A gaggle of curious, naked children seemed to follow Allison everywhere she went. They took every opportunity to run their fingers through her blond hair, by far the fairest they’d ever seen. Allison sat in the shade of the large hut that acted as a meeting place and banquet hall.
The village was awash in excitement as the Pirikura made preparations for the Ground Pounder’s festival. At the center of the village, a fifteen-meter tower built of three beard-tree trunks had risen. Sturdy, it was not. The only thing preventing its total collapse was that no two pillars could agree on a direction to fall.
It was this rickety structure the men of the tribe would soon ascend to challenge the ground by heedlessly flinging themselves at it. The women of the tribe seemed content with dancing, drinking, and festively decorating their huts.
Jacqueline came striding down the main path. A retinue of village youth trailed behind her.
“Afternoon, Jackie. Sit down and take a load off.”
“Thanks, Captain. I needed to talk to you anyway.” Jacqueline sat down as requested.
Up close, Allison noticed that Jacqueline’s hair had been tightly braided into hundreds of delicate rows, each with tiny, iridescent beads regularly spaced throughout.
“What did you do with your hair?”
Jacqueline smiled and ran a hand through the braids. “Do you like it? The kids here did it while I was uploading reports to Maggie. It’s the children’s job to braid all the women’s hair, on account of their tiny fingers.”
“It’s cute, Jackie.” Allison looked at the data pad in the young woman’s hands. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Sort of. I borrowed this from Mr. Fletcher yesterday. It’s loaded with schematics and tutorials. I wanted to familiarize myself with his new hyperdrive equipment. I have questions I want to ask him, but I can’t seem to find him anywhere.”
“I haven’t seen him today. We’ll ask Harris. They’re good friends. He can call him on that implanted com their crew has. He can’t ignore a phone ringing inside his head.”
Allison dug through a deep pocket on her thigh until her fingers found the earbud com. She stuck it in her ear. “Lieutenant Harris?”
“Go ahead for Harris,” came the prompt reply.
“It’s Ridgeway. I’m here with Dorsett; she’s looking for Felix. Have you seen him?”
“Not since I woke up for watch this morning.”
“When was that?”
“Seventeen thirty.”
Allison grimaced. Solonis B had a twenty-nine-hour day. Since they didn’t intend to be planet-side for more than a few days, the teams had remained on shipboard time instead of switching to the local cycle. It did mean, however, that sunrise and sunset kept changing schedules on them like an absent-minded wedding planner. It was playing merry hell on their sleep cycles.
“Could you call him on your internal com? Dorsett has some questions to ask him.”
“Sure. Just a minute.”
Jacqueline sat listening quietly to Allison’s half of the conversation.
Allison smiled at her. “He’s calling him now, Jackie. It should just be a minute.”
Harris’s voice returned. “I can’t raise him, ma’am.”
Allison’s concern ratcheted up from green to yellow. “That’s not encouraging.”
“It could be nothing, ma’am. He may have just dozed off. The daylight disparity’s messing with everyone’s circadian.”
“Maybe you’re right, Harris, but we should still find him. Falling asleep in an alien jungle is probably a good way to get eaten.”
“Hang on, ma’am. I can locate him by his com.”
Allison sat tensely while the silence stretched out like a rubber band.
Harris’s voice snapped the silence. “Ah, ma’am?”
“Don’t tell me. You can’t track his com either.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Is there any plausible reason for that?”
“Well … if we suspect an enemy has hacked our encryption and is tracking squad movements, we can disable the auto locator.”
“And the odds that Felix knows how to do that?”
“They’re not encouraging,” Harris said, mirroring Allison’s own words.
Yellow gave way to orange. “Recall your squad, Lieutenant, and meet me at the banquet hall.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am.”
“Jackie, round up the rest of the survey team and bring them here.”
Jacqueline’s eyes were as big as ripe plums. “What’s wrong, Captain?”
“We have a missing man to find.”
A little over twenty minutes later, the members of both teams sat in a circle on the floor of the Pirikura’s largest building. Just beyond them, the villagers had halted their festival preparations and watched the proceedings intently.
A holographic image of the village and the surrounding forest spun slowly in the air.
“Here’s what we know.” Allison pointed to one of the huts in the display and twisted her wrist, leaving a red dot. “Mr. Fletcher was in the sleeping hut until 1947 today, about an hour after sunrise. Then he got up and made a beeline for the forest.” She dragged her finger through the air, leaving a red path behind her on the map.
“Once past the tree line, he slowed down and started moving along a more erratic path for almost six kilometers, until his com signal faded and was lost around here.” She twisted her wrist again, and the line terminated in another big red dot.
“What could cause that?” asked one of the survey group.
“We don’t know; some sort of interference.”
“Wait,” one of the marines, Devor, interjected. “The coms are built to filter natural interference. So what are you saying, that people who are still knapping flint have signal jammers?”
“Not at all. I’m saying it’s an open question.”
Whispers ran through the semicircle of villagers, but Allison couldn’t understand them. Magellan had a translator running that fed English approximations of their speech into her ear com, but it could only work on one speaker at a time. One of the children walked past the seated crewmen and tried to grasp the hologram with an outstretched hand, but came away empty. The whispers grew more alarmed.
Allison tried to gently push the child back toward her waiting parents. “Not right now, sweetie.”
The girl was unfazed. She looked intently at the images, especially the aerial shot of the village.
Harris cleared his throat. “Maybe we should turn off the holo, ma’am.”
“Good idea.” Allison knelt down and was about to shut down the portable projector when the little girl started shouting excitedly. Her face had the wide smile of accomplishment, minus a few baby teeth.
“What’s she saying?” Harris asked.
“Something about her home, the village, the river. I think she’s figured out it’s a map. Smart kid.”
The child thrust a finger at the forest, past where Felix’s trail had run cold, and started talking rapidly, too fast for the translation to keep up. Her mother strode up to retrieve her, bending to pick her up, despite the girl’s protests.
Allison put up a hand. “No, just wait a second. She was saying something about a ‘Cave of the Creators.’ What does she mean?”
The mother paused to listen to Allison, but she was uncomprehending.
“Jackie, give me your earbud.” Jacqueline obliged. “Maggie, are you there?”
“Yes, Captain Ridgeway. How may I help?”
“I want you to run the translation backward and feed it into Lieutenant Dorsett’s com.”
“You wish it to run from English to Pirikura?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“That will take some time.”
“That’s fine, just let me know as soon as you’re fin—”
“I’ve finished.”
Allison rubbed a temple. “Maggie, remind me later that we need to talk about human time perception.” With the earbud com sitting in her upturned palm, Allison held out her hand to the mother.
Cautiously, the woman took it. Unsure of the purpose of the gift, she smelled it, and then held it to her tongue. Allison waved her hand and pulled her hair back to expose her own earbud. The mother turned the bud around in her fingers, then placed it snugly in her ear.
“Good. Can you understand me?”
There was a delay of a heartbeat as Allison’s voice was transmitted to one of the Gargoyle platforms in orbit, which were pulling double duty as communication relays, passed around to Magellan on the far side of the planet, translated into Pirikura, then sent back around the world, down to the surface, and into the earbud.
The woman looked sharply to her right, but when she realized there was no one there, she threw the bud to the ground in a panic. She raised a foot to crush the cursed object, but Allison crouched and grabbed it in time.
“It’s okay,” Allison remained as calm as she could manage. “She probably thought it was jewelry.”
Allison pulled the earbud out of her own ear and spoke slowly and deliberately. “When you”—she pointed at the mother—“speak”—she made a talking gesture with her hand and pointed at the earbud—“this lets me”—Allison pointed at her own ear and smiled warmly—“understand you.”
The mother leaned away from Allison and frowned, but her daughter was not so suspicious. The child jumped up and snatched the earbud from Allison’s hand and stuffed it into her ear.
Sensing an opportunity, Allison spoke. “Can you understand me?”
“Sae,” came from the girl’s mouth.
“Yes,” said the earbud.
“Hello. My name is Allison. What is your name?”
“Piya.”
“Hello, Piya. You are a very smart little girl.”
“Thank you, Al-lee-son.” She smiled bashfully as she struggled with the foreign name.
“Can you tell your mother that the earring is safe and will let us talk?”
Piya grabbed her mother’s skirt and tugged. They conferred. Eventually, Piya’s mother took the earbud and placed it back in her own ear.
“Thank you,” Allison said with sincerity. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes. What magic/sorcery?”
“No magic.” Allison tried to sound reassuring. “Just a tool. Like a knife or a hammer.”
“Hammers don’t talk.”
“True, but you don’t need them to.” Allison patted Piya on the head. “Your daughter is very clever. When she looked at our map, she said, ‘Cave of the Creators.’ What is that?”
“Sacred place. Where gods sleep. Pirikura no go there. Forbidden.”
“You don’t visit your gods? Why not?”
“Protected by phantoms/monsters.”
There was a rumbling from the ring of villagers. The survey team also heard the translation, save Jacqueline, and perked up at the mention of phantoms.
“What kind of phantoms?”
“Used to be men, but cursed/fell. Now just phantoms/monsters. Consume/defeat Pirikura.”
Allison paused to consider the implications of the consume/defeat translation. “One of our tribe is missing. Do you think the phantoms are responsible?”
“Yes. Phantoms/monsters take Pirikura sometimes. Take your man.”
“Can you show us where the phantoms live?”
“No. Forbidden. Danger.” The mother moved closer so that only Allison could hear her whisper. “Our men no warriors/heroes.”
She had a point. Predictably, the tribe’s physical stature had suffered somewhat from the strongest men getting inebriated and throwing themselves off a ten-meter tower once a year.
“We don’t need you to take us there; I just want you to show us on this map.” Allison held her hands wide to encompass the holo of the area.
“I no know where,” she said. “But Tolo do.”
“Tolo?”
“Tolo!” the mother shouted. “Tolo!”
The circle of villagers parted from around a young man, no more than a teenager. With a little prodding, he stepped forward. The mother leaned close to his face as if to whisper, but spoke to him with a strong voice. Only then did Allison notice that he had no ears.
“Tell Al-lee-son where you escape phantoms/monsters.”
He threw up his hands and shook his head violently. “No go back. Never. Forbidden. Understand now.”
“That’s all right, Tolo.” Allison looked back to the mother. “Tell him he just needs to point at it.”
She did so. Tolo nodded and stepped up to study the display, its tiny village, and the river. His face scrunched up as he tried to work it out. Then, he jammed a finger at a point roughly three kilometers west of where Felix’s trail had faded out.
“There!”
“Thank you, Tolo.” Even though Allison knew he couldn’t understand, it needed to be said.
Piya’s mother spoke again. “You go, phantoms/monsters consume/defeat you, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Allison looked straight at Harris and his squad, bristling with machine guns and muscles.
“Because I brought my own phantoms/monsters.”