With the coming of morning Rene found the earth enwreathed in a grey and sinuous fog that was so thick he felt like he was standing on the shores of an ocean of sky. Only the lapping edges of the wide pond he had located was visible beneath rolling tails of mist. He couldn’t even tell where the heavens ended and the water began—they had all joined together at the waist in one vague mass. It all had filthy, sooty smell to it too, like the inside of a baker’s oven. As through a clouded window pane he saw a red and malevolent haze glowing on faraway slopes to the southeast. Zildiz noted his bewilderment and taunted him:
“Don’t you recognized your own handiwork when you see it? An entire biome went up in smoke because of the Engine’s rampage. Not that I mind—all this is Leaper territory after all.”
“Cry me a river,” Rene scowled, dipping his boots into pond and wading into it. It was only knee height at the deepest point. What’s more, he could see the blurred outlines of small darting shapes below the surface that he hoped were fish.
He made Zildiz sit with her back against a sapling and bound her to it with the spool of webbing he’d collected.
“Don’t get any ideas,” he told her. He slipped off his boots and raggedy socks, rolling up the jumpsuit around his calves and getting back into the water.
At first he tried to get at the fishes with his bare hands. It would be just as easy as catching the milky cave species they raise in the aquaculture ponds back in Ulysses, he thought. All one had to do was slip one’s hand in with glacial patience so as not to disturb them, dipping the palm right under their bellies. Rene had gotten so good at it as a boy that he could even tickle them right in the gills and under the chin. But he soon discovered that the fish on the surface world were nothing like their subterranean cousins. For one thing, they weren’t blind, or stupid. The little rascals fled when he floundered after them, feet slipping on the mossy stones that covered the pond bed. Zildiz looked on with interest as the single worst attempt at hunting she had ever had the misfortune to witness began. This Rene-creature was as clumsy as it was slow-witted, splashing around in fruitless pursuit of its feeble prey. How had these animals ever managed to conquer the stars? Zildiz watched as Rene stubbed his toes on a sharp rock and howled, falling arse-backwards and losing his visor in the process. He then painstakingly dredged the pond bottom for it, turning it up some time later all covered in water lilies and mud. Rene angrily slung his backpack back on and cleared the gunk out of his mask before fitting it back on his face, only to begin yelling as a river crab he’d left inside tried to crawl up his nose. He tore the mask off again and doused it in the pond, finally ridding himself of the curious crustacean.
“Phew!” he sighed with relief.
“Toss it in again,” Zildiz suggested gaily, “At least that way you might catch another.”
“Shut up,” Rene glowered, face going purple with rage. He grabbed the biggest stick of driftwood he could find and began beating the surface of the water as if it owed him money.
Zildiz hid a smile at that. She was famished and events had definitely taken a turn for the worse, but at least someone else was suffering more than she was.
And while this halfwit is preoccupied, Zildiz schemed, I’ll go ahead and signal the god for help. She activated the magnetosynaptic organ behind her inner ear and tried all the usual frequencies.
Nothing but static. Either her organ had been knocked out of commission with the loss of her exomorph’s functions, or the heavy smog caused by the wildfire was getting in the way of reception.
But more than this, a greater part of the Vitalus would be preoccupied with containing the damage to its work. As a shared consciousness It had unimaginable processing power, yet It tended to deal with the world in a holistic fashion, neglecting the individual elements. This did not mean that the god could not be effectively omniscient—It merely had a wholly different perspective and hierarchy of priorities than did Its mortal servants.
For problems on the micro scale, it did however deploy Hollowores or other Inkarnids. Zildiz wasn’t vain enough to think it would send such an avatar of creation and destruction just to retrieve one lone Gallivant. No help would be forthcoming for a while. No matter; she was certain that she could outsmart the Fleet-man soon enough.
Then something happened which drastically altered her perception of him and his kind. Rene grabbed another stick and banged the two pieces together, frowning with concentration. Without a word he returned to the survival kit and combined them with the spool of webbing, twisting them together into the silk and rotating them to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Grinning evilly, the Fleet man took the two sticks and the webbing strung between them and gently lowered them into the pond. He then waited, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as a fish approached him. When it refused to come any closer, he took one of the white cubes and crumbled it into pieces, which he sprinkled liberally into the water right above his new tool. Eventually the fish took the bait and swam in for a nibble. In a flash Rene pulled up the net and held up a wriggling, pinknosed carp with an ecstatic cry of victory. Chuckling at his own cleverness, Rene hauled his catch to the bank and dashed its brains out on the rocks. He then repeated the process until he caught three more carp with the exact same method. He gutted and descaled the carp with his clasp knife in a trice.
Zildiz was seeing the boundless cunning of these creatures firsthand. It bothered her more than she cared to admit. Granted, if her exomorph was up and running she could’ve killed him in a heartbeat, humming sword or not. But the rate at which he had adapted to his surroundings was concerning.
For comparison, say a Gallivant wished to specialize in the catching of fish. It would have had to ask the Vitalus to edit its gilt helix so that its exomorph could accept the grafting of an appendage designed solely to catch fish. This was assuming the Vitalus had calculated that the addition of this new capability would not lead to the eventual collapse of the riverine ecosystem in the next ten or twenty generations, or that the Gallivant in question could be entrusted with such a responsibility, assuming that its lineage’s previous contributions to the Great Game rendered it worthy of the sudden advantage.
Meanwhile, Rene had developed the net tool in less than the span of an hour, with absolutely zero regard for the consequences of his actions. Zildiz could only imagine what an entire nation of Renes could do if they were given time to multiply beyond Arachnea’s carrying capacity. Clearly this Fleet was a threat not to be taken lightly.
Rene finished cleaning the fish and skewered them on sharp sticks. He then found some pebbles and started banging them together to produce sparks above a pile of bark scrapings and twigs, careful placing one of the brown lumps from the kit inside. It was just as successful as his first attempts at fishing; he smacked the rocks together until he bruised his fingers, then hurled them cursing into the fog.
“Sonofa…” he swore, squatting next to Zildiz and looking at the raw fish dejectedly.
“What, you can manage all that but can’t get a fire going?” she asked, nodding at the blaze in the distance. Rene made no reply, too busy sucking on his thumb. Suddenly he unsheathed the sword and Zildiz nearly panicked, thinking that she had finally annoyed him to the point of violence. Instead, Rene picked up a chunk of quartz crystal off the ground and cut it in half, producing a shower of sparks as the edge met the mineral. Rene piled the fuel again and repeated the trick with the sword and the stone until the tinder caught and tiny streamers of smoke wafted up. Cupping his hands around the precious heart of flame, Rene blew on it lovingly and smiled as it grew into a merry, crackling cookfire.
Making sure to give Zildiz a smug look, Rene sat cross-legged next to it and began to barbeque his meal. Zildiz had built fires herself during the cold monsoon seasons as a special allowance granted by the Vitalus for extreme weather fluctuations, but those had been for warmth, not to burn food with.
The smell of the browning fish skin flooded Rene’s mouth with spit. He saw Zildiz licking her chops unconsciously, said:
“Don’t worry. You’ll get yours.”
Sure enough he held out first batch of carp for her to eat, blowing on it to cool it. Zildiz even forgot her hostility for a moment as she seized the fish with her jaws.
“I can feed myself, you know,” she told him between crunchy mouthfuls of bone and white flesh. It was delicious! An explosion of flavors that was at once both salty and slightly burnt, the meat firm yet succulent. Swallowing greedily, she pulled the fish off its stick and ate it whole, the fish’s head crackling under her molars. Rene watched her choke the thing down with a mix of amazement and alarm, then replied:
“I would consider giving you an arm free to eat with, but you’re a walking arsenal, lady. Is it good, though? My cooking?”
“Passable,” Zildiz lied with a shrug of her shoulders. Her affected disdain did not stop her from giving the rest of the carp a longing look. Rene knew she was hungry and tore the next fish in half, gorging himself and giving Zildiz the rest. Very soon all that was left of their breakfast was a pile of bones and scales that Rene kicked back into the pond. He sat back and propped his bare feet next to the fire to dry his toes.
“Uuurrpp!” Zildiz belched appreciatively.
“Bless you,” Rene commented, and settled down for a nap. He could only rest his eyes for a moment, as the woman would slit his throat as soon as he let his guard down. But the fatigue of the constant marching and fighting amassed on the edges of his consciousness. Slowly but surely, he was pulled down into the untroubled realm of sleep, free from the cares of his existence.
