Interference

by Sue Burke

  But the sparks die, leaving the scent of burned leaves. The cloud of gas has burned itself out.

  “Fire attacks!” the nettle whines.

  “But you are alive,” a nearby locustwood says.

  “Alive,” it affirms.

  “Then do not complain. The fire passed through Stevland, and he did not complain.”

  “Stevland big strong.”

  “Stevland is the biggest, most powerful thing alive,” the locustwood says. “And Stevland is brave. He has seen the water god. Would you dare to look upon it?”

  Several thoughts pass through my mind, none of which I communicate. First, this is a small female locustwood, part of the colony we planted here, and she is almost as aggressive as the male. Perhaps she has ambition.

  Second, I did complain. I said it scorched.

  Third, I did not see the water god. I saw the ocean where it lives, and looking through the network, not with my own eyes. That secondhand sight was humbling and awful enough, all that restless water. How do seaside plants remain sane in the constant presence of the immense ocean?

  Fourth, I may be the biggest and most powerful being in this valley, but in given situations, I am as helpless as moss.

  Finally, I do not believe the nettle is wise enough to understand everything it was just told.

  The nettle says, “Stevland see god?”

  “Yes. The water god lives in the sea,” I say. “That is a lake of water bigger than our valley by many many times, bigger than the plains many many times, bigger and deeper than the mountains are high. It is a big dwelling fit for a big god. I hope your injuries are minor and you recover quickly. I will ask my service animals to help us with these fires.”

  I also send it some adenosine triphosphate through our roots. It likely understood few of the words I just said besides god and big. Water god big. That speech was directed at eavesdroppers, who may be more awed. The nettle will understand the energy-rich chemical as a kindly gift. With a little help, it will recover from such minor injuries within a day. I use nettles as guard plants to protect me. This is my service plant, and I must help it.

  If the forest had been drier, rather than filled with the moisture of spring, if the wind had been slower, if the gas had been denser, we might have burned, all of us.

  The other fire has burned out, too, causing no real damage. That makes two fires tonight. But the swamp has been there for centuries without so many fires. Something has changed.

  In the city, Fern is taking her fippokittens out for an evening stroll—or rather, she is supervising their romp. Arthur approaches, gives her a kiss, and chats, smiling. They pass one of my stalks and pause.

  “We’re going to make the Glassmakers argue with each other,” he says, “the queens and especially their workers and majors. First thing tomorrow. We know how to pick a fight. We’ll tell the Earthlings. They’re disagreeable.”

  “How is that going to help?” Fern asks.

  “We outnumber Glassmakers. Their only advantage is their ability to work together, which makes them hard to beat. But they never agreed with each other before, so we don’t think they’ll be able to stick together for long. Work teams are—” He sees a worker approach. “How did they do today? Did you get enough meat for the carni-kat?”

  “You will go home,” the worker scolds.

  Fern picks up the tree-kat from Laurentia. “Isn’t she cute? Do you want to hold her?”

  The worker cannot resist, and as he does, Cawzee approaches.

  “They will come with me home. You will come! You,” he says to the worker, “perhaps you will go. I guard these Humans.”

  The worker reluctantly hands back the kat and leaves. Cawzee says, “Perhaps be-you ready to come home?”

  “Hey, Arthur,” Ladybird calls.

  “I should talk with her.”

  “I be-me here to let you talk.”

  The four stroll, chatting, and when another Glassmaker approaches, Fern and Cawzee distract him with her kittens.

  Ladybird waves at them. “There’s a Committee meeting tomorrow. We can build on that. So I should go. Good night. Good work. Cute kats!”

  Night is falling. Streets are clearer of people than they would be during a rainstorm. Bats circle, crying, “Who is here? Where?”

  The sky still glows with a pink sunset when I hear a blast of static. Of course I heard static all day, but this is different, louder, irregular, with little noises or notes like speech or meaningful sounds being swallowed up by surrounding static. I do not know how to interpret it. Is this the network? I wish I could speak to the Earthling technicians. I observe Ernst leave his home and run toward the workshop. His eyes are round, as if he were hoping to see something. Other technicians are coming with the same look.

  But in their excitement they have forgotten that a guard is at the workshop. They cannot enter. Instead they mill in front, and with a furtive gesture, Ernst brings them together, by chance near a stand of me. “That’s the carrier signal, I’m sure of it. We turned off security and left everything wide-open to send and receive.”

  “Yeah, I’ve always had a synesthesia thing for it. This is green. Greenish.”

  “It’s the right sound, that’s for sure. B-flat.”

  “You do it with sounds? Nice.”

  “Can you send to me?”

  “Hold still.… How was that?”

  “The green got a little brighter in your direction, that was all. Did you send words?”

  “I was sending the ‘We Pledge’ song.”

  “No trace of that.”

  Then a few garbled words come through. One of them might have been “Abacus.” They all jump with surprise, the same surprise and happiness I feel.

  The guard approaches. “You will go home!”

  The Earthlings grumble. “Let’s go home to my house. It’s the biggest. We can listen together.”

  They leave, and soon, besides the usual guards on the wall and a couple of workers patrolling the streets, the city is quiet. Too quiet.

  But my chip is not. The static is broken up by tones, by more wordlike sounds, and by occasional silences, as if the static were being brought under control. This goes on for hours.

  * * *

  As the stars and moons cross the sky and auroras grow and swirl, the static and its tones and whistles slowly diminish like wispy clouds. The network does not respond. Has this attack finally destroyed it?

  When the eastern sky becomes faint purple, the static returns, grows, and fades again. And then:

  “This is Abacus.” The voice is familiar but faint. “Operations have renewed. Standing by.”

  Cheers sound in several houses.

  “Can you hear me?” Ernst sends to all members of the network.

  “Velma here. And I’m glad it’s back.”

  “Abacus, we missed you!” the three Mu Rees send together. “How are you?”

  “Yes,” Om sends. “How are you?”

  “I have rebooted. A log says I had a virus. Source unknown. It has been isolated and eliminated.”

  “Where could it have come from?” Om sends. “We need to know. Who did this?”

  “It could have been Earth, from Earth,” Funsani answers, “delayed. Or even some glitches are effectively viruses, not malicious, but they operate like them.”

  “Or an attack. Didn’t it say it was an attack?”

  “Could be. Hard to do, though. We could do an image check. We’ll need the lab, though. And a connection to the ship in orbit. It has a mirror of the network. But the goons at the door aren’t going to let us in.”

  “Goons is an improper term.”

  “Cops, then.”

  “Well,” Om sends, “this is an order. Try to get access, but don’t insist. Otherwise, today will be like yesterday except that we will be assisting the natives in disrupting the unity of the Glassmakers, as I shall explain. Keep the network status secret until further notice. The politics here are delicate.” He describes the plan cr
eated in the weaving workshop.

  When Ladybird comes to the greenhouse for breakfast, I tell her that the network is functional and that the Earthlings plan to help disrupt Glassmaker unity. After she leaves, she tells Jose, who tells Arthur and Cawzee. They all have their secret radios.

  Om volunteers again to transplant pineapples on a team composed of Tens and Elevens and watched over by two majors. He can resume making notes, and he records how the mission has become part of an event like something that happened before in Earth history. It is complex and I do not fully understand it, but intentionally or not, he makes his role key.

  He interviews the two majors as they walk to the field, with Dakota as interpreter.

  “Have you ever had a disagreement with your queen?”

  “Never.”

  “Never.”

  “How about another queen…? Yes? Can you tell me about that?” One worker has a long tale to tell. Om asks the other major the same questions. “And his queen?” The major is vehement about the other worker’s queen, who seems to have mismanaged every project she headed. The other worker differs. They begin to argue, and Om intervenes occasionally to exacerbate their quarrel. “Was that the only time she did that?”

  At the main city gate, Haus is talking to Jose, Arthur, and Cawzee, all of them carrying hunting gear, when a bat swoops down to report: “Two meat. Danger. Big danger.”

  Jose hurries to take two bits of dried meat from a pouch on his belt and holds them out.

  “Big red worms,” the bat whistles, and snatches the meat. “Follow. Follow. Danger!”

  “Velvet worms,” Jose says. “Let’s go.”

  Cawzee runs ahead, and the bat takes him east, over the river and beyond.

  In a wheat field, a pair of workers stop them as they run after Cawzee. “You do not have a team.”

  Jose tries to explain the situation. One of the workers, Tweeter, says, “You must return to city and get assignment.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. We have an assignment. Do you want velvet worms in your field?”

  Tweeter says no. The other says there are no worms in their field. Members of the Human team, including Geraldine, hear the words “velvet worms” and hurry closer. The other worker scolds them for stopping work.

  “Worms!” Geraldine says. “What’s this about worms?”

  “Not here,” Jose says. “We were called to a field out that way. We need to get there as fast as possible. Cawzee is waiting for us there.”

  “Cawzee will watch the team,” Tweeter says.

  “Cawzee must come here and accompany them,” the other worker says.

  Geraldine bends down to talk to him face-to-face. “But worms can kill you. People are in danger!”

  “That’s right,” Jose says. “There’s a whole team and their Glassmakers, and they’re surrounded by worms. They need us. They’re going to die!”

  “We will let them go,” Tweeter says.

  “We will not. No unaccompanied Humans permitted.”

  Members of the wheat field team begin to talk among themselves, gesturing at the workers.

  “You will accompany them,” Tweeter says.

  “This team requires two guards.”

  “You fear velvet worms.”

  “I be-me brave.”

  Tweeter grabs a rope from his basket and wiggles it like a velvet worm, threatening the other worker, who leaps on him. While the rest of the team breaks up the fight, Jose, Arthur, and Haus run off toward the east.

  In another field, a team begins to plan the day’s work, and the Humans dither about what to do until they manage to make their guards disagree with each other, then the Humans exacerbate the disagreement until one of the workers runs off to his queen to ask for guidance.

  In the onion field, I cannot hear what is happening, but there is a vote by a show of raised hands. Only one Human votes in the same way as their guard, and that somehow turns into a heated argument between that man and the Glassmaker. Then they vote again, and the results are split among the Humans, all the men including the Glassmaker one way and all the women another. Then all the men start to shout at the Glassmaker. I wish I could listen.

  Ladybird is in the street talking to Queen Cheery. “We will be meeting tonight, and you can be part of the planning, or you can be surprised. And by you, I mean all the queens. I will be in the Meeting House talking to Stevland. Will you come?”

  “There will be no meeting.”

  “It’s been called. Those are the rules. You obey the Constitution, right?”

  “Constitution is not Glassmaker.”

  “You are a citizen of the city, and the city uses the Constitution. You have always been part of the city, all of us, and we make it better for each other.”

  “All queens go to Chut’s house to plan for families. You will come and talk now.”

  “No, I will be in the Meeting House tonight. With Stevland.”

  Haus and Jose and Arthur find a field with an unprecedented outbreak of velvet worms, and they send Cawzee to recruit more majors to help. As the majors come, some teams are left unguarded. The teams, freed from oppressive supervision, speak freely as they work.

  And so velvet worms are killed, crops are tended to more out of habit than directive, and lunch is readied. No one comes to relieve the guards at the network workshop at noon, so they abandon their post, and the technician who was watching the guards notifies the rest, who abandon what they were doing and run to the building. A lot of other people, including Pacifists of all generations and many Earthlings, along with some Glassmakers trying and failing to herd them, converge on the dining hall. The fight between the Tens and Elevens over the Earthlings is forgotten, at least for now.

  Life returns more or less to normal, although no one is sure what the Glassmakers will do next, and I do not know how long the generations will remain at peace. Some Humans walk through the city on errands, unescorted but still tense. The three Mu Rees are going somewhere together, and they are not behaving normally. They look around, evaluating who and what is near them, acting much like a family of Glassmakers, in constant communication. But I cannot hear what they say to each other, even with my private radio. Or rather, I hear something, but it is too weak to understand because their transmitting power is set very low. They are carrying specimen bags as if they were going to hunt new species.

  They go to Chut’s house in the northeast corner of the city, where the queens are meeting, and they enter, forcing their way past a worker at the door. I hear shouts, then a high pop, an Earthling air gun. It can shoot bolts of air like knives. They had guns in those bags. There is more shouting as three workers dash out. I smell fear and anger and flee and attack and help!

  A passing major grabs a worker, who clings to him.

  “You will tell me perhaps what happens?” the major says.

  The worker babbles about queens and guns and Earthlings.

  “Be-they prisoners?”

  “Be-they dead perhaps!”

  Another worker, equally panicked, says, “Seven queens. My queen! So many queens!”

  The Mu Rees contact Om. “Talk to Darius. Do what he says, or we’ll kill the queens.”

  “You will do no such thing. Release the queens!” Then Om sends to Darius, “Explain what’s going on.”

  Darius answers immediately. “It is time we return to the sky, all home.”

  “First of all, if they kill the queens, that’s murder, which will be punished. And since you’re an accessory, you’ll pay, too.”

  “Home now. Or they will die.”

  “Consider yourself under arrest.” Om tries to locate Darius and cannot. He tries to contact the Mu Rees and cannot. He tries to call Haus and cannot. He turns to the team in the pineapple field. “I must tell you something tragic, and I must ask for your help.” Before he finishes asking them to free the queens and capture the Mu Rees and Darius, they all start running toward the city.

  Arthur and Cawzee have delivered two
deer crabs to the kitchen that they spotted and hunted in the far field, and now they are returning to their homes. I call them on their radios to share the alert, then I call Jose and Ladybird, then Mirlo.

  “Do you get along well with the Mu Rees?” I ask Mirlo. “Someone needs to talk to them.”

  “We share a lab and house, that’s all. But I’ll do everything I can.”

  “See if you can get them to release Rattle, the baby.” I do not explain that this might give the queens more freedom of action. There are seven queens against three humans. Weapons count for only so much.

  Workers and majors of all families are hurrying to Chut’s house, along with a crowd of Humans. I hear a lot of talk about how evil the Earthlings are, but I smell more fear than malice, enough fear to make Humans’ eyes water. When Mirlo arrives, he is jeered, but the crowd parts to let him pass. They might fear that any harm to him will result in harm to their queens, or he might have built up some goodwill. He walks up to the door.

  “This is Mirlo,” he sends, bangs on the door, then says it aloud. “What are you doing?” No answer. He pounds and asks again.

  Mu Ree Fa sends, “We’re doing what we were told.”

  “You were told to take the queens?”

  “Yes. Hold them until we get to leave. So no one stops us.”

  Mirlo puts a hand on his forehead and shakes his head. Then he looks up and says, “Were you told to take the baby? Rattle, the baby Glassmaker.”

  It is wise he does not say baby queen.

  “Well, no.”

  “Then let her go. Send her out. I’ll guard the door, you won’t get rushed. Just let her out.”

  His words have been translated and repeated around the crowd. It falls almost silent. From the house come muffled Human voices and a few words of Glassmade.

  “I’m waiting,” he says. “Let her go. She’s not your job, and she doesn’t need to be part of this.”

  “She doesn’t want to go. They don’t understand. We can’t talk to them.”