Chosen One, page 11
Chappy suddenly became normal again and shook the numbness from his brain. ‘What in the name of my egg just happened?’ he queried. ‘I feel stuffed.’ He glimpsed the sluggishly flowing creek and did a double take. ‘Er, where are we Bron and when exactly did we walk here?'
'You took off and led me to wherever here is,’ Bronte explained. ‘I don't think you were quite yourself though. You were moving rather woodenly, almost as if you were...'
'Brought here,’ finished Gideon, stepping into view on the opposite embankment and startling the reptiles. Despite their attuned animalistic senses, the pair had failed to detect his reappearance.
'You were, brought here I mean, by me,’ the alien personage owned up, speaking to Chappy.
'Against his will,’ condemned the Thunderfoot cow. ‘I had a feeling you were behind this. How did you manage it?'
Gideon shrugged and said, ‘Basic mind control. Some personalities are weak-minded and rather open to suggestiveness.'
'You picked a perfect subject in Chappy then,’ muttered Bronte.
'Hey, was that an insult?’ honked the slighted Duckbill.
Gideon ignored the bantering dinosaurs to carry on explaining. ‘I merely insinuated to Chappy on a subconscious level to come along here. He actually did so of his own volition. I can't force anyone to act against their will, but quite often the body is reluctant to heed outside influence, hence the funny walk.'
Puzzled, Bronte demanded to know, ‘How come I wasn't subjected to your brainwashing?'
Gideon's metallic laugh answered the cow. ‘Don't think I didn't explore that possibility. I briefly touched upon your mind, Bronte. Your thought processes are surprisingly well structured for a Beta Class life-form. You would be exceedingly difficult to ... coerce.'
Bronte found satisfaction in that reason, though was disconcerted at having her mind so casually and callously invaded without her knowing it.
'There was no real need anyway,’ Gideon smugly admitted. ‘I sensed the closeness between you and Chappy from our introductory meeting—where one goes the other follows. I knew you'd tag along.'
'You're awfully sure of yourself.'
'I've done my homework.'
'Ahem,’ came Vai's interruption over the open comlink.
'We've done our research,’ corrected the outlander.
'Who is that? Bronte insisted on being told.
'My conscience,’ Gideon answered bleakly.
'Lord, where's your shiny egg?’ Chappy wondered aloud.
'My what? Oh, you mean my starsphere. It's parked a way off.’ He spoke directly into his helmet microphone. ‘Though not far enough away for my liking.’ The alienaut was struck by a peculiarity. ‘Why did you call me lord just then?'
'Wake up and smell the solder, sweetie pie,’ cut in Vai. ‘They're animals. You appear godlike to them.’ The hint completely escaped Gideon. With an exasperated whine the computerised persona declared, ‘They think you're some kind of deity.'
'The Originator,’ elucidated Chappy.
'That's what comes from breaking the rules.'
Gideon disregarded his VAI's admonishment. ‘I hate to disillusion you, my adulating Duckbill, but I am not a god. I'm just an ordinary fellow, made of flesh and blood like you.'
'That's good enough for me,’ decided Bronte, suddenly thundering across the stream with a spray of chill water. Her charge was blunted when she encountered Gideon's personal force shield and was firmly repulsed by the unyielding energy barrier.
'I never said I was defenceless,’ he said, regarding the bewildered Thunderfoot with disdain.
'What's going on love?’ Vai crackled over the com channel. ‘I had a surge from your PFS that nearly overloaded my power cells. Did a mountain fall on you out there?'
'Just a little misunderstanding,’ Gideon radioed back.
Chappy was outraged by Bronte's behaviour. ‘What did you do that for?'
The dazed Thunderfoot tried to focus her scrambled brains. She felt like she had charged headlong into a rock wall. ‘I was making a point, Chap. I wanted to prove that Gideon isn't as harmless as he makes out, as you so readily believe. He's dangerous.'
'The only danger around here is what you are to yourself. Geez, and I thought I was impulsive.'
'I'm not here to hurt either of you,’ reiterated Gideon. Bronte narrowed her hateful eyes at the outlander and he pleaded his case. ‘You surely can't blame a guy for defending himself. Look at the size difference between us.'
'Whatever,’ Bronte snapped back. She waded back across the brook to rejoin Chappy. ‘Have you come back to supply answers to our questions?'
'Fire away.'
'Where's the fire?’ Chappy honked worriedly. He tested the night air. ‘I don't smell any smoke.'
'It's just an expression my people used,’ Gideon said, calming the upset Duckbill. ‘It means begin.'
'That's a good place to start,’ Bronte affirmed.
'What is?’ asked the alienaut.
'Your herd. Where do they reside again?'
Gideon clapped his white-gloved hands together. ‘For that we need a demonstration. Vai, initiate edu-prog one-one-zero-four.'
'You didn't say the magic word again.'
'Please.'
'Better. Manners are so often forgotten nowadays.'
A ray of multicoloured light streamed from Gideon's Energy Dome and a perfectly detailed holographic miniature landscape of emerald trees beside a plain of lesser green shimmered in the darkness over the creek.
'That looks like Mother Forest and Fernwalk,’ exclaimed Chappy, his eyes alight with fascination. ‘It's beautiful. Wow! There's Clearwater River and Crescent Lake,’ he added, spying the ribbon and pool of blue out west.
'How perceptive of you, Chappy,’ commended Gideon, considering the birds-eye view was completely new to the land bound reptile. ‘Now think of your territory as being just a tiny part of an even greater whole. Watch closely.'
The three-dimensional image shrunk as the landmarks recognisable to the viewing reptiles receded to be lost in a topographical overview of the continent they were to be found on. Gideon began his narration. ‘This is the landmass your forest is but one small section of. It should be right about here.’ He pointed with a finger to an area in the mid-west of the continent just below and to the left of the bisecting seaway, his appendage passing through the filmy projection as if it were coloured mist. ‘Keep watching,’ he instructed the spellbound dinosaurs. The laser painting adjusted again and this time the landmass itself diminished in size to become part of the broken jigsaw of adjoining continents arranged on a spherical field of intense teal.
'What is that?’ Chappy exploded breathlessly.
'That globe is the planet which the land your forest is a part of sits on.’ Gideon struggled to put it into plainer terms the animals could more readily comprehend. ‘Think of it as the egg from which all life you see around you has hatched. Not just reptiles, but plants, trees, insects, mountains, hills, rivers ... everything.'
'It must be one huge egg,’ remarked the Duckbill.
'Big enough, yet your biosphere is in turn just an infinitesimally small piece in a vast cosmic mosaic.'
'Who laid it?'
Gideon was not surprised by Chappy's uncomplicated query. Animals tended to think in simplistic terms.
'Atheists and creationists have been arguing about that for centuries,’ he answered humorously. ‘Having been a student of both the sciences and theology, I tend to favour the latter.'
'You share our belief in the Originator then?’ It was Bronte's turn to pose questions.
'I take it that is your deity,’ Gideon conjectured.
'That's what He is known as,’ butted in Chappy.
'She,’ challenged Bronte. There is no proof the Originator was male.
Gideon tried not to laugh. Religious disagreement was obviously not confined to technologically advanced sentience. ‘On my world He's called the Supreme Being.'
Chappy shot his giant friend a look of superiority.
'Getting back to which, where do you come from?’ Bronte prodded again. She wanted a definite answer to the stranger's origins.
'A world that was not unlike your own.’ Gideon's reply was weighted with sadness. ‘My planet lies well beyond your reach and mine.'
'Will you show us your home-egg?’ Chappy eagerly wanted to know. Bronte looked at her Duckbill pal with surprise. He had grasped the rudimentary concept of planetary bodies comparatively quickly.
'Not this way,’ the alienaut expressed in a choked voice. ‘Freeze program, Vai.'
'Paused,’ confirmed the computer. She was oddly subdued herself.
Gideon proceeded to walk about until he found what he was searching for—a wide enough gap in the decreasingly leafy boughs of the forest roof so that he could amply view the night sky. The wind had blown off the daytime cloud cover and the starry firmament twinkled like sunlight reflected off the ocean, the cold and unearthly glow of the full moon dulled by the tangle of branches overhead. He simply stood and stared heavenwards through that break in the tree limbs for ages.
'Do you think he's fallen asleep?’ Chappy whispered to Bronte.
The Thunderfoot studied the unmoving outlander and said nothing.
'There,’ Gideon finally voiced, pointing to a grouping of faint pinpricks of astral light barely distinguishable to the reptiles from the surrounding star clusters. ‘Some three or four light years past those is my home-world of Berran.'
Bronte seemed placated. Gideon's claim of being an extraterrestrial was fanciful but far more attractive than deifying him. ‘Now that's established,’ she happily rumbled, ‘what are you doing here so far from your territory?'
The offworlder looked at the Thunderfoot with that disconcerting cyclopean gaze of his. ‘Vai, resume program.'
The stilled hologram flickered back into motion and Planet Earth grew small as the viewpoint panned back to show the airless moon orbiting its parent world. Other planets hove into the picture as the viewers were speedily transported a ways along the length of the solar system; first a red desert world, followed by a gaseous giant between which floated a belt of rocks. The 3-D imaging centered on these sterile lumps.
'You are seeing what are termed asteroids,’ narrated Gideon, his electronically generated voice once more strong. ‘They are essentially nothing more than boulders. But stones have a nasty habit of moving unpredictably along unforeseen paths if accidentally kicked.'
'You mean rock slides,’ ventured Chappy.
'Yes, in a manner of speaking. An avalanche of sorts is headed this way. Show the Annihilator, Vai.'
'I don't like the sound of that,’ muttered Bronte.
'Ready or not, here it comes,’ announced the guiding computer.
A huge rocky chunk of planetary leftovers, preceded and flanked by its accompanying shrapnel, flew menacingly into the picture.
'That looks dangerous,’ Chappy remarked.
Gideon's narrative took on a note of gravity. ‘That's an understatement. What you see before you is bringing likely extinction to all life on your home-egg. That rock is on an unalterable collision course with this planet. When it hits, and it surely will, I doubt anything larger than a cockroach will survive.'
Bronte absorbed the revelation. ‘You can't mean what I think you mean,’ she said in disbelief
'Oh, but I do. Thunderfeet, Duckbills, Killjaws—sadly all will die.'
The enormity of the doomsday forecast squashed Bronte like a reptile stepping on an ant. She could scarcely register the implications Gideon's disheartening words held.
He unfortunately confirmed her fears. ‘I've done the calculations, several times over actually. The prognosis is always the same. Worldwide death and destruction.'
The dispirited cow glanced at her Duckbill buddy. He looked as poleaxed as she did.
'While I'm sorry to be the bearer of such grim news,’ Gideon apologised, ‘I come also offering a chance of hope.'
'You're going to crush the rockfall to smithereens,’ Chappy confidently predicted.
'Regrettably I don't have the power to do that.'
'But you are almighty,’ persisted the bull.
'No, I'm not. However, He has sent me on a holy mission. You are the Chosen and one of you is destined to be transformed into the rescuer of this world.'
Bronte rose from her gloominess like a Lizardwing taking flight. The obscurity of her nightmare was being yanked forth into frightening comprehension. ‘What are you talking about?'
'Either you or Chappy must agree to be changed in form.'
'You're mad!'
'I assure you, Bronte, I am compos mentis.'
'What?'
'Mens sana in corpore sano.'
Bronte looked perplexedly at Chappy. ‘What's he saying?'
'How should I know? He's a foreigner.'
Gideon listened incomprehensibly to the conversing dinosaurs. They were uttering unintelligible rumbles and honks. ‘Vai, what's going on? I can't understand a blessed thing they're vocalising.'
'If I'm not mistaken the Linguistic Decoder is malfunctioning, dearie.'
'Thanks for the newsflash. Care to enlighten why it's acting up?'
'LDs are tasked with deciphering and translating sophisticated alien languages into Berranian speech and vice versa. They were not specifically designed to decode the grunts of animal talk. My particular unit is failing under the strain.'
'Run a diagnostic and fix it.'
'It'll take time.'
Gideon fumed aloud. ‘We're rapidly running out of that, Vai.'
'Would you like me to contact Berran for a repairman to be sent out to speed things up?'
'That's not funny.'
'Just bringing you back to reality. I can only work so fast with the portable resources onboard.'
'Meantime the saurians and I have to listen to each other's gibberish.'
'I've always found Nat-El to be quite poetic speech.'
'I'm so lucky to have a romantic VAI.'
Querulous hooting and booming crackled intrusively over Gideon's headset and he regarded the agitated reptiles.
'The natives sound like they're getting restless,’ spoke Vai.
'Start on whatever you have to do to repair the decoder,’ ordered Gideon. ‘I'm on my way back to the ship now.'
'Don't get lost.'
'That'll only happen if you switch off the homing beacon. I'll meet you at the rendezvous point shortly.'
Bronte and Chappy had given up on trying to make sense of the exchange between the alien and his unseen accomplice. Only when it became plain that Gideon was heading off did they return their full attention to him.
'Vale.'
'What's he trying to tell us, Bron?'
The Thunderfoot directed an irritated rumble the Duckbill's way. She watched closely as Gideon gestured to the starlit heavens before pointing to her and Chappy. ‘I think he's saying he has to leave but will meet up with us again sometime later. Either that or the sky is falling.’ She nodded her understanding to the small alien.
Gideon returned a deliberately exaggerated nod of acceptance. ‘Vade in pace,’ he said in farewell and departed into the shadows on his side of the stream.
'Once again we're left to ourselves with more questions than answers,’ grumbled Bronte.
'Gideon is mysterious,’ conceded Chappy, ‘in an exciting way.'
'You like him?’ accused the cow.
'You must admit life's not been dull since he's come around.'
'It's a kind of excitement I can well do without.'
'The stories he tells are fascinating. Do you really think a giant rock is going to fall from the skies?'
Not wanting to alarm her mettlesome friend, Bronte refused to speculate on that dire subject. In truth, she did not want to confront her own dream-inspired fears on that score. ‘Gideon is not being entirely honest with us,’ was all she said.
'What makes you think that?'
'A troubling feeling in my gut that is not entirely gas. Did you notice how he keeps speaking of his herd in the past tense? That is so unsettling.'
'Maybe they got eaten by predators.'
'It's possible, I suppose. There is more to our tail-less friend than meets the eye.’ Bronte looked nervously skywards.
Chappy picked up on her apprehension. ‘It's your turn to disappear,’ he guessed, ‘before you're missed.'
'I don't want Darved waking up alone and worrying,’ confirmed Bronte.
'Do you love him, Bron?'
'It's far too early to tell, Chap. I do like him though—a lot.'
'You're lucky. You've got a mate and will soon have a herd to run. That's what I call a bright future.'
Bronte doubted her pal's optimistic appraisal if Gideon's gloomy forecast was right.
'I've got nothing ahead of me but a routine life,’ Chappy moodily said. ‘I'm a nameless bull in a crowd of alike Duckbills. This'll sound silly, but Gideon makes me feel special.’ With that Chappy turned away from the perturbed cow and retreated into the dark forest. Bronte stayed only a moment longer before trekking back to her sleeping bull and herd with a great deal weighing on her mind.
A half-hour after the Thunderfoot and Duckbill had parted company a sinewy shadow detached itself from the surrounding blackness and glided soundlessly to the embankment the two herbisaurs had recently vacated. It paused momentarily on that spot before moving wraith-like across the creek without so much as a splash or ripple disturbing the sluggish water to stand in the space Gideon had occupied.
Shadower stooped to study the faint imprint of a boot left in the mud. In an age yet to come paleontologists might marvel over the anomaly of a booted footprint preserved in sixty million year old rock that near mythical lizards should have only trod upon. For now it was the Nightclaw's turn to be vexed by the partial alien track. The Killjaw spy had witnessed the entire exchange between the outlander and plant-eaters with his unparalleled night vision. Still, he wanted to examine any physical evidence to verify his bizarre findings.
The cough of a distant reptile carried across the night air and Shadower reflexively straightened to furtively glance about with his piercing eyes. Prudence had thus far kept the Nightclaw alive and at the peak of his trade. Alertness ensured survival in the wilds. After regarding the ebony bracken with discerning estimation, he abandoned the scene and raced through the nighttime woods, a spindly silhouette barely a shade lighter than the shadowy dark. Nothing more could be learned here about Mother Forest's otherworldly visitor and he had to report to his tyrannical master.
