The Veiled Edge of Contact by James Brayken

Author:James Brayken [Brayken, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oh Gentle Night
Published: 2022-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

The Hollow

“It’s a fucking multicolored tree,” says Thembe, hands on hips as he gawks at the alien-made thing ahead of him.

I try to resist telling him, “I told you so.”

“I told you so,” I say.

Thembe and the specialist are surrounded by twenty Wuchumbu, each of whom has been carefully selected by Mhaawu for their loyalty to her. However, those in the tribe who do not want to activate the tree—because they are loyal to Mhaawu or because they abhor the thought of murdering innocent people, including me—grow fewer by the hour. Stress and fear are pushing the Wuchumbu one by one toward a small faction led by the Gommo twins, who seek an immediate solution.

“To understand the tree,” Beejalee says to Thembe, “you need to drink the brew of the fruit of many colors.” She points to the premade batch, beside which the shaman is slumped, possibly asleep.

“Thank you for your offer,” Thembe replies, “but rather than consume that, the specialist and I intend to use a more modern, rational approach.”

“The brew is the only way,” says Mhaawu. “Shaman, bring a bowlful to this man. Shaman?”

Thembe smiles and holds his hand up in refusal.

“Mhaawu is right,” I chime in. “And we are running out of time.”

“I’m fully aware of how much time we have,” says Thembe, annoyingly calm and smiley. “The specialist is one of the most brilliant minds in her field, and with her equipment, she’s going to use a little thing called science to tell us things about this phenomenon you could only dream of. So, please sit back, relax, and let us do our job.”

The two guests go about their work, intermittently squabbling with the unsettled Wuchumbu, who give them little space and insist they keep their distance from the tree. I wait with the guarding tribe for a long time, until the opportunity arises for me to slip away from the group and move nearer to the extraterrestrial creation. Through air that hangs with color, I observe as much as I can, mindful that I may never be allowed back in here.

The altar rock is huge, standing over four meters high—the size of a tranzbus at least, much wider than it is tall, with one side angled and jagged enough to easily climb, and its upper surface mostly flat. Although the tree steals all the attention right now, the rock is imposing, and I can understand why the tribe once used this place as the focus of their spiritual practice.

The tree itself is around ten meters tall and stands dead center upon the rock, its roots wrapped tightly around the altar as if to choke it. Apparently in perpetual bloom, hundreds if not thousands of tiny flowers dot the branches, along with the fewer and much larger fruit, which I’d have thought would be too heavy to be held by their stems. The entire surface of the tree—its fruit, flowers, leaves, branches, trunk, and roots—are a glowing movement of color that flows and combines and pulsates and projects into the cavern.

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