Fic: Night Of The Harvester – Part 4
Oct. 29th, 2024 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Night Of The Harvester – Part 4-
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2241
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack learns quite a lot about Harvester from the creatures known to the settlers as corn grubs, but although the information is interesting, will he and Ianto be able to make use of it?
Written For:
spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
Previous Part
Jack followed a dirt track, one of many that ran through and alongside the various farms and fields, out into the darkness beyond the town, past the nearest farmhouse, and a sturdy wooden barn used as storage for feed, making for the closest field of grain. The settlers had dubbed the native species corn grubs, but in truth the creatures weren’t particular about what type of grain they feasted on. Wheat, oats, barley, corn, rye, maize… It was all the same to them, and they didn’t much care whether the seeds were ripe or not. If they ran out of grain they’d gnaw on the leaves and stems with their sharp teeth, drawing what nourishment they could from them, but they preferred the grain, that being the most nutritious part of the plant.
Reaching a field of wheat, Jack strode in amongst the tall stems, lamp held high, and almost immediately came across twenty or thirty of the grubs. Gripping on with multiple short legs, they were busily tearing the ears of wheat from the plants and stripping the grain from them, gorging themselves.
At first sight of Jack in his costume, every grub froze in place, setting up an eerie, fearful keening.
‘They are afraid,’ the TARDIS murmured in Jack’s head.
‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Jack stepped closer, peering at the nearest grub, which seemed to shiver, shrinking away from him even though it had nowhere to go. Its small, round eyes reflected the golden glow of the lamplight, and it made a faint, tremulous hissing, clicking sound as it held out one small hand in which rested a ripe kernel of wheat. An offering, meagre though it was.
“Mercy, oh Great One!” the TARDIS translated inside Jack’s head. “Forgive your unworthy subjects! Spare our miserable lives!”
So, there was no doubt about it now; despite their small stature and maggot-like appearance, these were sentient beings, with their own language, not merely pests. That could be a problem, considering that the settlers had been treating them as a crop-destroying infestation, only fit to be exterminated. Still, that was an issue he would have to wait until later to sort out. Right now, Jack was on a fact-finding mission; hopefully he could learn something useful from the grubs.
“Why should I spare you?” he replied, his words instantly translated into the grubs’ language. “Do you think your worth so great?”
The grub trembled miserably. “Your humble servants would never assume to be of even the smallest significance to any but ourselves. We are as nothing to your greatness, our lives too small to provide sustenance for one so mighty. If you will only permit us, we will go Below, hide our unworthiness from your sight, only we beg of you, let us be. Feast on the big ones and their bounty, they who have taken our ancestral lands and our homes from us!”
“You eat the grain.” It wasn’t a question, just a simple observation.
“We would starve if we did not, but we take only what we need. The rest we leave for you, oh Great One.”
From what Jack could see, they took a lot more than they needed, but perhaps they stored most of the food below ground somewhere, to sustain them through the years they remained out of sight.
“My hunger grows,” Jack hissed at the grubs, prompted by the TARDIS.
“And soon will come the time of feasting, but not yet, it was agreed! Our home is no longer our own. Before the big ones came, there was enough for all. Now you take more each cycle, our numbers grow fewer, the balance is lost. We have bowed before you since the day the fire fell from the heavens. We let you take what you needed to survive and grow strong again, but the more you have the more you want! All we ever asked of you was to be permitted to live in peace. For ten thousand summers we co-existed, each taking only our share. Then the big ones came, and you grew greedy, demanding more and more with every cycle. Will you now destroy us utterly, leave us nothing with which to sate our own hunger and nourish the next generation?”
“And if I spare you this night, what then?”
“We will retreat Below, as was our pact, leave the surface to you, oh Great One, until you have had your fill and must sleep again. This we promise, as each generation of our kind has promised since the first time you walked among us. Take the grain if you must, leave us hungry, not strong enough to bear young this cycle, but spare our lives. I, Frrrbrrgrrr, beseech you.”
“Your lives are small, barely more than a spark, there is little to be gained from taking them. Perhaps I shall spare you,” Jack murmured low. “For now.” He could see no point now in taking any of the grubs captive; he’d learned as much as he could from them. All he had now were a lot more questions and the beginnings of a theory. Turning, he walked out of the field, following the dirt road back towards the settlement, deep in thought. ‘What did you make of that?’ he asked the TARDIS as soon as he’d put some distance between himself and the wheatfield.
‘Curious,’ the TARDIS said. ‘It would seem certain now that the being known as Harvester is not native to this world.’
‘That’s what I figured. So he arrived here somehow, maybe on a ship that crashed, ten thousand or so years ago and… what? Made some kind of pact with the indigenous life form?’
‘It would seem so,’ the TARDIS replied.
‘Limited food supplies, so for a long time he was careful not to take too much, trying only to survive and co-exist peacefully with the locals. Maybe he needed them in some way and couldn’t afford to wipe them out, maybe killing them would have destroyed the entire ecosystem that he had to rely on for his own survival. We’ll probably never know.’ Jack shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway. Then the settlers arrive, and their crops are bigger, better, more nutritious, than the native plants. Harvester gets a taste for them, and at the same time, the native vegetation the grubs eat is being dug up to clear the ground for grain and vegetable crops, and for pastureland for their herds. Now the grubs have to eat the settlers’ grain because that’s all there is that they CAN eat. Their digestion might not be able to cope with other terrestrial plants.’
“But Harvester is getting greedy, growing bigger every time he surfaces, needing more food and, maybe, more life energy to sustain himself. He’s not so easily satisfied; he might even be surfacing to feed more often than he did before the settlers arrived…” Ianto joined in the conversation, stepping out of the darkness as Jack neared the place where they’d parted not much more than an hour earlier.
Jack smiled as his husband fell into step beside him. Ianto must have been listening in the entire time through the link both of them shared with their TARDIS; that would save him having to explain what he’d found out.
“If that’s the case, there’s going to come a time when taking one extra farm each cycle won’t be enough for him. He could wipe out the entire colony in one night. It could even be this year.”
“It could,” Ianto agreed. “But I don’t think Harvester is quite at that stage yet. Not that it changes anything, we still need to stop him before it gets to that point. There are getting on for two thousand human lives at stake, according to Tanisa. If we fail this time…”
“Then we’ll simply jump ahead eighteen years and try again,” Jack finished.
“If we have to,” Ianto agreed. “But I think we’d all rather it didn’t come to that.” He kicked at a small stone, sending it skittering along the path. They could see the edge of the town ahead of them now, light shining from unshuttered windows.
“You’re right about that,” Jack said, “but the option’s there if necessary.”
They fell silent then as they made their way into town. There were fewer children waiting for them, the youngest having been sent to their beds, and the mood was more subdued; it was getting late, and people here tended to be up before first light. Still, when they reached the central square, they found Tanisa patiently waiting for their return, her long, grey hair, twisted into a heavy braid, gilded by the golden light streaming from windows and open doors, making her look almost as she might have in her youth. She was a strikingly handsome woman, even now, tall and straight backed, with intelligent grey eyes, and a wide, full-lipped mouth that smiled readily. She wasn’t smiling right now, however.
“Did you learn anything of use?” she asked as they reached her.
“I believe so,” Jack said, leaning his scythe against a nearby wall and setting his lamp down on a bench, before removing the pumpkinhead mask and tucking it under his arm. “From what I’ve found out, Harvester was here thousands of years before your people arrived, but he doesn’t belong here. Like you, he came from somewhere else; presumably he crashed here, and for whatever reason, found himself unable to leave.”
“You discovered all this from examining the corn grubs?”
“From talking with them, actually. They may seem like bugs, but when it comes to alien life forms, appearances can often be deceptive. Turns out they’re an intelligent race with their own language and civilisation. They’re simply trying to survive as best they can in difficult circumstances. All this must once have been their land, but you cleared the native plants that were their food to make way for your own crops.”
“Intelligent?” Tanisa sounded shocked. “Then are we not the invaders, destroying their homes? Perhaps we deserve to suffer when Harvester comes.”
“No.” Jack shook his head. “You didn’t know, which isn’t your fault. You have no way of communicating with the grubs, and when your ancestors first arrived, they were just trying to make the best of the situation they found themselves in. Harvester was here long before you, and he WAS aware that the grubs were sentient, yet he took from them whatever he wanted, forcing them to make a pact with him, which appears to have held until your arrival. At that point, Harvester started getting greedy, taking far more than was fair, and making life increasingly difficult for the grubs. Without Harvester complicating matters, perhaps by now your people might have found a way to peacefully co-exist with the natives. Hopefully we can help you work something out later, a fair agreement between your two peoples. But for the moment, our priority has to be dealing with Harvester.”
“The grubs fear him, even as they worship him,” Ianto said. “In a way, he’s become their God, albeit a cruel and merciless one. They are as much Harvester’s victims as you are, perhaps more so. They hide deep below the ground when he comes because that’s the only way they can survive; they’re as vulnerable to having their life force drained as humans are. Their own population is dwindling, and probably has been since Harvester first arrived here. A balance was achieved for a time, but I suspect that involved allowing Harvester to take a certain percentage of their population each cycle, along with whatever food plants he required. Your arrival upset that balance, and Harvester seems to have completely abandoned the original pact, growing more demanding with each visit.”
“Then what should we do?” Tanisa folded her arms, her expression troubled.
Ianto shrugged. “We stick to the plan. Move the farm families and their livestock to the farms that have already been targeted in the past, trusting that will keep them all safe, evacuate the townsfolk to our spaceship, and then…”
“And then, Ianto and I will see what we can do about stopping Harvester,” Jack finished for his husband. “Permanently.”
“But if Harvester too is a sentient being, do any of us have the right to destroy him? Should we not seek a way to live alongside each other in harmony?”
“Normally, I’d say yes, but he’s already killed hundreds of your people,” Jack pointed out. “Don’t you have the right to defend yourselves by any means necessary? Chances are, he won’t stop until he’s killed every human on the planet, and anyone else who might come here in the future.”
Tanisa gave a slow nod. “This is true. If Harvester was aware that the grubs were intelligent creatures, he must surely know that we also are sentient, yet he has made no effort to communicate with us, or to come to a fair agreement.”
“Exactly. Why should you give him any consideration when he’s never afforded you the same courtesy?”
“We’ll only kill Harvester if we have no other choice,” Ianto added. “If he can be reasoned with, or persuaded to leave, maybe it won’t be necessary, but I wouldn’t count on that. We might not even get the opportunity to try.”
Tanisa inclined her head in gracious acceptance. “Very well, we will follow the plan you have suggested, and then…” She smiled faintly. “What will be, will be.”
TBC in Part 5
(no subject)
Date: 2024-10-31 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-10-31 11:34 pm (UTC)As for what they call themselves, I'm thinking something like Wrrrrticvrrrr. Not sure what it would translate as though.
Thank you!