The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Seven ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

Perisee and Lemista climbed the tree to the exact crook where Mick had sheltered. They curled together to whisper in privacy, to discuss the situation. They could feel the boy, smell him on the wood, taste the feel of his rather tasty Vrill. But, it was the ghost that captivated their attention. They didn’t call it a ghost, nor did they call it a Ba’Neesh. It was beyond their shared and individual memories.

That suggested a Ba’Neesh outside the Lamentation and that shouldn’t be possible. The Califar Ritual had long ago bound all Ba’Neesh together to share as a collective. To be Ba’Neesh meant to be called within the ritual. They weren’t individuals, not in the manner humans chose to perceive their nature. Ba’Neesh were a single entity with many antlers, many branches, many root hairs but a single core. It wasn’t possible for a Ba’Neesh to be outside of that single core. Yet, both of them acknowledged that the tree remembered an agreement they had no memory of, a memory with a Ba’Neesh they had no memory of. Neither should be possible. They needed a quorum of five Ba’Neesh and maybe a Caster and they would need DireSec’s new mobile Channel array. They nodded agreement to each other. It would have to be The Turtle. Jordy wouldn’t like it. That made them grin. An edgy Jordy was a tasty Jordy and both of them had plans for Jordy that he knew nothing about, maybe executed together, they hadn’t decided that part yet.

It wasn’t that Jordy didn’t like The Turtle, they knew the two Soek had grown up together in some ways. It was simply that The Turtle was a natural catalyst and by rights this situation suggested the presence of another catalyst already active. The idea of bringing two catalysts together was exactly the kind of thing both DireSec and the Order worked hard to prevent. After all, the world was still recovering from the last time The Turtle had acted. It was why both Perisee and Lemista were working far from the Citadel. They were natural trouble makers but not on the scale of The Turtle or this new presence. She could do things.

It was nothing special to talk to a tree, all Ba’Neesh did that. It was a whole other thing to enlist a tree in the capture of twenty-three persons including two Ba’Neesh, four Soek and seventeen humans. What the tree was doing, exactly, was why the two Ba’Neesh had climbed up to find out. While Perisee had tried to sound knowledgeable to Jordy’s questions, neither she nor Lemista really understood what the tree was doing. They were experimenting. Because the boy had fled into the tree suggested the tree’s action had begun as early as that act, or even when the boy crossed the tree’s territorial border, the relative edge of the canopy and root system. How had the tree known to act? It was clear to both of them that the tree had hidden all biological expressions of the boy during the earlier search. It was why they, Ba’Neesh, had not sensed him. No Soek boy they knew had agreements with trees. Yet, this tree had sheltered him. Why and how? Why had to be the unknown entity. How required Lemista, as the volunteer, to open her perineum to the tree by literally sitting on it so her perineum could touch its surface. When she did so the effect was fast, she stilled.

Perisee poked her. Lemista frowned and stuck out her tongue.

“What is happening exactly?” Perisee demanded, wishing she could share the immediate experience instead of having to wait till the next mutual sleep period and even then, it would be a memory and not a direct experience. Direct was best. Memory was a poor second best.

“It’s pulling my Vrill down, as expected.” Lemista reported. “It is practiced. I am resting on my perineum directly but also touching the tree in other spine areas, other access points, it is ignoring those although I felt the touch of exploration at those points in those first moments. It is recognizing me as a single individual and my primary receiving port as my perineum.”

“Who did it practice on?” Perisee asked. She too had felt the energy inquiry only she had said “No” in her mind and the tree pulled back, unwilling to challenge with such an abundant ongoing supply. This was different from earlier. The tree had set a trap, a strategic trap and waited until all of the secondary teams had entered its boundary before taking the intruders. That act of plant on animal aggression was in practical terms, unheard of. The plan was not the tree’s plan, clearly.

“There’s a fungus.” Lemista reported. “Root hair connectives. Oh my, the range of connectives is massive, maybe cemetery wide or even larger. The fungus is the trick. She taught the fungus that the wandering humans visiting the graves were opportunities for energy recovery. They have grown skilled at releasing an airborne soporific to make their targets feel slow and tired. Mushroom spore release. When they sit, the harvest begins. They are using ports in the feet, mostly as those contact the ground with minimal blockage.”

“So, it wasn’t this tree in particular?” Perisee wanted to feel and follow the fungus too. It sounded fun.

“It was, I think. Not sure the logic of why. This is a very low Vrill area but a newer area of the graveyard. The entity used this tree in some way, their relationship is strong and well rewarded.”

“Their shared knowledge will continue the harvest?” Perisee pondered that idea.

“Yes. The tree says, why not?”

Lemista backed out of the energy share. She closed her ports off to the tree and then her expression became puzzled. “Perisee, the cycled energy is not mine.”

Perisee reached out to grab Lemista by the antlers, the best connector to Lemista’s Vrill.

Her expression altered as well. “How very odd.” She said. “It’s full of stuff, human stuff, human memories too.” The flavor of Lemista’s Vrill wasn’t wholly unpleasant, it was just strange. Both of them sat there processing the memories of the humans harvested recently by the fungus. It was like a broadcast monitor with hundreds of layers, all playing at once. Neither of the Ba’Neesh liked it, but they found Lemista had to continue receiving until the last of it flowed through her. Perisee had only to let go of Lemista’s antlers to be free of the experience. She didn’t regret not having to endure the inanity of the running human conversations, thoughts and ideas. What a mess.

“The tree doesn’t get all that crap, does it?”

“I don’t think so.” Lemista felt a little top heavy as if the processing had both given and taken her energy. “I mean, it gets it all, but it processes out over years not seconds so the immediacy and pressure of the process is mitigated.”

They nodded to each other.

“You feeling okay now?” Perisee asked with true concern.

“Yes. But Perisee, my field is bigger.” Lemista said, her eyes rounding in surprise. “Imagine if you drank from that filthy mental pool every day for years and years.”

Perisee blinked. She didn’t want to think the thoughts that were creeping into her mind. So, she dragged her sharpened right forefinger nail over one of her recent gores and gave Lemista a welcome drink of fresh blood. Well appreciated. They nuzzled and shared a bloody kiss.

“I adore you.” Lemista said, grooming her own mouth area with a well-licked finger.

“I know.” Perisee nodded, her mind whirling.

The Soek came free first, including Eric although that didn’t register with Jordy immediately. Jordy, Eric and two of Jordy’s operatives stepped away from their frozen positions. One fell. The other three staggered and bent forward with a jolt of nausea. For Jordy, the experience was like immersing his head in a vat of blithering voices, all talking at the same time about nothing he was remotely interested in. He breathed heavily and tried not to vomit up what was left in his stomach. The Ba’Neesh had shown no such reaction and he had a few moments to recall that with some bitterness, no warning.

As the sense of immersion faded it converted into a massive header, the kind that made him long for dark sunglasses and a room of absolute silence, neither of which were present. He rubbed at his head.

“It’s like a drug hangover.” Eric said aloud as he too tried to overcome the immediate symptoms.

“From what?” Jordy asked. He felt like he knew almost as little as he had waiting for the local team to leave the area, what, nine hours ago? “Why are only a few of us released?” He gestured at the others. He knew which of his men were human and which were Soek so he could rationalize based on his knowledge, but, if true, that made Eric a Soek. Could the head of Tule Soc security team and a top operative at KAS really be a hidden Soek? The idea gelled. He saw a furtive look in Eric’s eyes. It was a momentary thing, so fast he could almost imagine he hadn’t seen it, but he had.

“Doesn’t matter.” He brushed off the question making sure he didn’t look at Eric’s men. He didn’t want them to question Eric’s species. It was a secret DireSec could use. Jordy sent his two functional if unhappy operatives to get a signal to DireSec for a replacement transport.

“Do you need com access?” He asked Eric. “We have transport in route.” Actually, Jordy was wondering why replacement transport wasn’t on scene. DireSec had been listening when they were taken and when Elias launched with the boy. They should have already arrived which meant they had arrived and were staying out of sight. He regrouped his thinking and walked from one frozen man to the next snapping clear head shots of each. He could see Eric’s tight face, his likely understanding of what Jordy was doing, his inability to stop it as he alone was reanimated while Jordy had two functional operatives and two Ba’Neesh.

The thought made him look up into the tree. He had been able to witness the speed of their climb. He hadn’t known they could climb like that, indifferent to watchers. They were barely in view, a slight movement high in the tree.

Jordy completed his circuit and came to stand under the tree. By rights he should move himself beyond the boundary of the tree’s influence, but he felt that was like chasing water. The tree was replete. He didn’t examine what that meant beyond his own enormous header and a sense of not being right inside of himself. Things to examine outside the range of listening Tule Soc ears.

Eric had taken him up on his suggestion and used the remaining damaged floater’s com to send a privacy coded signal. His own floater arrived almost instantly, reflecting that they too had waited just beyond the visual range of the frozen people.

Men piled off and waited, watching their still frozen comrades uncertainly. Eric held them back. It was impossible to tell if the weapon used would deploy again against new targets. He didn’t want to risk further delays. He led the group to just beyond the original boundary and they waited. Eventually the humans crumpled to the ground and then made their ways, staggering, to their comrades. Jordy followed Eric’s lead telling his men to head toward the two Soek waiting outside the damaged floater. Soon, he was the only one left near the tree. He waited. He didn’t want to give Arjan a shot at the Ba’Neesh. It wasn’t till his Soek gave him a tactical ‘All Clear’ signal that he yelled up at Perisee.

“Our transport will be here in five. Come on down.”

The Ba’Neesh had watched the unfreezing of the men with nearly as much interest as the freezing. They too noted the early Soek release without surprise. And, they could taste the rabid animosity of the Tule Soc second-in-command. The human had cowardly distance weapons. Both of them spat off the tree in contempt. But, they waited for Jordy. He had trained them in such actions showing them body signals for danger in areas where they might act impulsively.

The replacement floater dropped in and they all hurried aboard. There wasn’t room for sufficient privacy so Jordy positioned the once-more holographically altered Ba’Neesh at the rear of the aisle and he sat between them, hopeful they would remember not to stab his head.

The floater took them fifty miles to an airstrip in a small town well away from the city and its issues. Jordy had to restrain his questions as his men were looking mostly confused and uncertain and he didn’t want to add to their distress. The floater landed inside an open hanger and operatives on the ground slid the hanger doors shut.

Jordy waited and got off with the two Ba’Neesh, now looking like well-dressed female agents, human. He was met at the door by his big boss, not his station boss.

“Sir.” Jordy saluted as his team melted away, absorbed into a larger mass of mostly Soek operatives. OrderSec uniforms were clearly obvious. He could imagine his initial team was off to be debriefed and fed new memories to cover for what couldn’t be retained.

“Jordy.” Alesandro Kirsan himself, CEO of the Directorate and Tactical Head of both DireSec and OrderSec offered the casual greeting and gestured Jordy and the two Ba’Neesh toward a cordoned off space radiating a privacy field.

As soon as they were secure and alone, just the four of them, Jordy asked, “Elias?”

“Unknown. He was alive and well the last time we were in contact.” Kirsan answered calmly, too calmly.

“The floater?”

“Was manually disconnected from tranmitters within five minutes of becoming airborne from your location. Elias did the disconnect.”

“Five minutes?” This surprised Jordy. Elias was top of his class, literally one of the best operatives in all of DireSec. “What happened?” He had thought the boy would already be in custody or at worse, they would be trailing the floater.

“Excellent question.”

“You are certain Elias manually disconnected?” Jordy walked over to the temporary ops station that was already running three holographic screens. He called up the footage and watched as Elias jerked to attention and then rapidly ran the disconnects making no effort to protect tailing indicators, in fact, he did everything he had been trained not to do in such a situation.”

“I don’t understand.” Jordy ran the footage more slowly and noted gaps.

The sequence began with the boy running at Elias, recorded from the auto-feed implanted in Elias’ right eyeball. Jordy could clearly see Elias pointing the stunner at the running boy, aiming and then his hand wobbling, fighting, before falling to point down. He heard the boy yelling out, “We gotta leave man, before those Ba’Neesh figure it out.”

Jordy watched as Elias handed over his security gear to the boy and then asked “Where?” It was extraordinary.

The boy continued, obviously excited, “Away from here. Oh, and does this floater have weapons? Of course it does. I bet they are hidden too like the outside. Cool. Damage all nearby vehicles to slow down these people when they get free.”

“I don’t get it.” Jordy commented as the footage continued.

“A preference of direction?” Elias asked, his face tight and strange in Jordy’s eyes.

The boy said, “You are some kind of security guy, right? I need to get away from the rest of you, those guys down there, those guys earlier. What is the best evasion technique? I don’t know the rules here.”

“What rules?” Jordy asked the footage, not realizing that both Ba’Neesh and Kirsan were all watching as intently as he was even though Kirsan had reviewed this footage in enth detail for hours. It had brought him out of the seclusion he lived in.

They watched the boy searching the cabin and finding and eating food, obviously hungry. Then the boy said, “So, how are you thinking to trick me?”

“What do you mean?” Elias answered.

“You are an unwilling companion. That means you will pretend to go along with me until you can overcome me, take back your devices and weapons and return me to whatever ill fate all of those security and military people seem to want for me.” The boy said, drinking the last of the drink in his hand. “What’s your plan?”

“My best option would be to marginally go along with the compulsion while laying an underlying secondary strategy that will place my team in a position to regain control.” Elias answered, his face in obvious distress.

“Compulsion?” Jordy half stood and then sat back down. “Who is compelling him? I didn’t see or hear anyone except the boy.”

Kirsan gestured him to keep watching.

“Is your team listening to us in here?” The boy asked, looking around suspiciously.

“Yes. They have that capability.” Elias answered.

“Disconnect that potential.” The boy ordered. But, hard as Jordy was listening he didn’t hear any trace of Speech in the boy’s words.

They watched Elias comply until the feed cut off abruptly.

“That’s all of it.” Kirsan said. “It’s clear Speech was used and yet it isn’t stored on any device including on the onboard devices of each field operative.”

“By that kid?”

“In the absence of further data, we have to assume so.” Kirsan nodded.

“Oh, it wasn’t him.” Perisee said confidently, “It was Her.”

Kirsan rounded on the attractive human female and then slowed himself. “Would you please turn off your holographic displays.” He asked with almost painful politeness and visible restraint.

Alesandro Kirsan was easily sixty plus years of age but he looked Jordy’s age. It was a feature of Soek physiology to age slowly. He lived in seclusion precisely because his failure to advance in human aging terms made him visibly a target, as it did for all mature Soek. He was just over six feet tall, dark-haired and lanky build, with arresting features and a charisma that made him invaluable in business circles. He was considered one of the top three casters in the world, a fact that never ceased to annoy him.

He was currently establishing a new identity for his second life, as they called it, within the Directorate. All Soek in professional life had three or four life cycles in the span of a single human life span, sometimes more. To carry their expertise forward they had to re-enter their professions under different names and re-earn status so that the humans they worked with remained oblivious to the truth of their species or long-term identity. It was complicated and hard. He had endured cosmetic facial alterations to modify his appearance from his life as Alesandro Kirsan. But, in the limited presence of Jordy and the two Ba’Neesh, the truth of his identity was clear. He wasn’t supposed to be here, responding to an emergency. Technically, Jordy had his job. Both of them ignored this minor occupational issue.

“Who is the Her you mention?” Kirsan asked Perisee, now that he could see her properly. While he did, Jordy watched him pull jerky snacks out of his pocket to offer one to each Ba’Neesh. “My apologies for failing to bring food to you earlier when you indicated you were hungry.” He continued, ever the consummate host.

Perisee grinned and sampled his fresh snack, he was becoming well trained, to her endless amusement. All Ba’Neesh loved to mess with Kirsan and he knew it all too well. While Jordy was young and tasty, Kirsan was older and wicked in his own way, doubly tasty and useful far beyond the range of Jordy. They were forbidden from taking Kirsan, so, to make up for that loss of potential combat enjoyment, they teased him, or worse.

“The other. The one the boy is with. The one the tree traded with. The one who blew up the city. The hole. The one who hides in plain sight. She. We need a quorum that must include Anya and Old One Eye or Seera or both and we will be needing The Turtle.” Everyone knew The Turtle went nowhere without Anya although their relationship was hard to quantify as they tended to argue a lot about things other people struggled to comprehend, much less find objectionable.

“It’s that serious?” Kirsan didn’t argue. You got no where arguing with a Ba’Neesh. They were always right, even when they were wrong. He’d suspected this might be a situation, the DireSec euphemism for a potentially big problem. It had been nearly a half century, two of the human generations since the last big problem.

The Directorate had built an entire underwater habitat for The Turtle attached permanently to the Citadel. This habitat was designed to protect both the Soek’s necessary privacy and the world from his actions. He much preferred to spend his vacation time as close to the ocean floor as he could reasonably get and he usually dragged Anya along with him, so they could continue some incomplete discussion. The habitat was designed to exceed his every possible need in order to limit his time in human territory. And, Perisee was saying they needed him. Kirsan groaned.

Getting the Elder to travel would be equally hard. Old One Horn was a notoriously miserable traveler and only did so under extreme duress, fully surrounded by a dozen mature Ba’Neesh. And, Seera wasn’t even at Citadel.

“Anything else?” He forced himself to ask.

“Yes, we will need the mobile Channel vehicle, the one with the big casting floor. I know you aren’t satisfied with it yet, but we aren’t interested in your stupid Soek floor. We need access to the Channels and of course the best multiplier CoEx you can mobilize quickly.”

Kirsan blinked. What she was describing was an enormous undertaking. Why? This was a single Ba’Neesh, right? In theory the two Ba’Neesh standing in front of him should be sufficient to bring the wild one in. He rolled back her exact words, she hadn’t said that it was a Ba’Neesh, not exactly. In fact, she had carefully not applied any descriptive to the individual in this situation beyond her gender as a She. But, she had to be a Ba’Neesh, right? They were just messing with him, being coy.

“Hate to interrupt, Sir.” Jordy spoke into the silent, stretchy gap.

Kirsan restrained his rapidly escalating temper. “You want?”

“Tule Soc’s second had some kind of mental moment frozen in that graveyard. I think he might go freak show crazy to hunt down Perisee and Lemista, much less the others. And, there’s something else. This was my first time meeting Eric Felsen. He’s Soek.”

“What?” This did shift Kirsan’s attention and quelled his temper.

“He released when I and my two Soek operatives did. I don’t think his second noticed or put it together yet, at least when it happened. He may review and notice.”

“Eric’s a mule?” Kirsan couldn’t adjust his thinking that fast.

“No.” Perisee and Lemista said together. “He’s tasty and wearing one of your glyph hiding devices, Kirsan.” They both laughed.

These simple words compounded Kirsan’s understanding or lack thereof. What was a high-level Soek doing hiding inside the top reaches of Tule Soc? Was the other organization suffering an internal war of some kind? This information cast Tule Soc’s entire policy into doubt.

“Dark Gods, you two don’t think this is an evolutionary situation, do you?” Kirsan couldn’t help himself. The Turtle had come to be recognized as an evolutionary shift. The species was moving away from current Soek nature to something else. He was scary on so many levels Kirsan couldn’t measure them. He would never pass in human society, not like Kirsan and every other Soek. He was more like the Ba’Neesh, a radically altered version.

“You and they have put pressure on our species for nearly two hundred of the human years. We are unable to evaluate what we do not remember. We should not be encountering what we don’t remember. So, it is essential to see if others are carrying other memories, unshared for some reason or shared too long ago to be easily accessed. You know that both Lemista and I are ninth phase Ba’Neesh. Old One Horn and Seera are at least eighth phase and they may have knowledge of others who are older still. We need a full quorum to discuss this.”

Kirsan prayed that the pickups inside the space had recorded every single word escaping her mouth. He had just learned more about Ba’Neesh history in one comment than he and his team had gathered in two and a half centuries.

He tried to re-group. So, they needed defenses to guard any Ba’Neesh they allowed outside from Tule Soc’s second in command, and they were going to pull what amounted to an entire adult colony of Ba’Neesh into a field assignment. The logistics of the thing horrified him.

“Perisee?” He stepped closer to the twisty-horned Ba’Neesh. She was the more reasonable of this pair.

“Kirsan?” She made her own step toward him but didn’t quite touch him.

Her nearness caused his Vrill to escalate wildly.

“This She is a catalyst, yes?”

“Our sense of her, yes.” Perisee nodded but didn’t stab the tasty Soek, she was amazed at her own restraint.

“You want The Turtle out. Two catalysts?”

“He will want to see the situation. Likely, he is already moving without you knowing about it.”

Her comment drove Kirsan to the Ops desk just as the alert sounded that an unscheduled private sub had launched from the wrong side of Citadel carrying six passengers, two of them Ba’Neesh, four of them Soek. Brad the Pirate was driving. Kirsan’s least favorite son was present, likely unhappily so. Of course The Turtle would pull him out of sec. And, of course Xasper would come, The Turtle never traveled without him. He acknowledged the message. How had they known before he did? Ba’Neesh intel, it continued to make his life hell.

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