Ontogeny

Chapter 14a

"Seems strange, not having the Brigadier with us," said Harper gloomily.

They were sitting around the campfire, eating their evening meal in silence. A stew made from a couple of rabbits Cotton had caught, along with some chopped vegetables that Crane had found growing beside the road. There were no globs in their meal. No-one else seemed to have the skill that Malone had had for finding the small, gelatinous creatures, and although they all told each other how much they preferred their meals without them Harper was surprised to find that he was beginning to actually miss them. Or perhaps it was the batman that he missed, along with the leader of their patrol.

"Still can't believe he just went off and left us," said Spencer, stirring his stew with his spoon while staring at it gloomily. It had begun to grow cold and bits of solidified fat were beginning to appear around the edges.

"If you don't want that, I'll have it," said Crane, whose own bowl sat beside him, already scoured clean with some dried Marestail stalks he'd found growing nearby. The particles of silica they secreted on the their leaves, to deter herbivores by wearing down their teeth, made them ideal for cleaning bits of dried food from plates and bowls. When he'd passed on this tip to the others, though, they'd all passed their empty bowls to him for cleaning, which hadn't quite been what he'd had in mind.

Spencer gave him a sideways look and took a half hearted spoonful of stew from his bowl. He looked at it as if wondering whether fending off starvation would be worth the effort, then lifted it to his mouth. He screwed up his face in distaste. "It's cold," he complained.

"It wasn't cold when I gave it to you," said Crane. "half an hour ago."

"Still can't believe he just went off and left us," Spencer repeated, stirring the rest of his stew. "Just went off like that."

"He didn't just go off," said Blane with a warning gleam in his eye. "He had a mission. He had his mission, we've got ours."

"It wasn't a mission. He just decided to go off sightseeing."

"That's enough, Spencer," warned the Sergeant. "If he thought it was necessary to visit a Radiant city then it was. He knew we were quite capable of completing the mission without him. We have to trust that he had a good reason."

"Who cares about the Hetin folk. So they were different from us. So what? Who cares? Leave it to the scholars and the ark...ark..."

"Archaeologists," said Quill helpfully. He had the saddlebags containing the precious bluecap mushrooms on the ground beside him. Since parting ways with the Brigadier he hadn't let them out of his sight, and kept them within reach whenever possible. The Brigadier had entrusted him with the keeping of them and it was a responsibility he took seriously.

"Right. Let them worry about it. What's it got to do with us?"

"Aren't you curious?" asked the wizard. "If the Brigadier's right and there were no Radiants in the time of the Hetin Folk, that meant that humans were the highest form of life back then. The very top of the ladder."

He looked out across the surrounding countryside, at the small stream that ran a short distance from the road, at the trees still visible in the distance despite the encroaching gloom, at the mountains on the horizon, their topmost peaks still lit by the setting sun. "Imagine being able to wander anywhere across the face of the world knowing that you would never encounter a creature more highly evolved than the human being. Imagine knowing that your kind were the Lords of Creation. Can you imagine what that must have been like?"

     “What about Those Above?” asked Harper.

     “There are no Those Above. It's just a silly superstition.”