by Sue Burke
She reaches for a headset in a box by the door. She speaks into it. “How about this?”
“I hear you,” I say. “We used to have a small power source using a crank to generate electricity, but Earthlings have enormous power sources, and Chut connected me to them two days ago. I can broadcast far.”
She leaves and tries from somewhere outside. It works despite the static.
“I’ll keep this for today. We might need it.”
“I hope not. Warmth and food.”
Mirlo is examining the fruit from Laurentia, but without the network, he cannot relay his discoveries to me at will. He comes outside to talk to a stalk and says most of the equipment cannot be used at all. He says the Mu Rees are working with their samples from Laurentia, but they, too, face serious limits. They are even more hampered by their emotional state. Mirlo has persuaded them to see to the care and feeding of living samples as a minimum.
Haus finds Karola entering the dishwashing workshop. “I want to learn about the Glassmakers. You speak their language, right?”
She looks at him impassively but takes a half step backward. “A little. Written Glassmade, that is. And spoken—it’s tonal syllabic, with additional information provided by scents. We can’t understand their scents well. We don’t have the noses for it.”
“So you don’t speak Glassmade.”
“Well, hardly. They understand Classic English perfectly. How’s your English?”
He grunts. “Who would be the right one to talk to? For military. For fighting. Like today’s fighting.”
“Probably a major. Queens don’t fight, they command.”
A major is dashing through the city toward them.
“It’s a waste of your time to be washing dishes,” Haus says.
“I can learn more here about anything than at a Committee meeting.”
The major interrupts. He carries a sword lashed to his belt and holds a weighted spear. He points to her. “You, Kaahrul, will work here. And you, Auzz, will come with me.”
“What did he say?”
“Go with him.”
Haus looks at the major’s weapons and raises his hands. “I surrender.” He looks more angry than afraid. The worker escorts him to a weapons workshop. As the morning passes, he learns to create arrows. He is frustrated at first, and I think he would leave, but he seems afraid of the major, even though he is armed with better weapons. And to the extent he can, he talks about fighting with the major and the Pax workers, so perhaps he is getting what he wished. But I am concerned about his work being assigned without his choice or consent. That is in violation of Pax custom.
In the city and workshops and fields, teams work throughout the morning, some more normally than others. Besides Zivon and Om, who work willingly despite being assigned the most menial tasks since they have limited farming skills, few Earthlings have joined teams. The technicians and scientists have their own work to attend to.
The queens meet an hour before noon in a garden. They agree to work together to maintain peace, and while they differ in their opinions of Earthlings, they set that aside.
“We will make the Earthlings work,” Thunderclap says.
“All will work,” Cheery says. “We will oversee.”
“One question,” Queen Chut says. “Humans work on their technology, many to repair their network communications system. They cannot leave Pax for Earth without it. If we make them work on other things, they must stay. If we let them work on Abacus, they can leave.”
“They do not all want to leave. They fight each other, too,” Thunderclap says.
“If they cannot leave, they cannot fight, they have no reason, new and old Humans,” another queen says. “There is peace. So they will work.” By scent, they mostly agree. They begin to plan assignments.
I object to this plan. I must tell Ladybird and ask her advice.
I search for her and cannot find her or reach her by radio. The Meeting House is constantly monitored today as most days by an elderly woman with a rheumatic illness that limits her mobility. She sits, spins, or sews, tells stories and jokes, and when possible goads small children to play the pranks she no longer can.
She is sewing a shirt as noon approaches.
“Warmth and food,” I say through the speakers there. “I am looking for Ladybird.”
“And no one else can talk to you. Everyone busy busy busy, too busy to fight, at least. I haven’t seen her myself, but I can ask.”
She picks up her crutches and hobbles to the door. She talks to a passing worker, who hurries off. Inquiries from the Meeting House customarily get priority.
She returns and takes her seat, generously cushioned with pillows. “We’ll know soon. How goes it today? Besides the fight. I’ve heard all about that. Don’t take sides, that’s my advice for you. No one is going to win this fight except the people who stay out of it.”
“Today goes badly.” I tell her about the network failure.
The worker jumps into the Meeting House and announces, “Ladybird works in onion field today near Ponytail Tree Grove.”
She thanks him. “There you are. Water and sunshine, and at least you have that today. Come back when you don’t have to work so hard.”
“Warmth and food, and thank you.”
Ladybird frequently works in the fields, especially during sowing and harvest. Onion fields are alongside the river in land too wet for my roots and shoots, so I cannot see what is there. I wonder if she volunteered for this job.
Normally many teams return to the dining hall for lunch, or at least send someone to pick up food. The queens plan to use the lunch break to reassign anyone not working. The shadow of the sun reaches due north. Every team has at least one if not two Glassmaker guards, with runners and guards shouting so that they remain in constant contact with each other. They are armed, and runners have distributed more weapons as the morning passed.
At noon, these guards make decisions. In some teams, by agreement—among the Glassmakers, not the team members themselves—one person is dispatched to the dining hall to fetch lunch.
“Oh, come on!” Geraldine whines. “Let us go get real food, hot food.”
Scratcher, one of her team’s guards, scents agreement but is overwhelmed by the major with him, a major from a different family, who says no. “You will stay and sit and eat.”
Geraldine and the other team members look around. They are in a lettuce field, and the only places to sit would be on mud or in weed patches doubtless filled with thorns and nipping geckos. Glassmakers can comfortably stand for long periods of time, but not most Humans. They seem outraged and intimidated.
That is the lettuce team, but the team in one of the pineapple fields accepts this imposition as good and proper and wise, perhaps because they have places to sit and they are Generation 11.
Yet other teams are permitted to go to the dining hall, and I do not know the logic behind these choices. They arrived escorted and eat watched over, sitting not where they please but where their guards order. I learn that from the orders exclaimed inside and comments mumbled outside. When they leave, I observe glum faces and reproachful glances.
As the Earthlings arrive for lunch, they are met at the doorway by Glassmakers, who order them to eat and then report to their afternoon job: kitchen, laundry, baker, gift center attendant, fisher, weaver, or field-worker. Pollux is a drama to behold as he is assigned to tend onions over his objection that he is blind. He is escorted there anyway. My humor root is amused to think he might be working alongside Ladybird, whom he hates.
“But the network—” Funsani says.
“We weren’t getting anywhere anyway,” Ernst answers, teeth clenched.
“We have to care for our animals,” a Mu Ree says. “The samples from Laurentia. You’ve seen them.”
The Glassmakers discuss this and reach a decision. One Mu Ree will stay and care for them, the other two will go work, one in a field, one in a carpentry workshop. They stare at the Glassmakers an
d then at each other, mouths open. They begin to weep again. A worker gives one of them a hug around the waist, since Earthlings are so much taller than workers. But the order stands.
And thus begins one of the quietest afternoons ever in the city. No one wanders the street on some errand or in search of companionship. Teams work without fighting, jokes, shared ideas, or the little quarrels often resolved with laughter that would routinely punctuate work, without the chatter that normally accompanies every moment of every day. Without songs. Even schoolchildren are subdued, with a Glassmaker guard in the classroom.
Dinnertime approaches, queens meet and agree on a plan, and messengers scurry. Families with small children are assigned to eat at home, with one member allowed to go to the dining hall to pick up food. Everyone else is assigned a different time to eat that seems random, although I observe that generations are spread out and teams are split up too perfectly to be random. The queens are clever.
Ladybird arrives with mud caking her boots and the hem of her skirt. “I will take some food and eat in the greenhouse,” she tells her guard, with the bearing of an irate fippolion. She arrives at the greenhouse with a tray of steaming food. She sets it on the table and cranks the power unit for me.
“I’m too upset to want to eat, but I have to. This is going to be a long night.” She rarely behaves with such anger.
“Warmth and food,” I say. “I have wanted to talk to you since this morning. The queens have decided to make the Earthling technicians report to fields and workshops so the network cannot be repaired, believing that if the Earthlings cannot leave, there will be nothing to fight over, neither by Pacifists nor by Earthlings. I do not agree.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. I give her time to think. She eats several bites of braised crab.
Finally I add, “I do not know if we should discuss this at the Committee meeting. A more important topic might be—”
She interrupts. “No Committee meeting tonight. Queens’ orders. No public gatherings. No Philosopher’s Club, no team meetings. We all stay home tonight.”
“But—”
“But we meet almost every night. I know. We don’t have to. Read the Constitution. We only have to have meetings three times a year.”
“Or when the moderator calls. Article Six.”
“With adequate notice,” she says. “By custom, that means at least a day’s notice. So we can hold one tomorrow. I think we should, but today, well, it wasn’t really formally called. I know I said this morning at the fight that everyone would be heard, and the queens have made a liar out of me. Oh, and the queens seem to think you’re on the side of the Earthlings. You work very closely with them, after all.”
“I work with them to further our own interests.” I almost said my own interests, but that would have been too true to speak.
“I know that. And you’re hiding so that if there’s a problem, you can take care of it. You infiltrated their communications systems. Queen Chut knows that.”
“If they believe I side with the Earthlings, I must rewin their trust.”
She looks at my speaker as if I said I would stop the movement of the sun. “And about the Earthlings,” she says, “I don’t know how they did today in their work assignments. The queens would know.”
“Perhaps we should meet with the queens, just you and me and them. The queens are meeting now in one of their homes.”
She sighs. “Maybe, but it would be a hostile meeting. Notice that they’re not meeting in the Meeting House. One reason could be that you’re there and could listen and participate.” She looks at her tray of food. “I should eat more. This is no time to waste food.”
“I wish we knew what the queens were saying.”
She nods and nibbles on a turnover without apparent enjoyment. As she eats, I attend to other observations. A few people have gathered at the doors of the Meeting House. They are dispersed by a trio of majors, but they linger in the streets, complaining to each other. Geraldine is among them and turns to one of my stems.
“Stevland, we want to meet. Call a meeting!” She spots Tweeter walking past, the worker usually on her farming team. “What are you doing? We have the right to the democratic process. And trust and support.” She is quoting the Constitution.
Tweeter does not seem to look at her, although with Glassmakers there is no way to know, and he continues trotting on his way. But as he departs, he says, “Four legs be-them leaders of two legs.” Geraldine does not react, so I do not think she heard it. If she had, she might have expressed outrage since that idea directly violates Article II, which calls for equal participation regardless of species. Of course, Article I aspires to peace. But it would seem, as has long been well-known, that the choices of people matter more than rules, since people can choose to ignore rules. I must talk to the queens, hostile or not.
In the Meeting House, I tell the attendant, a boy, that I wish to speak to the queens. He finds a worker, who races off with the message to Queen Chut’s house. I have been listening outside the house to what sounds like discussion and disagreement, but seeping through the door and rising up the flue have come smells of flower and fruit, of happiness and laughter. I suppose it is good that they are united rather than fighting, but over what?
At the same time in the weaving workshop, several women and one man come to work together on a complex piece, but they are hardly skilled weavers. In fact, two of the women are arguably the worst. The man is Arthur, who has never woven a thread in his life. Within their generations, they represent secondary leadership, but leadership all the same. I hear urgent voices, people talking too long to be conversing or discussing weaving. Instead, they are holding a meeting and making reports and proposals.
The worker leaves Chut’s house and runs to the Meeting House to speak to me. “Our queens be-they not meet you now. Much much work.” I notice that word, our, our queens, and not the queens as was normally said by workers before. A worker would not consider another family’s queen to be in any way his. This change worries me. And I am offended that they will not meet with me.
I answer. “You will tell them the Committee will meet tomorrow after dinner. I desire them discuss with me perhaps their work. Oh, and you will tell them a fire burns in the forest far to the south, near the Coral Plains. I am monitoring it. They perhaps will want a report. There have been many fires, and the plants in the area be-them terrified.”
A potential forest fire is, of course, the biggest catastrophe we could face, so if they mean to set themselves up as an unelected Committee, they must act with responsibility and wish to be fully informed. The worker runs off with a breath of fear in the air.
And it is true: another fire has broken out at the edge of the forest and the plains, with the understandable panic among trees and plants. I have no stem in the area to witness it, but the reports are consistent. The flame is floating in the air, swamp gas again. How precisely does it ignite? If the network were working, I could ask it. I miss it almost as much as the Earthlings do.
In the greenhouse, Ladybird is finishing her tray of food.
I say, “I should tell you there is a small fire along the border between the forest and the plains. Also, a messenger for the queens has told me they are too busy to meet with me. Geraldine and others tried to hold a meeting but Glassmaker guards did not let them. She spoke to me and asked for a meeting. I sent word to the queens that there will be a Committee meeting tomorrow.”
“Thanks for the good news.”
“This is not a good day. And I have observed a secret meeting disguised as a weaving team.” I list the attendees.
“Arthur, weaving,” she repeats with half a smile.
“The meeting has just ended.”
“I’ll go see if I can happen to wander into one of them on my way to delivering these dishes to be washed.” She stands. “I’ll tell everyone I see about tomorrow’s meeting.”
“I am concerned and confused about the queens’ behavior. And that o
f other Glassmakers.”
“They’re acting like we were all their family members.”
“They do not need guards for their family members.”
“Family members naturally obey. We Humans don’t. And you obey no one. You don’t have to.” She picks up her tray. “But I’m not sure what you can do right now, besides watch.”
“I can observe and speak. Warmth and food.”
But few people are listening to me now for various reasons. The network is not operating at all. Without it, I observe much less.
Yet with less knowledge and observation, I was able to defeat the Glassmakers a hundred years ago, but that was more of a disaster than a defeat. What succeeded was the domestication of the Glassmakers, a temporary achievement, perhaps. I must try again. I have no ideas growing like seeds, but Mirlo has shown me how to manufacture artificial seeds. I will find a seed or make one.
Panic about the fire continues at the border. And then, elsewhere, there is more fire. I see it. I can look over trees and brush into the swamp at the edge of the plains and the stubbled pink hills beyond. I see fire swirling in the wind over the swamp, consuming gas in the air. Other plants see only fire, and they panic. I feel panic, too. A wind blows it toward me, toward us, and if I had legs I would run. Fear spreads from root to root, so acrid it suppresses mycorrhiza.
From calm roots in a stem far away, I remind myself that this kind of gas burns at a low temperature, so it should not be contagious like burning wood. It swirls in the wind like a dancer and brushes against a rope palm. The old, dry remains of a little vine on it, almost weathered to nothing, catch fire and burn away instantly. The rope palm moans in pain.
Burning gas continues to blow from the swamp, coming closer. I prepare to sever a root in case I ignite.
The cloud passes through me. It hurts, it scorches like overbright sunshine, but it keeps moving. I do not burn. It moved too quickly to do harm, though it was strange and terrifying. I report this calmly to other plants so they may feel more informed, although they are not calmed at all. Behind me a dead nettle, dry and oily, catches fire and becomes a tiny, instant bonfire, collapsing inward as it is consumed, throwing out sparks. They land on a large live nettle, which whines.
