Once more, Minnie sank into a drowning pool.
Aether was alive. Aether was looking for her, waiting for her. The revelation ripped through Minnie’s head. Panic slipped in behind it. Aether was alive, and too far, and a million different things could take her away again.
She wanted to pack up and leave right that second. Brave the weather, push the skimmer to its limits, flout the dwindling power meter.
Unable to be still, she exited the tent and paced circles around the cavern. She cried with desperation, with elation, with pessimistic what-ifs. She cried for John, for Angela—what had happened to Angela? And then she tightened her fists.
“Get a grip!” she barked.
Now was a time for practicality, for logic, for planning, organization, sharp focus. Assume Aether would stay and wait in place, or conduct a search before turning back. No less than three days. Assume Aether would be out of harm’s way. What were the fewest, safest steps to reuniting? Because nothing after that mattered, and only good could follow.
3.7
In the icy canyon below, one of the riverbears paused, sniffing the frosty ground bordering a plant’s trunk.
Minnie tracked their movements from high above.
Whatcha lookin’ for, cuties?
Nothing of interest there, evidently. Both animals moved on to the next.
Long ago, Threck explorers visited this expansive coastline, encountering creatures somewhat less unnerving than those they’d discovered in the South. They tagged these creatures with the highly creative title, stoopock (snow animal). A lone Hynka clan residing in the northwestern-most village had encountered these same snow animals—distant cousins of Hynka, in fact—enough times to give them a name: grarlar. The word shared no root or correlating sounds with the local dialect, so it was presumed the beasts had been named for the sounds they made, perhaps while being chased or devoured by their larger relatives. Early in the mission, attempting to catalog hundreds of newfound species each day, Zisa had chosen the rather generic silver riverbear.
Upon arriving here, Minnie had spotted from a distance a riverbear mating pair, believing them to be more damned inescapable effing Hynka. Yet again, the mission’s scrupulous research had been wrong. Why not inaccurate Hynka environmental tolerances, too?
Dear old Mama had ventured a whole 20K north of the Hynka comfort zone. Minnie was now 1800K from Hynka-hospitable latitudes, the distance from New York City to Greenland. There were no Hynka present after all, but it didn’t mean there was nothing to fear. Silver riverbears were a bit larger than an adult grizzly, with each hand boasting two 20cm claws protruding from short nubs, and a long opposable thumb. Unlike the toothy Hynka, riverbears had no teeth in their independent jaw bones. Instead, the mandibles themselves jutted from gums, sharp-edged and powerful, chomping food like a giant nail clipper. In their aesthetic favor: a thick silver-white fur coat and big black circles for eyes. The faces reminded Minnie of a baby seal.
With her white environment shirt, pants, and gloves wrapped tightly over her suit, only the bright orange back of her helmet stood out among this colorless world. Lying prone atop a high glacier ridge, Minnie surveyed the canyon that lay southeast of her isolated new camp. Dense deposits of iron and gold filled the hills beneath the glacier, limiting her ground-level visibility to under 1K.
She closed her bio eye and zoomed in. One of the riverbears, large rump in the air, was digging out the frost beneath a megabulb. Megabulb or frostbulb? She couldn’t tell the difference. Wistful, Minnie knew how thrilled Angela would’ve been to see Minnie’s vids of her temporary camp, surrounded by the strange organisms.
Vids.
A fleeting smirk as John’s cheeky postscript popped back in her head.
Perv. I knew you had goddamn vids.
The second riverbear grew more animated and alert as the bulb’s thick, veiny base became exposed, dark permafrost soil staining the white surface. It guarded the opposite side as if something might spring out at any second.
It didn’t so much spring as swim, slithering up and out for a last-ditch escape. As the second riverbear trapped the eelish thing between four feet, dancing atop it like a cat on a jingly ball, Minnie’s own campsite felt a notch less safe than only a second earlier. Within 20m of her tent, no less than a dozen bulbs sprouted from the permafrost, like giant golf balls balancing on little tees. These snake things didn’t match any species in the master catalogue, and were probably dangerous, given Minnie’s track record thus far. Even if they weren’t, they were part of a riverbear’s nutritious breakfast, and legitimate cause for concern.
She watched the first riverbear join the second, cordially dividing the convulsing serpent between them. Minnie zoomed in all the way to their gobbling mouths. The silvery creature looked more like a long fish than snake. Tailfin, dorsal fin, eyes—only the pelvic/pectoral fins appeared adapted for surface mobility. This organism could very well offer an eye-opening peek into Epsy’s evolutionary history.
Shrug.
Minnie wasn’t a scientist anymore. She was just another animal fighting for survival. With any luck, she’d have some help with that soon.
The skimmer sat parked on a clear beach straddling the 50th parallel, three different beacons rigged and silently blaring for anyone with even just a fone. Aether was either three days late, or had already come and gone before Minnie’s arrival yesterday.
Minnie refused to believe that.
Sated for the moment, the riverbears engaged in a conscientious, leave-no-trace ritual, repacking the soil around the bulb’s base, then the frost, until the surface returned to a seemingly undisturbed state. Minnie’s focus centered on those claws as the pair ambled to the next bulb, sniffing around. Remorse already tugged at her gut, but she’d decided that her own life would remain priority one, even if it called for preemptive action. These animals were not endangered (yet), and like everything else alive, they’d meet their end one way or another. Prox sensors or not, she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight knowing those things were wandering the area.
She slid back, rolled over, and sat up, pulling out her MW. Ample power, still plenty of ammo. She aimed at the ground nearby and fired a test shot on lethal. A tiny piece of the glacier’s frost coat flinched. She stood up and magviewed through the surface. The round had fragmented and dispersed in the proper starburst shape. Cold didn’t appear to be an issue for the weapon or multirounds. Still fearful of a malfunction, she wanted the other MW and a spare cartridge on her.
Descending the icy slope, she took a few precarious steps before deciding it’d be safer on her knees. She dropped down, sliding the rest of the way to her saucer-shaped safe zone. At ground level, she jogged a wavy course through the bulb grove, optics flashing toward each bulb’s subsurface root stock. Indeed, roughly half of them were home to an unmoving coiled serpent, mouth clamped on a vein. Ugly, but seemingly inert when left alone.
Her camp was as she’d left it. Supply bins and gear stacked up as a wall between two bulbs. The tent stood only a couple meters from the wall, and before it sat her symbolic campfire—the heater on a metal container lid—along with John’s survival bag stuffed into a squishy chair.
She found the second MW and a spare cartridge, affixing the holster to her free hip like a gunfighter. An insulated case supplied a bottle of water she’d earlier melted. She unsealed her suit and poured the water in to top off. A few strips of bunny jerky remained in her pocket, but she grabbed a couple more, just in case. She wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. No more overconfidence. No more presumption about “quick” excursions. Her eyes touched each container as a mental inventory scrolled. There didn’t seem to be anything else she’d need.