The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown Page A

signal. A cheer went up from the people. Leah and Rahn moved to the head of the crowd and strode down the clearing towards where the Harvester was penned. The people fell into step behind the Elders and followed them, silent now.
    Hahta found Maatja’s hand and squeezed excitedly.
    All Maatja’s friends, and the adults she had heard talking about the Harvester, thought that the creature was beautiful – as were all the Weird. But Maatja didn’t agree. She thought it was a monster.
    They came to the long-house where the creature lived.
    The long-house was just a thatched roof, perhaps twenty metres long, supported by a dozen pillars. The Harvester occupied the space under the roof, a vast bloated grey mound of fat, so big that its body bulged between the timber pillars. At one end were a dozen tentacles, and at the other end a single, thicker trunk from which the beast excreted phar.
    Now the people lined up and walked past the Harvester, brushing its bulging flank with fingers and murmuring their gratitude. Maatja heard her mother say, “We give thanks for your munificence...”
    Maatja followed, her fingers touching the hard grey hide. She muttered under her breath, “You’re a fat ugly thing and phar tastes like poo.”
    It was the only verbal form of dissent she allowed herself.
    Her father carried a small pail he’d fashioned painstakingly from woven branches and dried mud. They stood in line while the other families received their ration of phar. When her family arrived at the back end of the Harvester, her father knelt before the dangling trunk. He placed the pail beneath the rheumy sphincter and Maatja watched with revulsion as the pink orifice opened and a litre of pale fluid spurted from the beast and filled the receptacle.
    Her mother and father murmured their thanks, rose from their kneeling positions and led the way from the long-house. The next family moved forward, knelt and placed their bucket beneath the trunk.
    She sat outside their hut and her father passed her and Hahta a small ladle. First Hahta dipped it into the thick fluid, lifted it to her lips and drank. She swallowed, then sighed and smiled, and a look of relief crossed her face.
    And now it was Maatja’s turn to simulate delight without spewing up the noxious liquid.
    With rising nausea, she dipped her ladle into the pail, feeling the initial resistance of the fluid and then the give as the ladle broke the surface and filled up quickly. She lifted the ladle, heavy now, and brought it slowly to her mouth. She closed her eyes, felt the rubbery moisture touch her lips, and opened her mouth and drank. The phar seemed to expand in her mouth, filling it completely with its oddly chalky, sour mass, and it was all she could do not to gag and spit out the food.
    She forced herself to swallow, tip the ladle again and take a second gulp.
    Then it was down and it was her father’s turn to drink.
    Maatja smiled in feigned happiness and looked at the fiery circumference of the sun, a great dome now over the jungle canopy.
    Phar day was over for another week. Now the stuff would dry and in its dried form was much easier to eat.
    After the phar meal, Maatja joined her foraging group and moved off into the jungle. If she hated phar day with a vengeance, she loved the foraging that followed.
    She slung her gathering basket over her shoulder and followed Jaar, a boy a little older than herself, and a couple of adults, along the jungle path. Perhaps five hundred paces from the clearing, she looked around. The other foragers, men, women and children, had spread into the jungle in threes and fours, and were hidden from sight. The rule was that you must always remain within sight of your group, for deeper in the jungle rogue Sleer and Outcasts roamed.
    Maatja had taken great delight in disobeying this edict from an early age.
    Now, when she was sure that the adults had gone on well ahead and Jaar’s attention was fixed on the path, Maatja slipped from the worn