Chapter 7 – Bruised but Beautiful
I can hardly hold my eyes open when we take our seats around a large, metal table on coasters the mudders pull into the gin joint’s central drinking room. Everything’s really fuzzy, and the halos are starting to illuminate that set of common, mudder faces. Teddy’s going to have to pinch me from time to time to keep me from falling asleep so that my face doesn’t slam onto the table. If I can keep my eyes open, I’m in the perfect mindset for mudder stories, for the strong gin has blurred the distinction between reality and dream. Whatever the mudder barkeep has to share regarding the beast that Teddy’s come to Tybalt to kill is guaranteed to grip my imagination, so much so that any nightmare the tale might summon is likely to be magnified. Yet I wouldn’t want to hear the story in any other way. I love the thrill of the dream too much to deny it. I love the magic too much to resist.
“Tell us everything you can about the beast,” Teddy sips at his gin. “The smallest detail might prove to be the one we most badly need.”
I peek at Marlena. Her face looks like a beaten pillow, and she’s wincing as one of the female mudders stitches shut the gash above her left eye. The mudders, especially their females, are adept at sewing wounds closed. They have to be as proficient in first aid as they can if they hope to avoid the obliterators’ executioner after they suffer injury. The mudders never use anesthesia. The mudder’s gin is the only thing they employ to ever dull any pain. Marlena’s fight in the cage might be finished, but she’s still got to endure all the hurt of being stitched back together until we might find the opportunity to find the finer services of a hospital’s healing chamber.
The clone barkeep sits at our metal table before beginning.
“The obliterators set all us mudders free to eradicate whatever native life we came upon on Tybalt. Tall grasslands covered the land during those first days, grasses so thick that a mudder could hardly push his way through them. But the grasses took easily and quickly to the flame because of the high amount of oxygen in this planet’s atmosphere, and we made easy progress through the first stages we needed to complete to meet the Law of Extermination so that the settlers could set down on planet.
“We just set everything on fire and followed the flames. It’s a lot easier to keep safe with fire when you don’t have to worry about protecting anything but yourself. But we hardly came across any wildlife at all. A few small lizards hissed at us in the grass. An occasional cloud of bugs lifted from our footfalls when we stepped on swampy places hidden beneath the grass. We didn’t trip across anything larger. Save for all of those grasses, this planet seemed empty. We didn’t expect to need much time before we got everything burned and scraped away like the obliterators required. We certainly didn’t notice any indication that there was any kind of animal on Tybalt that colonists would have to fear.”
“When did the mudders start having problems?” Teddy asks.
“Our fires stopped burning when we arrived at sector in the Southern hemisphere. That’s where we discovered the grove, a forest unlike anything any of us clones have ever seen. I think it confuses the obliterators more than it confuses us. The grove’s trees rise for miles. They grow beyond the very clouds far overhead, and vines drop from all those branches down to the ground, so that the grove seems shrouded with orange curtains. Strange bulbs, some the size of pearls and others the size of boulders, grow from those descending vines. None of our saws do any damage to the plants. The vines only tangle all the blades we wield against them until our tools’ motors are overwhelmed. Cutting torches and laser scalpels have no effect at all. We can’t find anything capable of cutting through an inch of that grove.”
“How large do you think the grove is?” I ask.
“Close to a million square acres, give or take.”
Marlena shakes her head and mumbles. “A million acres? It must be larger. Half of Tybalt appeared covered in orange when we approached.”
The mudder barkeep shrugs. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’m only relating what I’ve heard.”
Teddy nods. “Have the obliterators tried using the fleet to bombard the grove from low orbit?”
“Oh, they put on one hell of a light show,” snorts the mudder. “They must’ve opened their laser batteries onto the grove a dozen or more times. None of their ordinance had any impact on the grove. The forest just seems to absorb whatever energy assaults it. The obliterators even detonated a thermo-nuclear warhead over the grove, and all that fire still didn’t char any of it. Nor was there any indication of radiation following that explosion.”
Teddy shakes his head. “The obliterators must’ve been desperate to risk such contamination of a new world, especially one that matches Earth’s parameters as closely as Tybalt does. Not to mention that every strike against that grove must’ve cost the obliterators a fortune.”
“That’s why the obliterators keep pushing us mudders harder and harder,” the barkeep continues. “Our crews came to an absolute standstill at the border of that grove after we raced so quickly across the grasslands. There are rumors that the League’s established a scientific team at that borderland, which would make the obliterators even angrier. I’ve heard mudders sitting at this bar whisper that they don’t think the grove’s native to Tybalt. I’ve heard those mudders whisper they overhead those men and women stationed at that science outpost saying the grove’s some kind of extra-terrestrial life that’s migrated somehow to Tybalt. Some mudders claim the obliterators are arguing with that scientific crew over whether, and how much, of that grove deserves to be preserved.”
Marlena bruised face turns towards her father’s. “Preserving life native to this biosphere would keep the planet closed to human colonization according to the Law of Extermination, and the League couldn’t force the obliterators to preserve anything unless there was reason to think the planet possessed any intelligence equal or superior to our own.”
I rub my forehead. My buzz is starting to fade into ache. “And what happens if that grove proves to be as alien to Tybalt as we are?”
“I’m only a mudder, so I have no idea,” the clone shrugs, “and remember that I hear only rumors.”
Teddy scratches his beard. “Rumors about a beast were what pulled us out to Tybalt. What can you tell us about the creature said to so badly frighten the mudders?”
The mudder nods. “It wasn’t long until the obliterators started pushing us into the grove. They simply shot any of us who paused before stepping through those hanging vines into the grove. For a while, none of those mudders ever returned, so the obliterators started importing mudders from other star systems so that they could keep pressing us forward into those vines. The obliterators gave their mudders radio and camera equipment so the clones might communicate back to them whatever they found. They clipped tracking chips onto the ears of their mudders so they could follow their route through the trees. Only, the obliterators never received a signal of any kind from the mudders they pushed into the grove. They just kept pushing more and more of us clones into the vines.”
“So where have all the rumors of this monster lurking on the planet come from?”
Teddy leans forward. He’s got an excellent Poker face, but I still see he’s getting anxious. He’s starting to fear he’s come all this way out to Tybalt to chase nothing more than a fiction.
“Eventually, the mudders started to shamble back out of the grove,” the mudder sighs. “The clones returned to describe a grove filled with the heads of strange animals preserved in amber. They mumbled about a creature of shadow who stole their faces. They returned to ramble on and on that the dark monster hungered for new faces, that it was about to come out to search for new ones. Some of the mudders described the beast as a kind of vulture fluttering way up high in the trees. Other mudders described a kind of giant and black cat that pounced from the branches. The mudders who returned from the trees kept claiming the grove was tired of the same, clone faces, that the grove wanted new trophies to satisfy i
ts curiosity.”
“What happened to those mudders?” Marlena asks.
The mudder pauses. “They wouldn’t go back into the grove. They preferred to be executed for refusing the obliterators’ orders to do as commanded. Do you know of any planet were a mudder is allowed to refuse to follow as he or she had been bred to do?”
“That must’ve been when the obliterators contacted me about their problem.” Teddy leans back into his chair.
“When did they reach out to you?” The mudder asks.
“They told me some animal was holding up their efforts four months ago, and I’ve spent the last three with my daughter and friend jumping all the way out here.”
The mudder shakes his head. “The obliterators knew of that monster for well over a year.”
“Why did they wait so long before reaching out to me?”
The mudder shrugs. “It’s not a mudder’s place to second-guess what motivates the obliterators. Maybe they didn’t want the rest of the galaxy to know they were having problems on Tybalt. Perhaps the beast changed their minds when it started crawling out of the grove around the time the obliterators reached out for your help.”
Marlena gives me a nervous look through her swelling eye.
“Where has the beast struck?” I ask through the mumble of gin.
“It’s hard telling,” the mudder replies. “There are so many rumors, and the grove remains very far away. Still, there are rumors that the monster has reached this camp of cardboard shanties.”
I peek at Teddy. I wonder if he’s having any second thoughts about leaving his Spartan sentries at the landing platforms. It would be nice to have their quiet company of armaments at my side right about now when my imagination starts to whirl out of control over rumors of a monster slinking about the clone work camp. Maybe the mudders might be frightened enough by their own rumors to turn a blind eye towards the presence of robots in their community.
The mudder stands from the table. “That’s all I’ve heard. The woman could use something in her stomach to help her regain her energy. She’s going to need it to help with the healing. The man in the garish shirt’s going to need something other than gin in his blood if he doesn’t want to languish in hangover after a few more hours. A little food will do all of you some good. I know it’s only a gin joint, but stay and share in some stew. Consider resting here in the back chamber before the sun rises. You’re not going to have much time to rest if you try making your way back to the landing platforms at this hour.”
“You’re right, and we’d be grateful,” Teddy agrees.
“I recognized you as a wise man,” comments the mudder, “a shame the obliterators don’t seem to share your wisdom.”
The three of us are too hungry to protest as a female mudder emerges from a back room to deliver us all steaming, clay bowls of pungent mudder stew. I always keep a salt shaker and a handful of cheap soy sauce packets in my pockets so that I’m prepared for any occasion when I might need to share a meal with the mudders, and I’m very grateful when our hosts offer us a large bottle of hot sauce to douse over our stew. Teddy and Marlena might not carry any cumin or pepper with them, but they don’t say a word as they slowly chew away at the meal. They’re probably just as tired and hungry as I am.
Marlena and Teddy also keep any reservations they might have about spending what remains of the night sleeping in a mudder’s gin joint to themselves. I’m still happy to rest anywhere other than a starship. Besides, I’ve spent my share of nights sleeping off the gin in clone hovels far worse than this building, and I know how to make myself comfortable in the least-accommodating of places.