Junction

by Daniel M. Bensen

  Her nose twitched at the smell of sewage. So did Nurul’s.

  “Ugh! I wouldn’t want to eat noodles that smelled like that,” the journalist said. “Are we going to spend another three days hiking through this stuff?”

  Anne tried to stop staring at the camera lens and just answer the question. No wonder Daisuke was half-crazy. “Um. Not according to Sing’s map. She said this biome only runs down the spine of the mountain range.” And, as the thought occurred to her, “Why that would be? Is there a wormhole at the top of the mountain? Why doesn’t this biome extend all the way down to the foothills?”

  Nurul made an encouraging noise through the hand she had placed over her mouth and nose.

  Anne toed an odorous brunette tussock as she tried to visualize the map Sing had drawn. “Sing says this biome dominates the upper slopes of the next mountains over too. But again, not in the valley in the middle. That’s home to three separate biomes. So…the ultraviolet light up here or the low pressure or low temperature or something else gives this stuff an edge?”

  That seemed to be the case. The vegetation grew larger and more varied as they climbed, and fortunately less rank. Or maybe that was just Anne’s nose getting used to the rotting garbage smell of this mountaintop biome. She breathed deeply, then breathed again. The air was definitely rarefied up here, who knew how high above sea level. Who knew if Junction even had seas.

  They made good progress. Anne had been afraid the weird ripply forest would prove to be impenetrable, but the game trail continued right between them. Hip-high soba-weed swished gently between stands of bamboo-like tubes. Except the brown cylindrical stalks didn’t move like bamboo. They were too flexible, too fluid. Looking up at the undulating plants, now four meters tall, Anne was reminded of a kelp forest, which meant….

  “You look like you’re thinking something interesting.”

  Anne turned to look at Nurul. “Sorry, I was just remembering going scuba-diving in the Giant Kelp Marine Forests off Tasmania. There are these tall undulating stalks of seaweed.”

  “Yes.” Nurul gave a little clap. “Good delivery. Good image. Now, why didn’t you just say that when the thought struck you?”

  Anne frowned. “You mean just say everything I think out loud?”

  “Not everything, maybe, but everything interesting,” said Nurul. “You’re an expert on biology, so people will want to hear whatever you have to say about it.”

  “That’s never been my experience,” Anne said. “Most of the time people react like what I’m saying is either boring or gross or insulting.”

  Nurul steepled her hands in front of her chest. “Anne, I promise I will tell you when you are boring or insulting. Trust me.”

  Anne couldn’t help but smile. “Okay.”

  “Good.” Nurul tilted her hands so the tips of her fingers pointed at Anne. “Why do these plants remind you of seaweed?”

  “That’s not important,” said Anne. Oh, that had been rude, hadn’t it? She looked at Nurul who mouthed, Keep talking.

  Anne took a breath. “My point is that these plants shouldn’t be able to stand up under their own weight. Look.” She reached out to the nearest stalk, preparing to feel its texture. But then she remembered she was on an alien planet, in a brand-new biosphere, and it would be a phenomenally stupid idea to go around squeezing the wildlife.

  “What’s wrong?” Nurul’s voice was just a bit higher than professionalism would dictate.

  She’s remembering the last time we went walking together.

  “Don’t worry,” Anne said. “Just let me find a stick or something? I’ll whack one of these, um, kelp-trees with it.”

  They both cast around for a suitable prodding tool, peering into the undulating foliage that lined the trail.

  “I can’t see anything,” said Nurul, “and if you think we shouldn’t touch the plants….” She reached tentatively toward the soba-weed. “Keep your hand away and trust my boots,” Anne said.

  “Your boots?” asked Nurul, but Anne was already standing on one foot, stretching the other into the undergrowth. Brown hairlike strands parted harmlessly over her foot as she swept it back and forth.

  Something tiny, hard, and zebra-striped bounced off her tough boot. Nurul shrieked, but Anne only hopped backward, keeping an eye on the creature, which had fallen onto the path. About the size of the tip of her pinky, the animal writhed on the dirt, pushing out with a muscular organ like the foot of a clam or a human tongue. Except that instead of a simple bag of fluid-filled muscle, this organ was a hollow tube, which could turn inside out and slip over the round little animal like a sock. The creature was now half as long as Anne’s pinky and twice as fat, rolling around in a circle as it brought to bear a sharp little spine.

  Anne ducked aside just as that sock-foot flipped itself inside out, launching the animal into the air. “Huh,” she said as it sailed through the space where her head had just been. “This biome’s equivalent of a flea? A parasite that jumps on a single foot like a tongue. A…linguipod.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Nurul asked. She had pulled her elbows in close to her body, as if cold.

  “Hm? Maybe.” Anne considered. “See that color pattern? That striking black and white? Might be a sign of poison. That little thorn on the front could certainly deliver a dose of venom.”

  It probably wouldn’t do anything to humans, of course, unless they happened to be allergic to it. But still. “Stay away from the soba-weed,” said Anne. “And step out of that linguipod’s flight path.”

  Nurul squeaked and jumped at the same time as the little creature. Its leap arced across the path and toward the weeds on the other side. Before it could land, the linguipod was snatched from the air by what looked like a twisted-up towel.

  “Ooh! Would you look at that?” Anne rushed past Nurul, to where the soba-weed was still rustling. She gave the undergrowth a prod, then a kick, and a hollow log toppled out of the soba-weed.

  The log was about the length and thickness of her forearm, with thick branches along its fibrous sides. One end was capped by a pale growth. Some kind of mushroom?

  “Aha,” said Anne. “A log. Just the sort of thing we need.” She leaned toward it and the log moved. “Or…maybe not?”

  The folds of pale flesh that Anne had mistaken for a mushroom pulsed. Turned inside out. Became a tube. A trunk. An everted proboscis, peppered with eyespots and lined with teeth.

  Anne slowly straightened and backed away. The proboscis stretched after her. The stiff woody limbs rattled against each other and the creature’s tubular body scuttled around to bring Anne into reach. That wasn’t a log at all, but a woody shell.

  “What about that?” said Nurul. “Is that thing dangerous?”

  Anne sidestepped a jab from the proboscis, slid forward, put her toe under the creature’s edge, and flipped it onto its back. “Not anymore,” she said, and watched as its proboscis curved around, trying to lever the animal back onto its feet. It had six legs, Anne saw, arranged not in pairs, but in staggered rows down its sides. And there was also something strange about how they moved.

  “Look at this,” she said, belatedly remembering the bodycams. “Each leg is connected to the, um, trunk, just like the branch of a tree. No joints. The branch extends out and down until it terminates in a sort of cap. The cap moves, but not by muscle-power. See these strands of thread that extend from the cap to the trunk? This animal is…what? Operating its limbs, like a puppeteer.”

  They watched the log-worm as it rocked back and forth, trying to right itself.

  “Still, though,” said Anne, “I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t touch anything here until we get a better picture of how this biome works.” She sighed. “Hopefully Sing will be able to tell us something useful about this place. Otherwise we’ll just have to—”

  “Kick things and hope?” Nurul shrugged. “It’s not as if
we’re live. We can always edit this footage to look like you always found whatever you were looking for on the first try.”

  Anne wasn’t listening. She frowned up at the impossible, bendy trees. “Not to mention the fact that I still don’t know what these damn trees are made of. Hell. It’s as if the animals evolved lignin as their structural chemical and the trees evolved, what…fucking algin?”

  “What’s algin?”

  Anne blinked, annoyed. “It’s the stuff they extract from kelp to make your ice cream thicker and I don’t know what I’m talking about, do I? I don’t want to say something stupid like ‘plants here use algin as a structural component’.”

  Nurul made soothing gestures. “Remember, we can always edit to make you sound cleverer. Now, what was that about ice cream?”

  Anne sighed. “My point is I have no idea whether what’s in these plants is actually algin. In fact, now that I think of it, I’m sure it isn’t, because algin only forms a gum when in the presence of water, and we’re not floating in water. See, that’s why I don’t want to open my mouth before I finish thinking. I wasn’t making any grand scientific observations, I was just distracted by how similar this stuff is to kelp.”

  “So talk about that,” Nurul suggested. “How is it like kelp?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” said Anne. “This stuff has the same kind of holdfast cementing the stalk to rocks and boulders. No root system. Which is also crazy on land. And….” She pointed up. “The same fronds high above. And that doesn’t make sense either.”

  She didn’t wait for Nurul to ask the inevitable ‘why not?’ but went right on. “See how they flap? They’re like flags or streamers, which is great if you want to summon the king. But it’s rubbish for photosynthesizing. Kelp fronds flap like that because they need to stir the water around so they get access to oxygen, and because the surface of the water holds them up, so access to sunlight isn’t an issue. The situation’s reversed up here, so why? And the way they bulge out at the top like…oh, blow me.”

  Nurul jumped. “What’s wrong?”

  “This is why I didn’t want to muse out loud,” said Anne. “Everyone at home will think ‘why didn’t that moron immediately figure out that these things are being held up by buoyancy?’ Just like kelp, except instead of air they’re filled with something lighter than air.”

  She looked triumphantly at Nurul, whose eyes were glazed with incomprehension.

  “In other words,” Anne said, ‘these trees are balloons. Filled with hydrogen, probably. Which” – she snapped her fingers – “they crack out from water or methane or something with the help of ultraviolet radiation, which they can only harvest at high elevation, where the air is thin!” She pumped her fist. “Yes!”

  Nurul applauded. “Oh, I understood most of that.”

  “Thank you!” Anne took a bow.

  “Okay,” Nurul said, “now let’s turn around, get the camera, and film this whole conversation over again.”

  * * *

  When Anne and Nurul returned for the second time to the convoy, it had barely moved.

  “You have to stop,” Anne told the gasping Daisuke and Hariyadi as they strained at the towrope. “You’re going to rupture something.” The air was much thinner here, worse than Anne would have thought possible for a mountain this short. Her heart was pounding with the effort of just standing here, and so was her head. She could only imagine how bad off the men were.

  Daisuke strained, face red, eyes squeezed shut. “Keep,” he groaned, “pulling. Even when vision goes gray, pull. The peak of the mountain is there, and you will come to it.”

  Misha just cursed in Russian from behind the cart, where he and Rahman were pushing.

  Nurul went to go pat her sweating husband on the head and tell him how manly he was. Anne took a more pragmatic approach with Daisuke.

  “Listen, Dice,” she said, “ you have to stop now before you collapse because I don’t want to carry you.”

  “Have to,” he wheezed. “Over mountain. No food here. No fires.”

  “Well, of course we can’t light fires,” said Anne. “The whole damn forest is full of hydrogen. But look. We have food, and we can get water here. Or at least, that’s what Sing told me last time.”

  “So,” Hariyadi groaned, “ask her.”

  Sing was walking behind the cart hand in hand with Tyaney. Or rather wrist in hand. Anne didn’t want to map Western standards onto Nun culture, but it did look very much like Sing’s husband was dragging her up this mountain. He was squinting into the shadows off the trail, but as Anne approached his eyes darted to hers and his lips parted.

  “Ah, Ibu Anne, how nice of you to join me. Are you going to look after my wife for me while I go piss?”

  “No.” Anne shook her head and it pulsed with pain. “I wanted to ask Sing about something.”

  “You can ask her after I piss. Here. Take her hand. Hold on tight.”

  “Wait,” Anne said. “No. Why do we need to watch her?”

  “Just make sure she doesn’t do anything.”

  “Why would she do anything?”

  Tyaney rolled his eyes. “Because she’s a witch and we are in her country! She wasn’t born on Earth like us, remember? She’s corrupted. Just help me, all right?” With a grunt, he slapped Sing’s wrist into Anne’s grip and jogged back down the track.

  “Damn it,” said Anne. She let go of Sing and said, “I’m sorry. Uh…okay?”

  The woman just looked at her, expression stony. Anne wondered if the woman was immune to altitude sickness, or just good at hiding it.

  “We will need to do something about Tyaney,” Misha said. Apparently pushing the cart did not take all of his attention.

  Anne sighed. “I don’t know…I don’t speak Nun. Maybe we’re misinterpreting signals, but—”

  “But Tyaney is abusing her,” Misha said.

  “Tyaney is dog,” said Rahman, who had apparently been listening too. “He is…egois?”

  “Da,” said Misha. “Egoistichnyy. Egoistic. Selfish.”

  “Everything he’s done has been for the sake of his tribe,” Anne protested.

  Misha smiled as he heaved at their cart. “Tribalistic, then. Is not much.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “Look, we have zero context for Nun culture.”

  “So we get context,” said Misha. “Talk to Sing. Teach her English.”

  “Why not learn her language?” Anne said. “Why not teach her Indonesian? Or Russian for that matter?”

  “Because English is easy,” Misha said. “Like baby talk.”

  “Din-lulum!” said Sing. “Metek aleb-ti-a. Din-lulum!”

  “Shut up,” Anne said. “That wasn’t baby talk. That was her own bloody language.” Anne followed the woman’s pointing finger. Kelp-tree stalks grew closer together than trees in a Terran forest, and their tassled balloon crowns blocked most sunlight from the forest floor. Visibility dropped off sharply, except where a narrow, rutted path branched off from their main street. Anne could look down the side path and make out a humped shape in the darkness. Something moved on top of that shape. Something…spun?

  “What that?” asked Rahman.

  Anne took a step toward whatever that was, but Sing’s hand closed on her wrist.

  “Deibuna,” the small woman said. “Metek aleb-ti-a.”

  “This is impossible,” Misha said. “Everything Sing says must to be translated through Tyaney. We need the primitive asshole.”

  Anne wanted to check out the spinning thing in the forest, but first she’d have to deal with Misha’s casual racism. “Would you stop that?” she said. “Tyaney isn’t ‘primitive’. He isn’t a ‘savage’. He’s just a person.”

  “Just an asshole,” Misha said. “He literally says his wife is a witch!”

  “Translation error.”

  Mish
a folded his arms over his chest, creating a wall of hairy muscle between himself and Anne. “Very well. What about actions, then? He sold out his tribe as soon as he figured out that they were sitting on a strategic resource.”

  “He figured out how to leverage the tribe’s assets into a position that would defend them against invaders,” said Anne.

  “No, that was you who did that. Tyaney just wanted to sell to highest bidder,” Misha said. “I know. I know he went to Jayapura. Bought some guns. Learned some new things about wormholes from science fantasy movie. Then went back to village full of ideas and weapons. Went through wormhole and conquered people on other side. Took daughter of chief as newest wife.”

  Rahman nodded. “Yes. Tyaney say.”

  “What sort of sensationalist garbage is that?” Anne said. “You think Sing is a captured princess? Where the hell does that story come from?”

  Misha shrugged, then leaned into the cart for another push. “Listen what he says about her. He talks about capturing her. He says her people are evil. He looks at her like she is new Mercedes he just stole.”

  “Okay, enough of this,” said Anne. “We’re talking about Tyaney and Sing like they’re another couple of aliens we’re observing. They’re people. We just need to talk to Sing.”

  “Oh,” Rahman asked. “How?”

  “Yeah,” said Misha. “Know any words in Sing’s language?”

  “Just a few,” Anne admitted. “‘Tree’. ‘Worm’. ‘Water’. ‘Country’. Um, ‘house’, I think.”

  “Water? We need water!” said Rahman.

  Of course they did. Anne looked around. The side path with Sing’s spinning thing was well behind them now. No point in doubling back, but maybe she could learn more from their native guide.

  “Okay.” Anne leaned down and caught Sing’s eye. The woman had been looking into the soba-weed as if afraid of ambush. “Um, Sing? Water? Mek?”

  Sing looked up. “Mek? Yo metek aleb-ti-a sam mek.”