toes, telling him about animals on the move. Without looking, he knows when he crosses the path of a pig or a deer. He can feel the subtleties in their trails. Their hooves punch distinct shapes, compressing the mud in different ways. The distance between the tracks reveals the animal’s stride and its character, telling him whether it’s old or young, healthy or injured, whether it’s panicked or grazing, but this mud speaks of outsiders.
Anuk understands the unspoken language of the jungle floor.
The jaguar’s tread is wide and soft, barely making an indent. The anaconda leaves a long, slender trail, evenly spreading its weight. Rodents create a wave of impressions as they scurry around, but humans are clumsy. When he’s close to the village, Anuk can tell not only the difference between men and women based on the size of their impressions and the depth of their indentations, but also between individual men. Stride length relates to height. Some men walk on the outside of their feet; others favor the heel; older men limp.
Anuk mimics the jaguar, walking on the balls of his feet. Now, though, he’s detected something different. Compressed blocks of mud squished by hard impressions. Boots. The strangers from the sky wore hides on their feet that left similar impressions, but these are different. They’re harsh. They speak of determination. Without looking, Anuk knows these are the impressions of warriors. He can sense their direction and determination, and even how old the tracks are by how much the edges have collapsed and how water has pooled within them.
Anuk’s tribe has had fleeting contact with outsiders over the years. Normally, it’s news of other-worlders cutting down trees or digging up rocks, told to them by the tribes further down the valley. Occasionally, tribes will barter for things of value, trading skins or baskets for trinkets. Sometimes, strange objects come from the outside lands, like bowls made without hollowing wood. He’s been told it is steel, as though the word itself holds more meaning than just the strange sound. Steel—to his mind, it’s a shiny rock pressed into thin panels, and it perplexes him how that could be, but it doesn’t bother him. He doesn’t see it as magic so much as unknown. Why has his village not gained this mastery?
Anuk has met tribesmen from the valley wearing the boots of outsiders to protect their feet. Most of the young men in his village marveled at the idea of having exotic brown boots on their feet as well, but not Anuk. He despises those who would weaken the tribe. And now, outside warriors have arrived.
Anuk is wearing the skull of the caiman he killed with his bare hands when he became a man. Shadows fall on the dark scales, obscuring his features from view, changing the way his face appears among the leaves, allowing him to blend in with the jungle. Mud has caked on his skin, protecting him from insects and helping him disappear in the shadows.
Anuk understands the hunt.
Eyes define his tactics. Animals like caiman and jaguar have eyes facing forward. They are predators, with eyes set together, allowing them to focus on attack. Those with eyes on the sides of their skulls, like deer and pigs, are prey. Their focus is on fleeing at the first sign of danger. Once, Anuk saw a jaguar pull a large caiman from the river with its jaws clamped over the skull. The dark-spotted big cat struggled to drag its prey into the forest. For its part, the caiman thrashed around, but the jaguar simply increased the force in its jaws. Blood seeped from around its teeth. To his surprise, the jaguar attacked from straight in front, where the caiman could see it best. At the time, he didn’t understand why. Anuk realized the jaguar couldn’t approach from behind as the animal’s body and tail were resting in the water. He wondered why the jaguar didn’t approach from the side. And then he realized that even predators can become prey. And like prey animals, their sight is honed to detect an ambush from their flanks. The slightest motion from the side triggers a response, but from in front, their pride leaves them vulnerable.
Humans are like caiman and jaguars. They're dangerous when confronted. Their only weakness lies in understanding their strengths.
Anuk sweeps around one of the outside warriors, creeping through the ferns, approaching him from in front. The man carries the weapons of another world. They’re lethal, but only if they’re on target, only if they’re turned against him. Anuk will turn this man’s strength against him. He will be the jaguar to this caiman.
Anuk presses through the leaves, knowing his quarry is looking directly at him, understanding he won’t see him, just the wind pushing the branches around him. This man is a seasoned warrior. He’s looking for a face, a human face. Like the caiman, he’s expecting an attack to come from the sides or from behind. No one would dare attack him from in front, not from where he can so easily see the danger. No one but Anuk.
With mud smeared over his body and his mask hiding his face, Anuk blends in with the jungle. Birds squawk overhead. Monkeys howl, but not in alarm. He’s invisible even to them.
Anuk is protecting his village, but the reason why escapes him. He fights not out of anger or bitterness, not to defend his way of life or to ward off evil. Anuk acts out of duty. He’s been told this is expected of him, not that it is right or necessary. Loyalty compels him to be diligent even if he despises the elders. In his mind, the fight is natural, like monkeys grooming each other in the trees or lizards climbing into the canopy to reach the warmth of the sunlight in the upper branches. Were he to intrude on the homes of these men, he’d expect them to hunt him as well, and this is why he does not leave his range. Each to their own, like the jaguar marking territory with the stench of piss.
As for the lives of these people, they are nothing to him, no more so than the deer he hunts or the fish in the river. That they are the same as him is lost on his mind. That they, too, have families and friends is meaningless. In his village, there are carers and killers. To Anuk, these are roles that ensure cohesion. His sister is a carer, as is his brother. Anuk has only ever been a killer. He enjoys the way his pulse races as he pursues a monkey in the trees. He seeks a sense of satisfaction that can only be found in the moment of a kill.
Anuk creeps through the undergrowth. He’s so close he can smell the fear in the man’s sweat. It’s the unknown. The warrior is scared, but he will die a noble death. Anuk will give him honor. He will release him from the bonds of this world.
Anuk times his approach, seeing the clothing of the man through the fronds of a fern as the warrior rounds a bend in the narrow track. The outsider’s brown boots are covered in mud. Anuk will wash them clean and take them as a trophy. He will not wear them, and not wearing them will send a message to others in his tribe—they need not outsiders, not their ways or their things, only their defeat.
As rain falls, the wind picks up, allowing Anuk to step beneath the swaying branches. The man looks to either side of him but never directly at Anuk, standing there in the darkness. If he senses anything at all, it’s the illusion of staring into the undergrowth, seeing shadows flickering in the distance. Anuk is not in a rush. The kill is his. He wants to learn about his prey. The man carries a fire stick. Anuk has heard of these. They launch arrows smaller than a stone, hurtling them with the crack of lightning. They can kill a man at a distance far greater than that of an arrow, but that strength reveals their weakness—they assume their adversary will remain at a distance.
With soft steps, Anuk lurches forward, intruding on the man, lunging at him with his stone knife raised. To this warrior, it would seem as though the trunk of a tree is falling toward him. He reacts, but he’s too slow. Anuk’s blade is swift and sharp. With a flick of his wrist, Anuk cuts the man’s throat open, running his knife around the man’s neck in what would be little more than the blink of an eye. It’s only then that the man sees anything out of the ordinary. The horror on his face as the jungle explodes to life is apparent in his wide eyes. Terror seizes his mind. Even now, he doesn’t understand who killed him, only that he’s dying. He chokes, grabbing his throat, but Anuk’s cut is precise, stretching around his neck, severing the arteries that lead from the heart to the head. The warrior falls to his knees, gasping for a breath that will never come.
Anuk takes a knee before him. He stretches his arm over the man’s chest and cradles his head in his hand, preventing him from falling into the mud.
“There is no shame,” he says softly, knowing the man won’t understand him, but offering him the comfort of words as his life fades. “We live. We die. And we live again. Not in this time. Not in this form. But life cycles like the rain.”
The warrior’s fingers twitch, trying to reach some part of his fire stick. Anuk may not know how the device works, but he understands the danger it presents. He doubts the warrior could turn it on him, but the man doesn’t need to. He needs only to unleash the thunder, and that will warn his tribe. Anuk respects the warrior’s conviction even in death. He rests his hand on the dying man’s hand and closes his fingers, pulling the man’s hand away from the fire stick. Anuk watches as tears flood the man’s eyes. There is reason there, understanding, resignation, regret.
Blood soaks the ground.
The warrior’s body falls limp. His life is gone, fleeing like a bird into the sky. Anuk lays the man on the track, leaving him for the jaguar who will smell the fresh blood and come in the dark of night for a feed.
There’s whispering.
Anuk crouches. There is something in the warrior’s ear. With his fingernails, he plucks a black device from the dead man’s ear and listens. Voices speak. The village elders would be worried by such a mystery, but not Anuk. Rather than assuming the worst or attributing anything he doesn’t understand to the gods, Anuk realizes there is nothing to fear in the unknown. No one knows how a child is formed within a woman, but that doesn’t mean it is mystical. It’s natural. Even when the steel birds soar low over the jungle with the roar of thunder trailing behind them, Anuk is not afraid. If the birds of the forest can soar through the sky, then is it that surprising that outsiders can fly as well? Not through magic but knowledge. Anuk would love to know how, but he suspects even the outsiders barely comprehend the complexity. And just like the birds of the rainforest, sometimes the steel birds fall to the ground, perhaps not struck by an arrow, but something humbled them. Seeing the crushed remains of a steel bird with a dead woman inside dispelled the myths of the elders and their lies of the other’s invincibility. The outsiders differ not from those in his village. As he suspected all along, they bleed and die like anyone else in the jungle.
Anuk listens.
A few words are repeated over what, to Anuk, looks like a seed nut with stringy bits of bark hanging from it. He may not know how this device works or what the words mean, but the repetition tells him what he needs to know. They’re trying to get hold of the warrior Anuk just killed, and the lack of a response will tell them all they need to know. They will know the man is dead. And they will know Anuk is coming for them. With that, Anuk reaches into the blood and mud and smears fresh grit and dirt and leaves on his chest, renewing his camouflage, making him like the jaguar, nothing more than the flicker of shadows in the dark of the jungle.
Anuk steps into the ferns, covering his tracks with the sweep of his feet. The incessant call of insects and the shrieking of birds hides the sound of leaves and twigs breaking softly beneath his feet. A large lizard climbs a tree. It’s a good sign. Normally, they’ll drop into the leaves and flee or circle to the far side and scramble up the bark. If his four-legged brother was caught unawares, no man will detect his approach.
