(eng) Paul Melko by Singularity's Ring

Author:Singularity's Ring [Ring, Singularity's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

An hour later, we hid in an overcovered tributary for night to fall. Everyone was too tired to keep going during the night. I watched my pod make camp in silence. I knew they were thinking together, whispering thoughts among themselves, yet it was ghostly to watch their synchronous actions. Once I caught Meda looking at me. I shrugged and turned away. They were missing a part of themselves just as I was.

Standing, I walked into the jungle. In seconds the camp was hidden from me behind emerald walls. I disturbed a small frog which leaped to a nearby leaf, clinging to it with its thick digits.

I caught it from behind, letting its suckery feet crawl across my palm. Its front and rear three-toed feet were equally useful to it. It looked up at me with one watery eye, almost as large as its head. Then it jumped with strength disproportionate to its body, disappearing into the brush.

“Beautiful creature.”

I turned to find Jol next to me.

“Yes.”

“I used to look out at the jungle from the hospital windows, wondering what was there. I imagined snakes and crocodiles as long and wide as trucks. I never imagined frogs as small and delicate as that.” She was standing close to me. Her dark hair was darker with water; she had just come from the river—a dip to cool herself off—and her hospital clothes were plastered to her body. She ran her fingers through her hair.

“Are you lonely without your pod?” she asked.

“Not so much,” I said. “I should be, I think, but I’m not.”

“Two people can be a pod,” she said.

I looked her in the eye. The invitation was between us, and this woman seemed as wild and alive as the jungle we stood in. Yet I felt I could not trust myself; my emotions were ruling me without a pod to control them, without consensus to work toward.

I didn’t answer, looking away at the mulchy floor of the rain forest. A tree had fallen—perhaps last rainy season—and the canopy was thin, allowing saplings and bushes to begin a desperate race toward the sun. The fallen trunk was an ecosystem in itself. I watched as termites zipped inside and out of the patchy bark. Spiders had strung webs across rotten limbs. A black agouti, chewing a Brazil nut in its teeth, sat among the upturned root system and observed us calmly.

Jol stepped forward to get a closer look at the rodent. Her foot slid into the soil. I took ahold of her shirt and pulled her back.

What we had thought was a mound of mulch from the tree was in fact an anthill, some two meters tall. The ants had apparently mined the earth around the hill, perhaps for defense, perhaps for material for the hill, leaving it susceptible to collapse if something large stepped on it. Now that I knew it was there, I saw surrounding the hill columns of ants marching to and fro, all of them bent to tasks to keep their little community alive.

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