The Visitor (16 page)

“
Oh, hey! not our fault if it came to die here! You shot it way over there...”
 

“
Yes, but... you know when they're not happy, they need a scapegoat. Let’s carry it further away.”
 

Each holding it by a leg, they moved the bov away a few metres. Kklapos came back to raise the grass back up with his feet to conceal the traces of blood, and then they dragged it into the depths of the forest.

“
I would’ve brought a leg back with me, but I don’t want to any more, if it’s sick. It’s surely isn’t healthy,” said Ikklussu.
 

“
Besides, I already told you that they want to retrieve it for analysis. So, we have no choice. Let's go, let’s haul it to the vehicle. We’ll say it was killed near Toro.”
 

“
Yeah, but pull this beast harder! I’m already holding Yepp who’s going in every direction but the right one! Not easy!”
 

“
Hard work...”
 

“
Yepp! Calm down! Stop pulling!”
 

*

Toro felt inner suffering that he had never known before. Nature had given a voice to his testosterone, but it also struck him in his heart. Thus, it had turned into an adolescent’s tender heart so vulnerable to Cupid’s legendary love at first sight. The creature was so similar to him and yet so different from him also! Although Toro was, without knowing it, a father a thousand times over, he had until then yet never met a female. She that had remained only a moment near him occupied the totality of his mind. Her image, her voice, her smell, her demeanor, all of it was engulfed into his memory. One could even say that his memory became her, since he thought of nothing else.

He barely noticed the beings that had been whistling near him for some time. Although their presence was often linked to food, he didn’t grant them any importance. He remained lying on his stomach against the earth, spread eagled, listening to his suffering, only thing that remained from that magical moment in his so monotonous life.

*

“
We’ll move him later,” said Ikkillu. “If we’re sure that he has nothing major.”
 

“
By the way, still nothing from the lab?” asked Ekkbokk.
 

“
No, nothing.”
 

“
Yet it doesn’t seem to be fit as a fiddle.”
 

“
That’s the least we can say!” exclaimed Ikklobar. “I've never seen him like that. He doesn't want to eat anything. Usually, when I him throw bananas and apples... we don’t need to twist his arm.”
 

“
Could it be infected by an unknown contaminant vector?” wondered Ikkillu while thoughtfully pinching the underside of her beak.
 

“
Or a stupid allergy...” proposed Ekkbokk.
 

“
Or an allergy, yes, why not.”
 

“
In the food, you think?” asked Ikklobar.
 

“
I thinking more like something that was carried by the female,” said the boss.
 

“
Fucking beast! It really has disturbed everything!” Ekkbokk  remarked philosophically. “Where will we put it when it has finished to be an asshole?”
 

“
I don’t know yet,” confessed Ikkillu. “The technical service has prepared a room, but I don’t know exactly where...”
 

A noise in the forest interrupted them. Turning around, they saw two hunters coming dragging their kill.

“
Ha! You’ve finally nabbed it!” said Ekkbokk.
 

“
Yes! Not easily, but yes,” answered Kklapos with some pride.
 

Welcoming the opportunity to rest a bit, they let go of the body a few meters away from the cage.

“
We’re supposed to bring it to the lab,” explained Ikklussu. “It seems they have tests to do to find out if...”
 

Ikkillu interrupted:

“
I know, I know! It’s for me, in fact. Just leave it there. We deal with it.”
 

“
Okay! Good, it's okay with me! I’ll just say that it was you... Yepp! Stop pulling now! It’s over, okay! … … Excuse me, I was saying that I’ll report that it was left in your care, then.”
 

“
Yes, that’s it. Thanks for your help!”
 

“
It was nothing!”
 

The two security officers excused themselves and went off.

“
Now, what’s gotten into Toro, to get it all excited like that,” grumbled Ekkbokk.
 

Toro was shaking the bars of his enclosure bovgrunting so hard that it was almost suffocating him.

“
It’s obvious that it’s the female that putting it in that state,” pointed out Ikkillu. “It’s the first time that he has seen one.”
 

“
Aha! Hormones! Hey! but, the jackass’ll break himself out, look!”
 

Toro was thrusting himself with all his might against the bars.

“
Quick!” cried Ikkillu. “Remove the carcass! Take it to the vehicle, while I calm this one.”
 

She prepared a tranquilizer dart.

*

Lying on the ground, Etos was stretching his arm through the standing branches to fetch blades of grass that he brought to his lips twisted with pain. Mahisa’s body had been lying on them. They had been in contact with her skin. A lightning-slayer had walked over the place, but there were still some stained with strands of red. Etos had gathered all those that were within reach. He kissed them and rubbed them on his cheeks, weeping enough to drain all the water from his body. The torture his heart endured was so great, that it was the only thing that allowed him to exist. He wasn’t anything else. All that he had been was gone, blown away by the explosion of his suffering. He was nothing more than pain. The image of blood and revealed flesh in Mahisa’s back burned his spirit. It didn’t want to leave him. Shaking his head to make it go away, he screamed his distress and despair. He continued to fetch grass with his trembling fingers to pick up all of the sacred strands. Blind and deaf to the rest of the world, he didn’t see nor hear Gentle Lightning who was talking to him and touching him.

 *

Akkaliza was tenderly stroking Sneaky’s back weeping, too, in her own way.

In her own way, because, strictly speaking, we couldn’t really say that she was weeping, because umas showed their sadness in a quite different way. Indeed, nothing changed in their eyes; their tear glands didn’t express emotion, they were only used to wet the cornea when it was necessary.

When umas 'cried', the two parts of their beak vibrated against each other, producing a very particular sound recognized by all their contemporaries, were they blue or green. That’s what Akkaliza was doing stroking the animal to which she was so attached. She felt his huge distress and shared it.

Never before have bov and uma weeped as one. It was the very first time.

Akkaliza’s beak vibrated in a way that would have moved the most impassive uma. At this moment, even more than usual, she felt immense frustration caused by the interspecies communication barrier. She didn’t understand why Sneaky was so sad, but she felt him suffer. That hyperactivity of lacrimal glands reflected more than physical pain became a certainty for her. The day starting to decline, she said that she would never have the courage to leave him by himself while in that state. Without ceasing to pat, she grabbed the camera
to see what had happened during her absence, hoping to find the cause of this overwhelming distress.
 

Once again, Ekklamisa looked up at the space control center’s giant screen. It showed the same thing as did all the personal monitors in the front of each ground crew member:

Coordinates of the target at optimal time T = 0:

X = 32 ° 27' 42 ".

Y = 27 ° 33 ' 56.

Z = 18 023 056 m.

V in forward direction = 11 103 m/s.

Current T = - 117,334.

“
We’ll get your lovely toy that came from elsewhere,” Ikkarix told her in a low voice. “Stop watching the countdown every four seconds! You'll end up fraying the numbers! They’ll be of no use after that!”
 

The tall mixed-race was sitting to her right. Four hands resting on his thighs, he sported a friendly bantering way. In response, Ekklamisa made screeches by waving her neck scales, which meant her laugh was forced.

“
Very funny! It would be far better to lose numbers than to lose this vehicle that has travelled for at least a million years to reach us.”
 

“
Yes, but without numbers, one wouldn’t know what one million means.”
 

Ekklamisa waved her crest from one side to side, a friendly exasperated body language which had the same meaning as a shrug, expressing impatience.

T = - 117,311, she saw on her monitor.

The Adventure was the best placed shuttle. Ekklamisa had great confidence in its captain and his crew. Everything should be okay. The orbital plane change maneuver took place perfectly. Adventure was on the right inclination. For the shuttle, all that was needed was the right acceleration at the right time. It was only a space rendezvous after all. Unless at the last moment, an engine failure...”

But even more complexity was involved. The craft to be captured had to be slowed down, as it would be passing at 11 103 m/s while the shuttle would be only at 9 500 m/s at that altitude. So they had to make it lose 1 603 m/s. If this precaution wasn’t taken, any attempt to capture would result in a terrible collision that would destroy both the target and the shuttle. Fortunately, Ikkarix and his squad of mathletes had worked hard. The engineers and technicians also. The result of all this beautiful intelligence was what Ekklamisa was relying on: at T = - 30, Adventure would launch a rocket propulsed vehicle called a Falcon, which would go to the front of the target to capture it in a net, at T = 0, to slow it down and place it in a terumastrial orbit. At T = 0, the Falcon would be at 11 102.5 m/s just in front of the target. It would then use its retrorockets to decelerate its capture.

If that worked, it could be said that the mission was successful, because once the target was in orbit around the planet, its retrieval would become a simple rendezvous like any other. Everything was calculated so that Adventure would capture it two more orbits later, but if that failed to work they would have time under these conditions to try again as many times as necessary.

T = - 117,107, Ekklamisa read on the giant screen. She was holding herself back from calling Adventure to request another verification of Falcon.

I must do everything I can not to faint at T minus thirty
, she said to herself.
 

“
Make an effort not to faint at T minus thirty,”  whispered Ikkarix.
 

“
I don't know why, but I have an urge to sink my teeth into you,” she replied.
 

*

122724’s knowledge was even less than Toro’s.

Same as 1, as 2, as 3, as 267 or 23796 or as 200000 also, he knew virtually nothing. 200000 castrated bovs knew only that there existed food before them, fences so close that it was impossible to extend a limb, itches over their whole body, wounds to their backsides because of the grid they were sitting on, and finally an extreme weariness to be alive.

This short list was all that they knew of existence.

Like his 199999 companions in misfortune and Toro, but contrary to their fellow kind in the wild, 122724 didn’t know how to communicate, because, isolated, he hadn’t learned any language. Force-fed with everything he needed to grow and to grow as quickly as possible, he had very quickly reached the optimal size to be consumable; so fast in fact, that he was still a teenager. It was now time for him to be cut into pieces of meat.

Today, he and a few hundred of his companions would know this fate.

Although these farmed animals were all literally deformed because their muscle had been enhanced by anabolic steroids, none knew how to walk, because never in their life had they the opportunity to take a single step. But, they didn't have to walk, because everything had been planned.

An employee of Nature Foods put a ring around his left ankle and tied his two wrists together behind his back. The relatively low frequency of these gestures on each workstation didn’t warrant the investment to automate them. 122724 felt those objects, but had no time to worry, because immediately he was unceremoniously turned upside down and hoisted by the ankle using a winch mounted on a rail attached to the ceiling. This lifting device began to roll. Following a branching network, it transported 122724 horizontally, upside down, about ten meters above his companions. Under him they were two hundred thousand, all sitting, as he had been himself for so long.

However, what he saw from up there inspired him absolutely nothing, because so far having seen almost nothing but his feeder, he couldn’t understand it. He didn’t even have the cognitive means to realize that he was in the air. But, unfortunately, no need to be particularly erudite to feel pain and fear. 122724 had a very sore ankle and he was terrified. The painful pressure sensation of blood descending into his head increased his distress. He made heart-rending bovgrunts gesturing instinctively, but the more he moved, the more pain he felt in his ankle and leg. Twenty meters ahead, 122723 was suffering the same torture, preceding him by a few seconds towards death. Over all, a liberating death. Himself, he was ahead of 122725 who was the victim of a similar adversity. Others and others, again and again, before 122723, after 122725, flapping and screaming in terror and pain, all hanging upside down. A long parade of suspended distress that never ended; macabre garland constantly advancing. Continuously or almost, we could say, because the few rare times where the mechanism stopped for an instant corresponded to short quickly repaired breakdowns. Nature Foods and Ralchadomac were huge machines that had to produce their tonnage of meat every day.