Chiton Read online

  ***

  I dreamed of my days as an artist. My instructor had been very patient. He needed to be. My sketch work was technically perfect, but he insisted that there was no feeling in the drawings. My sculptures never quite looked like what I intended, and in the end the instructor had sent me on to learn to be either a draftsman, where I tended to add more information than my instructors deemed necessary or a building painter, where I made such a terrible mess on my first day that I ended up working in the sewer system that week.

  I awoke to the fading sound of a scream. At first I told myself that it was just the aftermath of a nightmare caused by shadows in my mind of the last two weeks underground. Then I saw the dark shape glide past my hiding place. A small piece of armor with a bit of flesh on it settled to the floor of my pool, and it was immediately clear what had happened. A fish had got Parker. I hunkered down beneath my rock trying to suppress the relief I felt at not having displaced Parker after all. After a minute I felt safe enough to retrieve the bit of flesh and I ate it in the safety of my shelter. As I finished the last bite of armor I thought, "I'm going to miss old Parker."

  Then I saw another motion. Something passed over the shore in the air. The blurred figure turned and dove directly at me. In that moment my mind played out the immediate future for me as I was devoured by some terrible bird, and my last thought was, "I hate the wilderness."

  With a roar, the blurred flier transformed into a column of bubbles directly in front of me. I raised my inadequate weapons in a reflexive defensive gesture, then lowered them in relief when the fleeing bubbles unveiled my angelic rescuer from yesterday.

  "There you are," she began. Somehow the water gave her voice a sultry timbre that sent a shiver through me. "I've been looking all over for you," she continued. "The others are all ready to start their training. Let's go."

  She returned to the air with as little effort as she had used to enter. I was helpless to do anything but follow. Minutes later I found myself looking over the edge of the embankment gazing at the most astonishing sight. Hundreds of people were spread across the fields. Dozens of burrows built up at random locations. It was almost a city. I hadn't gone far when I was accosted by the largest man I had ever met.

  "Where do you think you're goin' boy?" he bellowed, placing a claw nearly as tall as I was in my path.

  "I was... just got here," I managed.

  "What's your name boy?" he demanded.

  I told him.

  "That's a stupid name," he challenged. "Now get in that line before I kick your..."

  "Wilson."

  I recognized that angelic voice. There, hovering above us was the female. The change in Wilson's personality was dramatic. A moment ago he was the incarnation of brutal domination, and now he was a grinning, shy child dragging at least three of his toes nervously back and forth across the ground as he beamed his tittering devotion upward.

  "Take good care of my friend here," she directed him, "I see great things in his future."

  Her eyes met mine and for just a moment, I think I echoed Wilson's embarrassing display. I recovered myself and managed a casual, "Hey."

  Then she was gone, her musical laughter hanging in the air between us. I turned my impish smile back toward Wilson and all the joy immediately drained from my expression. He was looking at me with an expression of disbelief hidden only by his obvious need to kill me on the spot.

  "That line right over there?" I backed quickly out of his reach into the false security of a crowd of young boys.

  The slow moving line carried me to a table where a very bored man was directing the mostly younger males ahead of me to other lines.

  "What training do you have."

  I had reached the front of the line, but was scanning the horizon again hoping for another glimpse of the only reason I was here.

  "Hey!" the bored clerk demanded my attention. "What are your qualifications?" he enunciated slowly.

  "Huh?" I offered.

  "Skill set?"

  "What?" I confirmed his scornful opinion of me.

  "Infantry." He decided, pointing to another long line behind him.

  I stared dumbly at him finally beginning to wonder what was going on here.

  "Go...over...there...and...wait...in...that...line."

  I chose not to reply and just walked to where he had indicated.

  "Yeu look like yeu seen some action." The accent was deep north.

  I was not interested in a conversation at the moment. "Uh, yea sure." I reacted.

  "Hot dawg! I knew it!" He slapped me on the shoulder and I was drawn in.

  "I'm Nub," he babbled on. "Come all th' way down from th' territories."

  I introduced myself and as several others appeared alongside Nub, he obviously being the most intelligent of the lot, I could not avoid relating a very condensed version of my travails. The group interrupted me several times asking questions which forced me to jump around awkwardly in my narrative. I'm not sure if the story I ended up telling started with me in the caverns or ended there, and just as I was about to tell of my rescue from the alien, I was distracted by the female flying across the edge of my vision in the distance. Another question, and I may have completely skipped over any mention of the female at all, except to end my tale with her invitation to come here. That naturally led my asking Nub what was going on here?

  Several members of the group attempted to answer my question all at the same time. The one voice I could understand said something like, "We're the Infancy."

  At last they parted in front of Nub who led me to look over the top of a low hill. The thick looks on the faces of my new companions changed to match my expression of awe at the synchronized motions of the one hundred men below. They were arrayed in a large rectangle each exactly the same distance from his neighbor. They all appeared to be holding long sticks in their claws as they spun and stepped all together in a complex martial dance, striking the air, ground, or their neighbor's stick with their own sticks every few seconds. The crack of their sticks meeting each other and the simultaneous stomp of four hundred feet on the ground could be heard even at this distance.

  I'm not sure how long I stood there watching, but it finally dawned on me that I was alone on the hilltop. Well, not entirely alone. Wilson was standing beside me.

  "Aren't they beautiful," he said almost pleasantly.

  His eyes were not on me so I took the opportunity to back down the hill toward the infancy. He turned and his eyes pinned me to the ground several meters before I reached my goal.

  "I understand you drove off a dozen aliens single handed at the battle of barren hollow," he declared just loud enough for the entire group to hear.

  "I...huh?" was my eloquent response.

  It seemed that the disjointed story of my adventure had been retold and so rewritten several times before it had reached the big man's ears.

  "Imagine my joy," he continued, "to find my lady's favorite among my boys."

  He had closed the distance between us, and I flinched as he placed one arm around my shoulders, turning me toward the group.

  "Do you have any idea why you're here?" he whispered.

  "We're the infancy?" I croaked.

  His grip tightened as his pained expression assured me that I was far from correct. For just a moment I thought he was going to snip me in half.

  "Have you all met?" he asked. Many of the group nodded their heads, a few shook theirs no, but most just directed blank looks at the two of us. Wilson introduced me. To hear my name from his lips was like being rubbed between sheets of sandstone. Squirm as I may, I could not shrink from his grip. I was proud that I remained on my feet when he finally released me and marched through the center of the group saying, "Come. Get some sleep. Tomorrow at first glow you all learn to do that!" He turned and pointed dramatically back toward the top of the hill.

  I knew that he was referring to the odd dance beyond but from the expressions of the others I could see that most of them thoug
ht he was just pointing at me.