One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (22 page)

Enoch reached out his own hands to meet it. “Friends,” he said.

“
That’s enough,” Tek’tek hauled him back. He was touched at Enoch’s effort to integrate, yet revolted that Enoch could even consider that thing intelligent. An insect, perhaps indeed a silverfish, had long ago got in, munching its way through the old books. A visitor to the library in the early days of genetic enhancement had left dandruff, or loose hair, that the insect had eaten and spawned an uncontrolled mutation. “Probably it won’t hurt us. They likely live off dead cellulose. But let’s not take any risks,” he said.

Tek’tek hauled Enoch onto his back and retreated to the elevator. He was never more glad in his life than when they stepped out into the clean, green world again. “Xi will sort this out. Then it will be safe to return,” he said.

Sara calmed down at the sight of blue sky and green mountains. “Hold this for me,” she shoved the container into Tek’tek’s hands and took off. The bronze of her wings flashed in the light.

“
Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun,” Enoch said, eyes fixed on her.

Tek’tek looked down at the container.
Homo sapiens
, it read.
 

Professor Xi hustled his students off to be decontaminated, sent the genome sample to the medical staff, and dispatched a specialist team to the Old Stacks. He was flustered at how close they’d come to harm but he forgot his concerns when Enoch announced he wanted to meet him in the tutorial room.

Enoch regarded Professor Xi doubtfully, then reached out his hand. Xi took it gently with his pincers.

Enoch did not flinch.

“
Professor Xi is very happy to meet you,” Tek’tek translated.

“
How do you know the demon in the Old Stacks was dangerous and this one is safe?” Enoch asked.

“
Professor Xi is as human as we are.”

“
You are not human,” Enoch said. It was so flat, so emphatic a rejection that Tek’tek was stunned. For the first time he felt the gulf between them, between a civilisation built on technology and one built on faith. “You are not made to God’s image,” Enoch explained, perhaps sensing his hurt.

Tek’tek realised then that he and Enoch would never understand each other. Did it matter? They were unlikely to meet again after this summer. Why then did he feel so bad because Enoch would die at seventy years, just at the age when he, Tek’tek, would be starting his football career. Yet he felt bewildered, and all his certainties were shaken. What did it mean to be human? In sixty undisturbed years he had never contemplated that before. His thick fists trembled. He wanted, unaccountably, to cry. He desperately wanted Enoch to understand. He knelt, and held out his hand.

“
I’m human where it counts,” he said. “In my heart and in my mind.”

Perhaps Enoch felt the same pain, in his alien, incomprehensible world of sin and redemption. He took Tek’tek’s hand in both of his. “My son, prove your soul in your life: and if it be wicked, give it no power,” he said, very earnestly indeed.

∞
¥
∞
Ω
∞
¥
∞
 

Sara came by Tek’tek’s room that night. “I want to apologise for my behaviour in the Old Stacks,” she said.

“
You were fine,” Tek’tek said, furtively kicking rubbish beneath his bed.

“
No I wasn’t fine. I was completely terrified. I was that close to ploughing into a wall,” she said. “I want to say sorry, and thank you.” Whereupon she ran her hands up his back, and flung one graceful leg over his hindquarters. She kissed him, warm and deep.

When Tek’tek woke the next morning, face planted in his pillow, Sara was gone. She left an eyeview note to say she was in the geography lab. Reaching out, he found a metre-long feather tangled in the sheets.

He sat and looked at it, turning the feather this way and that so the morning sun touched the bronze highlights. Being gifted an avian feather was a rare and special trust. Avian lovers swapped feathers, they’d even implant each other’s feathers. It was called flying on love’s wings. Problem was Sara hadn’t gifted this. She’d just lost it. He should return it. He tucked it under his bed, and slunk off to the geography lab.

Sara was translating between Enoch and Professor Xi as they studied a round ball covered in coloured paper set in a brass plated, semicircular mounting.

“
What’s that?” Tek’tek asked, struggling not to think of feathers.

“
A globe,” Xi said, proudly. “An ancient map of Earth.”

Tek’tek ambled over. “What are these things?” he pointed at coloured blotches.

“
Nations,” Sara said. Eyeview had to translate that.

“
You mean they used to divide a world,” Tek’tek was appalled. A planet was small enough in the vastness of space. Why carve it up? He checked eyeview and stumbled over a whole range of unfamiliar concepts. From nations he moved to tribalism, nationalism, colonialism, and post-colonialism. Then he discovered football hooliganism. At last, a history lesson he could really appreciate.

“
Are you even listening?” Xi asked, irritated.

Tek’tek returned to the present with a start.

Xi tapped his pincers on the globe. “We are here, in what was once New South Wales on the east coast of Australia. The only other known surviving Original community is in Vermont, in the north-eastern point of the United States. It takes five hours to travel there.”

“
Five
hours
? I can be home in five hours,” Tek’tek moaned.
 

“
For the purposes of our, er, field trip, Enoch has agreed to air travel but he has concerns, so we’ll stay within the planet atmosphere,” Xi said. “I warn you that once the Vermont community decided to have done with modern society they tore up roads and railways and drove off visitors with primitive projective weapons known as guns. It took me a long time to get the ethics permission to visit them, and I don’t want any more, er, unfortunate occurrences. Enoch should lead as the most obviously human.”

“
As the only human,” Enoch corrected the translation.

“
For the purposes of this trip, you are right,” Xi conceded. “Sara, you may be useful if they think you are an angel. Tek’tek, you are back-up. Keep out of sight. I’ll stay here and monitor events,” he concluded, sadly.

“
Why is it so important to visit them if they don’t want to be visited?” Tek’tek asked.

They all just looked at him. This was clearly something he should have known from the reading. He’d ask Sara on the journey, he decided.

Late that evening they met up again at the airfield on the western side of campus. Tek’tek had kit bags strapped across his hindquarters, filled with food, first aid kits, tools, torches and cold weather gear.

Enoch had his Bible and his suitcase.

An intra-planetary hopper was already primed, sitting on the field under the lights like a giant ceramic spider. Enoch faltered when he saw it, and his sweating grasp slipped on his suitcase. He breathed deep, squared his shoulders and muttered a prayer as he strode on board. The hopper folded its legs and took off. The flight was uneventful but Enoch spent the whole time in prayer, unconvinced of its ability to stay aloft without divine aid. Tek’tek tried talking to Sara on eyeview.

“
Let’s talk so Enoch can understand us,” Sara suggested

That was exactly what he didn’t want. He gave up, and slept.

The hopper touched down at the nearest safe landing place to the Vermont community, on the fringes of a huge, ancient forest. The sky was lightening in the east on a dim, grey day. Undisturbed snow lay thick on the ground, and the great oak trees were bare. They stepped out into clear, freezing cold, and Tek’tek unpacked the storm weather gear for the other two. He didn’t need his. Compared to home this weather was mild, even a touch balmy.

Sara and Enoch huddled over a paper map Sara had produced. “The village is here,” they pointed out. Sara didn’t want to fly in case she caused alarm. They were in for a long tramp through dense forest.

“
Get on my back,” Tek’tek said, resigned.

After an hour’s journey they found a rough road. Tek’tek set the others down and they advanced cautiously until they came in sight of a huddle of stone houses. Enoch’s shoulders slumped. Even from a distance the village was clearly a ruin.

I
t didn’t take them long to explore. There were a dozen empty houses and an abandoned church. The rooftops were fallen in. Furniture had been left to moulder away. Saplings rooted themselves in the cobbled street. Enoch explored the church, and reported that the church vessels, the communion cup and cross, were gone. He took that as a good sign, that the community had not died out but moved on.
 

Sara glanced up at the overcast sky, threatening more snow. “We can see if there’s another village nearby. I’d better fly and risk alarm, or we’ll be caught by bad weather. Enoch, I think I can carry you with me if you like.”

Enoch agreed, but only after several deep breaths. Tek’tek took his book and case. Sara lifted Enoch by holding him around the waist. He started praying as soon as his feet left the ground. Sara struggled with Enoch’s weight while rising, then soared aloft.

Enoch shouted and pointed below. “We can see some huts in a clearing,” Sara reported. Tek’tek bounded through the woodlands after them. The sun broke through the clouds, gilding the foliage and the two flyers. They descended until they brushed the topmost leaves.

Then a large rock rose almost lazily through the air towards them.

“
Watch out!” Tek’tek shouted. The rock only looked slow. It was far too fast for Sara.

Sara let Enoch drop into the tree branches. With spread wings gleaming bronze she tried to back air and dodge. The rock hit her right wing. There was horrible snap, and Sara crashed.

Tek’tek tore through the forest. He found Enoch standing over Sara. She lay spreadeagled on the ground, one wing broken, one leg doubled up beneath her.

“
Sara!” Tek’tek called.

She made no sound, and did not move.

Enoch faced a cluster of huts built of bark and thatch in a snow-covered clearing. His clothes were torn, and his face and arms were scratched. His hands were spread wide and open. “Enoch,” he said. “Friends.”

A small crowd confronted him. Eyeview identified them as adolescent human, five male, one female. They wore furs and clutched rocks. Eyeview made a wide scan. There was no other humans in the village or surrounds.

The teenagers were at the ugly end of the human spectrum. Faces were distorted, features melted, limbs misplaced or missing. They were thickset and squat, less than a metre in height.

“
Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,” eyeview scrolled red.

Some visitor, long ago, left something they didn’t intend. Without contact with the outside world the uncontrolled mutation had spread.

As Tek’tek approached the teenagers hurled their rocks, then ran behind the huts. Enoch threw himself over Sara. The rocks rained on his head and shoulders.

A creaking sound came from behind the huts.

Enoch raised himself, bleeding from a gash in his forehead. “They have a catapult,” he gasped.

Eyeview flashed pictures of a device even more primitive than guns, then reported the catapult was being reloaded behind the southernmost hut.

Tek’tek felt a surge of anger and fright, like he’d never felt in his life. Two green streaks shot from his shoulder eyes. They seared through the snow on either side of Enoch and Sara. They blasted through tree trunks. They struck the hut. It collapsed in a smoking shower of sticks and bark revealing a contraption of timber and taut rope cradling a boulder. The green streaks struck the catapult.

It exploded.

The teenagers were thrown in all directions.

“
Woah. They’ve never done that before,” Tek’tek said. He should have looked it up after the Old Stacks incident. “Alright, it was an illegal military patch, but I swear I thought it was just night vision,” he said.

Five figures got up and ran. One stayed sprawled on the ground.

Tek’tek knelt by Sara and pulled out his first aid kits. He slapped them on her injuries. The sentient gels analysed and set about their tasks. Sara moaned and stirred. Tek’tek cracked a first aid kit for Enoch’s bleeding forehead.

“
Don’t,” Sara hissed, opening her eyes. The painkillers were taking effect. “They might change his genome,” she whispered.

Enoch took his suitcase and his Bible, then ran towards the ruined hut.

“
Stop him before he touches—” Sara fell back.

Tek’tek hurried after Enoch, coughing in the cloud of smoke and dust. Eyeview scanned the small body. Deceased. Female, twelve years old. “Shit,” Tek’tek said. Outside a football field he’d never hurt anyone in his life. Now he’d killed a child.

Enoch knelt by the girl’s side. He gently straightened her body, and folded her arms across her chest.

“
You shouldn’t really touch — uncontrolled mutation,” Tek’tek mumbled.

Enoch lifted his sister’s lace from his suitcase. He laid the lace reverently over the girl. Then he opened his book.

“
Look, I’m really sorry. We have to go… We don’t have time for—” Tek’tek stopped.

“
For dust you are and to dust you will return,” Enoch recited.

“
Watch out!” Tek’tek saw the five teenagers re-appear from the forest. Green lights hissed from his shoulders. He snapped a mental command and they blinked out.

Enoch rose to his feet and spread his empty hands. “Friends,” he said.

The biggest of the boys made the sign of the cross. Then he threw a rock. It hit Enoch’s face, and split his cheek.