ABC Shorts: Harvest Time…
[Note from Steve: A. B. Carolan isn’t sitting around patting himself on the back for his new novel Mind Games. He continues to write short fiction. Here’s one story he wrote in honor of Brian Aldiss.]
Zeno climbed higher. The fruit at the top ripened first. The tribe always went through the grove, back and forth, each time getting nearer the ground. And then they would start all over again.
He climbed almost to where the sky closed over and he could climb no more. It never occurred to him to ask why the sky closed over, but that day when he sat on a limb, ate his fruit, and stared upwards, he asked the obvious question: Why does the sky stop my upward progress?
He climbed a bit higher to where he could reach out and push against the sky. It’s solid! Is there something on the other side of the sky?
“Zeno! Come back down!”
His mother didn’t like it when he climbed so high.
I’ll have to tell her about the sky!
***
Zeno’s mother had always been warning him. Other creatures climbed high too. One of the wide-eyes was stalking him. He turned just in time, saw the salivating predator, and moved away, only to slip on a patch of moss.
It was a long fall accompanied by his mother’s scream. He bounced from limb to limb as he floated toward the forest floor. No one in the tribe had ever died from a fall, but limbs could be broken and minds addled by hitting the hard wood of the fruit tree limbs.
He was unconscious when he hit the ground.
***
Zeno awoke. A member of another tribe hovered over him and smiled. He was covered in a bright white skin.
“You had a nasty fall, Zeno.”
He spoke the language of the people, but it didn’t sound quite right. Some chirps and whistles rose in pitch when they were supposed to go down, for example.
Zeno looked around and felt claustrophobic. He was in a place best described as a nest, but it was a bit larger, and the whiteness of its walls was as white as the stranger’s covering.
“Where…where am I?”
“Where you’ve always been, just a bit more forward in the….”
Zeno didn’t understand the words that had followed. “I want to go home.”
“You need a few more visits to the….”
Again the words meant nothing to him. He mouthed the unfamiliar words: long-haul starship and ship’s portadoc. They seemed like gibberish. He wriggled a bit, testing his body. Everything hurt.
“Am I broken?”
“Kira found you. She was testing soil….”
He knew the word soil. The tribe used soil and ground almost interchangeably. He didn’t know what pee-aych meant, though.
“So I have to stay here?”
“Only for a while.”
***
Later that day he met Kira. He hadn’t known Kira was a female’s name. She was much taller than his mother, and he liked her immediately.
“I have a friend, Roberto, who asked me to find out why you’re called Zeno,” she said.
“There’s always a Zeno in the tribe. It’s tradition…and a rule. If there’s no Zeno, the tribe can fall on hard times.”
She nodded. “Do you have a mother?”
“Everyone has a mother.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tolleya. I am her oldest son. I had another name, but when the old Zeno died, I became Zeno.” He grabbed her arm, startling her. “I want to go home. Everyone falls sometime. I’ll be okay. Why can’t I go home?”
“Because you’re injured. And, while you’re here, we want to learn more about your tribe.”
He grinned. “Tell me about your tribe, and I’ll tell you about mine. Maybe we can join forces and become the most powerful tribe in the forest.”
“There’s not much to say about my tribe. We’re boring. I don’t think your tribe will want to join ours, we’re so boring.”
He understood boring. A lot of elders in his tribe were boring. Even his mother said so. Maybe Kira’s right. Her tribe might make ours weaker.
He started to tell her about his tribe and the history of the people in general.
***
“I’d say that the only thing we have in common now is language,” said the captain, “and that commonality has interesting gaps.”
“Yes, they’ve lost many words, probably from disuse,” said Kira. “What are we going to do?”
“Nothing,” said Ricardo, the sociologist. “It’s not our fault they all woke up too soon.”
“We’re lucky,” said the captain. “They couldn’t access the forward sections of the ship or mess with our cryosleep units. And maybe when we start sending shuttles down to the planet, our new home, we can find a place for them, and slowly integrate them back into modern society. There’s a lot of forest down there.”
“That will destroy their culture eventually,” said Roberto. “He doesn’t have any idea about the meaning of Zeno, does he?”
“No,” said Kira. “But he knows the sky’s solid. They will resolve all their paradoxes eventually, including that one.”
***
Comments are always welcome.
Mind Games by A.B. Carolan. Androids with psi powers? What could go wrong? Fourteen-year-old Della Dos Toros must leave her sheltered existence in planet Sanctuary’s Dark Domes to escape those searching for her. Her adopted father told her to hide her powers, but she must use all of them to find his murderer. This action-packed sci-fi mystery for young adults is available on Amazon in ebook and print format and on Smashwords and at its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc) in ebook format. From Carrick Publishing.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
