“I think we are exploring from here on. The village elder told me his village stood on the frontier. No other people heading… which way are we heading anyway?”
I didn’t need to check my compass. “West. Well, west-ish. The magnetic north on this world is offset from the rotational axis by twenty-six degrees so your angle of—“I stopped myself. I’d long ago discovered the details of my profession made for snooze-worthy dinner conversation. “We’re kind of heading west.”
“Chokohn – that’s the elder’s name – he told me there’s a string of villages that run the equivalent of north and south in a straight line along the edge of this denser jungle. He said they never come in here.”
“Never? I know this jungle’s dense but Falstaff and I passed a ton of what looks like edible fruit on our way here.”
She shrugged. “He said ‘never’.”
“Maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
I described the elder’s actions and gestures as I was packing up to leave.
“You’ve always got to be careful, Ted. You can’t assign human meaning to alien gestures. Jesus, there’s not universal consistency across human cultures, let alone alien ones.”
“Well, it sure looked like he was trying to tell me not to come out here.”
Murray shrugged. “They’re a primitive culture. Limited agriculture. Just starting to smelt metals. Maybe jungle represents the unknown and they’re naturally afraid of it.”
“I guess. But for a fledgling culture, this jungle also represents new resources, right? Hey, that’s why we’re out here. But the old man said they don’t come out here at all? Not even to hunt? Not even those kids I saw poking around my beacon?”
Murray shook her head. “This whole area is taboo. Because it’s taboo, there’s naturally superstition surrounding it.”
“Boogeymen?”
She laughed. I always liked it when I was able to coax a laugh from Murray.
“Pretty much. But his word, if I’m right, translates to ‘The Others’.”
“How ominous. Wait a minute. I thought that’s what the indigenous people called us.”
“That’s what I thought they were calling us. They call us Jahahlla.” The word ended in a delightful trill that brought out Murray’s laugh lines. “I thought that meant ‘others’ until today. The elder explained the difference. I now know it means ‘visitors’ or ‘travellers’.”
“So how do you say ‘others’?”
There was nothing at all delightful about the guttural clack that came out of Murray’s mouth.
“Oh… that doesn’t sound very friendly, does it?”
“No. Chokohn told me we shouldn’t come out here. I explained to him as best I could that we’re mapping the area so that when more visitors arrive they’ll know where everything is. He told me we didn’t want to know what was in the jungle. He said we could just end our map at the edge of his village and go back the way we came.”
“I wish. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but I could really go for the relative luxury of a spaceship right about now. We’ve been here for over a month now. This traipsing through the wilderness following soldiers is a young person’s game.”
“You whine and complain but you love it. Besides, on a civilized world there’s no need for mapmakers.”
“Or linguists. Not on the civilized ones.”
“Too true,” she said. “It’s weird. Usually the locals are only too ready to have us push on.”
“Not this time?”
“No. Chokohn invited us to stay, rather than have us press on into the jungle. He said they’d hold a feast for us, if only we promised to go back the way we came.”
“They really don’t want us out here, do they? Do you think they’re really concerned with us running into these Others you mentioned?”
Murray picked at the last of her lettuce but made no motion to move that sad leaf to her mouth. “We hear things like this on other worlds. You know that. Oh, don’t go out there. Bad things are out there.” She inclined her head toward where the captain sat, eating and talking with her officers. “More often than not the locals are simply trying to keep our soldiers from finding some place of religious or cultural significance. Or from uncovering some nearby resources – resources they’d like to keep for themselves.”
“You can hardly blame them. After all, it is their planet.”
Murray placed her hand on my arm. “What a naïve notion, Cartographer First Class Wilson.” Her tone was good-natured, but there was a bitter undercurrent I wasn’t sure she’d intended to share. She lowered her voice a shade. “It’s their world until we find something useful. Then it becomes annexed. For their own protection, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. “We’re all just one big happy galactic family.”
Sgt Falstaff approached with his tray, eying his food brick dubiously.
“Chicken?” he asked as he took a seat.
“Chickenish,” said Murray. “So, what is the captain saying about tomorrow’s adventure. We’ll continue to the west?”
“That’s her plan,” said Falstaff. “We’ll break camp at dawn then press on until we find a big enough gap in the tree canopy to launch a drone to scout ahead. We’ll reassess the situation then.”
As it turned out, we never had a chance to launch that drone and only some of us ever got the chance to reassess the situation.
I’ve marched on more than three dozen worlds, through terrain far more varied than anything found in earth’s solar system. Each ecosystem brings its own challenges, and the only thing worse to march through than jungle is swamp. After hacking our way for three hours without a break, the jungle abruptly opened into a vast misty wetland shrouded with a fetid layer of yellowish fog.
“Private Ho, let’s have an atmospheric test before we press on,” the captain called out from the front of the line. I heard one of the soldiers moving through the ranks, though I couldn’t see her. I was reaching for the respirator in the pouch on my hip when the captain called the all clear. “No toxins.”
Those were the last words spoken before everything went to hell.
The fog drifted to the edge of the jungle, enveloping us and reducing our visibility. Falstaff stood two metres away. I could barely see him. From the wetlands, I heard what sounded like a breaking wave accompanied by a locust swarm’s worth of fluttering.
Two quick shots were fired from the front of the line, followed by a wet slap and a loud crack. A rapid burst of gunfire, a scream and then the sound of branches snapping as something flew through the jungle to my left, landing with a meaty thump. As part of the Cartography Corp, I carry no weapon, yet I found myself instinctively reaching for one at my hip. Falstaff, long a soldier before he became my assistant, reached for a weapon he did not have. He unclasped the marker staff, brandishing it like a spear.
I raised my hand and was about to speak when something leathery, grey and moist reached out of the fog and dragged Falstaff away. The marker staff fell to the ground. As I reached for his foot, a length of ropy, slime-coated tentacle slapped against my cheek. The tentacle’s tip was just below my eye. It terminated in a glistening thorny claw that dripped a pus-like yellow venom.
A quick jab just below my left eye, then oblivion.
An alien insect crawling across my eyelid startled me awake. My mouth seemed full of ash. As I opened my eyes, I realized the left one was swollen shut, save for a crusty sliver. When I tried to lift a hand to determine the extent of the swelling I realized I’d been bound.