Family Day
By Q.B. Smith
Journal Entry
Lilex Nediff
0099-11-19
We found this place on Family Day nearly one hundred years ago. It was not planned that way, it was just a random thing, a coincidence--well that’s how the story goes. The way the universe works sometimes I guess, but no one really knows…
The planet was a tad radioactive, but that had never bothered us before. After all, our colony ship had collected its fair share of galactic radioactivity in the three thousand years that it had been in space searching for planets like this one. Besides, we were never expecting perfection, just breathable air and enough atmospheric pressure so that our eyes would not bug-out.
Today, everyone knows the story of Maxen Tillup, the 30th space-born of the Tillup family and the last standing captain of Egress-ten before it landed here. It is common nursery-school knowledge how he wanted to head towards the mosquito constellation formation after he determined that the yellow star that Egress-Ten was then headed for, was too electromagnetically unstable and thrice as radioactive than that of a suitable star for us to live under.
So he said, and had even logged himself saying the following, which is now recited every Landers Day in song and coincidently, on every fourth Family Day as well. “Farther than the kelvins reach--so far that it freezes meat--yet the geiger-counter reads too much heat, I’ll change the heading but first I’ll drink--for family days tomorrow. The grounding-cage has reached it’s peak--still magnetic waves distort the screens--I’ll change the heading but first I’ll sleep, for family days tomorrow…”
A few hours after Captain Tillup woke up the day after he made his last space-log that the song was based on, the Egress-Ten began landing on the type of planet that should not have existed under such an angry yellow star; but somehow there it was--shielded from radiation, and here I am jotting down all that I know of the whole thing in my journal. I guess that’s just how the universe works sometimes.
It has been 99 years, 11 months, and some days since the Egress-Ten touched down. Almost a hundred years have passed since 9,999 pregnant women and my great, great Grandma were thawed out of suspended cryogenic-sleep, and let loose to populate this enigma of a planet.
In ten days it will be the centennial festival of Lander’s Day, a hundred of this planet’s years have nearly past since 10,000 people stumbled out into the bright light and blue skies and begun to make this place into our home.
Today, the original 10,000 female pioneers have upgraded to become 135,000, traditional family oriented homesteaders. 135,000 people descendent from those first days of the matriarchs who now occupy what is not quite the jungle our ancestors found, but is still definitively a frontier by every sense of the word.
The aggressive males have slowly returned into population but their climb has been slow. We, above all things, will never forget how the unchecked male-hormone can destroy whole worlds, and hopefully with that knowledge immortalized along side our social redirection towards strong family bonds, we wont destroy another planet. After all you know what they say. “Third times a charm.”
Because of the odd time-fraction of sunlight missing from each day on this planet, this coming Lander’s day will, as it did four years ago, fall on the same day as the first home world’s Family day--that along with the added population growth will make this Family day/Landers day, outstanding, terrific, bigger than ever, and I can’t wait.
In ten days not only will families get to celebrate the love they have for each other, but all the adventurous space fairing bachelors and bachelorettes without families yet, will also spill out into the streets in song and drink to celebrate the one hundredth Lander’s Day.
Both of my favorite days of the year will be rolled into one unbelievable event and I am so looking forward to it, it is going to be freaking crazy!
Mom says dad may even be there this year, and my whole class chipped in on fair, so they will be coming with me on our chartered air-breaker into Coast City. We may even fly over the big waters; who knows?
That’s not even all of the good news I have, future self. I am also excited because today Traxdan Lizdon, the teacher’s son, has asked me to meet him in the forest by the log bridge across the creek. He said he wanted to show me something. He’s a cutie but he’s also kind of dumb, I hope he finally makes his move and kisses me. Well I’m off to meet him right now, wish me luck future self--maybe I’ll get some--let me know if I do and if I liked it.
End Journal Entry/
Lilex Nediff/
10 days until Family Day.
Moments later in a forest somewhere a poem unraveled…
I would like to kiss her here, next to this trickling stream, by the mossy rocks, and blankets of grass spilling in from both meandering sides--kiss her where the ground meets wet, above a million green fingers pattering along the rolling water’s edge. I would like to kiss…
When Traxdan saw Lilex approaching he quickly wadded up a piece of paper he’d been writing on, and put it in his pocket. Quickly he rehearsed is plan-B proposal when he knew he had all but lost his nerve.
The two of them blew past the small talk and helped by their ephemeral insecurity and enduring shyness, they quickly got any hope of kissing out of the way.
So Traxdan used plan-B, his contingency. Without nerve enough to kiss her, like so many times before, at the sight of her his courage fizzled-out. Every time when she appeared his preparedness melted. As so, this time when she got near, rather than looking like a fool again, he’d have an alternative activity ready--a manly activity he would invite her on.
It has always been easy for little boys to hide their feelings behind artificially inflated masculinity; Traxdan was no worse or no better than anyone else, just a youngster on verge of rut.
As for Lilex, an unspoken two worded question kept her mind full and her smile faked. “Hunting--really?”
“You know it’s illegal to hunt them without a permit? You want to be sent Labor-side or something?”
“It is only illegal if we get caught, or if you tell on me. You’re not going to tattle--are you?”
“No! It’s just I thought that I saw your mother in the forest yesterday, I think she has been tagging the cows. She’s going to know something is up.” This was not at all what Lilex Nediff was hoping for.
“Don’t you think I know what’s up? I know she has, that is all she ever does anymore, tag, tag, tag, document, report and repeat.” Traxdan formed a wicked smile and went on. “That is how we’ll track them.” Traxdan did not seem worried that his mother would find out. His careless bravado started to rub off a bit on Lilex in a kind of a “If he did not care why should I?”
Traxdan held in his hand a familiar ball that was attached by a dainty metallic cable to the ring on his pointing finger; when he flipped the ring with his other hand the ball split like a sectioned-out metal orange. Each section’s lens had its own color filter and job to do in projecting the virtual display that now appeared above his palm.
“You see these?” Traxdan pointed to two red dots on one side of the half-hallo-globe. “This is you and I. You see these?” He was now pointing at a dozen blue dots across the half-hallo-globe floating above his hand. “These are our quarries.”
“Pregnant females?” aren’t you the noble hunter Traxdan--look at me, I poached a slow, defenseless and pregnant female, how proud am I?” At that, Lilex laughed loud enough to herself so that Traxdan could hear her but she called Traxdan a fool under her breath just soft enough so that he could not.
Lilex aimed low with her comment and hit; Traxdan’s masculinity was her target.
She was not looking forward to this hunt, this was not what she desired or anticipated but she wanted to be around Traxdan whatever the cost--because just maybe the fool would one day get wise and make a move instead of always trying to impress her.
He was the only boy even close to her age that came this far inland, everyone else she knew that was her age stayed in Coast City were they were all building components to be launched into space from the city’s rail gun. She was becoming a scientist instead of working on the mega-ships being assembled in lower orbit.
Lilex Nediff was the youngest student in her science class; Traxdan was the only one she could kiss without sending to jail--there because he was the professor’s son. Lilex started to think that brains were not innately hereditary.
“We’re not going to kill the cows--idiot!” Traxdan tried not to sound offended. “We’re only going to use their trackers to find the herd; you know--to find young ferocious bucks. We’ll get one and we’ll eat as much of it as we can and then burry the rest. All my mom will see is the fat cows scatter, she’s not going to know why or that we’ve even been out here--unless of course you open your big fat proboscis.”
The two of them unquestionably knew how to play each other’s bendalor strings. Lilex hated being referred to as a tattletale and Traxdan was just coming into male maturity, and anyone who said contrary would get a taste of his yet untested and out of control, new-adult hormones.
Lilex was scared of getting caught but she also liked the sound of fresh meat; she was tired of the rehydrated ship rations that they had been feeding the students lately. Some fresh meat would be a nice change; they used to get buck meat all the time--not lately though. “Ok. I’ll go, but only if you promise not to kill any cows.”
“Of course not, besides my mom would see that from her tracker at camp.”
Lilex did not like the look that Traxdan gave her. She could tell that he was using semantics again to lie without lying outright, so she thought hard and added just as a precaution. “No killing the cubs either Traxdan.”
“All right--all right.” Traxdan was only waiting for Lilex to confirm that she agreed, and with her stipulations she sort of did. That was enough for Traxdan.
Traxdan did not even like buck meat. He was only hoping to impress Lilex by showing her his hunting skills. A few months before that he tried to impress her by showing her how far he could spit. He was not very good with girls and he suffered from the same problem Lilex had, only one other person his age was within a two thousand mile radius--Lilex Nediff.
Traxdan was not very skilled with the ladies, not having a father anymore to teach him about flirtatious tête-à-tête; as so he tried to do things that he knew would impress him for Lilex. He notice a glimmer--a change in her face when he mentioned eating some fresh meat--he was on to something and he would come through at all costs if it meant Lilex would like him a bit more.
Traxdan himself did not look forward to eating buck. He had seen one cleaned-out once, before his dad had died in the space supply rail gun accident a few years ago. His dad had killed a buck and cooked it over an open fire four years ago. When his dad got to cleaning its guts out, towards the end when the buck’s waste spilled on the ground, the smell was so awful that it left Traxdan with an unscrupulous overtone every time he even smelled a hint of buck meat.
Luckily Lilex had never seen one cleaned out before; if she had she probably would not like it either. More so, if she had not started going to alien environmental adjustment class for her required science credits, she probably would think that the delicious meat she loved so much was grown in the plastic packs that they sold it in at the grocers. Even Traxdan thought that it grew in plastic packs until he started helping his mom study the alien life forms in the forests a couple of years ago--after Bartley Lizdon, Traxdan’s dad was killed by an exploding SPR, or a supply and parts round, being lunched into orbit with the Coast City’s colossal rail gun.
Shelly Lizdon, Traxdan’s mom, was the professor of Alien Environmental Adjustment 1550, the advanced class; and she would be absolutely pissed off if she knew where her palm-ball tracker was right then, and right then--she was looking for it because the camp tracker had just bonked-out. But that is just how the universe works sometimes.
“Has anyone seen my palm-ball tracker?” Shelly’s highly distinctive voice bellowed through the camp and resonated off the red and white swirled sandstone canyon walls. It sent shivers down the spines of those students reading and writing in their tents, the ones who were studying for the test after the upcoming holiday vacation was over. “I know I left it in my field pack.” She thought, so she yelled out again “Who has my Gerch-Damn palm-ball!”
Fifteen innocent students were shattered by Shelly Lizdon’s deafening and commanding voice while fearful for whoever it was that had actually taken Dr. Lizdon’s palm-ball. Meanwhile two guilty students were now out of earshot of her blood curdling commands and in hot pursuit of a young buck that they had singled out from the herd, or rather Traxdan had whilst Lilex watched amused from the generous shade cast by a five hundred year old Black oak tree.
“You almost got it that time Traxdan!” Lilex yelled out trying not to let him hear the laughter in her voice. Traxdan looked like a fool chasing what he had called a ferocious buck, through the clearing that splayed out beneath the hill where Lilex had taken refuge under the massive tree.
“You can tell it is a ferocious buck -- its hair is shorter -- look how white the razor sharp teeth are!” Traxdan yelled out while zigzagging through grass and loose sand.
“Keep telling yourself that Traxdan!” To Lilex it looked about half as big as the pregnant cows were. Traxdan had also said before they sighted one, that often like with us, the males are smaller, but Lilex was not sure if that was true. Luckily it was much faster than the cows were. She only hoped these things would be on the upcoming test.
Traxdan had chased it away from the line of oak trees, down a hill and into the field. The ferocious buck was followed by Traxdan but from out of the woods and all of a sudden came a fat cow that joined in on the chase; the cow was so fat it was almost waddling after the two. It was quite a sight. Lilex could not help but laugh out loud at the pot-bellied cow’s exaggerated waddle and spastic, bellowing-barking sounds.
Traxdan, who did not yet see or hear the cow in pursuit, thought Lilex was laughing at his blundering attempts at catching the spritely little buck, so he doubled the intensity of his efforts.
Each time Traxdan bared down on the buck it would change direction and Traxdan grabbed nothing but dirt, and the little buck would emerge once again unscathed from the cloud of dust, darting off in another direction in seemingly effortless motion after effortless motion. The icing on the cake that had Lilex laughing so hard that the sides of her neck begun to ache, was that each time the dust from Traxdan’s many failures started to clear, the same fat cow came waddling on through in what seemed like delayed speed or slow motion, quietly barking and screeching in the most peculiar manner. It was a sound that Lilex had never heard, it sounded like no other animal on this planet; none that she had studied or even encountered yet.
She did not know what to make of the whole fiasco, just that now, she was only rooting for the little buck, she hoped it got away from the overshadowing, much, much bigger Traxdan and his clumsy hunting, there would not be much meat on it anyway.
“That’s enough man, let it go Traxdan!” The last run passed by close enough for Lilex to see exactly how much bigger Traxdan was than the buck, but more to the point, Lilex could see how much bigger the cow was than the buck. “She was not trying to mate with it, she was trying to save it--it was her cub” Lilex wished they weren’t out here breaking the law because she would love to be the first one to document this kind of behavior. “Cut-it-out Traxdan, it’s just a Gerch-damn cub!”
Not much was know about the rest of the animals on this planet yet, but they had learned a few things about the type of bipod that Traxdan was now hunting. The first thing was the reason why most everyone knew about these beasts--they tasted damn good--they tasted just like the little flightless birds that seemed to scavenge off of the beast’s scraps but with ten times the amount of meat. The second thing they learned about these beasts was the reason why the grocers stopped selling so much of its meat, and why you now needed a tag to lawfully hunt them and you could only hunt full grown bucks over ninety pounds; they had something to do with the propagation of the trees and the trees had something to do with the breathable air. So until we learned more about how these animals made the trees grow, strict harvesting laws were imposed on them.
Shelly Lizdon, the head professor over the alien Environmental Adjustment Bureau, and who was teaching 1550, Lilex’s advanced alien environmental adjustment class, had already searched all the tents and backpacks back at the research camp and now was retracing her steps from tagging cows the day before. Dr. Lizdon wanted to see if maybe she had lost the palm-ball while tagging the feral cows the day before.
Miss Lizdon’s job was to find out how they made the trees grow. She had, over the last ten years, inadvertently caused the bands on harvesting them for sport and meat to be emplaced. She learned tons about the animals, like for instance, she was the one who first learned that they were what was responsible for making the trees.
Now, what she was about to learn this moment would not only destroy the new study that she was almost ready to submit to the Alien Environment Acclimation Board or the A.E.A.B. but it would also annihilate the way all of us looked at this world; even to the point of forcing her to betray her own son.
This discovery would start with the whole class coming over the distant ridge and finding her missing palm-ball, which her son was now wearing.
“I mean it Traxdan, stop it!” Lilex could not see the class on the ridge behind her through a break in two adjacent oaks, but they could see both of them and hear her pleading with Traxdan. All Lilex saw was that the little cub was tiring out and it stopped being funny about the time Traxdan’s claws ripped into the cubs arm, and the cow in pursuit fell to her knees and begun secreting clear fluid from her two eyes. Lilex did not remember these animals only had two eyes before then--she hoped it would be on the test after the holidays because for some reason she had always remembered them having four eyes like she had.
The cub’s arm now flung around limp and it could not keep its balance like it had been able to earlier when it seemed to effortlessly dart and duck away from Traxdan’s attacks. But this time, within three seconds from when Lilex last yelled out her objections to Traxdan’s grotesque hunt, Traxdan had the cub in a straight line-up and pounced.
Like before, the same cloud of dust discharged from Traxdan’s impact with the dry loose soil, but this time Lilex held her breath waiting for the little thing to break out of the dust once more.
The dust settled and all that was seen was Traxdan’s head lifting up and falling down, he was pushing his proboscis into the flesh of the small cub over and over again, it was done; worse, it seemed to Lilex that Traxdan had used so much venom that it may have ruined any of the good meat anyways.
“Traxdan!” Lilex fell to her knees beneath the power of Dr. Lizdon’s famous shrill. The professor’s scream was loosed right behind her. Traxdan, though much farther away, heard it too. “Had she watched the whole thing?” Lilex wondered.
“What have you done Traxdan?” Dr. Lizdon did not wait for an answer, besides it was clear Traxdan was speechlessly in rut-mind so no answer was coming from him at the moment. As so Dr. Lizdon filled the silence. “I’m too ashamed to even talk to you--you know I have to report this, I have to--my whole class watched you do that, oh Gerch-damn-it Traxdan, Gerch-damn-it, Gerch-damn-it--they are going to send you labor side, you know that right?”
Still no answer came from Traxdan who was now standing over his kill like a child caught with his hand in the bug jar.
It was 4:38 when the call came into Forest-edge fort. Captain Ely of the marshals, who was one of only two men stationed there picked up the print out first. Reading it to himself, captain Ely shook his head and laughed in a single sound that was more an extended outward breath than a laugh. “Hahhh!” he paused and took a deep breath, He had obtain Oraby’s attention at that point. “His name is Traxdan Lizdon.” He needs to be picked up and brought to Coast City to be tried for poaching. Deputy Oraby was also reading the digital text beneath the picture that came across his own palm display.
“This is the definition of irony.”
“What do you mean captain?” Oraby was confused.
“Lizdon?” Captain Ely waited for Deputy Oraby to figure it out on his own. When Oraby did not, the captain spoke on. “Lizdon, as in the Lizdon initiative?”
“Oh, you mean the Lizdon hunting bans.” Oraby’s voice was full of suppressed resentment. After about a second pause, Oraby lost the resentment and also laughed. “Oh--I get it--the boy’s mom is who banned hunting, and now the boy was hunting. Irony--ha, ha.” Only two types of marshals took post like Forest-Edge fort, the ones like Oraby who did not know any better and the ones with something to run from like Ely.
The captain and deputy Oraby used to hunt the bucks themselves, Captain Ely still had a freeze box full of jerky he made before the final laws were drafted. Now the only meat you could buy was from the grocers and it was all second rate farm-grown stuff.
Captain Ely and Deputy Oraby locked up the station after they loaded up the skyclimber patrol craft with the extra supplies that they might need to go into the deep forest where this arrest would be made. This would be the first time Oraby left the far outskirts of Coast City, and the second time that Ely had. Neither men liked the forests. These forests were like nothing their ancestors had ever seen before. Ely often said, “if it isn’t flat and out it the open then it is not in our blood.” Referring to the sand planet that they originated from. There, large worms consumed sand and made oxygen in their guts; here all captain Ely knew was that the tasty beasts had something to do with breathable air but exactly how was beyond him.
The skyclimber started up slow, it had not been run for nearly two months and Captain Ely thought it best to let it warm up for a few minutes before trusting the old machine with the two men’s lives. Finally when Ely felt the field generator was running smoothly enough that it stopped vibrating, he began to engage EM-clutch to spin the outer wheel. The outer wheel served for no propulsion purposes; it was only for taking the dead weight of the four heavy mag-motors and neutralizing it. It did this with centrifugal force, by spinning the four evenly spaced, mag-motors around the outside of the sky climber, their dead weight was turned to outwards facing weight that gravity had no hold on. The four large motors could then easily power the sky climber by pulling air through jets and pressurizing it until finally funneling it and shooting it through the jetport on the bottom.
The down sides of using one was it was like being surrounded by a kiloton of potential energy if the skyclimber ever crashed, and it looked like a dinner plate turned up side down. The advantage of the skyclimber was that the four mag-motors rotating so rapidy around the crew and passengers created an electromagnetic force-field that allowed it to fly into some of the heavily radiated areas on this planet; and even in strong winds and thunderstorms the skyclimber stayed perfectly balanced and impervious to radical EM energy.
But the flight would be slow; Skyclimbers are not that fast and they could not leave the thick lower atmosphere like the sky-breakers could.
After the skyclimber landed it took another twenty minute for the outer wheel to stop spinning, none of that energy was wasted as the Em clutch was again engaged, but this time it was channeled through a bank of massive capacitors which turned the kinetic energy of two tons spinning at thirty-five hundred rpms into nearly a kilowatt of electrical energy. The electricity would be used for starting the skyclimber back up when they were ready to use it again. It was an old design, but it was time tested and reliable.
Traxdan was waiting with his mom and Lilex for the saucer shaped craft to come to a complete stop. Finally when it did, two men emerged from the top and slid down the craft’s curved side.
“Are you Mr. Lizdan?” Captain Ely asked, to which the tall boy nodded his head. “Come on son, you’re coming with us. I don’t want to do this but it is the law.” Ely was in part telling the truth but he was mostly speaking so Shelly Lizdon might hear. She was sitting beside Traxdan and it was clear she was his mom; they both had a distinctive flaring at the base of their proboscises, and the same pink eyes and thick brown back fir.
“We need to bring the dead animal, can you show us where it is?”
“Yes, come with us.” Traxdan’s mom led the way to where it all happened earlier that day. The sun was falling behind the canyon walls, and it was already dark at the camp, but when they left the canyon it added a few hours of light.
The sun ducked low, and the sky was lit up in a red patina, it was very pretty but it meant it would be dark soon so Ely asked, “Where is the evidence?”
“Over here look at this.” Miss Lixdon showed them a digi-print on her palm-ball that she had earlier retrieved from Traxdan. Both the officers empathy caved a little when they saw the boy had killed a cub, that’s not a challenge.
“There is not even any meat on that Mr. Lizdon, what were you going to do with it?”
“Don’t answer that Traxdan.” His attractive mother stopped him from talking. “Don’t say anything that will get you into any more trouble than you are already in.”
“Miss Lizdon may I assume.” She had yet to introduce herself officially. When the captain imagined meeting the head professor of the Alien Environmental Adjustment Bureau he had imagined she’d be twice as old and half as pretty as this women was. “We will need to bring the actual carcass with us back to Coast City.” After the pause the captain asked, hiding his hopefulness. “Will you be coming with us Dr. Lizdon?”
“I will, and so will someone else--I fear.”
“I’m sure we’ll have room if that is what you are worried about mam- miss- ah professor.” Deputy Oraby stumbled over his words, he was also taken back by the aesthetic qualities of the women standing before them; he just hoped “someone else” was not a boy friend or something.
Traxdan rolled his eyes at the whole thing, he was used to men responding to his mother this way and he never liked it--his dad had only died two years ago.
“It’s not that deputy.” Dr. Lizdon granted the customary smile for when little boys stepped all over their tongues around her and, like expected, the deputy ate it up--the captain not so much.
“What do mean Miss Lixdon? Who else is coming?”
“I assume you understand the law. Am I correct in doing so?”
“Do you mean your law?” Captain Ely did not wait for an answer before he said. “All one hundred and three pages; I used to love to hunt myself. I must say your laws are pretty comprehensive.”
“Well I guess not everybody understands them.” Shelly smacked the back of Traxdan’s head, who was walking beside her in manacles.
“Who is coming with us ma’am?”
“It will be much easier to show you than to try and explain what we are dealing with.” Shelly tried to rub the exhaustion from her face. “Follow me and I’ll try to explain.” She spoke with fatigued disparity.
She led them to the field where the cub still laid slain. It was now dark and the two officers could hardly make out what they were looking at. “Is it still alive? It looks to be moving.” The deputy asked when he could see motion on the object they were approaching.
“Just wait.” They were about ten yards away when Shelly asked. “May I see your torch deputy?”
In a clumsy full body fumble Deputy Oraby swirled, spun, and did all he could do but actually hold the light, to keep it from falling on the ground. Captain Ely plucked the light out from its seemingly perpetual fall.
“Here you are.” Ely handed her the torch. When the light came on it was instantly clear what they were dealing with. A hideous cow covered in the distinctive red blood that animals from this planet had, had in its two arms the dead cub.
“What is the cow doing with it?” Oraby hadn’t enough guile to forgo asking the obvious question; but they all wondered the same thing. “Is it going to eat it?”
“If I did not know any better I would say it is mourning the death of her cub.” Shelly had never seen anything like this either, even though she was the foremost export on the little beasties.
“Aren’t they instinctively scared of us--it don’t seem scared of us.”
”No, it is very scared of us deputy.”
“Deputy, when you done goggling Dr. Lizdon’s thorax, I could use a hand.”
Oraby, now flushed with blue in the face said, “Yes sir, what can I do?”
“Help me try to scare the cow off of the carcass.”
“Wait a minute captain Ely, I thought you said you understood the law.”
“I do.” Ely did not read the whole thing like he said he did, he had just scanned it. Luckily, Dr. Lizdon had dealt with enough students saying the same crap that she knew what she was dealing with.
“So you know then, that you can’t do anything to try and scare, direct, or influence a pregnant cow, right?”
“Well then Dr., enlighten me. How do we move this carcass to Coast City?”
“Well, you can’t touch the cow, you can’t attempt to move her, touch her, or even scare her. However, since you have to follow the law, if you move the cub’s body and she does not let go--well you wont be breaking the law. That is what I meant by you may be taking extra passengers with us to Coast City. I have a strong feeling that this cow won’t let go.”
The two marshals just looked at each other, puzzled. How were they going to look toting around a carcass and a living cow through the cave of the magistrate? There was going to be Digi-imagery of the whole fiasco all across the wave-connect. Everyone with palm-balls, or wrist watchers will be laughing at these two men--two men who lived on the outskirts near the scary forest just to get away from all that connected culture crap in the first place.
Oraby and Ely’s gaze lingered in silent contemplation of the potential humiliation--but grech damnit it was their jobs so they knew they better face it sooner than later.
“Very well.” Ely succumbed to this reality first. “In the morning we’ll fly in and pick them up, who knows maybe tomorrow the cow will have gone.”
“Maybe.” Shelly Lizdon repeated through a sardonic smile and tilted head.
“Yeah, maybe!” deputy Oriby said quite earnestly to which both Shelly and captain Ely shook their heads and started back towards the way they came.
“What--what? Hey wait up, don’t leave me out here Captain.” Oraby fumbled to catch up.
The next day about an hour after the sun came up the cow still clung to her little boy while she watched what her ancestors once called a UFO or flying saucer land in the field twenty feet before her. Consumed by pain she had no fear; she was only waiting for them to kill her too. This was not a world into which another baby should be born.
Her last three sons had met the same fate as ten-year-old Brillow met yesterday; if she birthed another boy it too would suffer the same fate.
Her people now had two missions, one, the oldest mission, older than time itself, was for them to plant trees to fix all that their ancestors had destroyed.
Before the aliens arrived her people had nearly planted the world over with trees again, but they never grew back quite the same as they appeared in the old cave panting’s and texts. Before time, trees could populate themselves, now they needed delicate attention, both water and dung.
The second mission was newer, it was assigned to the tree planters ninety-nine years earlier when the aliens first arrived and started cutting down trees and hunting her people like deer--they had to repopulate themselves to match the great numbers being reaped by the large bug-like beast that emerged from that alien space craft so long ago.
She pled with the arbor god in a language that was not comprehended by the bug-beasts “This is not a world to bring a child to. Why won’t the bastards kill me arbor god!”
All Shelly and the marshals could make out was a strange bellowing barking noise, and all the cow could here from Shelly and the two other bug-beasts sounded to her like static electricity from a rustling dry cloth. Traxdan was in the Sky Climber shackled to a seat making no sounds.
It was very hard for the cow to cling to her child while Oriby and Ely lifted it up and into the Sky Climber with, for them, relative ease.
Inside the craft the cow was momentarily pulled from her preserved fixation to her cub when she saw Traxdan. At first she thought he would surely kill her the way he killed her son but then she noticed the chain holding him to a bench. She quickly fell back into her sorrow before she spent much thought on the whole thing. Everything else seemed inconsequential to her pain, her loss, and her little boy who was dead in her arms. “Why won’t they kill me?” the cow thought to her self.
“How are we going to keep the carcass from rotting?” Oraby asked. “We can’t put it into the freeze box if the cow is not going to let go.”
“What did you say?” asked Captain Ely, “That’s not a bad idea Oraby.”
“What’s not a bad idea?”
“He means if you put them in the freeze box maybe the mom will let go before she freezes.” Traxdan’s first words in hours. He was still mad that his mother called the marshals in the first place.
“That should work.” Shelly said though she was not sure. She knew that these animals had a heightened drive for self-preservation, but nothing this cow was doing made any sense.
“Your date with the magistrate is not until the 27th so we can keep the carcass in the freeze box until we ship out to the cave of the magistrate.”
“Where will I stay?” Traxdan look dumfounded.
“You broke the law son, you’re going to stay in a jail cell until the morning of the 27th.” Captain Ely tried not to sound smug, but did by calling him son; he did not know about Traxdan’s dad’s death.
They arrived at Forest Edge Fort and Traxdan was led to his cell where he waited for the 27th.
In the freeze box a mother’s reality was pushed to the extremes of certainty as her boy’s body froze and turned hard whilst hers stayed alive and limber. She had hoped to freeze but the morning after the first time she fell asleep, she woke up covered in warm cloth and blankets made of strange fur. Days of this went by, the cow would uncover her self and fall asleep but Dr. Lizdon would slowly open the freeze box door and cover the cow back up.
“Lilix, turn on your wrist watcher, the trial is about to began.” Someone sitting next to her on the Sky breaker informed her. It was the 27th, two days until Family day/ Landers Day but the earlier anticipated jubilee for this trip over the big waters never came to fruition. 16 melancholy students were glued to their palm ball’s hallo-display or their wrist watcher screens. Above the shared image all of them read, Breaking News, Poacher Son of Shelly Lizdon--98,000 veiwers--stay tuned.
The fact that 98,000 people of the 135,000 people on this planet were watching this did two things to Lilex. Confused her was the first and lesser one, but the other thing it did was weighed her down as it made the guilt within her swell. She was lucky she was not there being tried too. She was as much to blame as Traxtan was, she just got lucky that she changed her mind right when the class came over the hill--only seconds earlier she had been cheering him on just hoping to get to eat some fresh meat and maybe take advantage of Traxtan when he was in full-rut after his first kill.
“Quiet, it’s on!” someone called out from one of the back seats.
The number on the top left side of the screens and hallo displays fell back down to 54,000 viewers. But that was still nearly half of the population, and then the sound came on. “Traxdan, second male of the Lizdon family, you have been from your egg for 18 seasons and you are an adult by law. Do you understand this to be true?”
For everyone on the Sky Climber a familiar face filled their screens. “Yes sir, I do.”
“Do you understand the charges you have been brought before the magistrate on?”
“Yes sir, I do”
“Would you like to fight the charges you are here today for?”
“No sir, I don’t.”
“How do you plead.”
“Sir, I am guilty, and ask for justice.”
“Is the evidence available to be viewed by the Magistrate?” Someone who was not visible on the screen asked.
One of the men that had been there to arrest Traxdan spoke. “Yes sir, there is however a stipulation caused by new law that I feel I should prepare you for.”
The viewer count instantly went up the 62,000 at the mention of something abnormal about the trial.
“What is that captain Ely?” the head magistrate asked.
“Sir, as I’m sure you’re familiar with the Lizdon initiative better than I, you know that we can’t do anything to change the directions that the cows decide to go.”
“Yes I understand that, the Right Of Way initiative if I’m not mistaken.” The Magistrate looked at the papers he had in his hand once again. “Did this young man kill a cow?” At that he sounded surprised.
“No sir, Traxdan has told us everything and he has been very helpful and no he did not kill a cow; however one is indeed here today.” Ely scratched his head.
“How did it die then captain?”
The viewer count again jumped as people shot each other digi-notes saying things like. “hey watch this” or “turn on your wave connect now!” Just as the number of viewers jumped back up to 100,023 captain Ely answered. ”It’s not dead, this is the direction it chose and we are not authorized to breach the law.”
“Very well, I will allow it.” The judge sighed as he was worried that these Forest Edge Fort marshals were trying to make a mockery out of this trial, but gave them the benefit of the doubt anyways.
The evidence tray rolled in and on it was indeed a living pink colored cow holding tightly a frozen blue cub. Before, when Lilex saw Traxdan kill it, it was not blue, but now it looked like any of them may look with only four limbs instead of six, and where it was covered in blood and Traxdan had maimed one of the limbs, it almost passed off as a person with two limbs ripped off.
The number on the top right corner of Lilex’s wrist watcher jumped again to 112,042; nearly every person on the planet that had been watching traditional family propaganda had tuned away to now watch this trial, to see this oddity.
“What’s it doing?” Someone behind her on the sky-breaker asked. “It’s mourning her baby,” someone else answered, everyone focused on his or her own interface with this unfolding trial.
The magistrate had also asked what it was doing to which Shelly answered. “Sir, I believe the cub belonged to this cow; I believe the fluid that is being secreted from its eyes are like the tears we cry from our neck pores, and after having observed this cow for the last 5 days I noticed distinct patterns in the strange noises it makes.”
“What does that mean, can you explain that so us who are not anthropologists could understand.”
“Yes your honor; what I am basically saying is I think the cow can explain it better if you allow it the used of the Engress-Ten’s universal translator.”
“Is that a joke Dr. Lizdon” The magistrate’s face began to turn blue and the hairs on his neck started to stand on end. “Do you expect me to move this trial to the Engress-Ten museum?”
“No, your honor, I would never cause the Magistrates any disrespect. I do think however, that in a matter of minutes we could use any Wave-connect compatible device and interface with the universal translator at the museum. Your honor I think this will be our only chance to do such a thing, so I again ask, if the court sees fit, can we at least attempt to translate the noises the cow is making.
“Very well Dr. but I don’t see how this will help your son’s sentence.”
It only took a second, luckily the museums curator was also in digital attendance and stood ready by the translator. “We’re ready here, just hold your palm-ball next to the cow for a few minutes and let the translator work.”
“While the translator is functioning Mr. Lizdon, is there anything you would like to say in your defense?”
“Yes sir…”
“Well boy, lets hear it.”
“Your honor, I never wanted to kill a buck--or a cub, or anything--sir, I just wanted to impress a girl, that’s all. I was just going to kiss her and I tried to all the time but never dared. I did not want to kill it, but I started chasing it and I lost control. I am sorry for what I did, I know it is against the law but more than that, I know this cow is sad. I know that sound crazy b…”
“shh click pop shh click My family.” Two very well known words erupted from Dr. Lizdon’s palm ball.
“Was that someone at the museum madam curator?”
“No your honor, we’ve made a full match, the translator is ready.”
Now nearly every device on the planet that was wave-connect capable was online for when the Magistrate asked the creature the first question anyone has, in earnest, ever asked an animal. “Do you understand me?” The words went into the device and came back out as undecipherable dribble, but the same kind of dribble the cow was making. The cow did not answer with words but abruptly looked around the courtroom. It clearly understood.
The Magistrate needed a second to compose himself before he spoke again. “Do you know why you’re here?”
A brief moment of silence was cut like a knife when out of the device Shelly held near the cow, came, “Because you’re going to kill me like you killed my baby.”
Lilex, still over the big water, felt the tears streaming down her neck and noticed that she was not the only one crying.
After the moment of shock the Magistrates voice dropped and he started to speak more tenderly than he had ever spoken while behind his gavel before. “No, we’re not going to hurt you, never again. Not anymore.”
“I don’t believe you, you killed my children, my mother, my father--my husband; you killed my family, you killed them all.” The voice that was coming through the palm ball was a familiarly used commercial voice, it paused for a moment but when it went on, it was with twice the emotion as before “And he--he killed my baby boy!, my whole family is dead, they’re dead” She pointed at Traxdan who was crying just like his mother was, like the witnesses of the court were, like deputy Oriby and captain Ely were.
“We did not know, families are the most important things to our people, if we had only known.” The magistrate said in Traxdans defense, he was just as guilty as this boy was. “But it is over now, we can’t bring back the dead but it is over, by power entrusted to me, I swear it.”
Journal entry
Lilex Nediff
0100-01-01
There was no celebration in the streets, no drunken song and dancing in the bars; the only thing different was how tightly mothers held their babies, and how fathers held their wives a little longer and how the children who once did not share with their sibling started to share all they had, and that change was welcomed and it lasted long after the holiday was over.
Traxdan was never sentenced for poaching as we had all been guilty of a much more heinous crime, that without Traxdan’s mistake we would have completed--we had all been part of the attempted genocide of what we thought was a mindless animal that turned out to be a sage and learned species that only appeared so meek because of the sacrifices they made to save their world and so save our world too.
It all finally all worked out, but hey I guess that is just how the universe works sometimes. Next year we will celebrate family day, but now it is the day that we will all plant a tree and join together with the humans to celebrate the love we have for each other and eat the flightless birds that scavenged off of our discarded grain.
End.
