Rovid Moves

ROVID MOVES

By

Anthony Plank

Smashwords Edition

Rovid Moves

Copyright © 2012 by Anthony Plank

Smashwords Edition, License Notes.

Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews.

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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Please note that I use Australian spelling throughout. You will see doubled letters (e.g. focussed), ou’s (e.g. colour) and ‘re’ (centre) as well as a few other differences from American spelling. Also, to aid your enjoyment of this novel, all alien measurements are expressed in humam terms. EG: alien distances are expressed in Kilometres etc.

PREFACE

The prehuman creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind... Humanisation was not a leap forward but a grope toward survival.

Eric Hoffer (1902-83). U.S. philosopher inReflections on the Human Condition.

And why only Humans?

If there are advanced alien races, then they too would have clawed their way out of the cosmic soup from which their worlds are made… and evolved. And in so doing would have battled for dominance. They would have experienced conflict and hardship, and throughout their generations would have produced leaders, followers, saints, sinners, heroes, cowards, erudites, ignoramuses, visionaries, demagogues and despots, all of whom would make up their society, a society which… like Human society... would do whatever it takes to survive.

CONTENTS

The Ape and the Orb

The Keeper of the Probes

Beauty and Carnage

The Jigon Prognosis

Conflict

The Arbiter Rods

Diversions

Ring of Fire

The Watcher

The Harvesters

Awakenings

Creeper-1 and Creeper-2

Feelings

The Mores of Ph-a-a

The Scrib of Enfor

Regressions

Aberrations

Hollow Dreams

The First Ark

Guardians of the Path

Babes in the Wood

Human Moons

Big Girl’s Rules

Old Soldiers always Die

Novas can Wait

CHAPTER ONE

The Ape and the Orb

(Circa 60,000 BC)

Feathery clouds of red etch a dawn sky, but today their hue appears deeper than usual, and their long, gnarled fingers seem to cringe in the knowledge that somehow, today will be different to all previous days. Already it’s hot, and were it not for early morning breezes wafting through treetops it'd be stifling. Soon those breezes will stop, humidity will rise, and temperatures will soar. Stretching to the horizon in all directions is a blue-green carpet of forest, and from the highest peaks to the deepest, darkest gorges it reaches out and vanishes into wriggling heat hazes. As the sun rises, so come the stirrings of morning. Things flutter, leap, buzz, and crawl while waking to a day that, to them, seems no different to any other day in the last million years.

Wheeling above the forest are flying things that soar on wings that barely flutter, whilst below, in the canopy, flit skimming things that hover and dart, and whose long, curved beaks drink from exotic blooms. The canopy is a place of flurry, colour, screech and noise; a place where bedlam reigns, but also a place where death can swoop from above with crushing talons.

Lower in the canopy is a world of wingless creatures, warm-blooded and earthbound. This is a domain of fur, hair, fang and claw ruled over by dominant males who are ruthless, and who acknowledge only one law, be quick, or be dead. Some of these creatures make sorties to the cold ground below, and finding a place even more hostile than they left return hurriedly to re-join those above.

And what of the ground beneath? Leaf, bush, and fallen log are homes to a myriad of scavengers with strong jaws, and voracious appetites who clean the forest floor, every one of which would readily pounce, and eat a brother.

For the creatures of the forest this is the way it has always been, and none have the slightest notion that the way they live out their lives is a link in an evolutionary chain.

Carved from this chaos is a clearing eight hundred metres long, five hundred wide, and roughly oval. The open ground is covered with marsh grasses, and gorse adds ochre splashes among moss-encrusted boulders. Down one side of the clearing runs a river whose waters burst from the shadows of the forest at one end, and disappear into its darkness again at the other. Parts of the river are slow and deep with hardly a ripple, yet elsewhere it cascades over boulders leaving plumes of spray in its wake. Near its banks grow water lilies whose leaves spread across its quieter eddies like floating fields; fields beneath which live very different life-forms. On the riverbank near one of these eddies foraging ants radiate from a mound of earth like the spokes of a wheel, and disappear into nearby undergrowth. Alongside these ant trails lays a large lizard, its long, grey snout just centimetres from the ever busy termites, its sticky tongue incessantly flicking out to collect a mouthful at a time and roll them back into its waiting maw. Normally the lizard prefers frogs, mice, and the eggs of wading birds, but today it’s hot, and this is easy pickings. The ant lines are unending, and as the ravaging tongue carves gaps in their ranks they rush to fill them, seemingly unaware, or uncaring, of the fate of their brothers.

The ape-like creature standing at the southern edge of the clearing is unaware of the lizard, or the ants, but is driven to distraction by mosquitoes buzzing around his head. Having found berries, he avidly eats the first food he's found in days, and when sated, he’ll return to his tribe and lead them here. An adult, about one sixty centremetres tall, his body is squat, solid, covered in dark hair, and the animal skin he wears is tied tightly at the waist. His arms and legs are bare, but his feet are wrapped to the ankles in layers of thick, rough leather securely tied with even thicker thongs of animal hyde. He walks with a stoop, and his wide face, prominent nose, jutting lower jaw, and sloping forehead give him a mean, aggressive look. He shambles among the bushes with eyes torn between searching for food and watching for predators, and although aware of what is going on around him he is not self-aware and doesn't question his existence. From his belt dangles a crude, stone axe, and in his left hand he carries a sturdy shaft sharpened at both ends and hardened by heat. His name is Arik, but far in the future he, and his kin, will be known as Cro-Magnon.

All seems peaceful in the clearing. Insects buzz, the river ripples, the lizard laps ants, and Arik harvests berries. Then, without warning, the tranquillity vanishes. The incessant buzzing of insects abruptly ceases leaving a silence in its wake that seems to quiver in the torpid air. The ant lines break and scatter as if they sense danger, and the lizard’s tongue freezes in mid-lap. Even the breeze seems to change, and dwindling to nothing add to the abrupt stillness. Primitive alarms pound in Arik’s brain, something is wrong, all is not as it was a moment ago. He jerks from relaxed awareness to acute alertness, and whirling to face the open ground behind him scours the clearing for a threat he senses is there, but cannot see. Straining for the slightest sound that will reveal danger he remains immobile, yet his heart beats wildly. Spreading his feet and bending his knees he prepares to meet an unknown, threat, and prepares to fight, or run. With left hand shading his eyes against the burning sun he sees nothing, and tense minutes pass before he relaxes. False alarms are many, and are one means by which he stays alive. He resumes eating, and raising his eyes toward fruit at the top of a bush comes face-to-face with the most frightening thing he’s ever seen. Backing away, he tries to drive it off by prodding it with his spear, but it rises effortlessly out of reach. Never has he seen so large an insect, or one so menacing. Crouching low he backs away, but the insect follows, always just out of reach, hovering, and staring unwaveringly down at him.

That it’s spherical, a metre in diameter, rotates about a vertical axis, and has no wings yet somehow manages to hover is lost on Arik who senses only danger. Its carapace is polished, and reflects sunlight from one side while the other remains in darkness. Glinting in the sun it projects a half moon effect, and the vents at its equator can only be seen as they rotate through the dark side. Protruding from its North pole are three trumpet-shaped antennae that don’t rotate with the body, but waver in all directions watching everything, and one of which never takes its eye off him. On the underside of its body something that looks like a tail points downward, and a small swelling at its end pulsates rapidly. That it’s manufactured is beyond Arik’s reasoning, all he sees is a predator that has gained an advantage over him, and which seems bent on intimidation. To Arik this means only one thing, challenge! Arik is chief of his tribe for one reason, he’s the strongest and fittest, and is no stranger to challenge, furthermore, experience has taught him that once challenged, to be the first to strike usually gains an advantage.

Without warning he lunges upward scything his spear toward the aggressor. Almost casually, it moves aside, and then returns to its original position. Arik continues to back away, but it follows. Many times he lunges, but his thrusts are easily avoided, and always his assailant returns to its original position. With axe in one hand and spear in the other he attacks continuously, but so casually does the thing elude him that he believes he’s being taunted, and somewhere in his gut the first feelings of anger stir. Why, he wonders, hasn’t it counter-attacked, surely so large an insect has a fatal sting? Dodging and weaving he retreats, yet his withdrawal is not without method, and on reaching the tree-line, he bolts. Once in the forest his agility shows as he sure-footedly winds his way along twisting paths and narrow gullies while yelling warnings that echo hollowly through the forest setting its unseen dwellers scurrying for cover. He looks back to see if he’s followed, and finds he is. Not far behind, the insect weaves eerily between the trees in pursuit, dappled sunlight rippling through the canopy and across its body adding a strange, luminous effect to its already frightening appearance. Gradually Arik outruns it, and when far enough ahead not to be seen dives for cover in dense undergrowth where, with heart pounding, he breathlessly peers out from his refuge. Tense moments pass during which he starts to think he’s safe, but then movement catches his eye, and he watches in horror as the thing drifts into view. For a moment it hesitates, silent and menacing just below the canopy, antennae swinging wildly as if trying to get its bearings while a myriad of psychedelic reflections sweep the forest floor. Arik watches, and feels the cold chill of fear clutch his stomach, what sort of insect is this? Slowly the wild searching motions settle until one antennae continually scans the place wherein he hides. Arik feels his entrails knot and his palms sweat as the thing descends toward him as if knowing he’s there. Halting within a metre of his foliage one of the antennae elongates and begins systematically probing, poking into every corner until finally it pushes into the dark hollow in which he hides. Trapped within the confines of his hollow he scrabbles to get away, but whichever way he turns the quick moving eye blocks his exit. Knowing that to display fear in the face of an enemy is to lose the fight he tries to project an aura of calm, and turning, looks his opponent squarely in the eye. The probe rises to within centimetres of his face, and although he doesn’t know, it he’s being scanned. Timing his move to perfection he drives the blade of his flint axe deep into its pupil, and flees.

Once again he weaves among the trees his fears increasing, for now his enemy is wounded, and more than any other a wounded enemy can be the most dangerous. As he runs he continually calls warnings, hopes that his tribe can hear him, and that his game of hide-and-seek has earned them the time they need to gird for war. Fearing to look back he wonders if the thing is still after him, and as if in answer to his thoughts a searing blast ignites the forest floor to his left and his involuntary glance behind reveals the insect hard on his heels, and even as he looks, another blast flashes from its base. A tree explodes to his right, the heat searing his shoulder. He changes course again and again, afraid, but not panicked, and once again there ’s method in his flight. The crazed thing behind maintains its relentless pursuit and throws its sting many times, yet never once does it score a direct hit, and Arik continues his flight expecting to be cut down in a ball of flame. Minutes later he bursts into a small compound enclosed by brushwood fencing. Scattered around its rim are dwellings constructed of bamboo and mammoth bones with animal hydes lashed to their frames with vine. Crude they may have been, but they were sturdy dwellings that kept their inhabitants warm and dry in all weather. In the centre of the compound burn the remains of a fire, its ashes sending stringy wisps of smoke into the hot, torpid air. The floor of the compound is hard-packed and trampled, and crude tools lay about as if dropped in a hurry. The place seems deserted. Running to its centre Arik stops and turns to face his enemy, and as it arcs down toward him he notices that the swelling at the end of its tail has grown considerably and changed colour. Truly the thing is angered, and as it approaches, all three of its eyes are fixed directly upon him, two with stares that bore deeply into his fear, and the third with his axe still buried in a pupil that drips sickly, thick yellow fluid. Anticipating another blast he leaps sideways just as the spot where he’d been standing erupts in flame. Before the thing can fire again he turns and scurries into the nearest dwelling. Relentlessly the insect follows. Inside the dwelling it’s dark, yet despite the loss of an eye the insect sees Arik run out through a rear exit. It accelerates noiselessly in pursuit and runs into an invisible screen that folds around it and bears it to the ground. Suddenly the dwelling is alive with bodies. Jumping from beams in the roof and rushing in through doors they try to pin down the edges of a hemp net and trap it inside. Realising it’s been careless the intruder lashes out. Three of Arik's clansmen incinerate and run screaming into the compound where they roll in agony on the ground. Females appear and douse them with water, but it does little to stop their screaming. Back in the dwelling the insect continues to lash at the net, its heat ray slicing it to shreds as if it were made of cotton, yet before it can rise, Arik re-enters, and rushing forward with a two handed axe he opens a wide, jagged gash in its side. Thick, yellow pus spurts from the wound, and mixing with the earth forms a foul smelling ooze. Despite its wound the insect rips free, and with hemp tatters dangling from its shattered hull it rams its way through the roof, and as it rises, the thick yellow fluid slops out behind it.

From a height of five hundred metres it rains down a storm of white heat setting fire to huts and bodies alike, and Arik stands by helplessly as his tribe are decimated. And then the firestorm stops. In the surrounding forest nothing moves, but a million eyes watch as high above the insect tilts to conserve the fluid dripping from its hull. Primitive intuition tells those below that the creature’s wounds are severe, and peering from behind trees and bushes they wait for it to fall. The quiver is imperceptible at first, but grows quickly, and then it spirals groundward and hits with sickening force splitting its shell open even further. For a long time it lays very still, and the dwellers, thinking it must be dead, start emerging from their hiding places and cautiously creep toward it. Standing in a circle around it, they stare in disbelief at its gut; a gut that, to them, looks strangely mangled and sodden with yellow blood. Sooner or later it was inevitable that one of them would reach out and prod it with his spear only to be sent screaming in terror back to his hiding place along with the rest of his tribe as the creature again comes to life. It gyrates in the dirt trying to right itself while cascading foul smelling fluid everywhere. It was trying to rise up and fly, but could only make small hopping motions in the dirt . Sensing victory Arik gripped his axe more tightly, and moved in. One of the antennae spots him, locks on, and watches his every move. The rest of the tribe stand back as the two antagonists face each other across twenty metres of fetid mud, each seemingly unsure of the next move, but each knowing that a finale must be fought. Arik is first to move. Convinced his enemy no longer possesses strength enough to injure him he rushes forward with raised axe, an almost fatal judgement. A beam lashes out, and although weak rips a swathe skin from Arik’s chest and sears the underlying muscle to the bone. He staggers and falls, but rises again, and with lumbering acceleration drives headlong into the slicing, slashing heat ray. Within seconds his body is a carnage of blood and incinerated flesh. Many times he staggers and recovers, and with dogged determination gets within striking distance of his enemy and buries his axe deep into its flailing body. Its shell implodes, and a frothing ooze of hot, stinging blood spatters out over him. The pain of acid on severed flesh is more than he can bear, yet in his brain the urge to kill surges. Standing astride his hapless victim he mindlessly pounds it to a pulp, shattering its innards, and trampling their remnants into an amalgam of mud and death. Others join in, and in an ever spreading lake of alien blood they smash muscle, bone, silicon chip, and micro-circuitry into a sodden morass fearful lest some part of it should still rise and smite them back. Ten minutes pass before the attack ceases, and another ten before they're sure the thing is dead and sink into a breathless anticlimax. Before long the sounds of the forest return to normal, memories of death being short-lived among its inhabitants. As the day draws on Arik’s people will rejoice, and as they revel in their victory they’ll have no inkling of the complexity they’ve destroyed today, and neither will they care… caring is not yet a human trait.

In the lengthening shadows of evening Arik stands alone, a pathetic figure weakened by loss of blood, half-blind, and mad with pain. He mumbles incoherently while swaying on his feet. Flies and other insects gorge themselves on his open wounds, and should even the smallest predator challenge him now he'd be helpless. Knowing him to be a spent force his tribe have chosen a new leader and transferred all Arik’s possessions to him. Arik feels no malice, it’s the way, and thus has always been.

Overbalancing, he falls, and with face in the dirt gasps for air, and when he tries to rise finds his legs have not the strength. For a long time he lays, fists thrashing and raising dust about him while his body racks with spasm. A short while later his eyes bulge, and lifting his great head to the sky he lets out one last, defiant scream, and dies.

Within the hour the sun sets, and long, dark shadows snake across the compound toward his fly-ridden corpse. In the surrounding forest the sounds of day give way to sounds of night as nocturnal things stir. No one will bury Arik, yet his corpse will be gone by morning, his flesh consumed by a thousand hungry mouths. There is no dignity to death in a land of scavengers.

Soon the compound stands deserted; all who can leave have left. By morning Arik's people will have reached a new place where they’ll build a new compound and new dwellings, but this time they’ll make their walls a little stouter, their roofs a little stronger, and their nets a little heavier, for they learn from experience. As for Arik, he’s yesterday's man, gone, forgotten, and over the coming years the weather will bleach his bones and blend them into the earth so that in forty thousand years hence, in a place called the Dordogne Valley, men will dig them up, place them in a museum, and wonder at their history. Had they dug fifty metres further into the mountain where Arik’s remains were found they'd have discovered shards of ceramic shell, slivers of microchip, and nano- devices that even their own fast developing technology could not explain.

Elsewhere, far from this place, the ramifications of today’s events would be unthinkable.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Keeper of the Probes

Four thousand miles above Earth, Yovis-Kon, Keeper of Probe Three, sat back from her screens, rested her head on her pod, and closed her eyes. She forced her mind to relax. There was little point in concentrating now. Her probe had vanished, and all her screens showed the white, wriggling crackle of static. She called the system doctor from the mainframe, set it to check all circuits, and for a few moments watched the multi-coloured hieroglyphics rolling across her screens too fast to read. The check would take twenty minutes, but she already knew the answer.

While she waited, her mind wandered back through time and space to a star many light years away, a yellow star similar the one shining on her now, and for her, and all her kind, it had a special place, for it was the home star, Rov.

The Rov system comprised twelve planets, several useful moons, and a few ice-chunks at its ecliptic used mostly as lookouts, sentries to the teeming inner worlds. Billions of years earlier the fifth planet had been very much like the one below, a mass of disorganised life struggling on the ladder of evolution. Billions of years? Had it really taken that long for their species to crawl out the slime of their oceans, and evolve to the point where they broke the gravitational boundaries of their birthplace? A million more years were to pass before they'd terraformed their nearest neighbour, and a further million before all twelve worlds were useful. Then came Win-Trad, the scientist of exceptional ability who'd designed and built the Particle drive, and under the power of its point-eight light-speed the galaxy opened its soul to them.

Yovis-Kon was a native of Rov-2, and of all the planets in the Rov system, Rov-2 with its global deserts, searing temperatures, and subterranean cities would always be home. Rov-2 had exceptional mineral wealth and thus held great importance in Rovid economics. Her earliest memories were of life beneath its scorching surface; a surface where temperatures climbed to two hundred degrees at midday, rarely dropped below eighty at night, and whose tempestuous storms blasted any animate life to oblivion in just a few hours. Beneath all this, however, lay cool, clean, safe cities; warren cities with supply plazas, transport, and most other conveniences found in a surface city. Her Matron had been a miner as had siblings, and as far back as she could remember, so had most of her kin. A picture of her enclave came to mind, and she remembered the grotto wherein her life began. On Rov-2 everything one did was done in a family grotto, eating, sleeping, playing, spawning and dying, privacy was unknown. She and her sisters shared their hopes, dreams, fears, and even their innermost thoughts, and nothing about a sister was unknown to her siblings, such was life in the enclaves, and never had it been otherwise.

Entrances to grottos opened onto wide, busy warrens thousands of which criss-crossed the city, and all of which had rooves lined with pipes; pipes that delivered water and power into the city, carried away its wastes, and being constructed from naturally fluorescing material lit the warrens to the intensity of day. Doors were unknown, and anyone walking a warren could look directly into any grotto, and to drop in uninvited to exchange pleasantries was not only custom, it was expected. Most of the warrens were residential, and opened onto business plazas, most of which were connected by transport tubes where vehicles slid silently along monorails leaving nuances of ozone in their wake. A constant draught wafted through the cities, an antiseptic draught generated by conditioning plants somewhere near the surface, a draught which, on the few occasions it failed, was sorely missed. At depths much lower than the residences huge machines drilled and processed the mineral needs of a dozen worlds and seventy billion people. As a child, Yovis-Kon had spent hours staring down the massive shafts that rose from those levels, and as she listened to the low, continuous rumble wafting from below wondered what could possibly be down there. There were many such cities on Rov-2, each self-sustaining, yet each connected by the tube transports through which, it was said, it was possible to circle the globe without ever coming to the surface, Yovis-Kon, however, had never met anyone who'd actually done it. Communications were by satellite, a system linking all twelve worlds such that no-one in the Rovid solar system ever needed to be ignorant for want of news. Because of the life they led most Rov-2's had never left their world, indeed, few had ever seen its surface, and natural events like night and day were unknown, for they never saw a sunrise or sunset, and never encountered time-zones like those on surface worlds. Those that had been to other worlds returned with wondrous stories; stories of life in sunlight, of great sprawling surface cities nestling on the shores of wide oceans, and of mountain ranges, forests, flying craft, shipping, and ways of life so unimaginable that they sounded impossible, and to some, even frightening. But the travellers also related tales of prejudice and bigotry. Whenever they visited other worlds, they said, they were immediately recognised by their smaller stature, lighter skin, and by a manner of speech considered quaint, but out-dated. Furthermore, the fastidious peoples of surface worlds thought them crude, lacking in civility, devoid of personal hygiene, and to be of a totally lower class. How, Yovis-Kon wondered, could such people know that on worlds where wastage of water was a crime it wasn't easy to maintain hygiene standards? And how could they ever understand that in the crowded confines of subterranean dwelling the finer decorum’s of life had to be foregone in favour of more practical ways? Perhaps, she thought, it was the don't-mince-words attitude of Rov-2 citizens that the people of other worlds found disquieting, and as most Rov-2’s did little to change their attitude when visiting elsewhere it was inevitable that prejudices would arise. She’d even heard it said that in the more affluent quarters of some surface worlds signs were displayed in shops and hotels that read 'We do not serve Warreners.

Yovis-Kon remembered how, as a child, she'd sat for hours in front the holoscreens watching anything to do with the huge freight ships that plied the space lanes. She could recognise their silhouettes, and knew their names, class, tonnage, top speed, and from the type of cargo they carried could often guess from whence they’d come. Each day after tutoring she'd go to the public databank and scan for anything concerning space travel, and should she find something not previously read she’d