Having said that much, the two elderly monkey mammals slumped onto the bench with exhaustion, and their healer insisted they take a break for food and medicine.
The crew of the Manessa Kwi, and the three Education Service trainees, poked around that part of the planet station, soon discovering a small artificial lake with tiny rowboats for anyone who wanted to explore the nearby woods and islands by water. Two reptiles in one boat, and an ursine in another, were having a friendly race. The ursine was winning.
The crew was tempted to try the little water craft, but Jimox and Teina were soon back, eager to begin their story.
Wet snow and freezing rain had been falling for two weeks, but never quite sticking. Finally, a day dawned when everything seemed willing to stay up in the clouds.
Jimox emerged from his soggy tent early, anxious to get out and do something. That camp was almost out of food, so he stretched his brown furry arms, shouldered a large backpack and his bow and quiver, and headed south into the suburbs where he knew scrounging would be good.
By mid-day, his pack was bulging with food, and only one arrow was missing from his quiver. The dog had mis-judged the abilities of his intended victim, but had broken the arrow in its death throws. Jimox had salvaged the razor-sharp broadhead and stiff turkey feathers to fit to a new shaft someday.
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Now the young monkey mammal was heading home, taking a shortcut through a neighborhood he hadn’t explored before. Most of the houses were burned, like everywhere else, but a small children’s school was intact, though very overgrown with weeds.
Jimox glanced up at the street sign as he crossed a small intersection.
Twenty-Seventh Street didn’t go much of anywhere in either direction, but he knew he could turn right at Thirtieth Street and be less than a mile from one of his camps. A sea gull squawked from a chimney whose house had burned down around it. Jimox thought he saw a ghost hovering near the chimney, as if tending a fire, but couldn’t be sure in the daylight. He shifted the weight on his shoulders and trudged on.
Soon after crossing Twenty-Eighth Street, his heavy pack was causing his back muscles to scream at him, so he looked around. A low stone wall called to him, with a good view in all directions. The house above had burned, though an old detached garage, with a peaked roof, was still standing.
He turned a complete circle, scanning and listening for dog sounds, or any other signs of danger, then rested his pack on the stone wall and slipped out of the straps. A deep sigh escaped him as his back and shoulders regained their freedom.
He opened his backpack. The package of crackers and peanut butter were a little stale, but not yet rancid, so he chewed, knowing they would nourish him and he could wash them down with a carton of apple juice.
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“Hi,” came a soft voice from behind him.
Within seconds, he had grabbed his bow, fitted an arrow, and was spinning around even as he began to pull back the string.
The girl standing there, not far from the garage, was only seven or eight, but in response to his bow and arrow, she flashed out a hunting knife about a foot long.
Jimox relaxed his string and lowered the bow to his side. “Hi.”
She lowered her knife. “Are you . . . real?”
“Yep. Not a ghost . . . yet.”
“And no . . . disease?”
“Nope. You?”
She slipped her knife back into its sheath on her belt. “I thought I was the only one.”
“Me too. I haven’t seen another person alive since . . . middle of last summer. Wanna . . . share some crackers, apple juice, maybe a candy bar?”
“Um . . . sure.”
Teina was seven, four years younger than Jimox. She had run into a patch of woods, the previous summer, when her parents started burning down their house, and had stayed there, peeking out with wide eyes as her world burned around her.
Sometimes the smoke nearly drove her out, but she could see nowhere better to go. Eventually she emerged to find herself completely alone, save for a few diseased and dying people dragging themselves around town looking for something to eat, or more often, just something to burn.
She had coughed for weeks, as she picked through the ruins and hardened herself to the circumstances of her new life. She quickly noticed that the
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dying people were all drawn to their houses, or someone else’s house if they had none, and were completely ignoring the shops and stores. She worked all day, every day, to protect food and other supplies from the mice and rats that were beginning to creep everywhere, and the birds who would get in through any broken window.
Jimox shared a similar experience. He had been camping in the back yard when his parents began to feel the effects of the disease. Luckily, he now realized, the house was completely in flames before he could get back inside to see what was going on. The heat quickly forced him down to the little creek at the bottom of the yard.
By chance, he had focused his scrounging efforts, in the weeks and months that followed, in a different part of town. He opened his map, and they both laughed when they saw that Teina’s territory was close to, but perfectly separate from Jimox’ territory, almost as if someone had drawn boundaries.
Only his short cut, that day, had caused their paths to cross.
Suddenly Teina froze, listening.
Jimox instinctively grabbed his bow.
“Too many! Follow me!” she asserted.
He took his bow and quiver in one hand, his pack by one strap, and dashed up the stone steps behind Teina, hearing the sounds of a pack of dogs rapidly approaching.
She ran behind the garage and scampered up a ladder.
He paused at the bottom, tossed his bow and quiver up to her, then shouldered his pack. Three or four large dogs rounded the corner of the building.
He set boots to the ladder, but canine teeth began tearing at his pants. He struggled to ascend each rung. One dog fell off as Jimox shook his leg.
Another could only be dislodged by kicking its head with his opposite boot.
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The third, the largest of the pack, leapt halfway up the ladder and sank its teeth into Jimox’ leg, but a moment later released its grip and dropped to the ground, a feathered shaft piercing its side.
The boy’s leg throbbed and burned with pain, but he climbed, got onto the sloping woodshed roof, tossed off his pack, and collapsed onto the shingles.
“Get your pants off!” Teina commanded. “I’ll get my first aid stuff.” She disappeared into a window of the attic above the garage.
Jimox was nearly as stunned by her assertive manner as by the pain in his leg. He was used to girls, especially seven-year-olds, having few abilities other than dressing their dolls.
But while he wondered about her, he did what she ordered, knowing well the condition of his leg would determine whether he lived or died. He forced himself to think, and realized the bone must not be broken, as he had been able, moments before, to finish climbing the ladder.
He got his pants off about when Teina returned with a big first-aid box.
Jimox looked at his leg, not daring to touch it. “The teeth didn’t get through my pants, but I’m gonna have lots of scabs, and one hell of a bruise.
Antiseptic?”
“Can you stand alcohol?”
He shuddered at the thought, but knew it would do the best job. “Do it.”
She reached into her box, unscrewed the cap, and poured.
He screamed, and tears of pain flowed down his face.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and kept pouring.
An hour later, his pants and socks had been sterilized with alcohol and were drying while Jimox munched cookies and listened to Teina share her experiences. More than once during the last ten months, she had to bravely doctor herself after brushes with rusty nails, broken glass, or hungry rats.
Jimox tested his leg, and could slowly walk around on the woodshed roof, but judged that he would have great trouble getting to any of his camps, the nearest about a mile away.
Teina swallowed once. “If you and me are partners, then you have another camp, right here.”
Jimox took a minute to remember the state of the world in which he lived.
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Eventually he sensed the importance of the moment, made eye contact with Teina, and nodded.
Her home was the attic space above an old garage, with windows in the front and back under the peaks of the roof. Luckily, the garage had not housed a car, or anything else dangerous or smelly. Boards she found in many different places had finished the floor, then made shelves, now stocked with every manner of food and supplies.
Jimox opened his map again, and shared the locations of his seven camps, promising to give her the grand tour as soon as his leg was better.
Not much later, the sun found the western horizon, somewhere above the thick winter clouds, and the pair of young monkey mammals lit a candle and prepared a simple dinner.
They had both endured ten months alone, eight of those without seeing another living person. Neither had any idea why the plague had spared them, and as far as they could tell, no one else. No purpose or task gave their lives meaning, other than to sift through the ruins and save anything that looked edible or useful.
But that evening, eating canned food by candlelight, their hearts sang with joy, knowing they would no longer be alone.
“For many years after that, Teina and I never went more than about a hundred meters from each other,” Jimox shared. “Neither one of us ever wanted to be alone again. We cooked together, explored new places together, and scrounged for food and supplies together, but we didn’t sleep right together.”
“At first we were too young to be interested,” Teina explained. “Then we
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were afraid of me getting pregnant with no healers or working hospitals anywhere.”
Jimox smiled, his gaze lost in fond memories.
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Chapter 9: Raison d’être
“For years we struggled to imagine what our purpose might be,” Jimox shared. “Why would two monkey mammals survive, when everyone else died, unless it was for some reason?”
“We had a purpose,” Teina continued the thought, “and we actually started fulfilling it about a week after the plague, but we just didn’t know it for years.”
“Let’s see . . .” Jimox thought back, “six years at home, almost a year traveling, then five more here.”
“We’ll show you!” she said, and started to hop up, but suddenly cried out in pain and fell back down.
Jimox quickly comforted her with arms and soft words. “The same pain?”
Teina nodded while trembling.
“Should we call for a team of healers from Satamia?” Kibi asked anxiously, finger poised over her mission bracelet.
Without looking up from his beloved partner, Jimox answered. “They know all about it, and there’s nothing they can do. We know how to manage it, but sometimes we forget and think we’re young again. Brora will be back from rounds any minute now, and has some medicine that helps a little.”
Teina whimpered through her pain. “I’ll be okay in a moment.”
Several minutes later, with Jimox’ help, Teina carefully stood up, but Kibi could still see pain in her eyes. The pair of original planet station hosts slowly led the crew of the Manessa Kwi to a part of the station called Olde Towne, full of quaint buildings from a time past.
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Soon they came to one that had been a large restaurant. It now contained display cases of many shapes and sizes, paintings on the walls, sculptures on pedestals, book shelves where nothing else would fit, and display screens facing a bench or two. In several places, pairs or trios of visitors watched a video or examined the works on display.
“This museum contains the most important art works and books from our civilization,” Jimox explained. “We think it’s silly, but the curators insisted that our journals go in here.”
They approached a display case with several books held open to pages of children’s drawings or simple writing. A bird and a large insect sat side by side on a nearby bench, studying pages from these or similar books on a display screen, taking notes as they worked.
“When the plague happened, I didn’t even know how to write!” Teina admitted after Jimox helped her onto a bench. “I was only six. But as I scrounged through stores for food and supplies, I always grabbed blank writing and drawing books. I didn’t really know why, I just couldn’t help myself.”
Jimox smiled. “I was doing the same thing in another part of town.”
“Jimox taught me to write, but at first I just drew pictures of what was happening — sun shining, weeds growing, burned houses smoldering, dogs eating dead people, you know, the usual stuff.”
Rini grinned at her.
“I
barely knew how to write, just stick letters and lots of misspelling,”
Jimox added. “But years later, we studied our early journals, and they really helped us to piece together what happened, and when. We figured out when the last other person died from a drawing of a dark rain cloud in Teina’s journal, and ‘RAIND AL DA’ in mine.” He spelled the words for his guests,
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and they laughed.
Teina laughed too, then started coughing deeply. Kibi rubbed her back until she recovered. “That was . . . that was in the middle of summer, we lived way up north. It’s a retreat now, and people from all over Nebador go there to peek in the window of our old attic over the garage. It’s embarrassing.”
Jimox smiled. “So before the smoke had even cleared, many months before we met, we were busy fulfilling our first, and probably most important, mission. We were alive because the universe needed witnesses to what our civilization had done to itself. We later found out we couldn’t have children because a species that does very stupid things has no business continuing into the future. But the memory of our people, who were way too full of themselves, needed to be preserved so that others could learn from their mistakes.”
T’sss’lisss laid her head on Teina’s lap. “I hope I have asss much wisssdom and experienccce asss you sssomeday.”
Teina stroked the smooth scales, front to back. “You will, and probably much more. On Satamia Star Station, you get to walk and talk with the gods every day. They only visit us here . . . maybe . . . once or twice a week.”
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Seven-year-old Teina colored in a gray cloud above the warehouse they had just explored. She noticed Jimox peeking over her shoulder, and spoke while coloring. “Warehouses never seem to be very good scrounging.”
“I know, but it was nice to do something out of the rain. I felt sorry for the two ghosts carrying boxes back and forth. Want to share journals from the first summer, just after Burning Day?”
A shadow passed over Teina. “What good will that do?”
“One of us might have noticed something the other didn’t, something that will help us understand what happened.”
“But
my journals are just silly little drawings. Yours are much better
‘cause you know how to write.”
Jimox considered for a moment. “I was thinking that mine are ugly and boring, and yours are beautiful with all the colors and feelings you put into them.”
After a moment, Teina cracked a tiny smile. “Okay.”
They each had a private shelf, on their own side of the garage attic, by their beds. From these came their earliest journals, almost a year old.
“Here’s a man who ran into the woods where I was hiding,” she explained.
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Jimox gazed at the simple drawing of a person with the plague, hair and eyes wild, arms and tail waving in the air.
“He tried to light a fire, but everything was too green. Luckily, he didn’t see me.”
“Did you draw your parents?”
“No. And I’m not gonna.”
Jimox nodded. “I wrote about mine, but it took months to work up the courage. I was so mad at them . . . but it wasn’t like they chose to get the plague.”
“I know what you mean. I remember the wild, crazy look in their eyes, and it wasn’t really them, the parents I used to have. They looked more like . . .
the sick man in the woods.”
“We discovered little things each of us had missed, but mostly it was good therapy for us,” Jimox explained.
“About a year later, I even drew my parents!” Teina revealed, but the effort brought on a fit of coughing.
After she recovered, Jimox struggled to share something that obviously was very difficult for him. “It wasn’t until . . . years later, in the big city to the north, that we . . . discovered the truth.”
Teina closed her eyes.
“All the terrible things that people did when they got the plague,” Jimox said slowly with a heavy heart, “it was all by design. The plague wasn’t some natural disease that got loose from a lab that was studying it. It was . . .” He had to stop and swallow several times. “It was planned to work that way . . .
by our leaders . . . from the very beginning of the project . . .”
