Tracking Song

Antonin Scriabin · 18 Mar 2014, 14:33 · from 2014-March.txt.gz

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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Antonin Scriabin)
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 10:33:16 -0400
Subject: (urth) Tracking Song
Message-ID: <CAM0v-i4JKmbXnmkdNLf6myqdEjkHAqEHprPP24Be4pi+VgMf8A at mail.gmail.com>

I've found little snippets online talking about this story, but I wanted to
see what the list thought of this idea: the planet / moon is undergoing
some kind of accelerated evolution.  Here is my idea:

At some point in the past, human colonizers landed on the planet, built the
underground city / research center, and explored the surface.

Something went wrong, that left the colonizers stranded on the planet.
Some remained underground, eventually becoming the half-machine, half-man
denizens.  They seem to have forgotten how to manage the giant mechs.

Others tried their luck on the surface, and they evolved rapidly for some
reason, which explains why the various species the narrator runs into are
almost all humanoids of varying sizes / social structures, speak the same
language (or one very close), etc.  They have filled most of the ecological
niches, which explains the rampant pseudo-cannibalism.

The narrator is a member of a rescue team, and through some accident is
left behind by his crew on the Great Sleigh, which could be some kind of
spaceship that can also operate on land, or a vehicle left over from the
colonizers.  We know that individuals on the Sleigh have interacted with
some of the humanoid tribes, giving them instructions (not to harm certain
birds, etc) that imply some sort of terraforming sequence is in the works,
some way to make the planet more livable.  Perhaps they settled on this
plan after realizing that the first colonizers had rapidly changed form,
and were no longer "recoverable" humans as such.

I think the man with wings that the narrator sees at the end of the story
is simply a member of the rescue team (his crew) wearing some kind of
biohazard suit / flying device (we know that gravity is very low on this
planet, which would make jetpack travel much easier).
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