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i explained how i had tried reaching pyong before, and how i had failed. drin suggested i try again. "just because it didn't work that one time, doesn't mean that it will never work. do you always give up so easily?" i felt somewhat chastised. how hard had i tried? not very, except for a thought here and there, and the one time i had cast my psychic tendrils out into the world looking for pyong pyong. ground control, this is major tom... well. i will do better.
drin and i left our cave and went out into the mountains. drin directed me to fly up to the top of a certain peak. "that's kavlorian peak, " he said, "named after the explorer who first traversed these mountains. she summited there and announced to her team that she could see the whole world. i reckon, rabbit, if she could see the whole world, you might be able to make contact with your friend."
i flew up and landed softly on the peak. then i composed myself. pyong, i thought. pyong pyong? are you there? silence. could she hear me? was i too far away? maybe she was ignoring me? i waited. listening and alternately throwing my mental voice across the world. if pyong was still in the world, she wasn't answering. maybe an hour later i came down feeling a bit worn out and depressed. drin was in good spirits, however. he told me not to worry about it...i could try again later on. try try try again. i admit i felt that somehow meeting drin would change my luck for the better. i guess it's like having a parent that you depend on for everything. you expect their arrival to make all the difference and right all wrongs in your world. the magic of drin was taking longer to work than i'd thought.
honestly, i don't know what to do. i like that i have a friend in old drin, but i don't know what he can do to help, either. hasn't he been living in the mountains for years now? i expressed this concern to him...
"well, rabbit, fer starters, i can get you out of these mountains a fair sight easier than you can."
"you know, drin," i said, "i can just float on out of here any time i want..."
"sure you can. but where would you go?"
ack. i have no idea.
my face must have shown it for drin chuckled gently and said, "i should think it's about time you tried contactin' your friend - that whip-smart rabbit gal. she sounds like she's got a notion tucked away where no one's likely to see it."
for all my smarts...i wonder sometimes, why don't *I* think of these things?
drin, it turns out, wants to help. help some rabbits get off planet, that is. seems so impossible to me...but i am still tired. we shall sleep on it.
it was almost morning, for we'd talked the whole night through. i felt like rip van winkle, finally coming to at the end of one helluva long night - very tired, very old. our gaze focused on the hole above us where the grey light of dawn began to fill our one circle of sky. misty in the mountains. i looked at drin. he looked at me. we were becoming visible, too. at times during the night, drin had been this disembodied voice that just filled the cave, echoing around me strange, melodious, haunting. i could see him taking shape again before me...like he was somehow becoming more real, solidifying, manifesting. the light reflected off his eyes...and he watched the same transformation take place with me. i was feeling spooked in addition to exhausted until drin broke the odd mood and said, "all right then, rabbit?"
"still here."
he chuckled deep in his throat...no earthly guinea pig was a bass as far as i knew. "i s'pose after we get some sleep, we should talk..."
hadn't we talked all night?
"...about what it is we're going to do next."
ahh.
old drin let the end of his tale sit quietly with us for awhile. i was busy adding it to the litany of stuff in my head...he was back in those times reprocessing those thoughts. these things mark us and change us. one day we wake up and we are no longer pretty and new. we have stretch marks and scars. we have memories and stress trauma. our bodies aren't firm, our skin isn't plump, the roses have gone from our cheeks, our noses, our ears (hell, where are my roses?!). i truly missed my innocence for one moment. i missed salad days. and i know drin felt the loss of his own innocence keenly. it's one of those things that you never think about until it happens. and for most beings, when it happens it's never as climactic or dramatic or as damaging as it must have been for drin everwind. knowledge, wisdom, growth with a terrible price.
"i guess when you're the only one that's left you feel responsible...even if what happened wasn't your fault. or not completely your fault. still, there's therapy and there's inquiry...and i had a fair amount of both. suffice to say, your planet was immediately regarded as 'dangerous' - until proven differently. the higher ups couldn't understand what possessed us to take up our residence on earth and lose sight of our mission.
"but as i said, that was long ago. they've made a lot of changes to the ships - now most of them have a natural environment as well as a ship environment, and it makes everyone a bit more calm. plus, training has come a long way. maybe i should call it brainwashing. whatever you call it, it seems to work. the g-pigs they send out these days rarely dare to disobey the prime directive. and the missions themselves are much more strictly delineated and focused - there's so much work to do, and the specialists they send are so committed to it, there isn't time for anything else...
"and that's why i'm surprised to see you here. i knew when i saw you that something had happened that struck some kind of discord with that prime directive...leave no trace. that's what they tell them now. so if you're here, and you know about us, heh, and you TALK, i'd say something went seriously wrong. you can bet that that crew that landed on earth and took you prisoner will never see Cavvy from a viewscreen again. THEY may not know it, but i do. excuses will be made to keep them planetside and there will be delays. the ship will need repairs, they'll make inquiries. from what you've said there's no one in particular that they can blame, no any one g-pig was responsible. but the crews have always been teams, and that's how they'll be seen - as acting in concert. a g-pig died on that mission, too, and you can bet that they'll want to know more about that. no, those beans will never leave this planet again. and it will fester in their hearts - that desire to be among the stars. it's like your human seafarers who had trouble finding land legs again after months at sea. something sings in their blood - some spirit of adventure...they'll go crazy, or they'll find something new that calls to 'em, or they'll end up like me - wandering in the mountains somewhere and trying to figure out how it all went wrong.
"the smell was coming from a pile of red berries heaped upon a plate - STRAWBERRIES - i later learned. a human creature slept on the far side of the cloth, her head pillowed on her arms. i was nervous and knew that this was exactly the sort of meeting we all wanted to avoid. if the human should wake!!! but she did not. she seemed perfectly harmless, and the strawberries seemed perfectly delicious. i remained still for what felt like forever, looking back and forth between the human and the strawberries. and then...then, my stomach growled. i thought, well, there's nothing for it, i'll have to try them now. so i inched forward slowly and stretched my neck out as far as it could go. i didn't move my hind legs at all - they stayed planted firmly behind me, trembling slightly from my fabulous extension. just as i held one of the prize berries between my teeth, my stomach rumbled again...loudly. the human's eye lashes did a fluttery dance against her cheek and then her eyes opened and saw me. we were both stunned for a moment. the strawberry hung between us. i don't know what she thought. i watched her figure it out...and i watched her realize that she'd never seen anything like me before. at least not on my scale. and then she screamed. as the silence shattered, i found myself able to move again. i turned around and ran, ran for my life - that silly berry still hanging out of my mouth.
"and then, shots. shots sounded. thundering, horrible, terrifying...and close. they blew past me, they stopped short of me...i ran i ran. i am no elegant runner. no guinea pig creature is. but i tore through the fields for my life. and i forgot everything. i forgot the everwinds, i forgot where i was going, i forgot where i had been. all that mattered was to escape that dreadful noise. shouts behind me- i only heard them faintly. the gun noise had crowded out everything else. the shooting stopped. i continued to run. then i stopped and darted into a sunken part of the field, hoping they'd miss me, forget me, give up. and it seemed that all was well...until i heard another sound. barking. oh no.
"dogs. we'd seen dogs before landing. we knew dogs. dogs with their sensitive noses. dogs who lived among humans, lived like kings among humans. humans might overlook me, but dogs, trained hunting dogs, would be able to trail me. i felt despair. and then i heard the grass move, and i heard panting...footsteps. much too close.
"i burst from my cover and ran again. the dogs were faster than the humans. they nipped at my heels. bruised and sore, i pounded on. and suddenly, i passed myself. no. i passed bree. i passed cuento, i passed the everwinds...the others. and they were all around me, and the dogs were all around us. i had led danger right to us. the guns began their terrible chorus once again. the everwinds wobbled in confused circles. they'd never, not a single one of them, faced a real threat in their lives. so, although it was time to run, they were slow in moving. shocked by the dogs, by my panicked racing, by the guns. they didn't start to move until it was too late. and then, of course, it was too late. dead, dying, bleeding, everwinds all over the fields of beautiful grass. crying crying crying. all of them dead at last. how i escaped it? i don't know. the humans and dogs stopped there. they looked at all of those dear dead interstellar guinea pigs and didn't know what they were. they left them lying in the field. they pointed and whispered and looked around, and then they left.
"i knew they would return. it was inevitable. other humans would want to know. they would discover us. and we were dead and no one could explain. well. they were dead. and i was terrified. i had to do something. then, i remembered the ship. finally remembered. i went inside and used mechanical arms and hands to carefully lift each one of those everwinds into the cargo hold. i used a spray attachment to wash their blood from the field. the mechanical hands expertly combed through the grass and set it to rights. when i was done, not an hour had passed, and the site of our devastation was bereft of any telling detail. the dogs might be able to identify it, but the humans would not.
"i didn't dare to stay. i took the ship into the sky and went back into orbit around that beautiful, and yet awful blue green world. and then, when it seemed safe, i went into the cargo hold to see them. their sweet faces, their round eyes, their curious noses like mine, but still forever. it was terrible. i left when i could stand it no longer. my fault, all my fault. how could i live through such a thing? such guilt. i returned to our control room and lowered the temperature of the cargo hold to freezing. and then...i remember nothing for weeks, months...until the others came.
"they tell me that a light was flashing in the control room to alert us to the fact that we were being contacted by Cavvy, the homeworld. it had been flashing for weeks before the massacre. no one had noticed. no one had noticed because no one went inside the ship anymore. the rescue team found me cowering in quarters. it seemed i had not eaten in many days. they found the slaughtered everwinds in the hold below. i was in no shape to answer questions. i could barely remember my own name, let alone how i had come to be where i was, and how things had come to be how they were. so, their medics did their best for me to nurse me back to health, and to help me recover my memory. it is a credit to all of them that i survived. now i can even feel thankful that i did survive. then, when my memories returned, i was raw and i longed to join my comrades in death.
"i can't say whether i was the worst of the crew or not, in terms of having forgotten our mission and having gone native. i know that the other everwinds were out there in the fields munching grass with me at one time or another...but my memoryof their company fades. i spent a lot of time on my own, wandering farther and farther away from the relative safety of our ship. it was camoflauged well - we didn't have cloaking devices then like we do now, but it was half buried in a depression in the ground and there were trees and shrubs and other vegetation around it that concealed it for the most part. the other g-pigs stayed closer to the ship, but their impulse to retreat back to its safety slowly eroded. soon, if they sensed any kind of danger, they emulated the posture and behaviors of other prey animals. like the rabbits we encountered, we simply froze and hoped the scary stuff would go away. and if it got too intense for us, we'd run. now, even interstellar guinea pigs are not well equipped to FLEE from predators. in times of trouble, when we had to worry, we stayed close to our burrows, or the rocks, or thick stands of grass and hoped the cover would keep us safe. oddly, we forgot the ship, forgot the technology that might have served us better.
"and so...one day i was out in the fields. far from the others, far from the ship. some delightful smell had caught my attention, and my nose was raised skyward gently sniffing at it, wondering at the many layers, wondering what produced such a complex and interesting scent...and i closed my eyes to concentrate on it. i started moving forward, tracking that wonderful smell. soon it was stronger...stronger yet. i seemed right on top of it. i opened my eyes and looked around. i was in an area of the field that had been cut or trimmed somehow. every grassy frond mowed nearly to its root. and my forefeet were just touching the edge of a strange bright cloth - checked red and white...
"do you ever wonder, rabbit, what you would do differently if you had the chance to live your life again? i spend a lot of time thinking about that...and i still don't have answers. maybe the choices we make are links of a special kind and saying that we'd change one thing would effectively change all things and we'd no longer be the same somehow. i catch myself now and then thinking, i wish i could take it back...that decision, that one day, those hurtful words. and then i think, maybe i learned something from it...maybe it was worthwhile even if it caused me pain. and now i know. but is it ever too late? do moments pass you by when you're doing these very important things you've decided to do? effectively closing off the choices you might have come back to? perhaps it is the essence of choices...you can't go back. and yet...the world, the universe, is a pretty sturdy place. it's resilient, it bounces back. and maybe i am just a figment of its imagination.
"aye, old drin is talking trash, now. i'm sure you've learned something of introspection traveling with those monks. the unexamined mind, blah blah blah. well, i just want you to know i've examined it. and there are things i regret. and maybe that's why i've isolated myself from society...because there are some things you can't take back. some things I can't take back.
"we were quite safe that day. no one had seen us. perhaps if something had gone wrong then, we would have been more cautious. we posted lookouts the first week planetside...and then...we forgot. we conducted our research for a bit longer. but, gradually, we found other things to occupy us. mostly we ate the grass and grew fat and glossy under the bright sun.
"it was then that i first encountered rabbits, sharing our field. they were like you...and unlike. i never heard one speak before today. these rabbits were born into the wild and everything was honed to that existence. i admired their speed, their powerful hind legs, their absolute quiet and stillness. your kind is sleek and elegant and so finely made. i watched the rabbits play in the grass at dawn and dusk when they were most active. i discovered bucks resting in their scrapes, and does with their kittens. so fragile and new, and yet so strong. you have their look physically, tho your colorin's a bit more showy...
"but to get back to my tale...we were never much good for the mission once we'd gone native on that grass. somehow, without sharing it aloud, we'd all taken on the mindset of colonists. we didn't speak of it, but the everwinds had come home to roost. the ship had landed and we were quite decidedly becalmed - the wind had left our sails.
"the night passed like this, with many sweet juicy munchings in the darkness. our thrall broke as dawn drew faint outlines of large alien guinea pigs against the retreating grays and plums. gray, gray-green, greener, full-sun sparkling on the dew drops, so green so new so irresistable. words come to mind like verdant, fecund, oh, and delicious. it was fresh like the new grass of springtime beginning to tuft up in places and looking so soft that you simply must roll in it. no choices. we rolled until we were as dewy as the grass, and as we came to our feet again finally the voice of reason rejoined us. bree everwind trilled a small panicked sequence reminding us that we were quite exposed in this field and we all marched back in to the ship forthwith, posthaste.
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