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Yellow Belly

Which of them was truly an alien - and which one, truly monstrous?

By Eric WolfPublished about a year ago 10 min read
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Yellow Belly
Photo by Beth Smith on Unsplash

The girl had to run at a full pelt, just to keep up with the grasses. “I’m going to beat you,” she teased the scrambling plants, which took no notice of her taunts, only of her motions. They flowed over the irregular terrain, almost as though they were a single, vast organism, instead of the thousands of individual blades and stalks uprooting themselves from the soil, with each running step she planted in their midst.

Vigga Østergård was in no danger of breaking any sort of a land speed record for a bipedal creature on this planet, but she cared nothing for official doings of any kind; she delighted in her newfound power to make the moving carpet of vegetation scatter and flow. Her home valley in Denmark had no analogous phenomenon; despite how many years the community of humanity had lived amongst the stars, some elements of off-world life remained off-world, a show of respect for life elsewhere in the cosmos.

A man’s voice called to her, with unconvincing sternness, “Watch what you’re doing, girl,” Karsten Østergård had maintained the pretense of being impatient with his daughter’s exuberance, past his ability to keep a straight face. He grinned; she was his favorite companion, which was hardly secret information, out on this extrasolar prairie. “You chase off half the crop, and we’ll have to buy in a part stake of the Mishra farm. That would take us over this mountain — I know you don’t want to go there. Do you?”

Fifteen-year-old Vigga answered him with a cartwheel she performed with an enviable, carefree energy. She closed her loop of motion, slapping stray blades from her hands; they crawled down her sides, and resumed their participation in the movement of the herd of itinerant foliage. Going over the mountains? It was a surefire adventure, a source of excitement; all but etched, into her DNA. She had, in fact, enjoyed two recent visits to Mister Mishra’s crop, which was a much larger patch of moving grain than this one was, though of a variety that was more difficult to steer away, from certain grazing animals, one of which a self-respecting plant-herder would never agree to encounter in the wild…

Its hills and valleys gently fall,” Karsten caught himself singing, just under his breath, as he took in the pageantry. “Its name is old Denmark, And it is Freya’s hall.” The anthem of his homeland warmed him now, as it had seldom done, during a hardscrabble adolescence that had shown him little of his daughter’s seeming contentment, but now, so many parsecs distant from Roskilde, from Earth, and him with his responsibilities to his wife and children, his contract, and to the local flora and fauna — “in accordance with the Concordance,” went the expression. This government of planets was over Karsten’s head, speaking literally, but it had seldom impinged upon the work he, his wife and Vigga were doing here, though it did insist upon preserving the ecological balance of an inhabited world, which seemed only just. The Concordance was everything.

Heltens fest — “Hero’s feast” — was the name of Karsten’s plant-herding service, emblazoned on the side of his light-bodied skimmer. A nod to the romances of Viking skalds who sang about great deeds, it had been his wife’s suggestion. A habit he had developed, since childhood, of frowning, as if he disapproved, all the time, about very nearly everything, had failed to materialize; Mirna’s pitch had inspired him.

Evolutionary oddity of this planet number one: the moving vegetation. Vigga, not yet freighted with her parents’ responsibilities, was left to marvel, at what the scurrying grasses did. This helped take her mind off of the rather pressing matter on her plate, and certainly, on her father’s mind: Evolutionary oddity, number two.

Hint of gold? Shoot it, cold.” The troubling mnemonic device was on the lips of every plant-herder, even before the first day of work began. It had an insider’s brevity, like something only the experienced members of the community used to note a major problem — even a menace, to life and limb. It had not been one of Karsten’s favorite expressions, or even applicable to his work experience —

Later, for days, he would be unable to get the first moment of shock and alarm out of his mind. Never before in his dealings with this planet had he been such an imbecilic wretch of a man — never mind, a father — as he was, slowing down his lightbody to a purring pause, above a craggy rock jutting out from the soil. These racing grasses avoided the gentle exhaust of the lightbody car, even as a siren quality in its humming motor drew them closer to it: a contradiction.

^^^^

Mirna’s voice, from his sleeve: “Do you suppose you’ll be able to get back here in time for supper, Kars?” She was originally from Croatia, and years living in Denmark had not erased her original accent, which she liked, because it gave her an exotic quality when she spoke Danish, a fact he appreciated, to say the very least. Her exo-botanist credentials enabled them to land the contract, to work here, and she found the work absorbing, if a bit predictable, of late —

“Depends what time the girl gets tired of romping,” he answered with a smile, before realizing he couldn’t see Vigga on either side of his vehicle. He called, “Vigga? Don’t play games, right this —”

A sound that could have come from his daughter’s throat, which was not what he could have called a spoken word, told him which way to look. Over his right shoulder, he spied her towheaded, spritely self. Or at the least, what he could see of her, over the mass of the monster approaching her.

A lumpy mass of what at first looked preposterously like moving custard — the size of a terrier, or an even larger canine — traversed the plain, leaving a slimy trail as it did. Its skin only appeared to be gelatinous and gooey; if a person touched it without protective gloves, the resulting toxic effect could peel back tissues, poison the unfortunate soul’s blood. Its coloring was a pale golden hue, with a hint of gray, which its digestive juices produced to dissolve the tiny creatures it consumed to live.

A field of grasses opened up a growing patch of barren soil, around Vigga — an expanding circle of bald terrain. If vegetation could be afraid, this would be its reaction to an existential threat. Vigga, however, was the one in jeopardy now. How was she keeping herself so calm — was it from abject terror?

“G… gul mave,” she gasped. “Dad…?” Vigga’s whisper could barely be heard. A placid expression on her face could only mean that she was too stunned at her predicament to register her dread. She knew what this was: “Gul mave” was a Danish form of “Yellow belly,” the name the locals had given to this predator.

Standard policy for colonists was to shoot Yellow Bellies on sight, no questions asked.

Karsten reached for his flamekit. He had gotten the hang of using this device, but it had never brought him any joy to kill anything, and he had flamed a few Yellow Bellies in his time here. None of them, though, had ever threatened the lives of his wife or his daughter, or even his coworkers; it had been a standard reaction to these disgusting pests.

Vigga, to her credit, did not try to outrun the beast. Instead, she did what any conventional person might have deemed the impossible: she sat down, where she stood, crossed her legs in front of her, and took on a meditative stance.

^^^^

“That’s good, girl,” Karsten told her. He stepped away, from the lightbody, the flamekit in his hands, and approached the beast with murder on his mind. A second or two went by, and he felt himself aged, as if several days had passed. “Just… another… second… and I’ll —”

She cocked her right eye open and turned her head to see him. As the Yellow Belly approached her on her left, all she could see was her own father, doing the same from her right, aiming a deadly weapon past her. How did he hope to kill this creature, without setting his own offspring alight, not to mention, the racing grasses that were his professional charge?

Vigga,” he ground out through clenched teeth, as he took an aim at the Yellow Belly, “when I say so, just sort of roll, my way. Then I’ll —”

“Dad,” Vigga said. “It’s not doing anything. Look, I’m okay.” She reached out a hand, fingers extended in full, palm flattened, holding it almost directly over the creature’s irregular head. “See this?

Karsten wanted to run, the full distance — Yellow Belly be damned — scoop his reckless child up in his arms, take her back to the lightbody in a single hop. Its torso heaving, the beast bubbled its toxic fluid out of its outer membrane. And just waited there, almost Vigga’s height away from her.

Undulating, as if from undue effort, the Yellow Belly expanded upward, which even an experienced plant-herd, like Karsten, could find a marvel. It rose to its full height, which was nearly as tall as Karsten himself, and it trembled. Was it afraid, too? Was it sickly? What did it intend to do?

This is why I wanted to come with you, Dad,” Vigga said. “I knew, we could do this. We met one of them, and it’s not hurting me. Do you see now?”

Karsten did not respond. He felt his insides going clammy and numb. He tingled as his circulation seemed to shut itself off and leave him ropey and unable to stand, unable to run. Unable to shoot the abomination, hovering near his little girl.

^^^^

“You’re okay,” Vigga insisted — to the Yellow Belly, Karsten realized. A smart, precious girl, like her, who loved animals and nature, would be naïve about dangerous organisms, especially on a planet that was not their own, but…

Karsten felt himself take a step forward. Then, another. The Yellow Belly was immobile. He took another, larger step. The Yellow Belly moved then… away from Vigga. It let out a sound he had never heard before from the monster or its brethren: almost a sigh, as if it was resigning itself to its sad fate.

“Vigga,” he said, when he could find enough air in his lungs to produce sound again, “stand up, slowly. Turn to face me, slowly.” She complied with the twin directives. The creature continued to tremble. According to all the folklore he had ever absorbed, it should have killed Vigga long before this point.

“Come on, child,” he said. She followed him back to the lightbody and took her seat beside him. The creature did not make a false move; the grasses began to surround it and cover the barren soil, once again reclaiming their positions.

“Are you going to tell people about this, Dad?” Vigga asked him, her voice like that of the very little girl she had been, until very recently. Until the morning before they had left to do this, Karsten mused.

“I won’t have to,” he assured her. “We record everything, from here,” he said, tapping the control panel of the vehicle. “Do you think it showed us mercy?” he teased her.

“It wasn’t like that,” Vigga insisted. “I just think it was curious about us. That’s why we came to space, isn’t it?” She craned her head to look at the purported man-killing monstrosity, which could have done just that, to each of them, as it trundled away, leaving its acid trail as it went. “Good little gul mave,” Vigga concluded, sounding to him just like a miniature Mirna.

“You know something? I think you’re right,” said Karsten. Firing up the motor of the lightbody, he found himself unaccountably pleased. He would become something unlikely, a defender of the Yellow Belly. His daughter would enjoy that, he knew. “King Christian stood by the lofty mast,” he sang — again, under his breath — as he drove them to their next assigned marker.

© Eric Wolf 2022.

[Explore the Concordance of Worlds: https://vocal.media/fiction/drongo.]

AdventurefamilyFantasySci FiYoung Adult
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About the Creator

Eric Wolf

Ink-slinger. Photo-grapher. Earth-ling. These are Stories of the Fantastic and the Mundane. Space, time, superheroes and shapeshifters. 'Wolf' thumbnail: https://unsplash.com/@marcojodoin.

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