Tree Fort – Containment Protocol-Part 22
Too Clever. Fiction. 2100 words, 11-minute read.
Booker and his men bed down for the night, among the treetops.
The rest of the Containment Protocol saga can be found here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/containment-protocol-serial
Part 1 (the beginning), ... Part 21 (last episode), Part 23
Treefort – Containment Protocol-Part 22
By Ray Tabler
Lumfa rode forward and his swahldet placed a heavy foot upon the foot of the drawbridge. Zunta unwound the thick rope from around a clifftop tree and dragged it with him toward the bridge. One by one, each of the party guided their mounts across the wooden span. Which creaked disturbingly under the weight of each domesticated dino, but seemed up to the job. Zoop called his swahldet from the far end of the bridge, and she ambled over, crooning.
Fascinated, Booker lingered until only he and Lumfa were still on solid ground. Lumfa swept an arm, shooing Booker before him. There were no guard rails on the drawbridge, and Booker felt a moment of unease, looking over the edge at the rocky ground three hundred feet below. But then he was on the other side. Lumfa urged his swahldet across, and the bridge pivoted up behind him.
A clever counter weight arrangement on each flank allowed the drawbridge to swing down and up, with relatively small effort exerted. Booker examined its operation from the saddle of his swahldet, admiring the ingenuity of the device. Despite the stone age nature of the construction, it worked well. Although primitive, the locals were not stupid. The drawbridge showed that.
Lumfa stopped beside Booker, curious at his curiosity. When Booker noticed he grinned sheepishly.
“This is very impressive.” He pointed at the stone counterweights.
Lumfa replied, at length in his language. Which Booker didn’t understand.
“Uh, thanks.” Booker said, slightly embarrassed.
Lumfa grinned and rode after the others. Booker followed.
The rest of the expedition had travelled along more wooden decking, similar in width and construction to the bridge, but fixed in place. The decking ran deeper into the grove of giant trees, supported by horizontal boughs and curving this way and that around massive vertical trunks. It was a fantastic scene, riding a dinosaur on wooden planking, suspended hundreds of feet off the ground, in the midst of a grove of monstrous trees. Booker was tempted to pinch himself, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming all of this.
After a hundred yards, the walkway opened out into a broad, open space. An expanse of wooden planking about the size of a football field stretched under arching redwood branches, Several other walkways led off from the open area. In the middle sat an open hearth, made of flat stones fitted together. The paving was fifteen or twenty feet across. Zoop was busy getting a fire started in the hearth. The arrangement to keep fire contained to the sone-paved area struck Booker as prudent, since they were in the middle of a grove of very flammable giant pine trees.
Krilno was field stripping his kill for roasting. Almost everyone else seemed to be engaged in seeing to the care and feeding of the swahldets. Zunta directed half of the soldiers in unsaddling the beasts and rubbing them down. Nohfa was in charge of supervising the other half in cutting small branches and dragging them over to where the animals would spend the night. Booker assumed the branches were for the swahldet to eat.
Lumfa slid to the wooden decking, and gestured for Booker to do the same. Then the tribesman patiently taught the lieutenant how to prepare his beast for the night, with exaggerated pantomime. It took some effort, but Booker got the message, and learned fast.
The sunset had turned to full dusk by the time the animals were cared for. The only light was a ruddy glow from the campfire in the middle of the wooden expanse. Reclining swahldets munched noisily on pine branches, and hooted softly to each other.
Booker finished setting his mount up for the night, and patted the animal on the flank. Those earned him an appreciative croon from the beast. He wandered over to the hearth, where the rest of the party was gathered round. Pieces of famp, roasted on branches over the camp fire, were being shared.
“Tasty!” Pinsky pronounced, meat juices running down his chin.
Muñoz handed Booker a medium rare hunk of impaled famp. The aroma made his empty stomach growl. A tentative bite of the hot portion confirmed Pinsky’s assessment. The flavor was closer to pork than anything else he’d sampled in this universe. Not all dinos tasted like chicken.
Booker eyed the tree tops above and the surrounding decked expanse. In the flickering firelight, the openings leading off of this platform had the look of dark tunnel mouths.
“What the hell is this place?”
On the other side of the fire, Nohfa wiped her chin with the back of a hand. “Holtha.”
“Holtha?” Booker asked.
Nohfa swept a hand. “Holtha.” She continued in her language.
Booker looked to Muñoz, who translated. “This was the home of the Holtha tribe. The Holtha perched in these trees, like pterodactyl. They are gone now. The gods allow us stay here for the night, if we do not stay longer. We must not stray from this platform. It is forbidden.”
Booker looked at the shadowy tunnel mouths again, wondering what lay beyond. “What happened to the Holtha?”
Nohfa finished her meat, and stood. She tossed the length of twig which had impaled the meat into the fire. “The Holtha are gone now. They became too clever. The gods took them away. To say more is taboo.” With a last, vaguely haunted stare into the fire, she turned and walked away.
Pinsky couldn’t keep himself from glancing at the witch doctor, crouching outside of the circle around the fire, Bunzo, shadows hiding his face except for a pair of malevolent eyes, ripped a dripping bite of roasted famp from a twig. He chewed, and silently watch the rest of them.
“What happened to these Holtha?” Booker asked Muñoz.
Muñoz shrugged. “I don’t know. She said they were taken away by the gods.”
“For becoming too clever.” Booker nodded. “What constitutes too clever?”
Muñoz translated this question to Zunta, who answered with obvious reluctance. Muñoz frowned, and spoke again to Booker.
“The tribes are permitted to work with stone and wood. They may fashion anything from plants, such as rope, and other items pleasing to the gods.”
Zunta’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, and he slid his eyes sidelong at the shaman. “But fashioning tools or weapons from fire-heated stone is forbidden. It is said that the Holtha did so. The gods were displeased. Now the Holtha are gone.” Zunta stood. “I will say no more.”
The hulking tribesman made some hand gesture against evil and strode away, following his mate into the darkness.
After Muñoz finished translating Zunta’s words, Booker raised an eyebrow. “Fire-heated stone. I’m think that means metallurgy, refining ore into iron, or copper, or whatever.”
“That would be my guess.” Muñoz agreed. “I’ve been wondering why these people are still in the stone age. There must be a religious taboo around metal.”
“Then how can they accept our knives, machetes, pots, and pans?”
“Maybe they can use metal, but are forbidden from making it.” Muñoz shrugged. “Weasel words in the letter of the taboo. You know?”
“Could be.” Booker allowed. “What interests me more is what the gods did to these tree fort people.”
“Yeah.” Muñoz sighed. “No details on that.”
“Those are exactly the kind of details the brass back home will want to know.”
Muñoz stared into the fire for a long moment, a troubled look on his face, before rising. He tapped Booker on the shoulder and tilted his head, before stepping away from the fire. Puzzled, Booker followed Muñoz into the darkness.
Pinsky, Olmer, and the rest of the soldiers exchanged bemused glances.
“Seekrits!” DeWiess whispered once Booker and Muñoz were out of easy earshot. Which triggered snickers.
Booker caught up to Muñoz at the edge of the platform. He stared into the moonlit darkness below. The base of the giant trees, which the former home of the Holtha perched in, lay far below. Faint, rustling sounds, and dashing shadows informed Booker of nocturnal creatures haunting the night on the floor of the grove of massive redwoods. There wasn’t a hand rail at the edge of the platform, simply a long, silent drop for the unwary.
“What’s on your mind?” Booker asked quietly.
Muñoz paused, clearly reconsidering his choices. Finally, the man came to a decision. “I feel compelled to tell you that I won’t be going back with you and the others.”
Booker was silent for a few heartbeats. “Go on.”
Muñoz kicked a stray twig off, watching it disappear into the gloom. “When you go through the gate, I’m staying behind. It’s as simple as that.”
“Simple action, complicated consequences.”
“Ain’t they always?” Muñoz grinned, his teeth shining in the moonlight.
“So, you’re planning on going AWOL, and thought it polite to tell me first?”
“It’s not going AWOL, or desertion. I’m not in the army anymore.”
“I doubt colonel Shaylton, or the people above him, will see it that way.”
“I don’t care what they think, or what they do.”
“The next unit through the gate will just track you down, and drag you back.”
“They’ll have to find me first. And I don’t intend to stick around here. It won’t be easy to follow me.”
“Where will you go?”
“There are other tribes out there. Zunta told me so. And there are probably other tribes Zunta doesn’t know about. I’ll just keep moving Sooner or later, the Army will give up on me.”
Booker held Muñoz’s eyes for a moment. “What do you think your chances are, alone in this wilderness?”
“Not bad. Better than back home.”
“What’s that mean?”
Muñoz sighed. “Why do you think I volunteered for a job like this? Guys like me don’t fit in, in the modern world. I can’t hold down a normal job. It’s why I joined the Army. It’s why I was in the green berets.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to run off.”
“Yes, it does!” Muñoz lowered his voice again. “Yes, it does. They won’t let me strike off on my own anymore.”
“You’ll still be scouting other worlds.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, lieutenant. You know how many coordinates they had to go through to find this place. Some bean counter will run an analysis, and wind down that part of the program. No more new worlds for me to poke my nose into.”
“You’re needed here, to scout this world.”
“No, I’m not. What do you expect will happen to this place, now that we’ve found it?”
Booker shrugged. “Haven’t thought about it.”
“I have. The army will shove a battalion of tanks through the gate next. Then, build a base here. Next, they’ll start strip mining the place.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Who’s going to stop them? There aren’t any environmentalists around here. Not anyone armed with more than a flint knife, anyway. Hell, the indigs will probably cheer you on, until it’s too late to do anything about it. Uncle Sam will want a return on his investment, and there’s a whole world to exploit. I don’t want any part of that. I figure that if I just keep moving, I can keep ahead of the bulldozers.”
“Lonely life.”
“Perfect life, for a man like me.” Muñoz smiled, wistfully. “Look at this place. We literally have no idea what’s over the next hill. There’s an entire ocean a couple of miles from here, that we were ignorant of until a couple of hours ago.”
“Maybe it’s just a big freshwater lake.”
“See? We don’t even know that. For me, this is the perfect place to live until I die.”
Booker considered the situation. “So, why tell me? why not just slip away when I’m not looking?”
“You’ve been straight with me. I’ll be straight with you. I’d feel bad about blind siding you. You can count on me until you get your people back through the gate. Then, it’ll be adios.”
“What makes you so sure I just won’t place you under guard, and bring you home?’
Muñoz smiled in the darkness. “I don’t know for sure you won’t. But I figure not. Now that I’ve told you my intentions, you’ll feel honor bound to respect my wishes. Downside of being an officer and a gentleman.”
Booker snorted a laugh, in spite of himself.
“Besides,” Muñoz continued. “You already effectively have one prisoner with Bunzo. Having to watch another one would take too much manpower.”
“You’ve got this all figured out.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“And what do I tell colonel Shaylton?”
“You tell him whatever you want. But, if I was you, I’d say Muñoz was there one second, then he wasn’t. Maybe he got eaten by a dino.”
“Maybe you will be.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe we all will be.”
A silence stretched for a long moment.
“Good night, lieutenant.” Muñoz walked back to the fire.
Booker pondered his dilemma in the soft moonlight.
END.
Tune in next time for Part 23 – Pre-Dawn Perfidy
The rest of the Containment Protocol saga can be found here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/containment-protocol-serial
Part 1 (the beginning), ... Part 21 (last episode), Part 23
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Very cool world and added intrigue! I’m really enjoying this story and am constantly surprised where you take it next. Your conversations between the military members ring true, even the moral dilemmas.
Keep this story going as long as you can it’s a winner!
Beautiful episode! Makes me want to wander off in this world, like Munoz.