by Sue Burke
“Stay in the canoe!” I shouted.
Cawzee was making explosive sounds, bounding toward her.
The queen squawked something in response, but did not pause and walked right at a coral. She had no training in the plains and couldn’t have known how deadly they were. But she should have guessed.
She staggered. Cawzee leaped and dragged her into the canoe. The Glassmakers pushed off and paddled toward us as fast as they could. I ran down to the water to meet them.
“Scratcher, first aid!” I called. An amputation, a mere amputation, I hoped. We could do that.
As the canoe approached, I recognized the queen drooping in Cawzee’s arms. Rust. That explained a lot. She would listen to no one, not even her own major trying to save her life. But a dead queen would be a bigger disaster than if all of us died. A family couldn’t live without its queen.
“You will help-her!” Cawzee bawled. I met the canoe and held it stable as the three Glassmakers carried out their limp queen. Scratcher began to work. Honey held the first-aid kit. She looked as scared as I wished I felt, but I felt worse. Hopeless.
Scratcher had them turn her to look at a dripping wound on her chest, poured something on it, then on another wound like it farther down on her belly. He looked into her drooling mouth, put his head on her neck to listen, and felt along her belly. He didn’t seem to be finding what he was looking for, and he was looking for signs of life. He searched again and again, and finally grabbed her limp hands and keened, the Glassmaker sound of grief. The other three clutched her and wailed.
My eardrums rattled in pain with the noise. I sneaked behind the cabin to hold my hands over my ears and think.
At least it wasn’t my fault. Rust should have known better. No one should have let her come, no one, not her family, not any other Glassmakers, not any Humans. But there she was, dead, and I was the team leader, so this was my problem now. First, all that noise might attract something. I couldn’t stay hiding behind the cabin.
The three screeching Glassmakers had sunk to the ground and held her limp body. Cawzee, another major, and a worker. Scratcher and Honey had backed away and looked at me to see what to do. I checked for predators, then motioned them to join me.
“Do we have to kill them?” Honey said.
“No,” Scratcher said, his voice still rough. “They kill-them each.”
“Not here, not while I’m in charge,” I said. “We have things to do and we need all hands. Scratcher, will they understand that?”
“Not kill-them here. At city, at ceremony.”
“Good. The sun’ll set soon, and we need to have this sorted out before then. First, Scratcher, we need them to stop making that noise. It will attract something.”
“Yes,” he said, and walked toward them, emitting a complex smell.
“I’m sorry for them,” I told Honey. “But she was stupid, and look what she did.” Honey nodded. A queen’s family depended on her too much. Right now, those three were blind with grief, blind with fear, blind with abandonment, all alone in a world that needed a queen to provide guidance and control.
I looked at the canoe again and bailed out some water. It could hold three at the most. I tried to figure out a way to get us home safe. We wouldn’t all fit, so I’d have to send some ahead. I’d go last. I made a plan and had time to think it through three times.
When Cawzee seemed coherent, I took him aside.
“Cawzee, tomorrow you must take your queen and Honey to the city.”
“I will kill-me.”
“Not yet. You must honor your queen by taking her home and by escorting Honey to get medical care.”
“My queen be-her dead!”
“And now more than ever you must show how great a queen she was because she has such great majors.”
He stood still, barely breathing. I looked at all three members of her family and hoped I had their attention.
“It will be night soon, and we must prepare. Your queen will be prey to scavengers here. We must take her inside. We will hold a vigil. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“We obey.”
The smell of subservience. And misery.
By the time we were done, it was night. A writhing green aurora lit the sky. It was too cramped inside, so I decided to spend the night outside, guarding, in order to escape the dead body and reek of grief. Honey said she would guard with me, and maybe she belonged safe inside, but I understood why she wanted out.
We took some blankets, the cooking brazier for a fireplace, and some boxes both to sit on and to make more room inside. We left the Glassmakers whining on the floor, grouped around the corpse that was wrapped in her own blankets.
Honey got flames going in the brazier while I inspected the canoe and all sides of the cabin. We decided to burn the remaining bits of log from the raft, since they might attract more big trilobites, and besides, the night was cold, and flames would frighten away most animals, we hoped.
I sat down, slung a blanket around my shoulders, and thought about how to get home. Rust’s other major had told me his queen had become frightened because the moving star in the sky was a spaceship. She didn’t know what would happen, so she wanted her family together. Her trip hadn’t been well planned or even announced. People were too upset about the spaceship to notice her leaving.
We needed to get back to the city. Fast.
A spaceship. Honey had interrogated the major, but she hadn’t learned much. Viewed through a telescope, it was definitely a fair-sized spaceship or something else artificial, and its orbit made it fly over Rainbow City regularly, which couldn’t be an accident. We were being watched from above. By who? Or what? Why?
More trouble was about to happen.
We stared glumly at the landscape and the aurora curling overhead. “Maybe we can see the spaceship!” Honey said.
A pale pink curtain radiated from the horizon and lit the landscape. None of the stars seemed to be moving.
“The sky looks so big here,” she said.
“Yeah. I saw a sky like this, even bigger, when I climbed the mountain. I could see the land below me and the sky down to the horizon. I saw how little the city was compared to the forest, and how the forest was surrounded by mountains and the Coral Plains, and downriver we know there are more plains and the ocean, and beyond them more continents, but we don’t know much. That’s what I thought.”
“We’re small.”
“Yeah. I’ll never be bigger than the things around me, bigger than the city, my team, what we do. But those things can be big.”
Around us, the coral boulders contrasted with the rough rocks and vegetation like the smooth rounded roofs of our city. The corals closest to us began to glow, then others farther away, and soon they were blinking in unison. I pulled my blanket tighter.
“Honey, did you ever think the corals might be aliens, like us and the Glassmakers, but really aliens, at least compared to the forest? We fit in there, in the forest, and we try to, and we’ve made friends and allies, but these corals are trying to take over and get rid of the forest because they need room to live.”
“Every biologist wonders that. Their chemistry is odd compared to the forest, but not too odd. It might be native, it might not be. We don’t know.”
Another thing to add to the tally of potential danger. “What about the ship up there? It really is a ship, right?”
“The telescopes spotted antennas and things,” she said. “It’s a ship. Stevland and the radio technicians heard pings like radar and sensors. It couldn’t be here by accident. Someone came looking for us. Earth.”
“Maybe. Or it could be Glassmakers.”
“Glassmakers always say, ‘Home Mothers not search for us.’ They don’t say why, and they might not even know why, but they’re sure. So I think it’s Earth, and Earth is horrible. The First Generation that settled here almost killed everybody.” She went on for a while, and I wondered what was going on back in the city. That farmer Geraldine, for exam
ple, would be in a panic. The moderator Ladybird would need help.
“It could be something else, too!” Honey said. “If Humans came and Glassmakers came, some other life-form could come.”
“It could be just someone else looking for a green planet. Or a pink one. The Coral Planet, if there is one. Oh! Look at that!”
The corals had started to blink in patterns. We stared silently. The patterns became complex. Soon her lips were moving as she counted. I realized I was holding my breath, my hand clenched on my knife.
“I’ll make a note of this,” she whispered.
I desperately wanted to flee and knew I needed to stay there and say something brave. “We’ve never seen them move. They can’t really do anything if we stay far enough away.”
“It’s probably just communication.”
“Fireflies blink,” I said. But not like that.
Eventually they stopped blinking and the lights faded.
“A Coral Planet,” she said. “Maybe.”
We were quiet again for a while, a long while.
“You’ve been a good leader,” Honey said.
“No, I think the trip’s been a failure. You got hurt, a queen died, the raft was destroyed.”
“We discovered a lot.”
“Still, no one’s going to pay attention with the spaceship stuff. I won’t be a leader again soon.”
“Yes, you will. But you intimidate people, so they’re scared to be on your team.”
“I intimidate people?”
“You’re smart and experienced and sure of yourself and, well, that. They don’t feel equal.”
“I’m not that sure of myself.”
After a while, I got up to patrol. The corals stayed dark. Soon after that, Scratcher came out with the scent of mourning clinging to him.
“Sad. Not my queen, not my sad.”
I put a box next to mine, and he settled down on it, wrapped in his blanket. Soon, his head dropped into my lap. Honey curled up and slept. I kept watch over the dark plains, wondering about aliens and Earth and being sure of myself. I kept the fire bright. Once I saw some glowing eyes looking at us, I threw a rock, and it went away. A few hours later, Scratcher woke up and told me to go to sleep while he kept watch, so I did.
* * *
He was awake when the hint of dawn woke me. The fire was bright and warm.
I sent the canoe off as soon as possible. Rust’s major and worker remained, moping around like it was the end of the world, which for them it was, but the major stood guard reasonably well and the worker helped Scratcher. I got bored, lit the signal fire in case someone else was coming, then went to plant the rest of Stevland’s seeds in the dry riverbed. I found some gold nuggets and flakes there. At the sound of shouting, I looked up to see four canoes coming up the backwash toward our raft.
I wasn’t surprised. A queen couldn’t go missing for long. Each of the rescue canoes held a Glassmaker major and a Human, all experienced hunters and friendly faces. I felt a hundred kilos lighter to see them. We organized our trip back in record time. I’d never wanted to get away from somewhere that bad. With the help of a stiff wind at our back and constant rowing, we were in the city by the next afternoon. They told me a lot while we paddled, and I still had plenty to do to wrap up the trip.
But the city was in an uproar. Who was coming from the sky?
Messenger bats and Stevland had announced our arrival, and Ladybird, Jose, and Thunderclap were waiting to greet us. They were already wearing old clothes for mourning for Rust’s funeral. I thanked them for coming, caught up on some of the news, none of it good, and said goodbye to Scratcher. I knelt down to be eye level with him, and he smelled like a bouquet of flowers.
“The next team I head, you’ll be on it. You’ll be a great addition.”
I escorted Rust’s Glassmakers to the Meeting House. Everyone in the city seemed to be rushing around, and a scent of worry hung in the air, but it was quiet and sad-smelling in the Meeting House. Her body lay in a basket in the chilly north bay of the building, and nine members of her family were settled on the ground facing her. The two Glassmakers with me took their places. I sat next to Cawzee for a while in shared silence. His carni-kat pelt lay in front of him.
Not every member of a queen’s family had to die when she did. A Human could adopt one and act like his queen if the Glassmaker agreed. I’d gotten so used to Cawzee that I didn’t want to see him go. There was a process to follow and the Committee would have appointed someone to handle it. I’d find out who.
Then I stowed my gear and visited Honey at her parents’ home, another island of calm. She was healing fine and had lots to say while her kat Emerald sniffed my boots and coat and finally jumped onto my lap. Honey had already given an hour-long report to the Committee and promised there was a lot more to say, so I should be prepared.
“But,” she said, “don’t expect a real expedition to the plains now! Not with the Earthlings coming.”
“So I’ve heard. They’re sending us radio messages. They’re landing tomorrow.”
“Yes, everyone’s talking about them. Sometimes we can understand them, so we think that’s what they’re saying. I’m surprised Ladybird could get away from the meetings to greet you at the river. We don’t know what the Earthlings want, but I have an idea. They’re coming to settle Pax. They ruined Earth, we know that, so they need a new place to live. But they’ll ruin Pax, too! Maybe we can make them live on the other side of the planet.”
“Ladybird said we don’t know how many they’ll be.”
“On a ship that big? I think a lot of them.” And she explained in detail why.
Finally, I went to see Stevland at a little greenhouse with its clear glass roof, since the Meeting House was occupied. It was a short walk through a busy city, and a lot of people stopped to say welcome back and share their theories about Earth’s return.
Halfway there, I stopped to think about it myself, staring at a little garden between some houses. It was ordinary and mostly bare, since it was winter. Some thorny stalks would sprout flowers in spring and cherries in summer. A ponytail sapling decorated the center, and its long thin leaves hung brown and dry, rustling in the wind. Above them arched the rainbow-striped stalks of Stevland, his leaves still green.
Honey and I had talked as if the corals were the aliens, but maybe green plants were. Maybe the forest was the intruder and had taken over plains that used to be coral. But some small and mostly harmless corals grew in the forest, and some plants were growing in the plains. Things weren’t as separate as they seemed.
The forest wanted to destroy the plains. And yet a lot of things lived in the plains, and they were beautiful. Beautiful and dangerous. Learning that had been a success in a way. Three intelligent species lived in the city, Humans and Glassmakers, both aliens, and Stevland, the last of his kind. Rainbow bamboo used to be the dominant species. He blamed wars between bamboo for its near extinction.
And now Earth Humans were coming, and they weren’t Pacifist Humans. We didn’t know them, and they didn’t know us. We’d all find out about each other soon. I was small, but the things around me could be big.
I felt I was being watched, and not just by those cell-sized eyes on Stevland’s stalks. I turned and saw Fern pretending to be merely walking past. I watched her until she turned a corner. Someday she’d talk to me. I hoped.
I went to the greenhouse and felt more relieved at every step. I’d be glad to talk to Stevland, and he’d be glad to talk to me, and no matter what the spaceship brought, nothing could change that. And Stevland was big.
“Water and sunshine, my friend. I brought you a present.” I opened a little cloth bag and held it in front of the stalk so he could see it. “Gold. We got what we could before carnivorous fippokats came at us. This will help you build radio parts.”
“Warmth and food. You are more important to me than gold.”
“I’m really sorry about the queen.”
“She acted imprudently.
She is responsible for her own death and the deaths of her family. We will miss them.”
I nodded and thought about the loss of an entire family. “I hear Humans from Earth are coming.”
“Tomorrow. Everyone’s getting ready, and there is no calm in the city.”
“Yes, there is, right here in this room. Me.” I still remembered how to talk tough, even if I didn’t mean it anymore.
“You would make Ladybird happy to know someone is calm. You have shown good leadership skills. Be aware that the plans include keeping my sentience secret. We do not know if these Earthlings are peaceful. But we will go ahead with the Glassmaker funeral no matter what.”
“Yeah. About that. I want to adopt Cawzee.”
“Did you become close on the trip?”
“Sort of. I’d really rather adopt Scratcher.”
“Scratcher is close to the end of his life span, sadly. Cawzee should live for at least forty more years. It would be a fine opportunity for him.”
“Yeah, an opportunity.”
“I see these Earthlings as an opportunity, although we are right to be anxious. I doubt this is a one-way trip. I could send my seeds to Earth.”
I laughed.
He said, “I believe I could adapt to its ecology well.”
“You’d end up running the place.”
“Every change or endeavor always brings the opportunity for success, no matter how difficult.”
“Yeah, Earthlings’ll be difficult, so we need to be calm. We can handle them.”
But I was talking out of habit. We might be able to handle them, or we could fail and face disaster, and it might not be our fault, but in any case it would be our problem to solve. We’d find out soon, and I hoped I’d be ready.
3
OMRAKASH BACHCHAN—EARTH YEAR 2443, PAX YEAR 210
During hibernation, we wouldn’t dream. That’s what the medical staff on Earth had told us. They also said we would awake confused. But the moment I regained consciousness I was lucid, aware that I had dreamed for more than a century, the same sweet dream in endless iteration. I had envisaged that after the privations and sacrifices of this journey, I would return home to the comforts of Earth and write an anthropological masterpiece, a study of a secluded society on a distant planet and our success in reuniting them to our species. Oh, the insights into humanity!
