CHAPTER FOUR
"We should try fishing for something, since there's no way we're going back to the Base yet, don't you think?", Ripley suggests, handing Call the steaming cup of their morning coffee.
She's glad she woke up before her and was able to return the favor from the previous day, letting her rest a little longer. Another thing she is particularly pleased with is the fire cover they set up, it works great, including the extra shelf for drying firewood.
It would be great, right now, to catch a couple of fish and roast them on the spit, just thinking about it makes her mouth water! Picking up her machete, she wanders off looking for a couple of branches, straight and sturdy enough to act as harpoons.
The young woman has not yet finished her breakfast, when she returns to sit beside her and begins to carve one of the two spears she has provided herself not far away. She feels her friend's curious eyes on her, so she smiles, handing her a knife and one of the two shrubs, showing her how to turn it into an effective fishing tool.
It seems unbelievable to her that only fifty or so hours earlier they hadn't even spoken to each other. She had no idea that time in his company could be so enjoyable! If only she could turn back time!
"Well? What do you think?", the clone recoils from her brooding, contemplating the android's handiwork. Her four-pronged spear is no match for the one she carved herself.
"I think you're a very skilled pupil!", she comments playfully, rewarding her with a couple of affectionate pats on the back. "Are you ready?", she then asks, standing up with an enthusiastic smile.
*.*
In the calmer section of the river, the two women scour the shallows for another easy catch. After a little over half an hour, they've already caught one fish each, but Call is so motivated that she wants another chance. Ripley watches her in amusement a few feet away.
With her pants rolled up to her knees, the young woman stands motionless, ready to unleash her harpoon, her gaze focused and fixed on the surrounding water. A very skilled pupil, indeed!
It all happens in a matter of seconds. Ripley doesn't even have time to register the unpleasant smell of wildness that invades her nostrils, when suddenly a mass of muscle and claws leaps from the bank, pouncing on the youngster.
The clone reacts instinctively in a lightning sprint. With only two long strides it reaches the beast as it opens its jaws wide, aiming at the neck of the girl, who, frightened by the sudden noise coming from behind her, has abandoned her fishing gear, hunching over in an attempt to protect herself.
With a motion driven by the adrenaline rush, Ripley jumps on the predator, grabbing it with all her might and hurling it away from Call. The creature ends up hitting the trunk of a tree a few feet away, and with a mournful roar, backs away in confusion.
"What was that?", the android asks in a shaken voice, still in a self-protective posture. Getting no answer, she ventures to raise her head towards the woman. Ripley is still looking around, eyes carefully probing the dense forest around them. Her breathing is heavy and frantic.
"Um... a big cat, spotted", she replies in an infirm voice. She finally turns in her direction, a grimace hardening the features of her face as she runs her hands through her hair. "Fuck! Call, you're hurt!", she exclaims in shock, reaching out to her and quickly withdrawing her arms for fear of harming her.
Auton looks at the triptych of long, deep scratches that rip through the artificial skin on both arms. The milky fluid that makes up her lymphatic system drips into the river water, dissipating into the current. Discomfort and throbbing pain begin to work their way through her neural circuits.
"It must have been a jaguar", the young woman remarks, as if it has any importance.
"I didn't fucking hear it coming", the clone comments, keeping staring at the gashes on her friend's arms.
"Well, neither do I!", Call retorts, sensing a hint of guilt in her tone. "That sucks! We've been here not even two days, what the fuck!", she tries to joke, in an attempt to lighten the mood.
"Come on, let's get back to camp, we need to do something about those cuts", the hybrid proposes, still shaken, gently swaying her by the shoulders.
"Ripley, I'm fine", Call reassures her, surprised at how scared the woman seems to be. "And don't you dare leave those fishes here!", she admonishes her in a joking tone.
*.*
The short walk to the OLIVIA is paced by the drops of Call's fluid, leaving round, white traces on the undergrowth leaves.
"Well, at least we'll easily find our way back to the river", the girl exclaims, in a vain attempt to distract the clone from the shock still lingering in her expression.
As soon as she crosses the entrance of the shuttle, she heads to the emergency locker, looking for some gauze. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Ripley sitting heavily on one of the two bridge stations. Her reaction leaves her puzzled. She's not used to seeing her so startled and exposed.
"Hey, are you okay?", she asks in concern as she sits down in front of her.
"Yeah, um, yeah. Sorry. Fuck! I'm the one who should be asking!", the clone tries to recover. With still infirm hands, she grabs the gear Call is handing her and starts bandaging her wounds.
"I don't know what came over me", she adds, looking for an explanation.
"Well, quite a shock, apparently!", the young woman observes, smiling playfully at her.
"Yeah! But I'm not used to it! It took me completely by surprise. That's never happened before!", she retorts in frustration.
"Hey, it's okay, let's not make a big deal out of it. Luckily, nothing serious happened. You were prompt enough to take action right away. Thanks, by the way. We let our guard down. We were having fun and let our guard down, that's all", the android comments in a sympathetic voice.
"God! Call, four months at the Base and look at us! We are pathetic!", the clone chuckles sadly, shaking his head in an attempt to recover.
"Yeah! After all we've overcome, we're getting screwed over by a stupid jaguar! We should do this more often!", amused by her joke, the young woman takes to chuckling in turn.
"What? Getting screwed over by a stupid jaguar?", the hybrid asks stupidly.
"No, dumb! Getting out! You know, so we don't lose our badassery!", the android replies laughing more openly.
"Will it stop? Um, the blood, I mean", she asks, after a long moment of silence dedicated solely to bandaging the young woman's arms.
Call struggles not to specify the nature of the fluid flowing through her artificial body, choosing only to reassure the woman in front of her, who is still struggling to regain full control of herself.
"Yes, I would heal faster, with a massive dose of nanorobots, but the standard amount in my system is enough to stop and seal the leaks", she explains, watching her working, finally her hands seeming to have regained some confidence.
"Will you have any scars left, without those extra nanobots?", Ripley asks, to keep herself occupied and stave off the horrifying vision of the attack just before.
"Not necessarily. But I'd rather keep the scars than have the nanorobots work up to totally erasing them, so, it makes no difference", the Auton replies with a shrug.
"As proof of your badassery?", the woman asks throwing her a winking look from underneath.
Call rolls her eyes at the joke, pleased to feel the ghost of their earlier misadventure receding further and further.
"Um, not exactly", she clarifies, twisting her mouth thoughtfully. "That's just a consequence", she adds jokingly, winking at her.
"As a memento of your past, your history", Ripley anticipates her with a half-smile and a serious, respectful look.
Call nods with a surprised expression, a veil of sudden shyness making her blush. Even some of her peers never shared this 'morbid attachment to her surface imperfections', as they had called it. Let alone understand it.
"Yeah…", Ripley comments, in a compelling need to break a long moment of strange silence. How the fuck had it occurred to her to dismiss her from her own life? She struggles with herself to maintain eye contact, ignoring a weird sense of awkwardness, certain she wants to express… she's not even sure what. Esteem? Understanding? Curiosity? Attachment? Or maybe just that connection already present in the days of the Auriga?
"Do they hurt?", Ripley asks, contemplating her handiwork.
"Not much", Call replies in a soft voice. "How about we just cook that fish that almost cost us our lives?", Call proposes, smoothing out the fresh bandages.
"That's the least I can think of!", the other jokes, getting up in an overthinking manner. She bangs her head on the OLIVIA ceiling and curses with a grimace on her mouth. But Call's spontaneous laughter makes her forget the pain instantly.
*.*
Invariably, the rain comes back shortly after their meal, which is definitely tastier and more satisfying than the freeze-dried ones they brought with them from the Base. Stuck once again in their suspended tent, the two women relax by reading in silence, each in their own corner, lulled by the sound of the downpour that shows no sign of letting up. -Luckily, it's not the rainy season yet- the clone thinks, eyeing her companion with amusement.
The silence between them is far from being as oppressive as it was at the beginning of their journey. The tranquility of the afternoon weighs down the clone's eyelids, at a certain point her hands lose their grip on the digital reader and she slips into a serene numbness. She turns in her sleep, with her back to the android, who looks at her smiling, thinking back to how little she was inclined to 'afternoon nap'.
*.*
"Hey", Call greets her peeking out from under the suspended shelter the next morning. "You didn't wake me up!", she protests in an unconvinced voice.
"You were sleeping so well!", the clone justifies with a smile. Her attention is immediately focused on the girl's still bandaged arms.
"How are those cuts going?", she asks, pouring her a cup of coffee from the thermal container she brought in front of the fire, which has been burning incessantly for three days.
The young woman begins to undo the bandages, but Ripley draws her to herself by taking her by the hand and gently uncovering her arms, grazing her closed cuts with her fingertips. Call winces, caught in mild discomfort, but calms her down as soon as she apologizes.
"It'll take a few more hours, for them to fully seal, but if nothing else, the leaking has stopped", she says, sitting down beside her.
As Ripley approaches the fire to feed the side tanks with the dry wood on the raised shelf, the girl notices something on her shoulder, which alarms her. She places her coffee cup on the floor and approaches her, examining her skin more closely.
"What is it?", the woman asks turning her head towards her. A slight burning radiates from where the young woman is touching her skin.
"What is it? Does it hurt?", the android asks her, probing with her fingertips the reddened and swollen area the size of an old twenty-first century coin.
"Um, I slipped, a little while ago, on my way to... you know…", the clone replies, embarrassed that she's gone all over the place. She's really losing grip, for crying out loud!
"You sure you got that from falling?", Call retorts, concerned, her eyes still watchful of the strange mark.
"Um, I'd say so! I don't even know how I did it, except that in a moment I found myself gazing at the tops of trees in a sea of rotting leaves!", the other replies sarcastically.
"Well let's keep an eye on it!", the Auton comments, thoughtfully.
"Call, it's not a tumor, take it easy. I must have ended up on something hard in the foliage", Ripley reassures her, guessing at her concerns.
When they arrived at the Base, months earlier, the doctors and scientists at the facility had subjected her to a series of tests, at Call's insistence, advancing the hypothesis that the speed with which she was healing from her wounds could be a sign that her hybrid DNA had some correlation with growth hormone, making her at high risk of developing tumors. This had been the main reason why, motivated mostly by curiosity to be faced with an unprecedented challenge, they had offered to look for a way to inhibit some of her DNA.
A strange buzzing sound nearby suddenly distracts the hybrid from the dialogue. With watchful eyes, she probes the surrounding vegetation, straining her ears. Perhaps her alien DNA has awakened after the previous day's startle, because she has the feeling that her senses have suddenly sharpened.
"What?", Call asks, immediately feeling herself silenced by Ripley with a wave of a hand.
The woman gets up with careful movements, and following the sound, now more distant, but still perfectly audible, she walks away from the clearing with cautious steps. It almost seems to her that the sound is accompanied by scattered flashes of color, how strange!
Stretching her neck towards the vegetation where the unusual buzzing is coming from, her tense expression changes, widening into an admiring and vaguely dreamy smile.
Moved by the curiosity of that sudden change of energy, the girl silently approaches, while Ripley signals her with an arm, to look in the direction in which her finger points.
Finally noticing her struggling to locate the source of the strange dull noise, Ripley gently places her hands on her shoulders, drawing her in front of herself so she can get a better look.
"God, you're so damn small!", she exclaims almost unconsciously, as she barely tightens her grip on the young woman in an affectionate gesture.
"I'd only seen them in file images!", the young woman comments, ignoring her comment, marveling at the colorful flicker of two tiny hummingbirds, intent on sucking nectar from a group of crimson flowers larger than themselves.
The sensation of synesthesia becoming more and more pronounced, the clone squints her eyes, in an attempt to separate the sound of the tiny birds' wings from the unusual colored flashes that appear before her eyes, for no apparent reason.
"Do you think they're a couple?", she asks after a while, in a lazy voice and a dumb smile.
Call turns to look at her, intrigued by her odd speech. The clone looks away from the flower bush and moves her face away from the girl's, to look at her without squinting.
"Are you okay?", the android asks, with a raised eyebrow.
"Um, yes, why?", the other lies, in an infirm voice, amused and intrigued by the colorful aura that envelops her friend's figure and seems to pulse and expand harmoniously, every time the young woman opens her mouth to speak.
"Well, it doesn't look like it, you know? You're weird!", Call turns around so she can get a better look at her. Her pupils are dilated, and tiny drops of sweat are forming on her forehead. She raises a hand and places the back of it on one cheek, but the woman isn't particularly warm, perhaps, just a little. Still, it almost feels like she has a fever.
"Ripley, something's wrong. I know you're not doing well. Tell me what you're feeling", she insists, confidently, as she gently grasps a wrist analyzing her vitals. Her blood pressure is higher than usual, as are her temperature and heart rate, but her oxygenation is in the average.
The young woman's voice echoes in her ears and the strange colored flashes continue to appear in front of her face.
"Okay, you're right, I do feel a little weird. I can see the sounds," she confesses, giggling unconsciously at the absurdity of her sentence.
"Let's go back to the shuttle", Call proposes, taking her by the hand. Ripley lets herself be pulled along without offering any resistance.
"I think they're a pair, did you see how they took turns feeding? Adorable!", the woman says, in a drawling voice.
"You didn't eat something unfamiliar, did you?", the android asks her as they reach the camp.
"Would you believe it! Come to think of it, though, I'm hungry as hell! What's for dinner?", the clone asks, stumbling over something and cursing immediately after.
The android rolls her eyes, undecided whether to be more concerned, amused, or intrigued by her nonsense.
"Ripley, it's still morning, remember?", she points out in a soft tone, watching her shrug carelessly.
She cautiously guides her under the tent and climbs inside. "Shit, Ripley, when you fell you must have landed on something that intoxicated you!", she reasons, concerned. "That's what that weird mark on your shoulder is!", she adds.
"And what could it have been?", the other asks casually, not very interested in the risks she's taking.
"Where exactly did you fall?", the young woman insists, increasingly alarmed.
"Fuck you, I'm not going to tell you where I'm going to pee, okay?", her reply makes her laugh, then she rolls her eyes, surrendering to her companion's serious expression, and points out to her the direction and approximate distance of the incident just before.
"Stay here, lie down", Call commands, thoughtfully, helping her on her bedroll, after slipping off her heavy boots.
"You have beautiful colors, you know that?", Ripley comments, smiling at her.
Call sighs, blushing, despite the apparent seriousness of the situation. "Stay here!", she reiterates, pointing a finger at her, serious, and straining not to laugh when the clone teases her by faking a puppy dog expression. She quickly walks away.
*.*
With the help of a dry branch, the young woman examines the spot where it is evident from the dislodged foliage that her friend has fallen. It doesn't take her long to pinpoint the potential cause of Ripley's state.
"Fuck!", something doesn't quite make sense to her, though. Maybe it's her DNA's fault, or rather, better said credit. If she were human, she'd probably be dead by now from multiple organ failure. She uses the stick to spear the tiny dead frog crushed by her friend's weight and buries it far from the path of passage. Holy Shit! Two potentially fatal accidents in the matter of twenty-four hours!