All We Leave Behind

It had only been ten days since Miriam and her followers had abandoned Manoach in search of a safe home beyond some canyon they had found to the northwest. In that brief span of time, the remaining elders and some of the second-generation adults had come down with a fever for which the late Christina Grigsby’s medical team had no answer. The water they had saved from the Pool of Life—a miracle of healing found in the temple—was not strong enough to fight off the virus or bacteria or whatever it was. Even rychat meat, with its medicinal qualities superimposed on a euphoric high, was incapable of slowing the spread. While the medical team didn’t know what they could do to combat it, they suspected the illness came from exposure to the raw meat of some strange simian-like creature that wandered into the path of a Cazador arrow. If true, it was the first zoonotic flu-like disease identified on Tishbe, but likely not the last.

To make matters worse, their former leader Brother Leo had dramatically changed after the death of his son Isaac. His right hand, Brother Benjamin, had fallen ill with something that had disrupted his cognitive abilities and slurred his speech. As a result, Benjamin was asked not to go with his daughter Miriam on her journey. Despondent and reclusive—and without a stable Benjamin at his side—Leo had assigned Aaron Jones, Micah’s cousin, a leadership role. Now Aaron was intent on flexing his authoritarian muscle and being an ass in general.

It had mortified Micah to learn that Aaron was pushing people—sick or healthy—to their limits by directing the expansion of the barrier wall around Manoach. Trees were being cut down in places that were known stalking grounds of rychat and hauled back by teams of men and women. They subsequently stripped the fatter trees of their branches and mounted them against the existing wall to act as a skeleton for the placement of smaller trees and branches that would be secured in place by a crude adobe and twine. Aaron had suggested to Leo that they could build a rampart with a walkway, one that would serve the community as a stage for scouts who could work in shifts guarding the temple from all the threats posed by the forest beyond. The new bulwark was almost complete, but more material was still needed, and the workers had to go farther out to get it.

At least Micah, in his capacity as the Chief Scribe, wouldn’t have to venture out beyond the wall to find material with which to craft paper when he ran out of his current supply. The bark, leaves and forest scrap he needed were being delivered to him.

One benefit of this need to find and bring back materials was a push to construct carts, three of which were now in use. While Miriam and her group had left before the first cart was finished, those still at Manoach could now haul more material at a faster rate. Though it was still required to pull the cart via teams of people, it made the labor easier.

The idea behind the fortification of the wall, Micah knew, was sound. The rychat had become wiser and learned ways to penetrate the existing barrier. Manoach had already suffered two devastating attacks in the past week, one which took a child and another which relieved three people of their ability to walk again. The scouts and Cazador who remained back from Miriam’s group were stretched thin, and despite trying different tactics to ward off dangerous animals, they were always one step behind. The rychat had learned skills as a pack, and they transferred that knowledge among themselves in some unknown way.

Micah had been spared the labor of razing the forest for material because of a leg that refused to get any stronger despite various exercises suggested by the medical team and a boot developed by the engineers which used stored energy to assist with movement. It was simple, really: a flat metal rod connected the boot and a strap around his knee behind his calf. It was also the first thing smelted by the blacksmiths and their new forge. Micah had also been given an important labor within the community—that of the Chief Scribe—and even Aaron respected the role’s importance. The leg and his boot, however, were a constant reminder that he had failed to save a woman he had fallen for, Christina, from a horrific attack that had occurred in, of all places, the Pool of Life. For his failure, Micah welcomed the disability, like a punishment meted out by Father Elijah’s god, forever reminding him he was a disappointment to all those who remained at Manoach. Not that anyone said anything to him or even treated him differently. It was simply something he felt.

Micah and his cousin Joel Page were both still charged with the nearly impossible task of translating the alien texts found on the second story over the Grand Chamber inside the temple and then developing a glossary and reference guide. After failing to decipher the dangers that lurked below in the tunnels and in the Pool of Life in time to prevent the attack that killed Christina, they were under further pressure to decode what they could in case there were warnings that might prevent another tragedy. Perhaps one of the texts could explain what that now blocked off mural was that Micah and his sister Candice had found in the tunnels.

Joel was not much help. Lately, he had been more focused than before on finding things that would help him when he left Manoach with a small team to return to the Barrier Mountains intending to locate a suitable valley in which to build a new settlement. He wasn’t scheduled to leave for another few days, and in the time that Joel had left with the texts, he was determined to learn all he could, to find whatever he needed that might clue his followers in on where to mine for the minerals needed to repair the Well inside the sunken Circle of Light ship in the Barren Sea which had brought humans to this planet.

Tyrone, Joel’s uncle and the father of Tobias, had been preparing a small team for the trek back to the still snow-covered mountains. Why they couldn’t wait another two or three cycles of the Short Moon for the snow to melt more, Micah didn’t know. It was as if Joel couldn’t move fast enough to abandon the community he was born into, raised by, and served for all his twenty-two years.

It was frustrating for Micah, but he was in no position to argue with his cousin. When Joel finally left, he figured there would be plenty of time to refocus attention on what mattered—learning all he could about the race of alien called the sa’ja’peet who built the COL ship and the other, more mysterious race, called the sa’ja’veil who built both the Well and likely the temple at Manoach. He would miss Joel, but he could also finally concentrate.

They had recently been attempting to translate one text that Micah had found which contained a keyword that resembled the Well. Unlike the other texts which contained the same keyword, however, they found this one dealt more with something that surrounded the Well than how to repair or operate it.

“What’s the square-squiggle-right line again?” Micah asked.

“Library, I think,” Joel said. He was propped against the wall with a text in his lap. They were in the same room where they had spent so much of their time trying to decipher anything they could. It was here where Micah had been when he heard Christina barge into the temple in a panicked run up the stairs toward the Pool of Life. That had been two cycles ago, but it seemed like yesterday. The memory was as fresh as the pain in his leg from where the animal that killed her—now referred to simply as “the root snake”—had ripped off a good portion of his flesh.

“I’ve found it in a few places now,” Micah said. “All near the logogram for the container.”

Joel looked up. “Why is that?”

“You think I have any idea? Either they wanted to tell us they liked books or they’re pointing to references we haven’t seen before.”

“You mean like other texts?”

“Maybe.”

Joel scratched at something on his scalp. “Could be a reference to all the manuals Elder Marcus said he left in the COL ship.”

“If so, they were never referred to in the same way before. Not as a library, anyway.” Micah leaned back against the wall. “And we don’t know if this word for ‘container’ means the same thing as the one we identified for the ship in some of the other texts.”

“No, we don’t, but it would make sense. Symbols change based on context.”

“That’s obvious, but what are you getting at?”

“Pretend we’re the little guys.”

“The sa’ja’peet?”

“Yes. And we’ve written everything we know about our histories and what we found on this planet. We’ve already said we found the Well.” Joel pointed to three of the texts sitting in a corner of the room he had previously identified as probable stories behind finding the Well. “We also said we know where to find the minerals needed to produce the conductivity for operation.” He pointed to another book.

“Approximately where to find, yes. I follow.”

Joel frowned at the comment. “If we were to build this container around the Well and use it, wouldn’t we want to bring along the operating manuals?”

“Of course, which is what Elder Marcus was using for his original translations. We know that. We also know that among those texts were navigation guides of a sort.”

“Yes, and if we had a bunch of books like that, we’d keep them in a place called a library. That library would need to be a room in a building—”

“—or a container around something else that might be as big as a building.” Micah looked at the text in his lap. “So, this container here is the ship.”

“Which means that you might be holding the history of how the COL ship itself—the container—was built. If so, there could be information about the materials they used, the dimensions, even their expected crew manifest.”

Micah tilted his head. “I don’t know about that last one. The crew manifest?”

“I’m still pretending to be them. As an engineer, I would devote an entire text to something like the COL ship, to include how many people would be on board and what they would do when they were inside.”

“That’s separate from how to operate it.”

“Precisely.” Joel pointed to the book on Micah’s lap. “I think that’s what you found, so your translations should use that as context.”

Micah looked at the book and frowned. “Something doesn’t make sense to me, though.”

“The language? All of it?”

“Well, yes, but also something Elder Marcus had said about the efficiency of the logograms.”

“How so?”

“Some of them are words, like this library. Others are phrases like ‘cross a river’ or ‘build tree water.’”

“I don’t see what the problem is. We’ve been through this before. Logographic writing is about efficiency.”

“Have you noticed in some texts that there are more complicated logograms? We haven’t deciphered any of those.”

Joel shrugged. “And?”

“What if they’re sentences or even a paragraph contained within a single logogram? That’s where we’re failing. We look at each as a word or a phrase, but what if some are even more efficient?”

Joel was silent for a moment. He looked at the text he had in his lap.

Before he could say anything, Patience Grubbs, a scout, popped her head inside the room, the braid of her red hair bouncing. “Aaron is nothing but an ass!” She stood in the doorway, fists balled. Her green eyes darted back and forth, not resting in any one spot. “Of all the stupid ideas a person can have.”

“What did he do now?” Micah asked.