IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) (17 page)

CHAPTER 23

SNAP

After she had seen the lizard take the female, Maria continued down river and away from them as fast as her legs would take her, crossing in the shallows where she could to cover her own scent, sure that she would also be captured again at any moment. Fortunately, there were game tracks on both sides of the stream most of the way, which made the going easier along the water’s edge, and she was able to cover some distance. But, as daylight faded, the animal trails became invisible and she began to trip and stumble.

  She had just about resolved to stop for the night when she suddenly smelled food. Curious and hungry, she continued making her way slowly and carefully along the side of the river, hoping to find the source of the delicious odor. In the last of the dying light, her heart stopped once when she thought she saw the shadow of another one of the lizard men across the water. The creature was headed upriver in the same direction the other lizard had taken with the woman.

  She squatted, holding her breath, watching closely, but she could not detect any further movement after the first. The world had become dark grey over black and it was almost impossible to see anything clearly. Finally, she dared to exhale, trying to convince herself that whatever she thought she had seen had been only in her imagination.

  As she drew a breath, the delicious aroma of meat cooking once again invaded her senses. She sniffed deeply. Could it be that there was a human camp close by? That would at least somewhat explain the sudden appearance of the other female.

  In any case, someone was cooking something, and whatever it was, it didn’t carry the sickening stench of the human flesh she would never completely get out of her nostrils. If she somehow survived, she knew it would be her own dreadful secret for life that she had eaten the flesh of her mates.

  But this was a much more familiar smell, that of roasted bison.
Perhaps I am just imagining it,
she worried, as she caught another strong whiff of the roasting meat in the air.

  Maria was so hungry that she thought the aroma might drive her mad.
I will pray to the Creator that it is not more lizard men,
she thought, as she made her way closer to the source. Despite her fear, her curiosity and her hunger were making it impossible for her to stop following the scent.

  She picked her way around another curve in the river and finally spotted the dim light of a fire glowing across the water. She could see vague shadows moving around the light, but she was still too far away to make out exactly what or who was creating them.

  Maria crept, practically on her hands and knees, quietly approaching the firelight from the far side of the water, as if she were stalking prey. Then, somewhere along the dark path, her foot stepped on a dry branch and it cracked loudly. She stopped and held her breath, hoping whoever was occupying the camp across the river had not heard it.

* * *

Tom was gazing into the embers of the fire, trying to imagine what might be going on with Alex. His emotions told him that he should have gone with Mot to look for her, but his logic told him otherwise. There was no way he could have kept up with the much faster Arzat. He would only be a hindrance. Now, he was in the unfortunate position of having to hope that Mot could find her still alive, and then, somehow rescue her from the Arzat—or Arzats—who had taken her.

  Ara squatted nearby, sniffing the night, flicking her tongue occasionally. Her hands were busy with Tom’s knife crafting another killing stick. Though she was absorbed in her task, her senses were tuned to the dark around her. If danger lurked, she knew she was likely to become aware of it far sooner than the Pilot. As she worked, she also wondered about Mot and the fate of Alex.

  The female Arzat was blocking her thoughts from Tom. She knew that Alex’s chances were not good, and unlike Tom, she held little hope that her mate would find Alex alive. Ara tried to imagine meeting a human for the first time under the circumstances that the mysterious Arzat must have met Alex.
I would probably have killed her immediately myself,
she thought, discretely eyeing Tom.

  But the unknown Arzat hadn’t done that. At least Ara hadn’t been able to detect any immediate sign of it. She had smelled no blood and . . . well . . . she had just not sensed Alex’s death.
I would know,
she kept telling herself, as she put the final touches on the long shaft of wood.
My senses tell me she is still alive.
Maybe there
is
hope for her.

  Alex and Ara had gotten off to a rocky start when they had first met, but during their time together in the Utah ARC, she had become close to the little human female. This was not altogether surprising at the time, especially since the two of them felt that they might be the only intelligent females left on the planet—as well as the fact that
both
of them were pregnant.

  As far as Alex had explained it, the poisonous gasses that were released by the impact of the great fire rock would have killed almost every living creature on the earth. Obviously her female friend had been mistaken about the animals, and Ara vaguely wondered if she had also been wrong about humans. She had clearly been wrong about the Arzats—that was now a certainty.

 
But how was it possible that other Arzats still existed?
During her time with the humans before their second great sleep, Ara had thoroughly probed Doctor Pete’s mind. She was absolutely sure that none of the other adolescents from her Zanta clan had survived. By touring Pete’s memory, she had been able to vividly relive their destruction and her own narrow escape.

  Later, during their time together in the ARC, Tom and Alex had given her a history lesson that had convinced her of the impossibility that any Arzats could have survived into the “modern age” of the humans. Sixty-five million seasons was almost beyond her comprehension. Alex had converted the number into the Arzat base eight numerical system so that Ara could fully understand the vast amount of time she and Mot had originally slept.

 
But, was it possible that some of the astrologers from some of the other clans had also foreseen the advent of the Great Fire Rock? She and Mot had survived. Was it possible that the wise mothers of other Arzat clans also knew the secrets of the long sleep? Was it possible that they too had placed some of their offspring into the depths of their own caves?

  One thing Ara did not doubt—whatever world they had awakened to—there were other Arzats present. There was certainly at least one of them anyway. One large adult male, judging by the marks he had left and his distinctive scent.

  She looked over at her human companion. The Pilot’s eyes had grown heavy and Ara could sense that he was just about to drift off into sleep.
Good,
she thought, pondering the long journey they would have ahead of them at first light.

  She noted that she was uncharacteristically tired as well.
Perhaps it is the new life I have inside of me.
Ara could fully sense the presence of her offspring in her body, but it was far too soon to expect to communicate directly with its mind. That would come later, after she had produced her egg.

  She stood quietly, not wishing to disturb the Pilot, and critically eyed the entire length of her new weapon in the light of the fire. It was not perfectly straight and was a poor substitute for the finely crafted hunting sticks she was used to, but it would do for the moment.

  She placed a few more pieces of firewood into the flames and rolled the sharp end of the weapon in the fire’s embers exactly as she had done with the one she had given Mot. Finally satisfied, she removed the stick from the fire, blew on the tip, and set the stick to the side. She then carefully slid Tom’s knife back into its scabbard and took stock of their camp.

  Ara noted the fresh meat that still hung in the trees. She had purposely positioned it far enough away from the fire that any determined predator could steal it without immediately putting Tom’s life in danger. It was unfortunate, but due to their need to follow Mot as swiftly as possible, Ara realized that most of the meat would be wasted anyway.

  Her eyes scanned the camp’s perimeter. From the vantage point of where she would sleep, she would have an unobstructed view for several sticks—enough space to allow her to get between Tom and any potential attacker. Still, she was quite nervous. This would be the first time she had ever slept outside of the protection of the Arzat caves or even those that the humans had created—and Mot was gone.
I will have to sleep with “one eye open” as Tom had mentioned earlier
, she thought to herself.

  She looked back again at her human friend. He had fallen into a deep sleep, and Ara could sense that he was dreaming unpleasant dreams, but she could not see them without probing his mind further and potentially disturbing his slumber.

  I had better get some rest myself,
she thought
. Qu’aa
would be rising soon.  Her instincts told her that she and the Pilot would be facing a long and difficult day.

  Ara took one last look around, preparing to bed. She squatted and placed the palms of her hands on the ground. There was nothing moving anywhere close by that she could detect, just the flow of water in the streambed below their camp, but when she sniffed the air and flicked her tongue her senses immediately sharpened.

  She flicked again. A strange human scent lingered on the tip of her tongue. She was convinced at first that she must have mistaken it for the Pilot’s. She tried again, totally surprised. No, this was not the smell of Tom the Pilot and it was not the almost undetectable smell of Alex from earlier in the day. It was from some other human—
some other female
—but definitely not Alex!

  Ara slowly stood back up, clinging to her new hunting stick, now completely alert, her mantle unfolding behind her head, her eyes and her ears searching the night for any sight or sound that might help her discover the source of the strange odor. She sniffed again and caught an even stronger smell.
It is most certainly that of a human female, Ara
concluded,
as distinctive and different from that of a human male as were the scents of male and female Arzats.

  She tested the air often, sure that she would smell more humans, but she only detected the one female’s scent. She held her breath and listened intently, continuing to scan the night with her almost preternatural vision, looking for any sign of movement.
There
must
be more humans,
her mind kept telling her.
This must be some sort of trap.
From what she already knew of them, humans were no more prone to wandering around alone in the night than Arzats. It was quite confusing.

  Ara squatted and checked the earth again, her neck twisting easily in almost a complete circle as she continued to monitor the entire perimeter of the camp. No, there was nothing that suggested a group. If there were more of them, they were not moving at all. Ara was sure she would have detected it. But there was definitely at least one, somewhere out there in the night.

  She was just about to wake Tom when she heard the faint snapping of wood from across the water. Ara instantly looked in the direction of the sound and could just make out the face of a human behind the branches of some trees on the other side—a very small dot of faint light in the otherwise completely black forest.

  She quietly moved to Tom and placed her hand on his shoulder. He awoke with a start, but Ara was quick to silence him with her own finger across his lips. “Pilot, there is a human on the other side of the water. It is a female, and she appears to be alone. I am going to investigate.”

  “Is it Alex?” Tom asked only with his mind, which was fighting its way back from the fog of sleep.

  “No, it is not Alex. The human appears to be alone, but her scent is definitely not the scent of Alex. Stay as you are, Tom Pilot, and I will go and see. But you will have to guard yourself until I return. Do not move unless necessary. I wish to surprise her.”

  Ara carefully placed the long knife in Tom’s hand and quickly crossed the camp without making a sound, taking with her the killing stick she had just created. She slipped quietly through the trees on the camp’s perimeter and slid into the fast flowing stream just below it. Then, she crossed the water to an area she had spotted a few sticks from the human’s location. It was her intention to circle around and catch the human unaware from behind.

  Ara pulled herself silently from the stream, again checking the earth and the air for any sign of other humans or other potential threats, but there continued to be only the distinctive smell of the single female. She moved swiftly with light feet and without making a sound and stopped in the trees just behind the female.

  Ara flicked her tongue to get a full sense of the strange female and was surprised when she detected that she was also pregnant. She looked carefully to see if she was armed in any way and was pleased to see that she was not. In fact, Ara detected that the little human was so full of fear that she began to wonder if her heart would stop altogether if she approached her.

  Perhaps I can probe her mind,
Ara thought. She pushed past the female’s current thoughts of hunger and fear and eventually discovered her recent memory banks. In just a few moments, Ara had practically relived the slaughter at the human camp and the female’s narrow escape.