Human Sacrifice

A short story written at Orson Scott Card 's writing boot camp which grew into a story taking place in the Destiny of Dreams universe, probably at a later time.
Basically the only thing that seemed to interest Brother Card in this story was a comment one of the characters made about licking the walls of the cave to get water, so the story evolved in the direction of that element, the people of the cave dividing into a symbiotic group of cave licking bats who cannot leave the cave to get food and humanoid people who feed the bats and eat the bats and depend on the bats to get water.
It has no overlap in specific characters so far, but includes a Paragangian Ship Community which is exploring remote areas of space [possibly a different galaxy], terraforming planets and setting up ship transport gates [ Jump Gates ]. And this transport networking project sounds very much like the one Sharae 's father is working on in the Gift of Time series, so those to projects may grow together and cause this to be set in the generation after Jason Scott-Harris , as Sharae's father probably works for Savoy Sr not Savoy Jr who is in charge of the project During the time of the Human Sacrifice story.
This story is about a dying planet believed to be a dead planet which they are exploring with the intention to verify it is dead to it can be terraformed into a habitable planet.
The people who remain on the planet live in caves in which sentient bats licking water from the walls deeper in the caves is the only source of new water. The bats cannot leave the cave, the people grow insects to sustain the bats at the mouth of the cave [a very dangerous profession] and in exchange the bats sacrifice themselves as a food/water source for the humans who keep them alive. The bats communicate tellepathically, and only some of the people have this bat-speaking ability. The people who are able to speak to the bats consider them to be just as human as the humanoid people, so when they give their lives to feed the humanoid people who feed them it is a sort of voluntary sacrificing their lives for the community.
the protagonist Garr is one of the people who can speak to the bats, and is very attached to one of them. Garr does not want his best bat friend to become food so he leaves the village cave seeking new water---which is certain death for Garr, and thus is a sacrifice similar to that of his bat friends when they become food.
Garr runs into the guys who are about to declare the planet uninhabited and suitable for terraforming. Thus Garr saves his village from destruction by the terraforming procedure, and the terraformers bring water to his village, so he accomplishes his mission. Garr is healed by Paragangian medical technology and considered as a god when he returns to his village.
That's what I remembered of it. I looked up the files and they are so random that I will have to sort several files to extract a solid story line. This story has a long way to go before it is anything readable. Not my top priority but I do find this story interesting.
In one version the half-Paragangian leader of the Teraforming team, Savoy Jr, was a grandchild of Jo Jenzar and Lenn . This would make the Ship Community of the Human Sacrifice story the Marrion Jay , showing again how lazy I am recycling old places and people for new stories. Since Lenn might have shape-shifter genetics, his grandmother [Jonathan's mother] having been a shifter, Savoy Jr's mother could be a shifter, and Savoy Sr could be fairly old when he is seduced by her, in which case Sharae's father could be Savoy? I probably won't go there, but I had to mention the possibility. that makes Savoy Jr a sister of Sharae. If the shape-shifting part Paragangian mother is the heir of the MArrion Jay, it would make sense for this caln to join forces with the man who has been working to extend the transport network, though why a non-paraganigan man is the head of such a project I ahve not yet explained [Paragangian's didn't exist yet when I invented SHarae and said that was the profession of her father]
Category:Other Series