Interference

by Sue Burke

  “You’d be a great addition.”

  “You will be a great team leader.”

  I got some seeds and took them and my weapons and gear to the raft. Scratcher and Honey were arguing about how to store the food. I had the final word, and I used it. “We’ll sort this out tomorrow.”

  Then my worker and I ate an early dinner. We had finished up and were outside in the cold headed home when Cawzee approached. Scratcher gripped my hand tight. He smelled something I couldn’t.

  “I be-me going with you,” Cawzee announced.

  “I’ve got my team already.”

  “I will prove my skill to my queen.”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow and things are set.”

  “You need a warrior. Honey and Scratcher be-they useless. I will guard-you the team.”

  We did need a guard, but he was no expert, and not even Honey was useless. I heard someone approaching. Four feet, by the pattern of the footsteps, a Glassmaker, and a heavy one. A hint of clumsiness, also the way Cawzee tensed up, told me who it was.

  “Good evening, Queen Rust,” I said in poorly imitated Glassmade just to annoy her.

  “You know me?” She sounded more annoyed than usual. “You not smell me.”

  “I know you by the sound, Queen. I’m a hunter. I listen.”

  “You will take-you my major.”

  “I have a team.”

  “He will be-he on your team.”

  I tried to bluff. “He will need weapons, lots of weapons. We don’t know what we’re facing. You might really lose him this time. And he needs clothing, enough to spend all day and all night in the worst weather, because he will be on guard all the time. And he needs all this by one hour after dawn.”

  I glared at her but didn’t hint that we were leaving exactly at dawn, so he’d arrive late. She scented something rude.

  “He will have-him all this.” And they walked off, no anointing, no goodbyes, and I didn’t say that he’d be a great addition to the team.

  “We need-us more food,” Scratcher said. “I get-us it.” There was that tired smell again.

  I went to bed early, but I didn’t fall asleep fast. Scratcher came in a little later, curled up, made a happy smell, then a tired smell, then fidgeted for a while.

  * * *

  I woke up to the birds and crab calls before dawn, and coaxed him awake. We got the bats, fed them, grabbed breakfast, got a big basket of travel bread at the bakery, and headed for the raft.

  Little plaques of ice had formed on the logs. No one had come to see us off and wish us luck, not my family or any Black Hats or hunters or Scratcher’s family or city leaders. No one except for the guard lounging up on the wall at the gate, who waved and shouted good luck. That’s how important we were. We began loading up the raft.

  Honey arrived. She looked to be dressed properly, with a rain poncho over a winter coat, a brimmed rainproof hat, heavy slacks and boots under her knee-length skirt, and her hair braided and out of the way. Scratcher had done his job. But she was carrying a fippokat.

  “This is Emerald.” She hugged the animal. “She has lots of experience digging for geological work.”

  “You’re not taking her.”

  “I’ll take good care of her. We’ll need her.”

  “She’ll get killed the first time she tries to dig. You can’t walk in the plains without boots and protection. Does that kat have boots?”

  “There are kats in the plains.”

  “Not that kind.”

  “She has tough paw pads. Look.”

  I took the paw, then pinched Emerald hard on the ankle. The kat whined and squirmed. I don’t like hurting animals, but I had a point to make. “It’ll be that easy for her to get stung and killed.”

  She pouted. “I don’t want to go without my Emerald.”

  “Okay. Stay here.”

  “If I can’t go, you can’t have my maps.”

  “I’ve already got your maps.”

  The sun was about to rise, and I didn’t see Cawzee. Maybe we’d get away without him if Honey didn’t make us waste too much time. I looked up, and the guard on the wall was waving and pointing so I’d know a team member was on his way.

  There came Cawzee, staggering fast down the river bluff road with side baskets loaded with weapons and clothes. Scratcher made a tired scent.

  “Cawzee’s coming,” I told Honey in a taunting tone. That made him good for something.

  “Why? We don’t need him.”

  “Tell his queen. Go ahead. Try.”

  “If he’s coming, I’m coming.”

  “Good. You’re a great addition. Without the kat.”

  She looked at me, at the kat, at Cawzee, at me again, then at the kat again. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Run,” I said. Scratcher was already rearranging the tiny cabin. I helped him, and I was surprised he made it all fit, and we were done before Honey got back so she couldn’t object, and all the while Cawzee stood by on guard, as if we could get attacked at the dock.

  We cast off and I raised the sail. I noticed the stand of rainbow bamboo growing near the docks and knew Stevland was watching. Someone was seeing us off. In fact, there were scattered groves of him here and there all the way up the river. He’d be with us until we got to the Coral Plains.

  The first day nothing happened. The current was slow, the wind got funneled onto the river, the sail worked great, we punted as needed, and the raft floated as gracefully on the river as a cactus through the air. We set the bats’ roost on a corner of the roof, and they flew around occasionally but didn’t say much and weren’t ambitious. It was cold, but I was used to it. Honey shivered but didn’t complain. Cawzee did. Scratcher either made himself useful or sat with his legs underneath him on the roof of the cabin and looked around in sweet silence.

  We tied up for the night. Scratcher cooked and fed us a good meal. I thought about the hunting sites I’d seen along the river. Cawzee paced nervously on the deck and the roof. Honey scribbled in a notebook. Eventually we all crowded inside the cabin and slept.

  * * *

  The second day, the same. We got near the war zone a little early and tied up, then stacked ourselves into the shelves that passed for beds and slept.

  * * *

  Bird calls woke me a little before dawn. I also heard bat calls, but it wasn’t the language of bats from Rainbow City, and ours were eager to fly. I let them go and set out food so they wouldn’t forget to return. By then the rest of the team was waking up. Scratcher prepared food while Cawzee took a little patrol. Honey was jumping for joy because we’d be at the Coral Plains in no time.

  We poled the remaining little way up the river as fast as we could to the war zone. None of us had seen it, but we couldn’t mistake it. Suddenly up ahead, a wide mass of tree roots crossed the river, topped by leafy shoots and branches. It looked like the river was dammed, but it continued to flow through a net of roots below the water.

  “Agate trees!” Honey said. “They thrive on the war! That’s how they get silicon, they kill the corals and absorb the shells.” She continued to explain the ecology and how little symbiotic animals amid the roots helped one side or the other. Meanwhile I sent Cawzee to find a path across the roots. Scratcher began to dismantle the raft. The bats flew around and had nothing more to say than “No trees! Come! See!” so at least there was no danger they could identify on the other side. But these bats had never been to the Coral Plains.

  Cawzee called, “I be-me on other side, easy way! Come! I have done-you your task!” It wasn’t that easy, and the dam was almost a hundred meters across, but we could do it. Soon we had moved the four logs, then some pieces of the cabin frame, and were setting them up on the logs. As I was tying them down, something struck my heel.

  I turned, grabbing my spear. The biggest venomous crayfish I had ever seen was climbing onto the raft, and other crayfish were reaching up behind it. I swung the spearhead like a scythe and knocked it off.

  Before I coul
d warn Cawzee, he screamed, “Crayfish! I fight them!”

  I ran toward the side near the cabin, where more were climbing up, and slipped as the logs shifted. I dropped the spear to grab a cable. The last thing I wanted to do was fall into the water. It would be the last thing I would ever do.

  Cawzee came running around from the other side. “More! I kill them!” He stabbed at them a little clumsily because Glassmakers have strange elbows. But he moved quick, hitting one, then two. On the third, he bent down to strike low. “I make raft safe. I be-me good guard!”

  “You’re a fine guard,” I said. I picked up my spear and watched him toss away the dying crayfish. Somewhere, sometime, he had learned something.

  We heard Scratcher and Honey arguing even before they came through the little forest that topped the dam, carrying the final load. They looked at us and our unfinished task as if we had been goofing off. We got to work again, Cawzee and I with an eye on the water at all times, and soon we put up the mast. We were done. Ahead of us stood no more trees, just wide plains pocked by low growth.

  “Let’s tie up and explore!” Honey said.

  “Let’s just go slow and look,” I said. “Listen. We’re not alone.”

  Near and far, things were clicking and buzzing, totally different from the forest. No leaves rustled because there were no leaves. It sounded wrong.

  The soil on the banks and plains shimmered light red and looked rocky, but many of the rocks and pebbles were alive, different kinds of coral. We could see a long way, across flat, wet land that gradually gave way to low rises separated by rills carved by rainwater. Clumps of brush grew on the tops of the rills. Some were mere sticks hung with brown ruffles, some were shaped like upside-down bottles with green bladelike leaves on top, or squarish boxes covered with blue thorns thick as fur. Sprays of red quitch grass grew wherever there was enough empty dirt.

  The river bottom sometimes felt sandy, sometimes mucky. Occasionally something struck the pole. The air smelled like wet decay with a hint of sulfur.

  I pulled out a small telescope and didn’t see anything different far away. I don’t know what I’d expected, signs of civilization?

  Behind us, the forest rose like a wall, a dark layer of short agate trees in front of taller locustwood and pine, and among them, maybe, a rainbow bamboo, or maybe I was just hoping too hard. It was winter, so most trees stood bare, but even still, the ones closest to the plains seemed sickly. A swamp lay between the forest and plains. Fuzzy red filaments rose up from the water to wrap around trunks of trees that had fallen into it fighting for us. What a way to die.

  Honey saw me looking through the telescope. “There’s a whole ecosystem at work here,” she said. “It’s so different!”

  “It be-it ugly,” Cawzee said.

  “For once,” I said, “I’ll go with him.”

  Something splashed and thudded on the far side of the raft. Scratcher was there! We all jumped and ran to help him. He held up a big two-tail fish in one hand and a little hooked spear in the other.

  “Food.”

  I raised the sail and we took off, tacking through the meanders of the river. Honey sat on the roof of the cabin, narrating nonstop about whether the land and the map agreed, and scribbled down everything we saw. We had to report back, but not all of us might make it.

  Cawzee spotted a pair of crabs scrambling among the plants and corals on the far side of the river, patterned red, yellow, and green, big enough to have killed Honey’s kat easily. She made a note and was silent for a little while, but not as long as I would have liked.

  We beached for lunch, by then maybe ten kilometers upstream. The landscape had become thicker with corals and plants. I stepped gently out onto the ground. It felt spongy under a surface layer of scattered corals like pebbles, some round but others shaped like branches or horns or fans, red, pink, purple, blue, or dead and white. The dead ones crunched under my soles, empty. I stood still and felt tiny knocks from the live ones, corals sending out darts to attack.

  “Watch out,” I said. “Big corals will have big darts. Keep your distance.”

  But Honey had to try to prod a boulder with a pole. The dart sprang out longer than her arm. “Whoa, that’s good to know!” she said, and made a note.

  I stabbed some holes in a clear area with a pole and planted a few of Stevland’s seeds. Good luck, friend. Maybe the stink meant the soil was fertile.

  I felt glad to be back on the boat. We ate. The fish was delicious. Two hours upstream, Honey motioned to stop.

  “Look, fippokats, sort of!” she whispered. “There by the trees!”

  For a second, I saw nothing, but the shape of a shadow gave away a fippokat colored in red, black, and white that blended perfectly into the landscape. It even had red-tufted ears that looked like grass. There was a group of them, maybe twenty, now obvious since I knew what to look for, including a couple of little baby kits that were the cutest things I’d ever seen. The adults were three times the size of Emerald. Their paws and legs were thick with fur.

  “We don’t want to draw their attention,” Honey whispered. “Carnivorous kats. They hunt in packs.”

  “My kind of pet.”

  “A long time ago, they killed two members of an expedition.”

  “What you-see?” Cawzee squawked.

  His shout got their attention. The two biggest ones took a few hops toward us. They could have easily hopped from the shore to our raft.

  “I not see something.”

  “They’re part red,” Honey said. “Glassmakers can’t see red well.”

  I grabbed a pole and shoved us away upstream. The carni-kats hopped along the bank to keep up. One snarled. It had big fangs.

  Honey began scribbling. “There’s another kind of kat that lives in the hollow trunks of the box trees with blue thorns. Those have blue fur. We don’t know much about them. Maybe we can look for them!”

  “We’re here to see if anything changed.”

  “Oh, right!”

  We were there to look for danger. Carni-kats in our forest would be a big one.

  As we moved on, we noticed more and bigger corals, some round and more than a meter tall, arranged in lines. The weather stayed clear and cold. Scratcher brewed tea over embers in a pottery brazier, and served it with dried fruit.

  “Thanks,” Honey said. “You know, with all the predators, there should be more animals in general.”

  “Why?” Scratcher said.

  “To feed them.”

  He watched the landscape slide past. “Yes. Water and food.”

  “If I were food,” I said, “I’d be hiding. The reports said that there are a lot of caterpillars and herds of giant land trilobites, at least in summer. Maybe a lot goes on underground, or maybe the animals are hiding. Even in the forest, it’s hard to find the animals, but they’re there.”

  Honey draped the map over the back of the cabin and pointed. “We’re here right now, I think, and you can see that just up there, the river splits. We have to choose.”

  “We’ll decide when we get there.”

  When we got there, it was obvious. The branch to our right, to the southwest, flowed full and apparently normal. But the southeast branch was dry. There was a backwash for a ways, and farther up a dry, rocky riverbed. Dried weeds stood stiff, and some of the corals along the edges looked dead and dry.

  “It hasn’t been dry for long,” I said. “A year or two, probably.”

  Far up the riverbed, seen through the telescope, stood a now dry waterfall over a ridge of light-colored rocks.

  “Well, now we know!” Honey said.

  “How water stop-it in river?” Cawzee asked.

  “That’s the question!” she answered. “I think it was the earthquake! The books say earthquakes can alter riverbeds.”

  I pulled us out of the main current. “Now we know. We can turn back.” But I really wanted to climb that ridge and see what was on the other side.

  “No,” Honey said. “We should s
ee what’s on the other side of that hill.”

  “Cawzee?” I said.

  “How water stop-it in river? We find answer there.”

  “Scratcher?”

  “We go-us to hill, see.”

  “We all agree, then.”

  I punted us up as far as I could and we dragged the raft onto sort of a sandbar. The water wasn’t safe, the land wasn’t safe, and the sandbar seemed to be neither water nor land and all the safety we were going to get. I decided we’d hike to the hill first thing the next morning, since the sun would set soon and storm clouds were blowing in, nothing too bad, I hoped.

  We tried to examine a big pink coral near the riverbed without getting too close. Its surface was rough and pitted, openings for eyes, ears, stingers, or whatever, Honey said. An animal lived inside and sucked nutrients from below and from anything that came near. Scratcher caught a little fish and threw it at the coral. A stinger flew out and hit it. The dead fish landed on a carpet of little corals around it.

  “It could all be one big animal,” Honey said.

  “Sort of like Stevland,” I said, “with groves all connected by roots.” Without trees and big hills, the land stretched all around us, and I felt exposed, the way I did standing in the middle of big fields. Nowhere to hide. But I could also spot anything coming.

  “Could we live here?” she asked. “Humans and Glassmakers?”

  “I don’t know. The forest hates the plains. This whole place is poison. And the ground vibrates like things are moving under there.”

  “Yes! Look how wet the soil is! This is rich soil, but maybe not for us.”

  Then it started to sleet, and we headed for cover. The rain hadn’t let up by the time we were ready to sleep, and when Cawzee and I made a final patrol, we saw that some of the corals were glowing. The air had filled with the sound of clicking, mostly in unison. But nothing was attacking, so we went back in and slept.

  * * *

  We woke up to a clear dawn and began hiking as soon as we could, Scratcher laden with first-aid supplies, Cawzee and I with weapons, and Honey with the telescope and a notebook. We wore our toughest clothes. We’d need to avoid the round corals, and I spotted a good path higher up.