IN NATURA: a science fiction novel (ARZAT SERIES Book 2) (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

FIRE AND LIGHT

Alex bent down in the dark and kissed Tom’s face. “I thought we might have lost you there for a minute, Thomas,” she proclaimed. Thomas was a moniker she liked to use for him in an ironic situation, and this had definitely been one of those!

  “I’m okay, Alex,” he said, still trying to shake the effects of his rather rude awakening. “Where are Mot and Ara?”

  “We are right here, Tom, son of Richard,” he heard Ara say to him in his head. The sound or thought that the Arzat was creating in his mind was quite raspy but also somehow quite feminine.

  Even after spending a considerable amount of time conversing with the Arzats, Tom still found their ability to telepath—and particularly
his
—almost impossible to believe. Now, he naturally switched from verbally speaking with Alex to using only his mind to communicate with Mot and Ara without even realizing it. The Arzats, it seemed, had no problem understanding him either way.

“Yes, Tom, we are here,” Mot added silently. “I am glad to see you are still alive.”

  In Tom’s head, Mot’s “voice” manifested itself with the same scratchy, otherworldly quality as Ara’s, but it was somehow deeper, more masculine, and belied the fact that the Arzat speaking to him was really only an adolescent.

  Tom laughed. “I’m happy
you
can see something my friend. I can’t see shit. Looks like we totally ran out of power huh, Alex?” he said, switching to his voice to utter the question. “How long were we in cryo?”

  “Well, the monitor says around eight thousand years,” Alex uneasily replied, remembering exactly what the monitor had indicated, still not able to fully believe it herself. She hoped Tom would somehow miss the fact that she had caused them to oversleep by over seven thousand years!

  Alex was also so relieved she hadn’t accidentally killed him that she was still on the verge of tears. Tom had not been a fan of being frozen in the cryogenic units in the first place and had thoroughly cautioned Alex about the ARC’s nuclear power supply and how long it might last. If she’d have killed him, well . . . she couldn’t even bear the thought. Not only did she love him, but it was also quite likely that Tom was the
only
other human on the planet besides
her
!

  “Do you think that is even possible, Tom?”

  “I have no idea Doctor—you’re the expert. It seems like I barely closed my eyes.”

  “It is the same with us,” Mot said, “much like the last time.”

  Alex was not completely surprised at Mot’s comment. According to the two Arzats, even their first multimillion-year sleep had only seemed like a short nap.

  “I guess we’ll just have to rely on what the computer is saying for now,” Alex said.

  “Wow. Is it just me, or is it freezing in here?” Tom asked, trying to raise himself from the floor.

  Alex suddenly realized she was shaking as much from the cold as her relief that Tom was alive. To make matters worse, she had just burned her shirt and was sitting in the cold clad only in the bra and cargo shorts she had worn into the cryogenic beds.

  “Yes, now that you mentioned it.”

  “Let’s see if we can get a fire going,” Tom said, unaware of Mot’s recent success in starting one. “Mot, do you still have that steel flint I gave you?”

  “Yes, Tom.”

  “Can you see well enough to find some fuel?”

  “Ara and I can both see quite well as long as we do not move too far from the lighted box. But we can find our way very well in the dark regardless. Come, Ara,” Mot said to his mate.

  The Arzats immediately disappeared into the utter black of the giant ARC.

  “I should have thought about there being no light,” Tom said to Alex after the Arzats had gone. “Although I had no idea we would be in cryo for as long as we were. I had hoped that the reactors would still be running when we came out.”

  Alex gulped. “I didn’t think much about it myself,” she stammered. “I guess you never really worry about power until you don’t have it, right? What about the safes?” she asked, trying to change the subject. “Do you think there is anything like a flare or something that might have survived?”

  “I’m not sure, Alex. Eight thousand years? Hell, I guess we’ll just have to open them up and see. But we better wait for some light so we can even find them.”

  “Okay, but in the meantime, can you warm me up a bit,” Alex said, moving closer to him. “Why is it so damn cold?”

  “I don’t know. Remember, the caves we found the Arzats in? They were just like this.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Alex said, recalling the night Tom had guided her into the caves where she had eventually discovered Mot and had nearly been killed in the process. Those caves had been unusually chilly, with a temperature near or below freezing, not the usual ten to fifteen degrees Celsius that was a constant in most underground labyrinths.

  “There’s something good in all this, you know,” Tom said, as Alex snuggled close to him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you happen to notice that we are breathing?”

  “Good point. We couldn’t possibly have air down here unless the atmosphere had cleared up top, could we?”

  “Let’s hope so Alex, let’s hope so,” Tom said, wrapping his arms tighter around Alex. “I certainly don’t want to be stuck in this ARC forever, especially without power. Hey, what happened to your shirt?”

* * *

The Arzats had been gone for a long time and Tom and Alex began to worry. Apart from the cold, it was downright spooky in the dark of the building that housed the cryogenic units. The two of them finally felt their way in the near pitch black to the door of the lab and almost instantly spotted a flame across nearly the entire length of the ARC—a distance of several football fields—coming toward them at virtually impossible speed.

  Tom smiled and shook his head, relieved to see the light. The Arzats had obviously fashioned a torch out of something and were now returning at their usual preternatural pace. “I’m surprised the damn thing doesn’t blow out,” Tom said, smiling, watching the light’s progress.

  “No kidding,” Alex replied, equally amazed—but the paleontologist in her shouldn’t have been. The two Arzats had originally come from a prehistoric world that would have literally eaten them alive were they any less adapted. They moved like lighting and were equally as strong as they were fleet of foot—pure muscle on reptilian frames that weighed well over three hundred pounds each—making the strength of a chimpanzee or even one of the bigger great apes seem paltry by comparison.

  It had been clear to Alex when she first discovered them that the Arzats must have been the direct evolutionary descendants of some branch of the theropods—dinosaurs that had walked upright on two legs and were invariably carnivores. By the end of the Cretaceous, these reptilians had not only evolved to become as intelligent as humans but they had also learned to communicate completely non-verbally when necessary by way of telepathy somehow during the evolutionary process, which was how Tom and Alex had eventually become able to communicate with them.

  “I am sorry we took so long, Alex,” Mot said, as he and Ara arrived. It had been less than a minute after Tom and Alex had first spotted the light. “Ara and I stopped to make torches.”

  The Arzat was barely winded. Under one arm, he had several long sticks, their ends wrapped in some kind of cloth. Under the other was a large bundle of larger pieces that looked like the ancient remnants of broken two-by-fours or something about that size. Ara was right behind him, bearing a similar load under one arm and a flaming torch in the other, no more winded than her mate.

  “Where would you like me to make fire, Tom?”

  “Right here—and not a moment too soon my friend,” Tom said, more concerned about Alex than himself. He could see her shaking in the glow of the Arzat’s torchlight.

  Alex and Tom watched eagerly as the Arzats quickly broke some large pieces of wood into kindling simply by pressing them over their knees. In just a few moments, they had a nice fire going and all four of them stood close, warming their hands. While the Arzats did not seem to be as affected by the low temperature, they did not appear to enjoy the cold any more than Tom and Alex.

  As the fire burned, Tom noted that the strength and color of the flames further indicated plenty of oxygen in the air. Part of him now wondered whether or not they had taken their cryogenic plunge prematurely.
No matter now,
he concluded,
what is done is done.

  “Thank you, Mot. Thank you, Ara,” Alex said, finally getting her blood flowing.

  “Alex?” Mot said as a question.

  “Yes, Mot, I know, I know—you’re probably very hungry.” Alex laughed. She was well aware of the Arzats’ tremendous metabolisms and their almost constant hunger. In fact, although it seemed almost funny now, when Mot and Alex had first met, he had seriously contemplated eating her! Instead, he had saved her life.

  “And thirsty, Alex,” Mot added. He turned and flicked his tongue in the air. “I smell water, but I think it is foul, and I can detect no food.”

  “Tom,” Alex said, “what do you think our chances are that there is something left in the safes?”

  “Well, now that we have some light, let’s go see.”

  Tom was still wondering where in the hell the Arzats had found the wood and how it had survived after all of the years. As far as he could remember, there had been hardly any wood used in any of the ARC’s construction.

  “It was in the food place, Tom Pilot,” Ara said, reading his mind. “Those things we sat on to eat.”

  “And in some of the . . . ‘walls’?” Mot added.

  Tom laughed. Of course, restaurant chairs! Tom and Alex had shared meals with Mot and Ara in several of the ARC dining rooms prior to going into cryogenic sleep. Before their encounter with humans, the Arzats had been accustomed to taking their meals sitting on the floor or squatting. At first, the reptilians had found sitting in chairs quite odd. Like them or not, it was obvious Ara had remembered their location.

  If the chairs survived, it is a good sign,
Tom thought. He could only hope that the supplies they had stashed in the airtight hermetic safes had fared as well. He was only mildly disturbed that Ara had read his mind again.

 
I will have to get better at blocking,
he reminded himself.

CHAPTER 5

ACK ROAST

“
Kak
,” Za’at cursed under his breath, still stunned by the sudden appearance of the smooth-skinned
female.

  He and the other Arzats stood staring at the white-eyed
uman
with the strange dark blue that glowed in their very centers.
How could I have missed her?
How could I have been so stupid?
he kept asking himself.

  Za’at sensed the hunters were just about to pounce on the female
with the full force of their killing sticks. “
Ne!
” he said aloud as he waived off Baa just as he was about to deliver a deathblow from behind.

  Baa gave him a look of confusion as he was forced to recoil unexpectedly. The other hunters also backed off a pace and froze, their weapons still held high, similarly confused. What was Za’at waiting for? The only good
uman
was a dead
uman
. Every Arzat knew that. Hadn’t Za’at even said so himself just prior to the attack?

  The female was breathing heavily and clutching her very large belly with one hand. The soft material that grew from her head partially covered her face. The stuff was long enough that it reached her waist and was as black as the deepest reaches of a cave.

  The fact that Arzats grow no hair at all on their scaly skin made the strange material all the more intriguing to the hunters. In fact, some jokes had even been told around the Great Fire comparing the material on the
uman
head to the stuff that grew on the rear of an
arsa.
But this situation was no joke. This furry-headed little
uman
was still quite alive and had just killed an Arzat.

  Za’at flicked his tongue to catch the full scent of her.
Definitely a female and definitely with child
, he concluded.
How had I missed her strong scent? How had we all missed it?
Za’at found her distinctive aroma almost overwhelming.
In fact,
he thought,
it was not altogether unpleasant.

  He continued to look directly at the female and the female continued to look directly at him, her body visibly shaking, her strange white eyes with the strange blue centers never wavering from his. They were the color of a deep pool of water and had round pupils that were quite unlike the elongated ones he was used to.
Certainly nothing like the eye of an Arzat,
he thought. Nothing like the eyes of any other animal he had ever seen.
Yes,
he concluded, the
umans
have eyes like no other. There was something about them that was quite unnerving.

  This was the first time Za’at or any of the other Arzats in his hunting party had spent more than a moment with a live
uman
. In fact, this was only the second time Za’at had personally been involved in a direct attack of one of their camps—but none of the
umans
had survived those encounters for more than an instant. This still living female had suddenly become a curiosity.

  He noticed a few of his hunters, now over some of the initial shock of Ack’s death, slightly lowering their killing sticks and closing in around her for a better look.

  “What shall we do, Za’at?” Baa asked, nervously eyeballing the female, his own hunting stick still held high, anxious to finish the killing.

  Baa, like most of the other hunters, was extremely wary of a live
uman
. They had all heard the stories of Arzats that had occasionally been killed in the past by the smooth-skinned animals. Now there was Ack who had unexpectedly fallen. The strong smell of his body charring in the fire was starting to make Baa sick to his stomach. How had a creature so obviously puny and weak managed such a thing? How had she gone unnoticed? Did she have special powers? Baa continued to hold a tight grip on his weapon, hoping and fully expecting that Za’at would give the order to proceed.

  Za’at glanced over at the fire where his younger brother lay dead, the top portion of his body smoldering in the hot ashes. He couldn’t decide if he was angrier with himself or the female who had just slain his sibling. Of course, as leader, the fault was
his
either way.

  “Pull Ack from the fire!” he finally said to the rest of the hunters aloud. “Baa, find something to bind this
uman’s
hands.”

  I will make this female loathe the day she was born,
he secretly thought, blocking any trace of it from the others.

  Baa was not in favor of leaving the
uman
alive for another moment, even for the purposes of torture, which he assumed was Za’at’s ultimate intent. Nothing good could come from it. He gave Za’at a look of doubt without blocking.

  “Do it!” Za’at said aloud, snarling at Baa, knowing this was a most crucial time to maintain order. He was well aware that he could be challenged at anytime, especially now that he had made such a huge mistake. If more than one of the other Arzat Hunters decided to rebel with Baa and kill the female, Za’at would likely end up just as dead.

  He could feel the hunters dubious looks as they moved to pull Ack’s body from the fire, all of them clearly blocking any thoughts they might have regarding his leadership or his decision not to immediately kill the
uman
. Za’at searched each of their minds for any obvious signs of treachery, but all of the hunters were now carefully guarding their thoughts.

  Baa was angry, but he was not about to challenge Za’at at the moment. He had seen him in too many altercations and knew that Za’at had never lost a battle or the Arzat leader wouldn’t be standing before him now. If only he could count on the support of at least some of the other hunters . . .

  Baa gulped. “What shall I use?”

  Za’at continued to stare into the
uman’s
eyes, as if she might somehow vanish if he looked away. “Use part of your loincloth, use part of her clothing, use her . . . I don’t care. Just find something.”

  Baa looked around the camp while watching the female closely out of the corner of his eye, expecting mischief.
I will kill her regardless of Za’at if she makes any sudden movement,
he thought, worried that she might cast an evil spell on him at any moment.

  He found a length of animal skin that had been fashioned into cord by the
umans
and warily approached the female, snatching her hands swiftly so she would have no time to react. As he got close, he was further shocked when he fully realized how small and weak she appeared to be.
Then why am I so frightened,
he wondered. Baa could feel the
uman’s
heart pulsing as he grasped her. He had expected a struggle, but the female just stood staring at Za’at through the light of the fire, barely noticing him as he deftly tied her. It was as if she had placed herself in some kind of trance.

  “Now what?” he asked Za’at as he finished. “Shall I bind her feet as well?”

  Za’at continued to stare at the female—her eyes becoming more resolute and now boring into his.
Interesting,
he thought. He knew that
umans
were intelligent and had some sort of language, and he suddenly began to wonder if communication might be possible.

  “No, Baa, she shall walk with us. We will take her alive to the caves.”

  This was almost too much for the young Arzat to bear. One of them killed! Now Za’at has decided to take this
uman
female captive? Baa didn’t mind the idea of torturing her for a torch or two and then having her for dinner, but he questioned taking a
live uman
back to the caves. It was unheard of! He snarled in spite of himself, and Za’at was immediately on him like lightning.

  “I am the leader of this group, and you will do as I say,” Za’at hissed, aware that he had once again captured the attention of all of the others. His fingers were wrapped tightly around Baa’s neck. He knew he had to demonstrate absolute control or he might lose it altogether. Most of all, he knew that he needed to get the hunters fed. They would all calm down considerably once their stomachs were full.

  Choking, Baa immediately relented. “Of course, Za’at, son of Qua,” Baa said, showing respect by using Za’at’s full and proper Arzat name. “I apologize. It is just that . . .”

  “Never mind,” Za’at said, releasing his grip and pushing the insubordinate Arzat away.

  “Mek and Url,” he ordered, “stoke the fire. We shall properly burn Ack’s remains so that he may join the Creator in the Great Void. And you,” he said pointing at two of the other hunters, “You will clean the
umans
and prepare them for transport. We shall eat one of them now. Pick one of the smaller, younger ones. The rest, we shall take back to the caves. Baa, you will stand guard over the female,” he said, turning his attention back to the rebellious Arzat. “And, Baa,” he added silently and to him alone, “if any harm comes to her under your watch I will personally gut you myself and leave you to the
var
. Now take her away until we are done.”

  “Yes, Za’at,” Baa answered, fully aware that Za’at meant what he said, his neck still smarting from the strong hold that the Arzat leader had placed upon it.

  The reptilian took a strong grip and turned Maria away from the fire. The shock of the attack was wearing off, but her mind was still spinning from the suddenness and ruthlessness of it, and the fact that the beast now holding her was quite simply the scariest creature she had ever encountered.

  As the giant reptile pulled her along, Maria wanted to protest and struggle, but she found herself completely unable to do so. Even though she had just been able to kill one, the obvious power and strength of the beast that now held her arm was mind numbing. There was nothing to be done.

  The massacre she had just witnessed had left her with a feeling of emptiness and a sense of total helplessness. Her mate and her friends were dead. Only the coincidental fact that she had wandered off to privately relieve herself just moments before the attack had allowed
her
to live through it. She wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty about that or very fortunate.

  Soon,
she thought,
they will kill me as well.
So be it. This is what I get for not following my father’s advice.
Against his will, she and her mate and a small group of friends had broken away from the tribe in the early spring in a desperate search for food. Now they had all—with the exception of Maria—paid the price for it. The lizards would kill her too. Of that she was certain. It was only a matter of time.

  As Maria began to resign herself to her almost certain fate, a strange sort of calm washed over her, but something still nagged at her mind, something she had forgotten. Then she remembered the child—
her
unborn child—and her desire to live suddenly returned.

  The lizard led her just to the edge of the camp and forced her to the ground so that she sat with her back to the light of the fire. She tried to turn her head, but her reptilian guard stood in front of her and grunted disapprovingly. Maria closed her eyes and focused on her sense of smell and hearing. The survival of her child, and therefore herself, was suddenly paramount. She could detect footsteps, the sickening sound of flesh being cut, and the strong smell of more fresh blood. Her mind began imagining the carnage that was obviously taking place behind her.

  As the creatures moved about, Maria found it somewhat surprising that they did not utter a sound, though she was sure she had heard language earlier. She listened closely, but all she could detect was their movement, which her lizard guard was tracking with his large reptilian eyes. After a time, she noticed the distinct and rather pleasant aroma of meat cooking.

  Maria had not eaten much of anything for the past few days. Her party had been following a large herd of buffalo, but they had failed to get close enough to bring one down. They had been surviving on the few edible plants they could find and the meager jerked remnants of their prior kills. She found herself salivating despite her awareness of what must now be on the menu and silently chastised herself for allowing such a thought, the guilt of her sole survivorship weighing heavily on her.

  Still, the strong odor of cooking meat gnawed at her intense hunger. The fire cracked and popped as fat burned off and dripped into its flames and the smell of it wafted through the night air.

  She watched as her reptilian guard struggled to keep its eyes on her. It was obviously much more interested in what was going on in the remains of her camp. Maria had the silly thought, for just a moment, that perhaps the creature might become distracted enough for her to try to escape.