Алан Дин Фостер - Relic

One of the first things settlers of a new world strove to learn was which local organics were ingestible and which were toxic. Crumbling craft of local design, warehouses, cranes, and deactivated shocknets all pointed to a local industry that, if not designed to catch fish, was clearly intended to gather something. In the absence of sea or field, they suggested a once-thriving local commerce founded on gathering the bounty of the mudflats.

A gap loomed ahead in the walkway he was traversing. While his athletic days were largely behind him, the breach was not significant and he jumped it easily. Nothing rose from the muck below to snap at him, though the stink of organic decay was pronounced. He wrinkled his nose. Daribb was ripe with the stench of decomposition. A moon would have helped, nudging tides that would have washed the shores of the city. But Daribb had no moon. And not much else, he was coming to believe, save the ghosts of the long dead. Fatigue magnified his dejection.

He was ready to turn back, more than ready, when for the second time in as many visits dank and depressing Dinabu tantalized his hearing with unidentified sounds. One hand dropped to his sidearm as he listened intently. This time he would not be surprised, would not be caught off guard by whatever came gnashing out of the ruins. Shrieks and rumbles, rapid-fire coughs and chitterings, assailed his ears. He let his hand relax. Somewhere in the depths the local lifeforms were disputing among themselves and it was none of his business.

He didn’t care how fascinating they might be, or if they comprised representatives of one or more new indigenous species. Let the exploration team’s xenologists assemble themselves to record the goings-on. He wanted none of it. Rising from the twisted ceramic beam where he had paused to rest, he turned to rejoin his companions. Bac’cul and Cor’rin might not be ready to leave, but he was. He found that he was looking forward to the return to Myssar. There would be no retirement for him there, only comfort and a tending to his needs. Even his death would be valuable to the Myssari scientists who were fascinated by all things human. They would watch and study his passing with as much interest as they had his life, carefully recording his last wheezing breaths, solicitously noting the stoppage of his heart, the shrinking activity of his synapses, the final forceful exhalation of his collapsing lungs….

He turned so sharply he nearly fell on the weather-warped walkway. That last sound—had he imagined it? Strikingly different in tone and timbre from the preponderance of guttural hooting and hollering, it had pierced him as cleanly as a surgical probe. While he was trying to analyze it, to decide if he had really heard it or if his hearing was playing tricks on him, it resounded again. Several times, increasing in pitch.

A scream. An undeniably human scream. Underscored by overtones he had not heard in decades except in recordings salvaged and offered up for his inspection and explanation by Myssari xenologists. Feminine overtones. The screamer was female.

He began to run, drawing his sidearm as he did so. As he raced in the direction of the screaming, he silently cursed every obstacle in his path, every shortened stride that kept him from reaching its source that much sooner. As he ran he spoke, haltingly and with difficulty, to the aural pickup that clung to his chest like an iridescent blue insect.

“Kel’les! Bac’cul, Cor’rin! I’m monitoring what sounds like local creatures fighting, but there’s something else. It sounds hu—” Mindful of earlier disappointments and opprobrium, he leavened his call with caution. “I think it might be human. I don’t have visual yet.”

Initial exhilaration gave way to prudence. What if the screams were being made by the Daribbian equivalent of a Serabothian mocking climber? What if what he was hearing was nothing more than the mindless replication of shouts once made by now long-dead inhabitants of the city, perfect reproductions passed down through generations of masterfully imitative indigenous creatures?

As to the source of the wild howling and bleating, he had no illusions. This was confirmed as he rounded a corner and came upon a choice chunk of chaos.

The fight between two groups of the long-haired hunters, one of whom had nearly killed him in the course of his previous visit, was ongoing and fierce. Battling with clubs, spears, and crude axes, more than twenty of the creatures were flailing away madly at one another. In the absence of anything resembling a combat strategy, sheer unfocused energy prevailed. Skulls were bashed, limbs broken, bodies sliced and stabbed. Whether they had noticed his arrival or not he could not tell, but none of the combatants paid him the least attention. Formed into a semicircle, one group was attempting to defend a pile of still-intact building supplies while being assailed by their adversaries. Though slightly outnumbered, the first group was managing to hold their assailants at bay.

Then Ruslan saw that what the first group was so zealously defending was not building supplies.

Initially he was so stunned he did not react. More than half a century had passed since he had last set eyes on another living human being. Despite the scouting report that had brought him and his companions to Daribb, he had not really, in his heart, expected to encounter one. Now he found himself staring through the red flush of battle at a struggling, unkempt figure that even at a distance the cynical Twi’win herself not could mistake for a native.

He knew he ought to wait for the others. Intervening on his own might get the both of them killed. But at any moment a stray blade, a thrown spear, might destroy his last chance to feel the flesh of a fellow live human pressed against his own. Blurting his discovery into his pickup, he raised his sidearm and rushed heedlessly forward, yelling and firing as he went. His charge would have been more impressive had he been a few decades younger. His speed would have been better, and his reaction time. The avalanche of adrenaline that shot through him helped to compensate for the passage of years, however, and he did have on his side the significant benefit of complete surprise.

Neither of the two contesting groups of primitive bipeds had ever seen an advanced weapon before. While the flashes of light from the muzzle of his sidearm were little more than distractions, the devastating consequences of the energy bursts they unleashed manifested themselves in the form of obliterated heads, severed limbs, and flowering guts.

When one or two of the creatures showed signs of challenging him, they were quickly dissuaded by the hasty departure of their fellows. Deprived of backup, these braver members of the two tribes joined their colleagues in flight. Low on the intelligence scale they might be, but they possessed enough cognizance to recognize superior firepower when it was shown to them. Smoke and the smell of burning flesh rose from the corpses they left behind. They made no effort to take the bodies of their dead with them. It was likely that as soon as Ruslan left the scene the survivors would return; to recover, to bury, perhaps to consume. He knew next to nothing of the biology of the local aborigines, nor did he much care. His attention was focused solely on the small figure that was huddling at the back of the mountain of material. Dust coated the surfaces of boxes and crates like brown sugar, indicating that they had not been touched in a very long time.

Slowing down as he approached, he lowered his weapon and extended his other hand, fingers splayed in open invitation.

“It’s all right. It’s okay. I’m human, like… like you are. My name is Ruslan.” In the absence of a response, he continued. “I come from a world called Seraboth. Like this world, Daribb, it was once part of the human expansion. Now I live with a race called the Myssari. They’re not very human, but they’re quite nice. They’ve taken good care of me.”