A few minutes later we were all flashing our lights into a hole.
“Wow,” Gretchen said. “We’ve just broken curfew and risked being accidentally shot by the night guard for this. A hole in the ground. I’m picking our next field trip, Magdy.”
Magdy snorted and knelt down into the hole. “If you actually paid attention to anything, you’d know that this hole has the council in a panic,” Magdy said. “Something dug this out the other night while the patrol wasn’t watching. Something was trying to get in to the colony from out here.” He took his light and moved it up the nearest container until he spotted something. “Look. There are scratches on the container. Something tried to go over the top, and then when it couldn’t it tried to go under.”
“So what you’re saying is that we’re out here now with a bunch of predators,” I said.
“It doesn’t have to be a predator,” Magdy said. “Maybe it’s just something that likes to dig.”
I flicked my light back up to the claw marks. “Yeah, that’s a reasonable theory.”
“We couldn’t have seen this during the day?” Gretchen asked. “When we could see the things that can leap out and eat us?”
Magdy motioned his light over to me. “Her mom had her security people around it all day long. They weren’t letting anybody else near it. Besides, whatever made this hole is long gone now.”
“I’ll remind you that you said that when something tears out your throat,” Gretchen said.
“Relax,” Magdy said. “I’m prepared. And anyway, this hole is just the opening act. My dad is friends with some of the security folks. One of them told him that just before they closed everything up for the night, they saw a herd of those fanties over in the woods. I say we go look.”
“We should get back,” Enzo said. “We shouldn’t even be out here, Magdy. If they find us out there, we’re all going to catch hell. We can see the fanties tomorrow. When the sun is up, and we can actually see them.”
“Tomorrow they’ll be awake and foraging,” Magdy said. “And there’s no way we’re going to be able to do anything other than look at them through binoculars.” Magdy pointed at me again. “Let me remind you that her parents have kept us cooped up for two weeks now, waiting to find out if anything might bruise us on this planet.”
“Or kill us,” I said. “Which would be a problem.”
Magdy waved this away. “My point is that if we actually want to see these things—actually get close enough to them that we can get a good look at them—we have to do it now. They’re asleep, no one knows we’re gone, and we’ll be back before anyone misses us.”
“I still think we should go back,” Enzo said.
“Enzo, I know this is taking away from valuable make-out time with your girlfriend,” Magdy said, “but I thought you might want to explore something other than Zo?’s tonsils for once.”
Magdy was very lucky he wasn’t in arm’s reach when he made that comment. Either my arm or Enzo’s.
“You’re being an ass again, Magdy,” Gretchen said.
“Fine,” Magdy said. “You guys go back. I’ll see you later. I’m going to see me some fanties.” He started toward the woods, waving his pocket light in the grass (or grasslike ground cover) as he walked. I shined my light over to Gretchen. She rolled her eyes in exasperation and started walking after Magdy. After a minute Enzo and I followed.
Take an elephant. Make it just a little smaller. Lose the ears. Make its trunk shorter and tentaclly at the end. Stretch out its legs until it almost but not quite seems impossible that they could support the weight. Give it four eyes. And then do other assorted weird things to its body until it’s not that it looks like an elephant, it’s just that it looks more like an elephant than it looks like anything else you can think of.
That’s a fantie.
In the two weeks we’d been trapped in the colony village, waiting for the “all clear” to actually begin colonization, the fanties had been spotted several times, either in the woods near the village or just barely in the clearing between the village and the woods. A fantie spotting would bring up a mad rush of children to the colony gate (a gap in the container wall, closed up at night) to look and gawk and wave to the creatures. It would also bring a somewhat more studiously casual wave of us teenagers, because we wanted to see them too, we just didn’t want to seem too interested, since that would mess with our credibility with all our new friends.