Native Americans

Avalon 9.6 Earth and Sky, part 3 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The alien paused as they approached.  He looked up at them but showed no hostile intent.

“This is a genesis planet,” Lockhart began.  “The Kargill has been given permission to reside here under strict non-interference conditions.  The Reichgo have been given permission to visit only with the provision that they do not interfere with the human race, the natural inhabitants of this planet.  The elder races born on this world are allowed to visit uder the same conditions, but you do not belong here.”

“I work for the Kargill,” the man said.  “Who are you?  And how is it you speak Ahluzarian?”  The man tapped something near his ear.  Probably a translation device which was not needed.

“We are the Men in Black and work for the Kairos,” Lockhart said.  “And again, you don’t belong here.  Only the Zalanid Mister Smith is allowed here to speak on behalf of the Kargill.”

“You work for the Kargill?” Katie asked, but the man needed a minute.  He pulled a different device from a pocket—probably his version of a database.  No doubt he had to look up Kairos and Men in Black.

“Perhaps you can help,” the Ahluzarian put his device away and attempted a smile.  “I am Commander Takar of the Ahluzarian police.  Our job is to keep the space ways and planets of the Kargill free of criminals and pests.  My ship is a prisoner transport.  There are three worlds well beyond this one at the very edge of the galaxy where prisoners and invasive species are deposited.  The Kargill does not allow us to practice genocide as an option.  The space lane goes past this system along the Reichgo-Kargill border.  I have this system clearly marked as a no-go zone.  But one of the prisoners managed to disable a portion of our navigation controls, and we noted this world is also marked as a sanctuary world.  We thought to pause here while we made repairs.”

“Help?”  Lincoln said as the others came up to listen.  “What do you need help with?”  Lincoln did not sound happy.

“Why are you not at your ship making the repairs?” Katie asked.

Commander Takar looked embarrassed if Katie read the expression correctly.  “When we landed, a sanguar slithered out of the hold and escaped the ship when we took down the screens to replenish our air and water supplies.”

“Sanguar?” Lockhart asked, not liking the sound of something escaping from a prison ship.

“An invasive species, not intelligent, but very clever,” Commander Takar said before Elder Stow interrupted.

“My father.  This one, for want of a better word, is a walking tree.  No blood to tempt some of the alien people we have encountered in our journey.”  He cleared his throat like a man about to read a report.  “The sanguar are worm-like creatures, one of the few survivors from the Agdaline world after they ripped the atmosphere off their world in their ill-advised gravity experiments. They arose on the same world as the dragons.  They are often red colored, grow roughly three of your feet long, have no eyes or ears, but a mouth with plenty of sharp inward pointing teeth.  They live and move underground, like worms, but are sensitive to vibrations on the surface.  When something edible walks overhead, they spring out of the ground spewing an acid-like venom.”

Commander Takar nodded that whole time, which suggested that bit of body language translated well between the species.  He took up the explanation.  “Only one escaped. We counted.  One cannot reproduce, and this environment does not seem suitable.  It should not be too difficult to detect.”

“What environment would be suitable?” Lockhart asked Commander Takar but looked at Katie.

“Consider a world with little atmosphere,” Elder Stow responded.  “Most species and ground cover would die off, leaving a desert-like world, maybe like Mars.  If the planet has any wobble, they might still have seasons, so a hot-dry summer and a cold-dry winter.  Think Gobi Desert.”

“Where are you parked?”  Lockhart asked as the question entered his mind.  Commander Takar pointed to the top of the mountain.  Everyone guessed he walked down, following whatever trail the sanguar made.  “My people are presently repairing the ship and doing guard duty.  I volunteered, thinking this sanctuary planet would pose no threat.”

“Not something you should assume,” Lincoln said.

“Shale mountain,” Katie repeated herself.  “It might be hard for such a big worm to dig through.  If it traveled downhill on the mountain surface, it might have gotten caught in the mudslide.  If it got caught in the flash flood, it might be well downriver by now.  Elder Stow?”

“So, it might be behind us?” Lincoln asked and looked.  Sukki also looked and she did not look happy.

“No,” Elder Stow said.  “I had the scanner set for life forms and it would have picked up a sanguar, even if it was ten or twenty feet underground.  I saw a black bear, but it avoided us.  The rest recorded deer, squirrels, birds and such.  My guess is it is ahead of us, and possibly washed downriver.”

“Commander Takar?” Lockhart turned to the man.

“My scanner is set for Sanguar.  I stopped here because I lost the trail.  It is not nearly as sophisticated as your own, but it will tell us when we get close, and it has a small grid to better pinpoint the location.”

“Commander Takar,” Lockhart frowned at the man, and he seemed to get the message.  “You better ride with me.” He turned his head back to look at Tony since they were at the back of the line.  His words came out in English, though he did not mean to speak in that language.  “Tony.  Did you and Louis get all that?”

“Yes,” Tony responded.  “I assume we are going worm hunting.  Louis says he does not want to even imagine giant worms with teeth.”

“Me neither,” Sukki said, commiserating with the man.

“Maybe hold on to my shirt,” Lockhart suggested, and reached his hand down.  Commander Takar did look essentially human, but he could not be sure.  In the back of his mind, he remembered the stick people they met at the beginning of their journey.  The Kairos warned him not to shake their hands because they were like petrified wood.  The spindly little stick people would crush his hand before they ever realized what they were doing.  Commander Takar’s hand had a flesh and blood feel to it.  He did weigh more than a human, but not by that much.  Lockhart’s horse did not complain, much.

Commander Takar and Elder Stow both kept their scanners on as they moved out of the water gap and on to a well-used trail.  They still followed the river, which everyone felt would bring them to the sanguar, but after a short way, they felt it best if they got down and walked the horses.  Louis did not want to get down.  All he could imagine was the worm springing out of the earth, spitting venom, and bighting his leg off in one gulp.  He did not really understand how scanners worked.  Sukki got him down with the promise to walk next to him.  He had seen her shove whole trees off the path.  That was a power he could at least understand.

Katie stopped everyone after a short way.  She heard sporadic cracking in the distance.  Decker, who had wandered out on the wing away from the river, came riding up, rapidly.

“White men on this side of the river,” he reported.  “Indians on the other side.  They appear to be trying to kill each other, but neither looks willing to risk a charge across the river.”

“We are not here to interfere,” Lockhart said.  “History needs to play out in its own way.”

Sukki had her amulet out and interrupted the thought.  “The Kairos is probably with one of those groups.”

“The Lenape group,” Louis said.  “I heard the big Swede married a half-English, but otherwise he has no use for the English.  They killed his parents and burned his home when he was young,”

“So, we need to contact the natives up ahead and find the Kairos.  We will ask if there is anything we can do.”  Lockhart looked determined, but less than twenty minutes later, they came face to face with a Lenape war party of a dozen warriors.  They looked mean, but at least they did not start fighting right away.

************************

MONDAY

The travelers get into the middle of a firefight between the English and Algonquin, and of course they watch out for the giant worm with teeth. Until then, Happy Reading.

*

Avalon 9.6 Earth and Sky, part 2 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The travelers moved three days through the storms and chilly spring rains.  They found the Delaware River and followed it, left the Catskill Mountains behind, and headed for the Poconos.  Louis took them to a small Mohawk village where he got some winter squash and beans to go with their protein-rich diet.  They moved slowly, mostly on foot as Louis had no horse.  He reluctantly got up behind Lockhart, Lincoln, or Tony several times, and once tried to ride Ghost, but both Louis and the mule quickly agreed that was not going to work.

Louis explained some things while they traveled.  “The five nations have greatly benefited the people of all the nations.  By making peace and uniting our interests, we drove the Mahican from the Eastern River and controlled the fur trade with the Dutch and later with the English.”

“Last of the Mohicans?” Lockhart said, half joking.  Katie smiled and shook her head.

“Mahicans,” Louis said, not understanding.  “Yes?”

“Algonquin tribe,” Lincoln spoke up from behind.  “Traditional enemies of the Mohawk, remember?”

Louis continued.  “We spread our influence south over the Susquehanna and Lenape people, and west over the Erie and all down the Alleghany River and into the Ohio territory.  The Shawnee are stubborn, but we have prevailed.”

“Lincoln?”  Katie asked as she saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

“Just looking something up,” Lincoln said.  “As a kid growing up watching all those western movies, I thought the Shawnee were a western tribe, like from Kansas or Nebraska territory, or something.”

The following day, the river turned from flowing southeast to a southwesterly direction.  Lincoln announced, “Port Jarvis.  We are entering the Poconos.  We are headed toward the Delaware Water Gap, though we won’t get there today.  Probably late afternoon tomorrow.”

“I will leave you there,” Louis said.  “We are already in Lenape land, though the English are pushing in from the east and up from the south.  Soon enough there will be no more Lenape land.  Some have already moved west to the Ohio territory.”

The travelers fell silent then and wondered if there was anything they could do to improve matters for the natives. Sadly, each in their own way concluded what the Kairos often said.  They had to let history play out the way it was written.  They were not allowed to interfere.

The rain came hard that night.  It rained hard all that morning as they moved along the narrowing path to the gap in the mountains.  The Mountains themselves seemed to move in closer and closer, pushing them toward the river.

“Blue Mountains.”  Katie pointed to her right before she pointed across the river.  “Kittatinny Mountains.”  “There is a ridge that connects the two, but there is a gap the river flows through.  Louis says there is a trail our horses can go, but I suspect it will be narrow.”

The rain slackened off at lunch.  Elder Stow set a screen around the camp so they could eat relatively dry and in peace.  Louis marveled at the technological wonder, which he imagined was some sort of magic.  But he had heard and seen enough in the past four days not to question these strangers.  He would do what he could for them in the hope that they might bless him.

As they began to clean up to move on, they heard something like thunder behind them.  Cannons?  Thunderstorm?  People asked, but Elder Stow settled it with a glance at his scanner and a word.  “Flash Flood.  Stay where you are.”

Everyone looked behind as Elder Stow stabilized his screen device against the impact.  In the twenty-first century, they might have imagined some dam upstream broke wide open.  It looked like a wall of water, even if it was only a couple of feet high.  Maybe just a foot high, but it rose higher behind the wall.  The water broke the banks of the river and given how narrow the way between the mountains had become, it would rise rapidly.

Louis shrieked, but the water hit Elder Stow’s screen and went around.  The thunder echoed a bit off the mountain walls.  Another sound echoed back.  After so many days of rain followed by the downpour, a portion of the side of the mountain gave way.  The mud poured down in front of them and over them, though the way behind looked clear enough.  They had to wait for the water to go down.

“Well,” Lockhart said.  I guess we are stuck here for a while.  Maybe the water and mud will be finished by morning.”  He turned back to the campfire.  Sukki and Nanette were already stirring it up again.  He turned to Katie.  “What were you saying about Otapec’s daughter whose name I can never remember?”

“Ixchel,” she said.  “And I was talking about her pet dragon in Ozma’s day.  The Agdaline andasmagora that guarded the city.”

Lockhart nodded.

Louis fell to his knees and wept.  He escaped certain death, twice, and these people never even blinked.

In the morning, the water had receded enough for the travelers to move on, though it still topped the riverbank in a number of places.  The mud from the side of the hill that did not wash down into the river proved thick in places.  Louis had to ride behind Tony through most of it.  In one spot, Elder Stow had to get out his weapon and use it on a very low setting to quick dry the way ahead so they could go over the top of it.  They had an early lunch in that spot and waited for the hardened mud to cool off.

They used Decker’s rope and the horses to move some bigger trees out of the way.  Sukki, who went back out on the point, picked up some small and medium sized trees and shoved them into the river.  They only had a couple of boulders to contend with.  Katie said the mountain appeared to be shale which meant it was not the best at holding the topsoil, but it did not make granite boulders.

Louis shrieked to see Sukki lift a whole tree and turn it to the side so the horses could go through.  He seriously shrieked when Elder Stow had to fly overhead to heat the water in that one section, to harden the mud so the travelers could ride over top when the ground cooled.  They rode over that section with some speed, thinking that even after two hours it might be like hot coals under the horse’s hooves.  Several horses and Ghost complained, but the wet mud on the other side of that section felt good and cooled them.  The travelers stopped and checked their hooves to be sure none got burned too badly.

Not long after, they moved through the actual water gap.  As Katie suspected, the way got very narrow.  They could see the land flattened out after the water gap.  It would be farm fields in the not-too-distant future, but for the present it looked filled with trees.  Before they could get there, though, they all had to halt.  Sukki stopped and pointed. Someone stood in the gap.

The man did not look anything like a native, but he did not look like a European, either.  He appeared dressed in a dull red uniform of some kind, and he seemed to be looking into a box, much like Elder Stow looked when he got out his scanner.  With that thought, Elder Stow got out his scanner and Lockhart and Katie moved up to join Sukki.  Up close, they could tell the man, though human shaped and with a human enough looking face, was nevertheless not human.