Chapter 8
On our first night on this planet, they came in their hundreds. Almost like they were prepared for our arrival. Waiting. Their screeching voices, mimicking the cawing sound of the Raptor. Terrifying. Heart-stopping. Under the cover of darkness, they lurked, and it was an especially dark night in more ways than one. We’ve called nighttime the dark hours since.
Like demented, ghostly apparitions, they struck with bestial rage and savagery. The only sightings we had of them were flashes of their frightful, fiery and furious red eyes—and of course, the crimson flare from their laser guns that burnt straight through the human body. We were sitting ducks, easy targets. I still gag when I recall the smell of burning flesh.
The net result of that first night: thousands dead, the Ark obliterated. Everything on board had been wrecked; the craft itself, incinerated. The massive vessel, mankind’s great hope, completely razed to the ground. The people were scattered … and our naïve, fledgling hopes shattered. Day One. Welcome to Eden? Tsk! Welcome to Hell. It didn’t take faultless Vulcan logic to conclude that we had to adapt or face certain elimination.
During the next two moons—suffering unbridled terror amid under-siege conditions—the senior men and women among us, including my father, showed their resilience, and the resolve of the human spirit. Desperation was a ruthless tutor, and the learning curve a vertical gradient. But we mastered enough to survive.
We learnt that the light hours were safe from them, but during the dark hours we needed to be strapped up in a tree somewhere. The higher, the better. On the ground, we were cannon fodder.
We also discovered that if we were in groups of around twenty-five or more, they were sure to attack. Like a red rag to a bull, or in Eden’s parlance, human skin to a Sabre. In smaller clams of twenty or less, we evidently no longer posed a threat. After we discovered this, we concluded that their main motivation for the onslaught was territorial. Maybe they had thwarted an invasion from an alien race before, perhaps at great cost.
Since the first two moons of war, they had not marshalled another overt attack again. (If it could be called a war. We never found one of their dead. Not a single fatality. Though we must have killed a few. Surely?) The ease with which they slaughtered us, and the sheer decimation of our numbers, brought an end to their coordinated frontal assaults. But they never let us settle. Not for a single hour of any single day.
On one occasion, in our second year on Eden, two clans joined together, planning a few days of friendship and bonding—their numbers coming to around forty people. By the second night, only three survived to tell the tale.
The same applied if we tried to construct anything resembling a permanent dwelling such as a house or fort. Two nights wouldn’t pass before it would be destroyed, along with those responsible for building it. Even clustering together in one tree for the night seemed to draw their fury. Needless to say, we knew they were watching us. Always watching.
Now, our primary concern was their random preying on individuals. The theory we held was that it had something to do with initiating youth as full adult members. Part of the initiation rite, or so we assumed, involved killing a human. It could happen at any time of the year, obviously during the dark hours.
They tended to target those they perceived as leaders for a kill, and they had a perverse liking for our younger women. We would find our men and older women dead in their trees, pierced through the heart, a tiny but fatal puncture wound in the chest. Our girls though … would just disappear … gone, no sound, no trace of their bodies anywhere, and no tracks to pursue. None. This was the reason we had a dearth of mature leaders, and why the men outnumbered the women so drastically. And why we hated them with perfect hatred.
We learnt many other invaluable lessons during those first two moons. Our survival as a species depended on it.
For one, we learnt what berries and nuts we could eat, and which ones to avoid.
On the verge of starvation, we discovered that the filthy, fierce-looking rat-pig was harmless, and would serve as our primary source of protein.
Hog, Hog and more Hog. What I’d do for a pizza with extra cheese. The older ones among us often drooled over the thought of coffee. I never got to taste the stuff. Strange as it might sound; the luxuries I miss most are toothbrushes, nail-clippers and toilet paper. Not necessarily in that order.
Besides being vital to our diet, when the freezing winter moons rolled in, we turned the Hog pelts into blankets. We also learnt that their fermenting flesh kept the Raptor away.
To our utter relief, we found out the Sabre and the Wolf couldn’t climb trees and weren’t fond of fire, or the denser parts of the jungle, or the river. Raptor, Sabre, Serpent and Wolf … yes, simplistic names; labels that arose out of fear and haste. One day we might assign better, more scientific names to these beasts. These days, we tried not to talk about them at all.
We also learnt that days on Eden were longer than on Earth, but with the Ark destroyed, along with all our technology, we had no equipment to calculate the exact length. The scientists among us developed a way to mark time and measure days. Today, we had survived on Eden for 3,500 days which, with a slightly longer day, was maybe around ten Earth-years. Eden’s moon revolved around the planet every twenty-eight days, so we had survived one-hundred-and-twenty-five moons.
Thirty thousand of us landed on planet Eden.
Ten thousand died in the first forty-eight hours.
After the first two moons, just over four thousand remained.
Ten years later, three hundred and sixty-seven were left.
Well, that was the head count at the last anniversary. Since then, we’d lost Victor. Who knew how many members the other clans had lost?
And still no babies were born. We weren’t sure why, but in ten years there had not been a single birth. I would pity the first parents trying to raise a child in this cruel world, but it would surely have to happen soon. New couples married from time to time, but still we waited.
On Earth we had used phrases to describe species that matched our survival rate on Eden. However, we didn’t speak about concepts like ‘endangered’ or ‘extinction.’ We clung to some elusive hope. I guess that’s the way of the human spirit. It did help to know that the Mzees were working on something significant. Although no one outside the senior leadership yet knew the details, the plan—called Operation: Future Forward—involved moving beyond mere survival. We dreamt of creating a thriving future. A wild, obscure hope perhaps, but then again, all hope borders on the unfeasible. Void of hope, humanity ceases to exist; as Victor always said: “Without the flicker of hope, the human soul fades into oblivion.”
As I worked my way through the thick jungle pondering our brief history on Eden, a realisation dawned on me. Something I always intuitively felt, but for the first time, I got my head around it. I thought of us as we … a tribe. A family. One people. My people. We were so few and our enemies so many, we were forced to pull together to survive.
Although I was only a terrified seven-year-old half-pint during those horrific first two moons, I was proud of what we had learnt, of how we had adapted. I was part of our survival, our success, and would give my life to ensure we moved forward into a sustainable future. In fact, the horror of those first two moons did not haunt my sleep nearly as much as the last two months on Earth. We witnessed the worst of human nature then. On Eden, we saw the best—despite the staggering challenges we had to overcome.
Through those frightful first two moons, the Mzees emerged, a simple leadership model of mature men and women who put our collective well-being ahead of their own lives. Heroic examples of integrity and courage, they gathered to meet three or four times a year to trade stories, continually comparing notes, relentlessly learning more about our new home planet. Our future depended on it.
A big part of the anniversary each year was to keep our hopes alive, encouraging one-heart across the clans, to share what we had learnt since we last gathered. New information was a treasure
, crucial to our progress. The wider Huduma group interviewed each person with questions carefully prepared by the Mzees, to take advantage of this opportunity. The interviews weren’t intimidating at all, just the opposite.
During those ten minutes, you’d feel safe, cared for, even significant. Knowing that the information you shared, the lessons you had learnt, contributed to a better future. In a small but powerful way, you got to know one of the leaders, and you felt enlarged, part of the wider family. I knew I could never be one of them. Certainly not mature enough, or selfless enough … which was why Ruzzell’s desire to be nominated was so puzzling to me. I couldn’t imagine him imparting the same comfort and hope the leaders did in those interviews.
What is he up to?
Bringing up the tail of our travel-party, along with Dixan and my many thoughts, I deftly pulled myself under an opaque, grape-coloured bush scrub. With ten-centimetre-long barbed thorns, at first glance, it looked impassable. Without a second glance, I was already through it. Nimbly, Dixan made easy work of it, too. Learning to dodge poison-tipped thorns was like learning to cross a busy road.
Stop. Look. Shield. Think.
During our trip, a word was never uttered. Hand signals were all we used, and even then it was seldom necessary. We all knew the way to main base, and it wasn’t difficult to find: just keep the river on your right and venture north.
Every year, either Ruzzell or I would bring up the rear due to our skill with the bow. Victor normally took lead. This year Ruzzell had assumed the lead, and Dixan was told to join me at the tail. I, of course, had lost my bow to Shawz.
On the journey, we did not follow each other in single file. This would make it too easy to track us, and would wear a pathway through the jungle. Instead, in bands of two or three, each group would leave after one-hundred-and-twenty counts—setting a course parallel to the other groups ahead.
I preferred being at the tail. I could protect the clan this way, alerting them of any dangers from behind. Gratefully, our clan had never been preyed on en route to the Gathering.
The clans south of the main base, like us, walked the distance. The clans north ferried the river. They would come downstream on makeshift rafts; the current was strong, and they cruised quickly—arriving a lot earlier than we did. It was also the reason they had to leave before us. They walked back, before the dark hours fell. We would then take their rafts, and sail down to our camp. The rafts would eventually end up as our firewood. It was a small price for them to pay—they lived further away from the Shadow Valleys.
As I pushed through some large, lush leaves and ducked carefully under another low-lying branch armed with needle-sharp spikes, I caught my breath. Ahead of me, some forty strides away, our clan had all assembled at another camp’s Base Stump.
Clearing the same thorn-laced branch, Dixan’s eyes narrowed. “Why are we stopping in Clan Three’s camp? This isn’t right, bro.”
I felt my head tilt to one side and my nose scrunch in anger.
What’s Ruzzell up to now?