The Apex Book of World SF 2 (29 page)

 

We're at the very
top of a baobab tree. Morituri36 and his cursed junglemyelitis. If I fall out
and die, our unborn child and I will haunt him until he joins us in death.
Right now, I can hear it below.
Why
is it following us? What's it after?
And
what
is it? It's not violent, fast, huge or destructive enough to be
an
elgort
. I'm glad it's nocturnal. Come morning, we'll be able to leave
this tree and continue on our way.

 

 

We are searching for
a mature CPU plant, so mature that we can actually download its hard drive. We
call them M-CPUs. Acquiring a copy of an M-CPU's hard drive has never been done
in all the history of exploration. BushBaby42, a close friend of mine, found
one three months ago but she disappeared before she could download anything.
She happened to send us the co-ordinates of her location just before she
stopped responding to us, so here we are. We've come hundreds of miles.

 

 

It is hard for me to speak of BushBaby42.

 

 

I don't wonder what
happened to her. She is an explorer, which means it could have been anything.
It is very often our fate.

 

 

On the M-CPU's hard
drive will be unimaginable information, the result of centuries of gathering.
Legend has it that these plants connect to networks from worlds beyond. Imagine
what it knows, what it has documented. We will not kill or harm it, of course.
That would be blasphemy. We won't even clip a leaf or scrape some cells. We'll
only make a copy of what it knows. Our storage drives should easily adapt to
fit the plant's port. Though our drive is most likely a different species of
plant, they'd have to at least be of the same genus.

 

 

The CPU plant's
entry does it no justice. The entry is a human perspective, ascribing significance
to the plant because it is cultivated and used as a tool for humans, a personal
computer. The true CPU plant grows in the wild, neither touched nor manipulated
by humans. And this plant takes hundreds of years to mature.

 

 

Many of us have seen
young CPU plants with their glowing monitor flower-heads that light up nights
and sleep during the day. They plug into the network and do whatever they do.
But an
M-CPU
? Nearly legend. What must BushBaby42 have felt gazing upon
it all alone, as she was? What must she have seen on its screen? And what
happened to her? She could take on a man-eating whip scorpion with nothing but
a stick!

 

 

Incidentally, the
creature we heard screeching this afternoon
was
an
elgort
. As big
as a house, with tight-black skin that shone in the daylight, beady yellow
eyes, as fast as the speed of sound, irrational and food-minded.

 

 

We dealt with it.
Manoeuvre 23, specifically for the
elgort
. We lured the crazed beast to
a tall strong hardwood tree. That's the most dangerous part, luring it in. We
had to climb very, very fast as soon as it smelt us. Once in the tree, as it
reared up below, trying to snatch us down with its tooth-filled trunk (a
terrible sight in itself), Morituri36 dropped a bursting seed (which I had
picked this afternoon, thank goodness) into its maw.
BLAM
! Its entire
head exploded. We now have meat for many days.
Elgort
meat doesn't need
salt to preserve it and it's naturally spicy; some say this is due to the
creature's anger and intensity in life.

 

 

We thank Joukoujou
and the Invisible forces for giving us the skill to protect ourselves.
Unfortunately, The Forces of the Soil also protected the
elgort
from
whatever creature is stalking us.

 

 

ENTRY 7 (21.34 hours)

 

Today was all pain.
In my back and lower belly. The stretching of ligaments. My belly feels like a
great calabash of water. This baby will come soon. Really soon. I hope we find
the plant first. The trees here are spaced apart, allowing the sun to shine
down, so Morituri36 had a good day. He carried both our packs and even prepared
breakfast and lunch—mangoes, roasted tree clams,
elgort
meat, figs and
root tea both times. It is days like this where I remember why I married him.

 

 

It is night now and
we are in a large but low tree with one wide branch to hold us both. We can see
the sky. It's been a long time since we had a night like this. I think the last
time was the day that our child was conceived. Not long afterwards was when he
started coming down with the junglemyelitis. His ailment will pass; he's a
strong man.

 

 

My gut tells me this
is the calm before the storm. But maybe I'm just being melodramatic.

 

 

ENTRY 8 (04.39 hours)

 

Dragonflies! Swarms
of them. BushBaby42 described these just before she found the plant. We're
close. But the creature is still on our trail. This morning, it left its muddy,
smelly droppings right at the foot of the tree as if it wanted us to step right
into it. I almost did. It was covered with flies and the mound smelt like the
vomit of demons. It was so strong that I nearly fainted with nausea. Morituri36
had to carry me away from the mess. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

 

 

Cursed beast,
whatever it is. No matter how we try to glimpse it at night, it keeps out of
sight as it blasts its angry flowery scent. Biding its time, I suspect. But when
the fight comes, it will be shocked when, instead of running, we turn to meet
it. We haven't survived the jungle solely because of luck.

 

 

But Morituri36 needs
to remember that he is a human being, and that
I
am a human being, too.
When he gets into his moods, he speaks to me as if I'm a piece of meat. As if I'm
lower than his servant. He speaks to me the way the Ooni chief speaks to his
wives. How dare he? I am carrying our child. I have done as much work as he
has. And, junglemyelitis or not, we are in this together. There is no need for
insult.

 

 

"It dies well
beforehand!" he snapped at me earlier today as we inspected a
morta
. We'd
caught it this morning. A
morta
is a beautiful red bird with a long thin
beak. When it dies, its dead body keeps flying aimlessly for days. Strange
creatures but not the strangest in the jungle. Morituri36 seemed to think that
their carcasses also rotted as they flew.

 

 

"Look at it," I
calmly said, despite my rising anger at his tone. The dead
morta
was
still trying to flap its wings. "This is the fifth one we've caught! No rot
anywhere!"

 

 

He just huffed and
puffed the way he always does when he knows I'm right. The entry someone
uploaded to the field guide was simply wrong and needed to be changed. The fact
is that
mortas
probably don't fly for that long after they die. Maybe a
few hours and that's it. Certainly not days. If it were days, it would be
infested with rot and maggots. But that wasn't what I wanted to find out most
about the
morta
. I wanted to know what made it fly as a dead creature.
Morituri36 and I agreed it had to be some sort of parasite with strange
faculties. We just needed to run some tests.

 

 

But he wasn't so
interested in answers today. He threw the bird corpse to the ground. "It is
because it is freshly dead," he muttered. "Stupid, stupid woman." Immediately,
the dead bird hopped up and took off. I cursed, watching it go, wondering what
microscopic organisms were working the bird's muscles and how intelligent they
could be to do so. They were obviously using the
morta
carcass to search
for food or a special place to procreate.

 

 

I wanted to slap
Morituri36. How many pockets of information have we lost because of his temper?
He and I are south westerners, the people of beads. Amongst our people, we say,
"Many beads protect the thread." He knows this kind of behaviour will not get
him far. Maybe one day I'll push him out of one of the extra high trees he
forces us to sleep in every night.

 

 

We didn't talk to
each other for hours. Then we started seeing millions of dragonflies.

 

 

The land was still
spongy and muddy. There were large pools of standing water. The air smelt like
wet leaves, stagnant water and spawn. An ancient CPU plant would thrive in a
place like this.

 

 

The dragonflies must
have loved this place, too, but the huge swarms were because of the plant. CPU
plants send out strong sine waves. These types of dragonflies are attracted to
the electromagnetic waves like moths, mosquitoes, suck bugs and butterflies are
to light.

 

 

We'd always been
plagued by a few of these sine-wave-drinking dragonflies because of the
portable we use to type in and upload information (including this audio
journal) to the field guide node. Our portable is powerful. Even hundreds of
miles from civilisation, we can access the network and communicate with other
explorers who wish to communicate. But there is a downside to everything. Large
dragonflies zooming around our heads is one of them. The sine waves intoxicate
them.

 

 

Usually, there are
only two or three plaguing us. Now it's about twenty. They're like flying
jewels, emerald-green, rock-stone blue, blood-red. A few of them are of the
species that glow blue-purple. But none of them stays long. They zoom about our
heads for a few minutes and then zip off, replaced by another curious
dragonfly. Something bigger is attracting them, of course. I can't wait to see
it. We don't even need BushBaby42's co-ordinates anymore. Just follow the
dragonflies. I hope BushBaby42 is okay.

 

 

Field Guide Entry (uploaded at 04:08 hours)

 

Morta:

The Morta is a bird of the
taxomic order of Nnunua which includes most bipedal, winged, pro-spine that lay
eggs. Its plumage is a deep red and its long beak is made for snatching
termites from termite mounds. The morta's mating call is a chilling screech
reminiscent of a woman being murdered. When a morta dies, its dead body
continues to fly aimlessly for days. They are easy prey for flying scavenger
beasts. You can find mortas throughout the Greeny Jungle once you get about
thirty miles away from civilization. Diurnal when alive. Diurnal and Nocturnal
when dead.
—written and entered by: OrchidVenom3

 

ENTRY 9 (22.20 hours)

 

We cannot sleep.
Morituri36 is sitting beside me. For once he's looking down instead of up. Even
he can smell the beast's scent now. It's right down there.

 

 

The dragonflies are
going mad around here. We can see the plant just starting to glow about a mile
away, to the north. By the night, it'll be glowing like a small planet. But the
creature is below us. Right at the base of our tree. I hope we make it through
the night without a fight. Doing battle in the dark is the worst kind of
fighting.

 

 

ENTRY 10 (20.14 hours)

 

It's a moth! With a
large, hairy, robust but streamlined body, thick fuzzy black antennae with what
looked like metallic balls on the ends, and a large coiled proboscis. But it's
wingless, the size of a large car and with six strong insectile running legs.
And it uses its proboscis like a flexible spear!

 

 

It came after us
just after dusk while we were looking for a tree to sleep in. Out of nowhere,
you just heard the sound of branches snapping, and leaves getting crushed as it
rushed at us from behind. Within moments, it speared me in the thigh and my
husband in the upper arm. We'd be dead if it weren't for our quickness and how
good we've become at climbing trees. I guess I have to thank my husband and his
stupid illness. We've bandaged each other up. At least some of the bleeding has
stopped, my husband's wound was worse than mine. So far no sign of poisons from
its proboscis.

 

 

The moth's body
shape tells me that this thing's relatives clearly used to be fliers. It's been
following us for days and now, as we close in on the plant, it has become
aggressive; it's guarding something. I can guess what it is.

 

 

We could kill it. My
husband and I have certainly killed larger, more dangerous beasts. But killing
it might eventually cause what it protects, the M-CPU, to die. The death of
centuries of information. No. We'd rather die. So, instead, we're stuck in a
tree a mile from the plant.

 

 

There's a problem. My waters just broke. No, not now.
Not
now!

 

 

ENTRY 11 (20.45 hours)

 

We're in another
tree. About 200 feet from the M-CPU. Like everything around here, it's infested
with dragonflies. Their hard bodies smack against my face like hail. The
wingless moth is below, waiting, angry, protective. We're about to climb down
and make a run for it. I hope my husband is right. Otherwise, we're dead.

 

 

The M-CPU's smell is
overly sweet, syrupy, and thick. I've vomited twice up here. The labour pains
drown out the pain from my leg. They are getting stronger and faster, too. Can
barely control my muscles when the contractions hit. If they get any worse I
won't be able to help myself, I'll fall right out of this tree. A terrible way
to die. A terrible way for an unborn child to die. I hope my husband is right.

 

 

ENTRY 12 (21.26 hours)

 

If I focus on
talking into this portable, I will not die.

 

 

We're cornered. But
we are lucky. We made it to the plant. Dragonflies are everywhere. Their
metallic bodies shine in the plant's light. They make soft tapping sounds when
they hit the plant's screen. Oh, the pain. My husband was right, bless his
always-sharp mind. The wingless moth indeed is guarding the M-CPU. And thus,
now that we are close to the plant, the moth fears we'll harm it. If we don't move,
the creature will not attack. It is not stupid. It can reason. Otherwise it
would have killed us both by now…soon there will be three of us.