Interference

by Sue Burke

“I was told the Earthlings will not give us that technology.”

  “They say we cannot understand, too complex, and they do not have medicine to give it to Humans, mistake will ruin a mind, even on Earth this happens, they say. To give to Glassmakers, not even something to discuss. They are selfish and arrogant. They have little medicine to share, they bring little from home.”

  “Do they suspect anything about Stevland?”

  “They believe with difficulty that I can think. Plants? Laughable.”

  “Do you trust the Earthlings?”

  “No, but each for a different reason. Each is foolish in a different way.”

  Malice?

  “For each other. For us, do you have malice for a child? They think we are children. But they always have interest for us. For me, since I am there. They take samples as if they are biting moths, blood and flesh and even urine and feces, they ask what I eat, how I breathe, how I see. Tiring, I repeat. Now I must depart. Many at the clinic are very sick and need care at all moments. You will come soon and I will have the neurotransmitter. Perhaps it is for Stevland?”

  “Yes.”

  Good. He is safety.

  He patted the baby and nodded again at Chirp. I bade him a loving farewell and watched him return with a bucket of water in each hand. He felt no trust for the Earthlings and wanted to be safe from them, and he was wise. Malice for a child? He could not imagine it, but I had burned with it every day for twenty days.

  Rattle stirred again. If she woke, we could play—no, she and Chirp could play. He would enjoy it, and perhaps he would never notice how little I wanted to do with her. I lifted up the basket and set it on the ground. “Rattle, you can play with Chirp. Would you like that, Chirp?” I did not know how much the baby understood. A worker or major at that age would understand little, perhaps just names, but mothers learned faster. Much faster.

  Chirp was ready to run. Come! he said.

  Come! she repeated, and chased him between the buildings.

  As I watched, I smelled Mother Cheery approaching before I saw her, a sulfur smell like poisonous fruit. She waved at Rattle. We greeted each other, but not hand to hand. Never hand to hand, not since she had developed her own scent. I had thrown her, my daughter, out of my home at the first whiff, and less than a year ago. It was instinct, and when I slammed the door, I fell to the floor, immersed in sorrow. Knowing that she felt sorrow and confusion and worse. Alone.

  Thus it is with all mothers. Once I, too, had been sent out, rejected. I had a house waiting, but empty. Instead I went to the dining hall and told some Human friends, and they congratulated me. They did not understand. Humans cannot.

  I went home that night and slept alone. Alone as seasons changed, night after night. My own mother and her workers and majors greeted me only from a distance. No touch, except from Humans. Sometimes I even slept in their homes for company. I had understood everything that was happening to me, how it was normal, how I could go on, but suddenly my own mother hated me, would hate me forever.

  And worst, I hated her, her scent, remembering all the while how I once loved her utterly. All mothers hate each other, disgust each other. Someday I would hate Rattle, and she would hate me. I could not bear to feel that again. Until she developed her scent, Mother Rust had been high-spirited but affable, agreeable. When her mother threw her out, she changed, and those first few days of madness stretched out into years. Sometimes that happens.

  I hated Cheery.

  “I have news,” she said happily. “The Earthlings desire to take us back with them.”

  “To Earth?”

  “As an honored new species. You know how curious they are. The whole planet will be curious, they say. But it is a long journey, and it takes special medical preparation.”

  “They study Scratcher at the clinic. Perhaps that is why.” I would not let them take him. But Cheery? Good riddance.

  “I desire to go, no perhaps about it. I am curious about them, too.”

  “I learn things I do not desire to know. They desire us to hate our Humans.”

  “Oh, you must be wrong.”

  “Have you talked to Zivon? He speaks only of that. About how we are oppressed. How Humans make us work and they control the city.” Anger.

  “He is right in one way. We must all work very hard. They do not fear hunger on Earth. Can you imagine? We could study, could do nothing but music, but here, you must build with wood, I manage weaving, our workers harvest and cook and build and serve and all the other things every day.”

  Rattle came running back fragrant with laughter as Chirp chased her. She hid beneath me, as if my legs and the hem of my dress were part of the game. I tried not to flinch. Chirp lowered his head and came after her, and, with lots of whistles and clouds of laughter, they continued the chase. I suddenly wished I could play with her like that. But the thought made me ill.

  “Someday she will be another mother,” Cheery said with a whiff of regret. “A good family. But we all send our majors and workers out to hunt and toil and return to us exhausted. All of us must work, Humans too, and all of us must take part in the government and try to decide what to do, and none of us know, and all of us make mistakes and foolish decisions. Our errors could leave us hungry or dead. But we would be free on Earth.”

  She was swollen with her first child, so she was not speaking from experience. And yet she was right about work.

  “We? They will take us all?”

  “They have a big ship. You see it in the telescopes. Perhaps an entire family can go. We can be free. And we are meant to travel, us Glassmakers. This has been a good planet but we do not belong here. Humans can only live here with difficulty. We needed their help. They have been very good for us, so imagine a whole planet of them!” She smelled of hope, pure hope.

  “Free? Imagine the voting.”

  “Free to be us. Free of Stevland. He is good to us, yes, but he is a plant, and we are animals. He has us stay in one place, rooted, like him, because that is how he lives. But that is not how we live. When we travel, we learn what is true. We can go somewhere new, and we will learn much.”

  “I trust no Earthlings, none of them.”

  “You must talk to them, and not just Zivon. Others are good, and they desire what is good for us. You will see.”

  I thought a moment. She knew nothing about the implant we were going to steal, and I decided not to tell her. Instead I said, “That can explain Zivon’s attitude. Some of the Earthlings work together, and they desire us to go with them. So they desire us to hate our Humans.”

  “But they do not all feel like that.”

  I wanted to say something gentle and loving, to be what I used to be even if only for a few words. To be that way again all the time. “You are right. We are always working.”

  “Yes. Now I must prepare something to burn for the celebration. It will be what it looks like. That is all I can say. And you?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You have little time.” She puffed goodbye, turned, and left.

  I called Rattle. She came hopping with Chirp, first on right legs, then on left, clapping to keep time. He had already taught her that! Then a memory made me troubled. We had always had music, but it was the Humans who had taught us to dance again. I put the basket back on Chirp, and we turned toward the clinic. The sky showed that it would rain soon.

  But as we approached, I smelled fear and vomit and feces. The clinic lay on the western side of the city, not in a round stone-and-glass building that we Glassmakers first built so long ago, but a square Human-style one with many windows on all sides. Medics liked light. Stevland liked to look in. Air leaked in and out, and on that air always rode many scents—and sounds.

  “I hurt! Hurt!” That was Cawzee. And groans and retching sounds. Fear. Help!

  And there were Human voices, not less fearful:

  “Help him!”

  “Here, I’ve got it.”

  “He feels hot.”

  “Cawzee,
it will be okay.” That was Arthur, his new mother.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Can you get him to be still?”

  Could I still get the neurotransmitter from Scratcher? And if Cawzee was ill, we too could be ill. Even if I hated Rattle, I had a responsibility. To see her suffer, sick? I dared not think of that, of how it would feel. I would wish her dead.

  “Rattle, stay with Chirp. In your basket. Maybe you two can sing. The song about the moons?” That might keep her occupied for the moment it would take to run inside. I entered carefully.

  There in the reception room, crowded with chairs and tables and shelves, Cawzee writhed on the floor, spewing vomit from one end and diarrhea from the other. Arthur knelt next to him, holding him and mumbling. Our medic, Ivan, knelt on the other side, examining him. The Earth medic looked into a small instrument he held in his hands.

  “Fever, definitely a fever,” Ivan said. “Influenza?”

  “I need a better sample,” said the Earthling.

  I stood there stupidly, trying to believe it. Could we get sick from the Earthlings? Perhaps. Perhaps.

  Scratcher scurried into the reception room carrying a bucket and a mop, then set them down. “Mother!” He touched a pocket of his smock, ran to me, took my hands as if in greeting, and pressed a small box into them. “You must go. Illness. Danger.”

  Rattle came dashing under my legs, babbling the song and laughing.

  Scratcher shrank back. Flee. Urgent. Rattle stopped and looked around.

  The Earthling medic looked at us. I tried to hold my hand with the box out of his line of sight, but I also had to get my baby and go. Or should I leave her? No. I jumped and grabbed her, but there was no space in that room crowded with bodies and furniture to turn around, so I leaped out backward as fast as I could, the hand with the box snug beneath my baby’s fur. She squirmed, but I held tight, wishing to drop her, to hurt her, to let her be hurt.

  Outside, in the fresh air—the theft was accomplished! And Cawzee? Maybe the doctors were wrong. Chirp stood nearby, apologizing.

  I set Rattle down into Chirp’s basket. It began to drizzle. We will go now.

  Go, go, she answered. Hungry.

  Sorry, he said. “She jumped down and ran fast.”

  “It is not your fault.” We were all sick already if we could get influenza, because we had all been exposed for days and days. And if Earth medicine did not work for Humans on Pax, much less then for Glassmakers. And what other illnesses would be on Earth?

  I opened my hand to see the prize we had schemed to get. The box was the opaque yellow of the Earth substance called plastic, small, yet it seemed too large to hold a bit of electronics to put into a Human brain—much empty space lay inside, I supposed. The box weighed almost nothing and looked plain. All Earthling creations looked drab. They had no sense of beauty. I slipped it into a pocket. Stevland would have seen that I had it and would be waiting. I had questions for him.

  But I saw behind me an Earthling approaching, Om, with Dakota, a Human who helped translate Glassmade for him. Mother Cheery had said I should talk to the Earthlings.

  “Chirp, take her home.” It had started to rain. “I will come home later.” I petted him—not her! but I should have—and he dashed off.

  “Queen Thunderclap,” Om said, “can I have a brief word with you? About the Spring Festival. What you think of it, and what it means to you. If you do not mind.”

  Om, the nervous one that some of his own team disparaged, was tall, slow, but not so pale or fragile, and spoke passably good English with less accent than Zivon. He wore Earthling clothing over his suit and looked out of place rather than odd. A cold, heavy raindrop fell on my left eye, beaded, and as it dripped off, it created distorted images of buildings, muddy gardens, and green Stevland. More rain began to fall, each drop like a noisy pebble.

  He stood there, half turned away as if to protect himself from me, waiting.

  “Let’s talk in the museum,” Dakota said, pointing to the building close by. She ran ahead and opened the door, and since I moved faster, I arrived first, followed by Om.

  Inside, rain rattled on the glass dome, and the stormy light was barely enough to illuminate the display tables topped with clear glass, and the other exhibitions. I knew he had been there before, since all the Earthlings had received tours of almost everything in the city and its surroundings, but had he paid attention?

  Dakota closed the door and smiled at me when he could not see. She wanted to have sex with Om, not because she liked him but because Pax Humans needed new genetic material, and Stevland had determined that he would be a good match for her. Stevland had shown us mothers a scent that would inspire sexual response, complex but not difficult, and not something they would consciously notice. Should I emit it?

  “What does he desire to know?” I asked. She repeated the question to him with no hint that I should do anything for her. Yet.

  He looked into the air at something his radio transmitter sent him, and he asked with his entertaining singsong accent, “What is your opinion of the Spring Festival? It existed before Glassmakers came to the city, so it is a Human holiday. Do you feel a part of it? If I may ask.”

  Dakota looked at me with apology drooping on her face, knowing how annoying the question was, waiting for my reply.

  “It is a Pax holiday,” I said, “not a Human one. We were all looking for this city.”

  She translated. He seemed to stare into space, probably doing things with the neurotransmitter. If Stevland was right, was he also sharing our discussion with other Earthlings?

  “That is what you have been told, I think,” he said. But his meaning hung like a scent: what I believed was not true. Just like Zivon, insisting we were used by our Humans.

  “Come look at this,” I said, and walked to the exhibit in the middle of the room that re-created in miniature the city as the Humans had discovered it, in ruins.

  “We built the city, then we left, and while we were gone, the Humans came. Do you know why we left? Our health was failing because we could not survive on this strange planet. We had originally been a nomadic people, so we left to become nomadic again to see if we would survive better that way.”

  Dakota had not finished her translation when he responded. He did not care what I said.

  “And you came back and the city had been taken over by Humans.”

  “Yes. By then we were in an even worse state, with very few survivors, very few mothers. But the Humans gave us homes.”

  I wanted to add that Stevland had helped the Humans, too, that we would all probably be dead without him and the other plants who helped us. And that Om and the other Earthlings should have stayed at their own planet.

  “They gave you homes only after a war with a high price.”

  He knew the story. Dakota sighed and smelled my anger. I decided to answer as if he were Zivon, using precision as a way to express my feelings.

  “Some Glassmakers tried to kill all the Humans. And they lost. But others of us had already been welcomed into the city, and the Humans protected us from the Glassmakers who fought. The Glassmakers who fought all died. We who hoped to live in peace then became citizens equal to the Humans, and now we work together, and the city is beautiful!”

  “That is the story,” he said. “Where are you from? Your home planet, where was it?”

  “We forgot. Forgot almost everything. When we came back to the city, Humans could write our language better than we could.”

  “And you practice Human culture more than your own.” He was sounding even more like Zivon. Why did they hate Humans? Perhaps it was like mothers hating each other.

  “It is not the Humans’ fault. Come and look.” I led him to a side dome that re-created a Glassmaker nomadic tent. It held a small loom, wooden bowls, a few stone and wood tools, and some coarse blankets. “These are the riches that a mother like me would have had. We could not even make glass anymore. Look at that blanket. That is what I would have wor
n. Now look at this tunic.”

  I spread my arms to show him the brocade. It fell in wide sleeves from my arms and draped around my legs in a design that re-created the colors and even the textures of a bed of spring flowers. “It is warm and beautiful. Humans and Glassmakers made this together. And together we all eat and are well and safe.”

  “But do they need you? They were living well without you.”

  Dakota did not wait for me. “We’re a lot better with them, a lot more productive. They do great work.”

  “But you do not need them.”

  She shook her head. “We would have failed if we hadn’t found this city. We were lucky the Glassmakers made this city. Lucky lucky.”

  “You feel defensive about them.”

  “We…” She looked around the room, then up at the roof, where rain still drummed on the rainbow glass. “We’re all the same.”

  “I have a question,” I said. He looked down at me intensely. “Do you plan to take Glassmakers to Earth?”

  His face did not change. “Well, yes, perhaps. We have the facilities to take back specimens.”

  I looked at Dakota. “That means Pacifists, right? Both Humans and Glassmakers?”

  “I think so.”

  “Ask him to clarify.”

  She did.

  He tensed his lips. “Well, the ship is not large, you know. And there are medical problems with hibernation travel. So … we were thinking perhaps a queen. She could come with us to Earth and establish Glassmakers there. I know we are asking a lot, so I will understand completely if you say no.” He cowered just a bit as he spoke.

  “Just one Glassmaker,” I said. Maybe Rattle. He would take my baby and raise her far away. Where she would not be equal, for she would be alone. If she did not sicken and die. But I would send her away before I truly detested her, before I became truly mad.

  Dakota translated, looking at me with narrowed eyes. Did she understand what this might mean to me?

  “Ah, you think I mean your baby,” he said. “Well … well, we can talk more later. Or perhaps just some DNA so we could reconstruct the species.”

  Dakota looked at him and at me. She waited. He turned to look at the replica of the ruined city.