Primal Estate: The Candidate Species (42 page)

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Authors: Samuel Franklin

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During the week when he wasn’t searching the internet or making love to Shainan on the small patch of turf in the back yard, he hunted the woods behind the house when Rick was at work. It was a beautiful tool, he thought. He’d taken more meat with less effort than ever in all his life. And he had done it alone. It had been heaven. His only complaint was that it was so loud that it made his ears ring. Now he’d been discovered. He knew he probably hadn’t earned the right to hunt this territory. But he had told Rick he needed to hunt, and Rick seemed to agree. He had been warned.
“Let’s sit at the kitchen table.” Rick beckoned him to sit. As Utu assessed Rick’s serious demeanor, it appeared that he had experienced some kind of momentous revelation. Utu dispelled his first impression regarding the discovery of the carcasses and suspected this had something to do with the Provenger. Utu believed that Rick now knew some of what he’d been waiting to tell him.
“I’ve just become aware of what is going on with this harvest, how it is likely to be done, and where we’ll stand after it happens. I’ve left you alone for these last few days. I wanted to build trust between us. I think we’re part of the way there.” Rick got two glasses out of the cabinet, the wine out of the refrigerator, and put them down on the table. They both sat down. Up to now, when they ate, Utu had refused alcohol.
“It’s our custom that when two friends come to an agreement, they have a drink together. Will you consider it?” Rick hoped some wine would loosen his lips.
Utu looked at the wine. Alcohol had destroyed his people after it had become readily available, and he viewed it as spiritual poison. But he knew that each new situation deserved new consideration. “I’ll consider it.”
“I just found out that the current harvests are merely preliminary trials of some type, that the harvests will increase rapidly for people in the harvest age, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, until such time that it becomes so obvious that everyone can’t ignore it and things start going to hell.” Rick paused to get his thoughts together.
“Synster is stalling to get people off drugs; they need their meat organic. When that happens, all remaining humans who have been designated for the harvest will be taken all at once, or at least as fast as they can process everyone. Once most are taken, the Provenger will come down in massive numbers, shut down our power plants, remove toxic waste, reduce our buildings to dust, and eradicate our history and technology. The few pockets of people that remain around the world will literally be reduced to the Stone Age. No offense.”
“None taken,” Utu replied without missing a beat.
Rick continued. “I can only suppose that you and I will be among those lucky few, along with everyone in this town and anyone else on a no-kill list, who will remain alive. That is, if you can call it lucky. We’ll be allowed to start over, building population and civilization again.”
“Where did you learn this information?” Utu asked.
“Well, that’s another thing I need to talk to you about. I’m having an affair with Nwella. She’s a Provenger.” Rick saw a black stare come back at him and added for context, “She is
my
woman.”
Utu raised an eyebrow. “Sexy, aren’t they? Not as good as Earth women, if you ask me,” commented Utu, keeping his cool remarkably well, considering his landlord was now sleeping with the enemy. Nothing surprises me anymore, thought Utu. I did it myself. But can I trust him? Let’s see where this goes.
“She’s Synster’s daughter,” Rick added to the already interesting scenario, “and she’s pregnant.”
Utu made a variety of painful faces at the flood of unpleasant disclosures, puffed air out of his lungs, pushed back from the table, and shook his head. “Couldn’t be. I’ve slept with many, many, Provenger women. None of them ever got pregnant. And Synster’s daughter?” Utu put his hands behind his head. “He is going to tear you apart. She’s making it up. Gotta be…lying to you…the pregnant part.”
Rick was growing agitated. “From what you could tell, do they obey their laws?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do they obey all of their laws all the time? For instance, in my…our society, we have laws, but we frequently ignore them and do the thing anyway,” Rick explained.
“Oh, yes, they always obey their laws… almost all the time.”
“Almost?” Rick asked, the pitch in his voice going up an octave.
“Yes, almost. As long as they have something to lose in their society, they obey their laws. If they are cast out, for some reason, usually morality issues, then they disobey. They are “rufqwrinst.” It means like a pirate, living outside the law. They would be very dangerous then. But I only heard of that happening a couple times. If you want to know what I think, I think she is lying to you, for some advantage. I never got a Provenger female pregnant; how could you? Look at us.” Utu motioned, pointing back and forth between the two of them. In his world of biology, the bigger the man, the more virile he was.
Rick sat back and crossed his arms. “She said it happened just after I went through the Recombinant. Would that make a difference?”
“You went through the Recombinant? How did you get them to put you through?”
“Carson was injured and sick. I asked and they said it would give him a better chance at survival. Also, I didn’t want to subject him to something like that alone. I guess Synster needed me badly enough or had some other motive. If it was the Recombinant that allowed this to be possible, I don’t think they knew it could happen. They haven’t put many humans through, so they told me.”
“My mother was put through before I was born. So was my father, I think. But now you’ll have a nice healthy baby, maybe as strong as me. Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?” Utu smiled at him. “You know the Provenger have a way of knowing that.”
“Yeah, we do, too. So do you still think she’s lying? She also said she had a dream.”
“Maybe not,” Utu paused. “And Provenger don’t dream.”
“Well, she said she did, and looked up the study they did on Shainan’s dreaming…said they were looking to fill in some knowledge gaps in their history.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Utu lied. In fact, he knew quite a bit. Dreams were indicators of spiritual energy, both good and evil. Provenger didn’t have dreams. To Utu this could mean only one thing. They had no spirits; they had no souls. He’d overheard rumors that long ago they’d considered the possibility of researching a type of energy that humans would consider souls. For some reason it was never pursued, maybe because of the war.
“Well, do you think Nwella lied about the harvest?” Rick asked.
Utu stared at Rick for a long time. Rick waited. Utu stared some more. Finally, Utu spoke, “I don’t think so, if she is pregnant. I think you can trust what a pregnant Provenger female tells you. It has been my experience that when they need to deceive, they avoid you before they would lie. It’s offensive to lie. That isn’t something they’re really likely to do when pregnant. Regarding the harvest, I think that’s how they’re going to do it, or something close. They will return this world to where it was and probably do the whole cycle all over again. With their ability to move forward in time, it is not long for them, these thousands of years we need to fill Earth. It is only years for them. The problem they have with an intelligent population is that they always advance. That’s why they have to ensure they don’t advance too fast. Did you ever wonder how many times they’ve already done this to us?”
“Maybe…” Rick then asked, “If you’ve been thinking all this, then why didn’t you tell me?”
“You work for the Provenger, Rick. Why should I tell you anything?”
“You should understand why I do. They threatened to kill me, everyone in my family, and everyone I know in the most horrific way.”
“Well,” Utu paused, collecting his memories on Provenger laws and protocols, “they can kill you for the sake of the project, I think, but they can’t just go around and kill everyone else, not for punishment or revenge. I think that would be against their law. Probably all those that they would have killed for your punishment would die in the harvest anyway.”
“Hopefully, the Provenger will honor their deal. Someone needs to survive to perpetuate the species. I’ve been able to exempt family and friends, take them off the harvest list,” Rick explained further. “Also, by working with them, I can position myself to know them, learn their weaknesses.”
“I see,” Utu said, processing the word “exempt” in its context for the first time. Utu continued, “But also, and I’ve got to say this, most of my knowledge of the Provenger is from hearing them speak to each other. I couldn’t ask questions,” Utu explained. “I need to tell you now, Rick. Obviously you’ve figured it out. I’m good with languages, like the Provenger. I can speak their language, yours, and all the others, to some degree, from the interaction I’ve had with them. One of their favorite things to do was to help themselves learn by trying to teach me. Of course, I couldn’t learn a thing,” Utu smiled. “I never let it be known that I knew their language or any of the others. If I had, I would be a threat to them, and they wouldn’t have let me go. This is my secret. If you let it go, I will die. They will kill me. You haven’t told Nwella I can communicate with you?”
“No, of course not. But if she becomes an outcast, she will come to live with us, in our own little Stone Age tribe.”
“That would be awkward,” Utu admitted. “We can’t let her know we talk to each other. And if we do, I’ll have to act simple, stupid.”
Rick looked up at him with doubt.
Utu continued, “That’s how they know me. At least, until we know we can trust her, if that would ever be possible.” Utu paused. “Does it scare you, losing all your technology?”
“Yes, I suppose it does.”
“Your technology, it is all a thin veil of civility concealing the brutishness beneath. It is not real.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. That’s very profound you know,” Rick admitted, impressed by the thirty-seven-year-old shaman.
“I read it last night on the internet. I think Shainan is getting jealous of it. She wants me in bed.” The two hunters, twelve thousand years and a kitchen table apart, smiled at each other and decided to have a drink.
Shainan had gone to bed early, hoping Utu would follow, but she instead awoke to the noises of men talking in the kitchen. The sounds comforted her as she remembered them from when she was a girl. The men would drink their ferment, when they had it, through reeds from the single skin in which it was made. They would tell their stories, bragging and fighting, usually not hurting each other. In the good years, it was almost always in fun. She would lift her head from the buffalo hide and strain with both ears to listen in on the stories. She wanted to hear them now.
Shainan rose from her bed and sat on the floor, opening the door a crack to listen. She was glad to identify the voices of the three of them, Carson, Rick, and her sun god. She could hear they were telling stories of bear, horses, deer, bison, mammoth, and elk, not because she understood the words but because she understood the sounds – the laughter, the exaggerated tones, the inflections. It warmed her heart. It gave her the feeling of safety to have a tribe again. As insignificant as it was, it gave her hope that perhaps they could one day be free of the Provenger. Life could return to normal.
She flattened herself on the floor, ear next to the crack in the door, and closed her eyes. She was back in time, a girl of the tribe, sleeping in her tent with her mother and sisters, the boys and the men outside by the fire, talking of their hunts to provide for their tribe. She would need that tribe if the child growing within her were to have any chance of a future. She listened.
“Get the…yes, yes, so when we get close we give all the spears to the smallest your age Carson so we’ll have our hands free, we’d never do it with less than ten we taught the dogs to stay with us so we would always have a solid ring around the beast the dogs would be running back and forth they’d make a fantastic roar and confusion where did you spear first well all over really some for the eyes head some would try for the tendons on the back of the legs one time we threw all our spears and the mammoth was over them and wouldn’t move so we had to get her to move to another spot no shit to get and the spears under her the first spears that went in she would always pull out with her trunk if she could reach them, then once we can put more spears in her than she can pull out and maybe a tendon or two horrible business so the boys just keep handing us spears yes and just as fast as we can when we get an opening and when tired we rest and collect spears that she’s pulled out and thrown and the boys get a chance enough blood loss and she goes down…As many spears we could with sharp bone tips, some with very sharp stone, best spears are heavy to go deep hit blood they fall out we throw again they can’t be too thick so they’ll go in by long thin hardened shaft to a point at the end of thick shaft I got hit by a trunk once thrown onto Risto…
The talking stopped, and Shainan’s eyes popped open when she heard and recognized the name of her cousin. Risto was Utu’s uncle but was more like a father to him. She knew why Utu had stopped. He was telling a story of hunting and said his name. She should go to him, she thought.

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