On our second day of travel, we find the going harder as we get deeper into the jungle. Data Haven, for all that it’s on a bit of a plain, is in the foothills of the ridge between it and Morgan Industries. Our trip so far has been mainly downhill, which has been great for regenerative braking to recharge our batteries. But the vegetation around us is starting to change the lower we descend. Fewer shroom trees, more vines and briars. In addition to clingy xenofungus, there are other thorny plants and fungus that Cleve and I have never seen before. At this point, Marina warns us to be mindful of briar beasts. She’s got some pheromone vials with her, but against a wild, untrained briar beast, their utility is limited. They can confuse or stun the plant creature, not enable her to order it around. As much as it would be fascinating to observe another briar beast, I’m not really keen to be around her deploying those chemicals, not with the effect they had on me last time.
Cleve navigates around the thicker vegetation whenever he can, but eventually we reach a place where there are just no options, not even the direction we came from. His attempts to back up and redirect us have only tangled us further. He stops trying and drums his fingers on the steering wheel, considering what to do. “What is this, a nest of briar babies?” he grumbles.
“Do you need me to clear stuff out of the way?” I ask. He packed a machete, but that’s not what I mean, and he knows it. He nods, and I open my door. “Keep your eyes open for anything that moves,” I tell Cleve, “especially that shouldn’t. Other than what I’m moving.”
Realizing what I’m talking about, Marina perks up, eager to observe me at work. When we get out of the rover, I’m immediately struck by how warm and humid it is. That’s why they call it a jungle, I suppose. LA could get pretty miserable in the summer, muggy and hot, but it never smelled as fresh as this does. This should give more life to my curls, I reflect with a smile. I comment on the humidity, and Marina explains that the winds blow from east to west on this part of the planet. A lot of the moisture gets contained by the mountains separating us from Morgan.
I pick my way around the rover, taking a look at what we’re dealing with. Marina gets out her notebook and pencil, as well as readies a miasma-measuring device. Once back next to her, I still myself and close my eyes, feeling around me. This seems like a good spot, at least internally. The resonance fields are very, I don’t know, resonant here. It smells like life, and it feels like life, too. A lot. Too much for me to untangle. I can get the vines and briars to move in response to my nudging and tugging, but that’s it.
“Noted movement in the plants but no recession,” Dr. Citali says quietly into her recorder.
“I can’t find the end of them,” I call to Cleve, who’s still behind the driver’s wheel in the rover. “This is a job for a hatchet.”
“Certain level of—oh! Sorry, he’s saying—” It takes a moment for Marina to switch out of note-taking mode. “Okay, so what’s next? How are we going to get out of here?” she asks.
“Uh, Mariah?” Cleve calls. He’s now standing outside the driver’s side of the rover, pointing across the vehicle off to my right.
There’s a craw! It’s bigger than any I’ve ever seen before, more Mr. Fuzzy size than raccoon size. This craw is holding up the larger of its two claws, swinging it back and forth repeatedly. It’s waving at us! How cool is that? Marina is speechless; this is something she’s never encountered, either. “Hey there,” I say, taking a step forward. When it makes no move to flee, I crouch down level with its eyestalks, steadying myself with my new shelftop cane in front of me. I’ve had some success communicating with wolf beetles in the past, and so I try here with the craw, drawing on resonance energy or projecting it, I’m not sure which. The handle of my cane grows warm in my hand, and I ask, “What do you want?”
The craw stops waving and looks intently at me for a moment. Then it points off to the side, toward the rear of the rover. We all turn in the indicated direction, and there’s another similarly sized craw! This one is slinking under the vehicle. Its larger claw is clamped on part of the undercarriage like a wrench, ready to remove our shocks. “Hey, what’s the deal?” I call to it, swiveling on my knee to face it. It pauses, looking surprised, and its eyes swivel toward the other craw.
What is this? A heist? Is this craw next to me the distracter? That is the role I used to play! Looks like we have more in common than just an interest in finery, me and the craws. Wow. These creatures are definitely smarter than crows. And that craw under the rover is trying to steal our shiny. “We need that,” I tell the craws. “Is there something else you want?” I feel a little silly voicing these questions to animals, but maybe the craws will vibe with me enough to understand my intent, like the wolf beetles did. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable question, given that those smaller craws exchanged goods with us asynchronously near the Morgan domes.
“This is wild,” Marina says under her breath, scribbling furiously.
The thief craw scuttles out into the open. One claw is still reaching under the rover, but it fishes around with the other one and produces its counterproposal, a braided set of vines. Craw bodies are segmented, and it was storing this under one of the overlapping pieces of carapace. Did it work the vine into this pattern itself? Are craws crafters? Even if not, it’s been transporting the item and now has considered its worth compared to something else it values. This is amazing! The craw whips the braided belt around, trying to catch my attention with it. The item is not as fascinating as its owner, though.
I keep my excitement under wraps while we negotiate. “I’m not interested in that,” I say, shaking my head vigorously, waving at it to move away from the rover. “I am interested in our shocks.”
It reads my tone or my gestures and tosses the corded rope aside, but it holds its ground. Its many little legs work to pass another item forward from its under-shell storage, one that looks metallic. Once the object reaches the smaller claw, the thief holds it up to display more clearly. Dr. Citali gasps, recognizing it. “That’s a bioscanner!” I glance up at her questioningly. “We have some of those in the Stepdaughters of Chiron. They’re tuned to scan native life and tell you all kinds of informative things about it.” She looks over to Cleve. “How important are these shocks?”
Cleve frowns, not keen to give them up and also not happy with the picture this is painting. “They killed somebody and took a bioscanner? Are these guys dangerous?”
“Nobody said anything about killing here!” I object. I haven’t felt anything malevolent from these craws. Even the thief just seems mischievous, not mean.
“How’d they get a bioscanner?” Cleve demands.
“How’d we get the siege worm device?” I counter, standing up and brushing the dirt off my slacks. “Have you seen your shimmerfly friend around lately?” Bella often has little knickknacks, and she might be the one who left that out for him to find. “All I’m saying is, there are many wrecked modules around where they could have found it. It doesn’t have to be that they mugged someone.”
Cleve tsks. “They’re working together,” he observes. He has a point there. This craw activity does feel like a common street job, one participant distracting the mark while the other lifts the goods.
“S-somebody, a field scientist c-could’ve unfortunately passed away while in the field,” Marina says, her nervousness about death bleeding out through some stutters.
“Exactly,” I say. “I don’t want to give away our shocks, but—”
“Okay, yeah, it’d be nice if we had something to trade,” Cleve agrees. As he says this, almost as if she was waiting for her cue, Bella floats on in from somewhere in the briars—or from who knows where. Her tiny little legs are wrapped around a chin strap, and a helmet dangles down beneath her. It looks far too heavy for her, but somehow she flies with it. When she gets close to Cleve, she drops it for him to catch it.
“That… that’s one of ours. They’re worn by rangers who do inland exploration,” Marina says. Cleve hands it over to her to examine. “This belonged to Ayumu,” she adds quietly. “I didn’t make the cut for the rangers. They did. They knew it was dangerous out here… Oh, I wonder if that is their scanner, too.”
Cleve points out the crushing damage to the stained chitinous helmet. “There’s no brains in here, though, just some blood.” If Ayumu’s head was inside when that happened, they’re injured—at best. But if a craw was the attacker, it’s not one of these two. Even their larger claw is too small for the marks on the helmet. “It looks like something maybe twice the size of this guy,” Cleve says, indicating the thief craw. He looks to Marina. “Whatever happened, it wasn’t just a rockslide. I don’t know what kind of creatures are out here or even if it was one.”
Marina looks at the damage more closely. “My guess would be a piece of machinery, caught between gears or in a vice. But how does that happen on accident?”
“Maybe a fall?” Cleve suggests.
I’ve been keeping my eyes and intention on the craws during this examination, just to make sure they don’t walk off with the shocks while the humans are distracted. They remain attentive, interested in the new item’s potential for exchange. On the one hand, the helmet might have sentimental value for Marina, since she knows the owner. But on the other, what practical use is it to us now? I’d like to bring this standoff to a peaceful conclusion; I certainly don’t want to fight craws. So I ask her, “Are you willing to part with that helmet?”
“I’d rather not,” she tells me.
“That bioscanner might have more information on it, right?” Cleve suggests. If it was also Ayumu’s, he could be right.
Thief craw notices his interest and scuttles back a step, possessive of a prize it knows has value to us. “Honestly, craws,” I say, including distracter craw in the conversation, “there’s three of us and there’s two of you. That’s our car. It’s not for sale!” The thought comes to me that we did stop in their jungle, so they might feel we owe them for passage—if that’s a concept craws can grasp.
“We do have two stun tasers for wolf beetles,” Cleve volunteers. “I don’t know if one of those would be—”
“You want to arm craws?!” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. A moment ago he thought they were murdering people and looting the bodies.
Cleve shrugs, not expecting the craws to be able to wield them effectively. “I’ve got chili powder, rope, and a blanket. And the Progenitor resonance filament.”
I grimace. “I don’t want to give up the filament. We need that for repairs.” I consider a moment. “But of all those things… The stun rods are shiny metal objects that make flashes. I think they would love that, if we’re willing to part with one.”
Cleve pulls one out and fires it up. Thief craw is entranced. It forgets about the shocks and drops the bioscanner in its haste to reach Cleve. It reaches up with clacking claws, like a kid making gimme, gimme demands.
“I think we have a deal,” I tell Cleve and Marina.
“What could go wrong?” Cleve says.
“Okay, but we have to teach them how to use it safely,” I insist. I beckon distracter craw over. I still feel a deep level of rapport with it, and I think it will understand me better than its over-eager friend. Cleve helps, demonstrating the switches as I explain, “This end is dangerous. It’s pretty to look at, but you could get hurt with it.”
Every time Cleve sparks the rod, thief craw jumps up excitedly. He hands the weapon over to distracter craw to try out first, and then we all step back. The craws… well, they don’t hurt us, which is great. But they have an awful lot of fun zapping each other once they have gotten the hang of the switches. Their shells must protect them some from the charge, as they don’t seem to notice the shock much. They’re more interested in the flash. It’s amazing how fast they catch on. And they really do have good manual dexterity with their claws.
“Okay, this settles our dealings,” I tell the craws. “You won’t mess with our car anymore, and we get the bioscanner.” I gesture at Dr. Citali, who has scooped it up and is running it through some diagnostics, turning the analog dials this way and that. “And we also get to keep the helmet.” That’s in Marina’s care as well, tucked protectively under her arm. The craws accept these terms.