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Episode 4: Coincidence

After a couple of hours transmitting pics in daylight, Gessy swung back to Deckett for dinner. She nibbled on a noodle from his pasta pocket while he paged through the pics and films they'd taken.

"This is great stuff, Gessy," he said with a pat on her head. She giggled and leaned into his hand.

"Now we do the darkness stuff?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "Let's start easy. Walk someplace safe during sundown, then just sit and wait for darkness. Film the stuff around you without walking."

"I can walk and aim the camera at the same time," she protested.

"Practice one thing at a time," he insisted.

"Oh, please," she started to argue. He tapped the table next to her feet once with his finger. She looked scandalized for a second but dropped to her knees.

"Who owns you?" he asked.

"You do," she said. Her head hung down a bit. She stared at his wrist before her.

"Who tells you what to do?"

"You do," she said. The head drooped a bit more.

"Who's been doing this for longer?"

"You, by years and years," she replied.

He looked down at the human for a second or two. Instead of the last line, though, he changed the ritual. "Who loves you?"

"You never have-" she started, then caught herself and looked up in his eyes. "You Do!" she shouted. He picked her up for a hug. She squealed and gave back as good as she got.

"I'll do it your way," she promised.

Just about sunset he walked some distance from where she'd already practiced and set her down by a fern.

She wandered around for a bit, setting her orientation and looking for a hide she could use. The hole in the bole of the tree was just too perfect to let go.

Climbing with the camera strapped to her back was more difficult than she'd expected, but she was still able to master the tree. The bark was smooth but the whole tree canted at a slight angle.

With a little work and her climbing hooks she made it to the hole, verified that nothing lived inside, and settled in place.

After full darkness, the camera was the greatest of toys. She alternated between light amplification, infra-red, and the visible and invisible ranging lasers.

She tried Celste's trick, too. To preserve her night vision, she closed one eye as she pressed the button to activate the flash. Then while one eye was effectively blinded, the other still worked.

"Wicked coolness," she muttered. Then she sat quietly and waited for the wildlife to recover from the flash.

A few hours later she heard some footsteps in the brush. She aimed the camera towards the noise and played with the settings. Finally, the light amplifying setting and the distance lens showed her a face. At first, she thought it was a monster.

Then she realized it was just a giant with something over his face. He was walking slowly through the forest, looking down at the ground. After a second or two, she saw another giant, with a similar device, walking behind the first.

Their views swept back and forth across the ground. Gessy lifted her head from the viewfinder to see what they were looking at. Near-total darkness was all she saw.

After another glance at the giants, she realized they must have been wearing some sort of night-seeing equipment of their own. They walked almost normally through the pitch black night without tripping over roots or hitting trees.

She idly wondered what they were looking for. A bigger concern was whether they would notice her, but she'd just tell them who she belonged to. Then she took a picture so Deckett would know who had found her, if they didn't obey the rules.

Another sound came to her then. From down at the bottom of the tree, voices drifted up. Human voices. Voices she knew!

"What the hell?" Betty was asking. "How do they keep finding us?"

"I don't know," Valerie said. "Duck down under the roots, maybe we can hide."

"If it's a tracking system," Betty hissed, "hiding won't help!"

"You have a better idea? C'mon!" There was a rustling, as of dead leaves, then silence.

Gessy turned back to the approaching giants.







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