Aliens, Fish Tales & Flying Hooves

Copyright © 2016 by F. Howard Schneider and Redwood La Chapel

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by SpearPoint Publications, Portland, OR

Cover created by Zap Graphics, Portland OR

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-4835734-3-4

Table of Contents

Kriga

Chuck’s Salmon Heaven

Railbird

Kriga

As told by Mizeta Moon

The manila envelope was lying on the desk. It could have gone to the recycling bin like junk mail, but didn’t. It revealed a sheaf of dog-eared, half-crumpled paper scrawled on by the pen of someone obviously literate, but possessed of poor penmanship. There was also a leather-bound journal that had been set aside during the first quick assessment of the paper bundle. It would be difficult reading, but somehow had a compelling air of mystery and intrigue. Events would prove that to be true beyond the wildest expectations of the person who would read it. Here then are the contents. I shall reveal the life-changing experiences after you understand the importance of this seemingly ordinary paper.

We’d weathered the raging southern seas and tacked our way around The Horn. There were many days of hectic activity filled with terror and excitement. My little sloop had nearly submerged at times, but was currently riding buoyant and high, tethered to a wooden dock. From The Horn we’d followed the coast up to Posorja, Ecuador. There we had the hull scraped, caulked and painted. A crew of locals polished brightwork and varnished the decks. A beautiful woman named Costansa used her skilled nimble fingers to mend rips in badly battered sails.

Saying goodbye to our new friends we proceeded up the Central American coast. By day we observed the green majesty of jungles and mountains backgrounding multi-hued surf, crashing on pristine beaches. Blue skies were a striking contrast to what we’d gone through at the bottom of the world and were welcome. Terns and gulls beat wings around us and we shared our fish scraps. Through it all the cook mumbled obscenities under his breath, but the crew sang while they worked. I kept at my studies.

The cook had been with me for three voyages. He was a sullen man but not openly hostile. I would term him a recluse who made magic with his pans while quietly hating everyone. No matter what other privations we faced, lack of a tasty supper was not one of them. Descriptions of his sauces could fill volumes. His beefy face and sun-burned brow are not the focus of this story, however, so I’ll spare you the barrage of my gastric ramblings.

The crew consisted of three Jamaicans who’d signed on at Kingston and were looking forward to being terminated in Los Angeles. Their fun-loving ways and penchant for happiness had been sorely tested by storms and long confinement, but they were staunch when the gunwales were breached and bailing kept us alive. Now that we’d reached La Paz, Mexico they could almost smell Hollywood Boulevard. During dinner they’d listened to a San Diego radio station, then went in search of local women.

I thought I might turn in early and with that in mind I got out a book of genetic codes and made myself some tea. I earned my living as a nature photographer, but was fascinated by any type of science. Lately my tastes had been heady and dry. I made a mental note to stock more fiction on the next voyage. Call it boredom, loneliness or whatever, but I couldn’t wind down and fall asleep. I tossed and turned, picked up my book, put it down, then finally got up and put my clothes back on. For a while I sat on the deck drinking beer. The rhythmic sway of the swell nearly lulled me to quietude, but some inner force was compelling me to activity. I sighed, stretched, and then walked down the gangplank.

The streets of La Paz were bustling with revelers. Late night diners ate and chatted under bright lights and garish neon signs. The warm night had a radiant glow and a tangible essence of intrigue. I found myself entering a quiet little bar at the end of a weathered dock. Several small fishing boats were moored alongside its ancient pilings and large nets hung drying all around. The stench of rotting fish tainted the air outside, but inside, the aromas of beer and humanity vied for dominance. There was only a barman and one customer to whom I gave no notice at first. Many times hence I have wished I’d left it that way. Simply turned around and walked out.

But I didn’t. I sat down at a grubby bar on a rickety stool and ordered a beer. After two more I asked about food and ordered a plate of carnitas and some guacamole and chips which turned out to be surprisingly good considering the state of the place. I could hear a woman humming in the background as dishes rattled and assumed the barman’s wife ran the kitchen. During all this the man sitting in a half-darkened corner never stirred except to drink sparingly from a glass in front of him. As I was finishing my late-night snack he rose haltingly and shuffled towards me. I’d thought he was Mexican, but now realized he was a white man turned leathery brown by winds and seas. A sailor of many voyages now obviously down and out. I was hoping he wasn’t going to hit me up for a ride or a job. I’d be happy to give a handout, but not accommodation.

His grizzled hair was matted and greasy. His eyes were those of a man who’d given up and resigned himself to fate. A man no longer in charge of his destiny. A foundered ship amid the storms of life. I could tell he’d once been proud, fierce, brave and adventurous. Now only a husk remained of the man he used to be. He walked like an arthritic, wincing in pain as he slowly worked his way towards me. When he got close I smelled him. It was the rummy odor of a heavy drinker. I wondered what had broken him. Unfortunately, I was about to find out.

Could you buy me a round, sir? was his opening line. I’ve little to pay with but my memories, but if you’ll buy I’ll be happy to share.

You needn’t recite sea chanteys, old man, I said. My voice was filled with magnanimity and a pompous form of pity. I don’t care whether your yarns are lies or truths. Have a drink and accept it in friendship.

I don’t know why I encouraged the bum, but something caused me to reach out to the back of the stool next to me and swing it around so he could sit.

Thank you. A kind man you are and will surely be blessed for aiding a dying traveler.

He sucked his first tot of rum so fast I thought he might choke. I nodded at the barman when his questioning eyes met mine and he poured another.

I remember so many things about that night. The barman with his limited English being bored by our discussion. His distaste for the old sailor was obvious, but his desire for my dollars overrode it. He busied himself with cleaning glasses when our body language spoke of a long-term stay. I was still wondering why I was there, but the beer was cold and my curiosity overwhelmingly aroused by something I could not define.

I remember walking back to the ship. Cold fog had crept in to send late-night partiers scurrying home. I rolled up my collar to keep the damp chill of it off my neck. The harbor was silent except for soughing sounds of the tide and the creak of rocking boats. I climbed aboard and staggered to my cabin, there to sleep like the dead. It was only when I woke the next morning that I pondered the old man’s tale. A scrap of paper he’d placed in my pocket looked like a map of some kind. I almost threw it away, but tossed it in my sock drawer instead. That is where it should have stayed. From the beginning I felt sucked into this affair by no choice of my own and often wonder if I could have changed a thing. Even my boat became part of the conspiracy.

Our plan had been to leave for Ensenada on the afternoon tide, but before we cleared the harbor one of the rudder cables broke. We had to limp back to our previous mooring to await a repair from someone who was not available until the next day. Try as I might, all roads led back to the same man, so in the end I just had to wait. I tried to study, developed some prints, but my thoughts kept returning to the old bum. His story was outlandish and couldn’t be true, yet I was fascinated by the earnestness with which he’d recited it.

I went looking for him. Couldn’t clear him from my mind any other way than to see him in the sober light of day and scoff at my own stupidity. In that daylight the bar was seedier, dirtier and even more rundown than I had previously noted. That I held down the food now seemed like a minor miracle. My ensuing conversation with the barman was filled with grammatical and translation errors and I struggled to comprehend what he was telling me.

Yes. He remembered me. Why not? I’m a big spender and a gringo. But no, he could not help me find the old salt I’d been talking to the night before.

Porque? I asked. Confident I could translate the answer.

Muerto, was all he kept saying.

I finally figured out that the old tar was dead. Using pantomime, the barman explained that the police found him dead in the alley that morning. I got crude directions to the local morgue and tipped him twenty bucks for his time. Still indulging my macabre curiosity, I went to find out what had happened to the body of my recent acquaintance.

The city building that housed the morgue was a clean two-story affair that smelled like antiseptic. I was directed to an English-speaking doctor when my Spanish faltered trying to explain my quest. When I made my enquiries to the white-smocked, balding little man he recoiled and fixed me with a glare.

Why do you want to know about this man? Who is he? Do you know his name? Are you a relative? American police maybe?

I explained that I had met the man the night before. That he struck a chord in me and I was simply curious about his demise. Had he been murdered?

Softening his gaze and adding a touch of sorrow to his voice the doctor said, No physical trauma. He just died because he was old and sick. It happens all the time in poor countries.

America too, I added redundantly. The doctor was obviously urbane and well educated.

Want to pay for his funeral? Otherwise we bury him in a group grave with other paupers. Budget…you know?

I gave him some cash and got a smile in return. He asked if I wanted to see the body and I passed. I’d seen death often enough in my travels. I thanked the doctor and started to leave, but just as I reached for the doorknob he spoke again.

We found this manuscript rolled up in his bundle of clothes, such as they were. The binding is leather and the pages remind me of papyrus. They reek of age, but are not tattered, as you can see. Since there is no one to notify and you just became his benefactor, you might as well become his heir.

I took the slim sheaf of documents reluctantly. Who was I to this man? From the moment my fingers closed around them my fate was sealed. My shoes squeaked on the highly waxed floors as I left the building, but I was too absorbed to notice. I suddenly felt compelled to retreat to my cabin and peruse the mystery I held in my hands. Would its pages reveal the truth or fiction of his outrageous story? Was it simply memoirs compiled by a raving lunatic?

Back on board I raced to my teak-lined cabin wondering why I felt such rising excitement. After all, he was just a babbling old drunk I’d met in a bar at the end of the world. How could a scholarly man such as myself be quivering like a child on Christmas morning? I was anxious to open my prize, but prolonged the moment by pouring a shot of whiskey in case it was doggerel or recipes.

Before I could settle into bed and begin, the Jamaicans came back from their carousing that had been extended by the broken cable. They were pretty jolly and appeared thoroughly drunk. They burst in on me and noisily insisted that I try some local pot they found in town. They had plenty of their own already. I’d only started smoking after I hired them. At first it was simply to quiet their dares, but over time I’d come to enjoy it. I’d drawn the line at smuggling into the States and had insisted they not add to their stash at ports such as this. Their disregard peeved me and it showed on my face.

Relax, mon, Jeremiah, the oldest one said in his lilting tones. Peace and herbs go hand in hand. Let us share the journey to the promised land.

He saw himself as a soothsayer and was prone to the dramatic. The middle one was shy and retiring, saying little and smiling a lot. The youngest one was the hipster who was popular with the ladies.

Yeah, mon, chill yourself. Heart attack, you know? he added as Jeremiah nodded sagely.

I joined them in a serious round of smoking and got pleasantly blitzed. Eventually their energies wound down and they ambled out of my cabin, leaving me and the manuscript to share the fading light creeping through my porthole. I covered it and after pouring a jigger of whiskey, settled in to read by my bedside lamp. My eyes widened as I turned each page, squinting at times to decipher tiny whorls of writing filling parchment-like pages of the journal. During the two days it took to repair the ship I hardly slept at all. I read and wondered. Tried to align what I was reading with my belief structure and previous view of the world.

Once back at sea I lay abed smoking pot and eating fruit while only nominally supervising the crew. They thought I had flipped out completely. My babblings about treasure made them voice concerns about having to abandon ship and swim for Los Angeles if I altered course. They breathed a sigh of relief when Ensenada’s bay hove into view. They could bus it from there if necessary.

The Journal of Kriga

I come from a long-lived race. Barring circumstances beyond our control, we live an average of five thousand Earth years. Generations of humans are born and die, yet we remain.

I can tell that the end is near for me, thus I feel the need to share with someone secrets I have carried around for millennia. After so many years to ponder and reflect on what went wrong I have come to the conclusion that Rynax is at fault. Rynax; a name I have learned to hate and despise during my life on this planet. A name that has been on my lips time and again when I woke from dreams covered by the sweat of fear and filled with a sense of loathing.

As was customary, whenever our long-range sensors showed a planet to be habitable, a wave of volunteers emerged. Each of them desperately longing to become colonizers on a new world and fulfill a destiny instilled from birth. They were not dissatisfied with our way of life or their careers, but among our race it is considered an honor to be chosen. From a long list of candidates Rynax was a poor selection.

Millions of years and billions of parsecs separate us from our point of origin. Before our sun exploded the planet we inhabited was named Mynaris. We referred to our sun as Helos the life giver. When our scientists discovered Helos was in a destruct sequence the entire planet mobilized to build a device capable of relocating an entire population.

The original platform was built on an old space station that had been used for many years to monitor weather conditions. A giant hydrogen ram was attached to it and when finished looked like a huge mouth capable of consuming anything in its path. After particle acceleration within the collector’s bowels the resulting stream of hot helium gas being emitted propelled us through space just under the speed of light for centuries. In the subsequent millions of years, it became a huge city in space. Seen from the outside it was a modular landscape of girders, cables, domes and antennae. Some landing grids for patrol craft were the size of a small moon. Life support systems ran from area to area. We built with metal, glass, and thousands of materials we discovered in our travels. During our continuous excursion our sensor array mapped every part of the universe we passed through as well as every phenomenon and anomaly.

We love to barter and welcome infusions of new culture and ideas. When we encountered races who casually accepted the presence of other intelligent life we sent out trade delegations. Conversely we waged war for centuries with hostile races while we forged across sectors of space they claimed as their own. The platform became so huge that directional changes took years to accomplish so our course was plotted decades in advance. Retreat from hostility across large systems was slow and unwieldy.

As we communicated with various races who had explored beyond their own boundaries we constantly inquired about planets ripe for seeding. When told about Earth we queried them as to why they held no interest in such a verdant world. The most common answer was that they had no interest in colonization or that such pursuits were too costly for what they might gain.

Entering the Milky Way Galaxy from a point that would allow a close pass to your planet, we focused our data collectors and marveled at the riches revealed. Thus the list of applicants growing daily. Each applicant understood that once detached from their brethren they would never be in contact with them again. But with the projections for lush green valleys and plains teeming with plant and animal life, the lure of free-running water, fresh open air and fertile soil were enough to foster excitement in everyone. The planet’s mean temperature was a little cooler than most of them would have preferred, but it was still considered a wonderful find. There was a humanoid civilization, but it was not very advanced and barely touched the wealth of available land. We believed we could easily carve out our own niches without disturbing the existing state of development. There had been times in our past when we wrested away a habitat by force and exterminated the resident life forms. I hoped this would not be necessary ever again.

Rynax was a terrible choice as a colonist. I will state this with my dying breath.

Like any system of interactions between beings, ours is subject to flaws. It is a basic third dimensional reality that no one can escape the laws of causation. Someone made a mistake. Got paid a bribe. Or. Who knows? No doubt about it that something went wrong, but there was no fixing it either. How it happened, why, or who it was that made it possible for Rynax to be suited up and piloting one of the colonization ships, it was done. Walking up the loading ramp, Rynax was all smiles as he waved to the ones not chosen. They saw him as a brave hero stepping into the annals of race history. Any one of them would have been a better choice.

Everyone watched the launch. It was a glorious moment. Each of the seven ships were sent in a trajectory that would align them with the proper landing co-ordinates. It had been decided by lottery which team would land in what part of the globe. Rynax drew an area that would ultimately be called Central America by Earthers. Some said it was the heat, humidity and mosquitoes. All of the above. None of them. However, it happened, Rynax lost sight of our purpose. He changed his priorities and developed entirely different goals from those outlined in our guidebooks as ideal behavior and techniques for colonists. Personally, at the time, I thought that Rynax was born evil.

When I, Rynax, and five thousand other colonists entered the green womb of Earth we were young. Being only seven hundred at that time I can recall the privilege and power we felt when a select few of us were chosen to lead crews that included souls as old as four thousand. Not many of the aged of course, but we needed their wisdom and guidance. The stability of their emotions when making decisions. We were filled with the dreams of frontiersmen throughout time. In human chronology this would have been around three thousand years before the myth of Christ and incessant wars for the next two millennia. Not that tribes weren’t in competition when we arrived. They were just fewer and farther apart.

Each team had orders to hide their craft upon landing. The indigenous population seemed to be oxygen-deprived at great altitude so this task was easily accomplished by boring tunnels and creating habitat in the planet’s highest peaks. The ship became a fortress/base for each group of pioneers.

It was necessary to build, plant and develop technology to colonize, which naturally led to our tools being exposed to native eyes. We were briefed by our Xenobiologists that when contact was made we could expect a worshipful position to be taken by these peoples or conversely, that they might kill us immediately. It was assumed they would be easily awed since their development was far from advanced. Each team found different types. Depending on where they landed, they encountered friendship or hatred. Rynax encountered some of the fiercest savages of all. Begrudgingly, I admit that the fact he survived speaks volumes about him. Personally, I wish he had not been so wily and ruthless.

Around the globe we began to use laser, plasma and sonic cutting tools to build houses, public buildings and monuments to our gods. We revered races older than our own who’d settled thousands of worlds before we took up the torch and they moved into a state of pure thought. Each landing group began blending our stone-cutting technology with local tribal designs. Fetishes formerly made of bone and wood became represented by a more permanent format. Using portable tractor beams in such weak gravity allowed us to build with both majesty and precision.

Unilaterally we began to be worshipped as gods. We appeared capable of great feats of magic. Our simple tools gifted us with powers incomprehensible to beings who, ironically, were derived from a crash landing thousands of years before our colonization. Our legends began to grow and will remain long after our passing, but we were doomed as a race from the start. Rynax was the first to discover this fact. Some have said that his disaffection and depravity were spawned in that moment of insight. His actions would ultimately spur nations to react where the others among us might have quietly faded away and left them to their own devices.

The one thing our scientists didn’t anticipate was the effect of solar radiation on our bodies. We became sterile within a few months. Babies already in the womb when we landed were born with severe defects and quickly died. It was a very sad time for us all. The ramifications hit us like a blow to the heart and mind. Everything we aspired to became meaningless overnight. Despondency and lethargy settled deep into our souls.

Rynax had two wives accompanying him on our adventure. Although polygamy was not encouraged on the platform, it was beneficial during colonization. His primary wife, Solile, was already pregnant when we arrived. His second wife had married him only days before departure and barely knew Rynax. Her name was Xyranna. Her fair skin and coal black hair were a sharp contrast to the goldenness of Solile. Rynax felt blessed to have two of the finest looking wives among all the landing parties.

Xyranna fell after only two days on the planet and severely twisted her knee. Pain made her indisposed to sex for over a month. When she and Rynax finally resumed conjugal relations nothing happened. There was no doubt of Rynax’s potency as Solile swelled towards birthing daily. Rynax knew medicine as well as metallurgy, architecture and linguistics. He set to work finding an answer to this enigma. He became obsessed with impregnating Xyranna. With two children they could get a hold on this planet. With four or five they could establish a dynasty. His research led him to an ugly conclusion. By then others were wondering about their lack of progeny. Soon the horrors that had putrefied in their mothers’ wombs struck all who saw them with sadness and despair. By the time Solile gave birth to the last of the hideous forms it was accepted as fact that we were all sterile. Nothing could be done. Even were it possible to leave the planet the damage was irreversible.

For the first few hundred years the now widely scattered colonists marched bravely on, forging a life from what the planet offered, constantly improving infrastructure. We maintained frequent contact and shared information freely. By 1700 B.C. many of our groups had taught written language to tribes they worked with and lived among. As gods they imposed the rudiments of interactive society on previously hedonistic primitives. All except Rynax, that is. He turned into a rogue soon after seeing the futility of our situation.

Try to imagine how we felt. Living on a strange planet for several hundred to some four thousand years. Then what? Rynax realized early on that the short lifers were the lucky ones. They would not have to stand by and watch their comrades die one by one until they were the last breath of our well-intentioned race. What point was there in doing anything at all? What would happen to anything we accomplished and all that we strived for? It hurt to be slowly consumed and unable to advise those on the platform of our failure. Itself hurtling on. Forever sowing other worlds that might be more productive. Rynax quickly cast about for earthly pleasures. Just for fun