Salticid [Scifi Short Story]

Part 1 of 3 - Discovery

Salticid PART 1 of 3

by Christopher T Garry

Dr. Carson Deming stood at the edge of the waterfall, looking down to the far side of the underground cavern. Ari, Deming's symbiont, saw what he saw and felt a sudden and deep longing to jump. Not suicide. It was just one of those strange draws that dawned on her when looking at such a stark, overwhelming expanse that fell below her as well as stretching out above her. She wondered if he felt the same.

The physician had spent days walking the paths of the underground cavern, searching for signs of his daughter, Pelly, and failing. Supposedly she had found tunnels to other caverns. She was last seen skulking down the southern slopes, past the lake, and he had searched that region there hardest and longest, particularly near a site that showed alarming blood evidence. Ari was patient with Deming these last few days in his despair, although he no longer spoke to anyone, not even her. His silence only confirmed that he had utterly withdrawn. Even more than the rest of the surviving crew who were hiding underground here since their freighter crashed two months ago. Above the Atrium, on the surface of Jesson VII, the violent weather, raging cold and perpetual dark offered little chance of rescue.

Ari was convinced in yesterday's terrible argument with the captain that Tiron would kill Deming, on top of refusing to help him find the girl. Thus, Deming no longer thought of anything in the same way. To him, Pelly died in that moment. Since the argument with the captain, none of the crew spoke much. 

Deming left the waterfall and moved along the path up past the crashing water, keeping the rising bank on his left as he walked, and Ari reflected on the state of the rest of the crew. Gif had been spending his free time running barefoot through the cavern, staying in shape, practicing with a balanced staff he had created from a fallen tree. He had to make two staves actually, as the tiny Cleaners, the masterful care-takers of the cavern, had carried the first away. Only after he pointedly demonstrated his workout for the palm-sized, sentient spiders, as they patiently waited for him to drop the stick, did they seem to realize that it was his tool. The only other remaining crew members, Grace and Maercus, had recounted similar experiences with the Cleaners. They were otherwise sullen since the fight as well. The semblance of normalcy instilled by their attempt at normal life after the crash--gardening for food, throwing a fourteenth birthday celebration for the doctor's daughter, exploring the far side of the cavern--all of it slipped away with Pelly's disappearance.

 Deming came to the source of the river bubbling up from underground. Ari noticed a Cleaner in the distance, working by itself on a collection of stones. Deming sat nearby, removing his pack and fashioning a pillow. He had been up in these highlands of the underground cavern for several hours, and this shade from the artificial light was as good as any on his long daily loop. From here they could see the entire valley in the distance. 

Ari missed real mountains. She would imagine great rocky lines obscured by the manufactured mist of the far wall. What she saw in the cavern nearly always had her complete attention. She was experiential. She was listening to the waterfall, listening to the insects that accompanied the fading light, absorbing the falling rain, feeling the clutch of soil and rocks under foot, sensing gravity hold her to this place, settling her and Deming forever to the last place they would ever live, it seemed. 

With this, she felt Deming slip into sleep's ample hands, letting darkness befall them both. 

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Tiny and slender, Pelly slept hard. With her lids closed to the utter blackness around her, her eyes still moved back and forth. She twitched ever so slightly. She was warm, slightly tucked so that her elbows dug into her abdomen and her palms were upturned to her pretty face in delicate but defiant fists. She had not come around yet since her accident. As she snored softly, she could not know how long she had been in this position, this place or how she got here. In her mind's eye she was in a hug. Her father held her mother, and her mother held her. She thought it odd not to be able to move her arms in the warm embrace, but then again that is the nature of a mother's protective clutch. She tried to reach her mother's cheek to feel closer but couldn't. It did not occur to her in the dream that her mother had been dead for two months, killed in the crash landing.