by Sue Burke
“Thank you.”
“I realize this is all our fault. Our technology failed. I’m not sure what went wrong.”
“Corals took it over.”
“We still have that problem.”
“Come and help me, so I can help your people. And we’ll talk.”
They will have a lot to talk about.
I can now head toward the south. I can travel to the plains, not just send a service animal. The plants there are shrieking more hysterically than ever. I move slowly at first, trying a turn, rising up higher, looking down at the forest that I have always known from the ground up. In the dark, it looks like a cool dark sea, with leaves rather than water creating waves.
I move a little faster and it becomes easier to fly, much smoother. Ahead, I see fire, but for just this one moment, I enjoy the sense of a creature flying in the air, free to go anywhere I want. It is like I am a different being. Movement is joy, like growth. Suddenly I understand dance. And running, the exhilaration of speed. I wish I had time to savor these feelings.
Fire lights the border in four places, too big for my service animals to put out if they could get here. This could destroy us. I review what I know about fire. It is hot, exothermic. It consumes oxygen and fuel. Beneath me, the tops of trees move from the wind created by this heli-plane. There is even a light sprinkle of snow falling as the frigid exhaust turns water vapor into ice beneath me.
Cold air. Perhaps that can put out a fire, if I can fly well enough. I head toward the closest fire and hover over it. With the heli-plane’s infrared vision, I see the fire diminish a bit, but the wind created by the exhaust also provides oxygen, so this is a poor plan. I need another. I move a little and tip the plane slightly so that I am creating a wind to blow the fire back toward where it came from, where it has already consumed the forest. Without fuel, it will die of starvation.
This is also not as efficient as I had hoped. I spend many minutes over this fire slowly adjusting my location. Cawzee is looking out of the windows, and he understands what I am doing.
“Why be-they so many fires?” he asks, and as I look I see another small fire at the edge of the swamp, many new small gassy fires. The corals must know they have lost control of the network, so they will try to destroy us with fire. I cannot put out the fires fast enough.
“The corals are causing the fires,” I tell Cawzee.
“Corals kill my first queen. They hunt.”
“Yes. I have talked to them.”
They are no more innocent than I am, and I am guilty of many things. I have done everything I must to protect my service animals because they and I are the same. And corals, perhaps, are like me too.
“Cawzee, can corals burn?”
“We burned their parts in fire.”
Humans have a saying, “Fight fire with fire.” I have fire. This heli-plane can create exhaust as hot as fire if I adjust it to burn inefficiently.
I have never started a fire before. I abhor fire. But I think if I started a fire in the plains, it would distract the corals for a while. After that, what do we do? I do not know. I will consult with the Humans. I simply do not have any ideas besides this desperate one. I will use this heli-plane to start a fire in the plains, then I will put out the fires at the edge of the forest as best I can. Then I will fly the plane home, and we will make another plan.
I pick a tall hill, or as tall as hills are in the plains, to start my fire. The height will make it easy to approach. The hill is far enough away from the edge of the forest to be no danger. I cannot communicate with the corals without the network as an intermediary, and the broadcasting abilities of this plane are limited. Otherwise I would tell the coral what will happen so we could negotiate. I can see them as lines of glowing, pulsating dots. I observe as I fly, and truly, Arthur is right. The plains are beautiful. I am so sorry.
I turn the plane to face into the wind and slowly back down as close as I can to the hill. Then I set the jets at the slowest burn they have. We start to fall. I was not expecting this. Up! Fly up! The plane shudders and then shoots up and forward, the jets cold again.
Now we are far to the east. The wind helps us rise over the mountains, and I look back through the cameras. There is a fire like the Spring Festival on the hill. Good.
I follow the air currents and turn north to approach the fires at the forest edge again. I am high in the sky and look around.
The fire has grown fast, not the ones at the forest’s edge but the fire on the hill in the plains. It has spread down from the hill in all directions in sudden flashes, some very large. I think I know why, but I must be sure.
“Cawzee, look out and tell me what you see as I fly over the plains.”
The plane has lights. I turn them on, lights that focus downward. The corals, the big ones, stand out like balls. I illuminate an advancing edge of flames and there, a coral explodes. The ground around it burns in tiny flashes and in sheets of fire.
“Corals burn,” Cawzee says. “All plains stink of gas to burn.”
Flames race across the plains to the edge of the forest, to the swamp separating it from the plains, and there they die.
I know the geography of the plains. I saw it from the Earthlings’ satellite. It is split by the river all the way to the far end of the valley, which stretches deep into the mountains. Perhaps at one point this part of the valley was ours, the bamboo’s, but now the coral occupies it to the very end. The fire is destroying the corals on the east side of the river.
And the west side?
Cawzee says, “They kill my first queen. They try to kill my second queen. Can we burn more?”
“That is the responsible thing to do.”
I turn the plane to face north and slowly descend. The ground here is flatter, but I spot a small ridge. I come close and turn on the hot jets, this time ready to rise up as soon as we begin to fall.
I look behind us. I have left a line of fire on the ground, and it is spreading out. I wonder if the corals thought we plants would be as flammable. How much do they know about us? I am certain we have not killed them all, but this will be a lasting setback. If we can communicate with the survivors when they have repopulated the plains, perhaps we can reach an agreement.
But right now I must put out the remaining fires at the edge of the forest. As I do, I watch fire rush to the south up the valley toward the mountains. We will need to monitor the situation. I am surprised at my calm acceptance, then I understand. I have left my emotions in a far root. Now is not the time to feel, only to act.
I begin to put out forest fires. It is slow, deliberate work. I have time to ponder flight. I am not an animal, I am a machine. Animals can do many things. This machine was made to do one thing superbly well: fly. I can sense the wind and respond with an adjustment, small or large as I prefer, controlling my reaction, not at all like a branch tossed by wind. I have the power to overcome wind.
As bamboo, I can choose what to grow, what to let wither. As a plane, I can choose where to go and how to get there. I can tip and slide on the air and sense gravity not as a direction but as a force, and I have a counterforce. I am one small point of consciousness with abilities beyond those I have seen and envied in animals, an enormous machine with enormous power.
I rise and see that one forest fire is out and move toward the next one. And I send every single sensation to a root to savor later. Pilots cannot sense flight this way. Machines sense nothing. I alone feel the confidence of a superb machine fulfilling its purpose.
More than half the night has passed before I am satisfied that we are safe. Cawzee dozes. In the city, most people sleep, and the medics have examined the Earthlings and decided they are generally weak but well. The usual guards patrol the wall, and another pair of guards is stationed at the network workshop, probably unnecessarily, but we have all been frightened. Those guards are armed with the largest hammers in the city. Their enemy is a machine, which they would smash.
Arthur and Fern are waiting when I
land to welcome Cawzee and take him home.
The night is quiet, and I am uncomfortable until I understand why. There is no network. I had become used to exploring its knowledge and listening to the Earthling chatter, sharing their presence and observations. Now I am as alone as I was at the beginning of the year, the same as I have been for hundreds of years, and I used to be happy like this, happy with the company of my animals and my plant neighbors. Now I know how much more there is.
I want to go to Earth. But will I be different from the corals when I get there? An invader? No. I will come to help Earthlings. I just saved them here, using their machines. The machines on Earth, bigger and more powerful, will allow me to be even more helpful. I will be the biggest, strongest creature on the planet, or rather, my descendants will be. But I do not think I can send them a root full of wisdom. They will have to learn themselves. That will be long and difficult.
So we must send the Earthlings home carrying my seeds, and to do that, we must solve several problems. I hope the Earthlings will know how to do that. I will help them in any way I can.
Now I must prepare for tomorrow. In addition to the work to be done in spring in the fields, we must recover from this disaster and avoid another one. Will Pacifists and Earthlings still hate each other? Humans and Glassmakers? Or will they have learned?
And when I finally open my emotions, what will I find?
7
ZIVON—2 DAYS LATER
Another funeral. The anthropologist in me was trying to notice any differences. The Pacifists wore old clothes again, but there were almost no Pacifists present, just Ladybird and a few members of Generation 11 with their black hats, probably trying to avoid work, and not Arthur. No Glassmakers, not a surprise there. Not even all the members of our task force. Still too sick from the coral attack, they said, but that had been two days ago. Sure. The truth was, not many of us had liked the Mu Rees, not even enough to say goodbye.
As for me, I only came to answer an overriding question, and I saw the answer in the one thing that hadn’t changed: Stevland, the bamboo. We were burying the Mu Rees at its roots. Fertilizer. That’s what they’d done with the natives who died of the flu. I’d even checked the site of the big funeral, the one on the first day when all those Glassmakers had apparently been fed poison fruit from Stevland. Poison fruit, how did that happen? How did the natives know? There in that field new shoots with rainbow stripes were growing from the guts of the dead.
Time to feed the plant. Didn’t matter what. We’d seen the same thing on the other continent, too.
And now that we were stuck on such a creepy planet, how safe were we from it? From them? What were they, those so-called Pacifists so prone to violence, and what was Stevland?
As one of the few in our mission in relatively strong health, I helped carry basket-caskets to the bamboo grove east of the city, next to the river, the place used as a cemetery. Not much ceremony, just glum people, no music. Closed caskets. I’d heard that what was left wasn’t pretty. We set them next to muddy holes excavated by fippokats, who hopped around playfully smacking each other with muddy paws during the ceremony, waiting to fill them back up. Cute, but complicit.
Om stood in front. He’d given the traditional summary of the deceaseds’ lives, now he had to make some assessment, some sense. “We’ve lost so much and suffered so much, but we shouldn’t judge anyone.”
He sounded the same as ever giving a speech, spitting out words like old-fashioned coins we ought to value. Pennies, though, not worth much.
“We shouldn’t judge because we all felt the power, a power greater than us, a power that took them and made them act, just as it tried to make us all bend to its will. The queens had every right to defend themselves, a right every one of us has. We discovered how much we rely on our technology, how much it controls us, and how much can go wrong.”
He seemed weary, shifting from foot to foot. “Does anyone else have anything to say?” He looked at Mirlo, who’d shared a laboratory and living quarters with them. I knew Mirlo had pretty much despised them. He said nothing. No one did. I could have said they were lazy scientists, but everyone knew that.
Ladybird came forward. “You are less than you were, twenty-seven now. They will rest in a place of honor, for as you heard, they did not act of their own will and were victims, sent into danger by the corals. And you will remain here, honored as well.”
Stuck here unless we got the network working so we could get off the planet and rendezvous with the ship. Honored? I’d seen the looks as I walked through the city carrying the baskets with the Mu Rees in them. The Glassmakers who crossed our paths deliberately stank.
A few more words and we were done, and I helped lower the baskets into the graves. I tossed a handful of dirt into each hole with sudden respect. Yeah, those men were used by the corals. They deserved sympathy for that. It could have been me.
I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t want to go back into the city so people could look at me with hate. So I walked down toward the river past fields of golden flowers they called tulips. “Tulip” meant “stupid” and no one would tell me why. Tulips had green leaves, but some other plants’ leaves were black or red. Weird. Too weird. I didn’t belong on that planet.
The river stank like half-burned petrochemicals and looked worse, full of reddish silt and black chunks of ash and exoskeletons. Cadavers, reminders of slaughter. A rainstorm in the plains had washed disaster down this far.
Pollux and Darius followed me.
“The body of a dead enemy always smells sweet,” Pollux said.
“It’s a whole civilization lost,” I said. “That’s tough to justify.”
“You’re as bad as Om. They tried to kill us. I still feel shaky. My head hurts.”
“Yeah, drink lots of fluids.”
Darius watched an almost spherical chunk float past, a small dead coral. “I want to be connected again. They’re working on it.”
But it didn’t look good for getting the network back up, not at all. We knew that.
“We’ve got to get away.” Pollux pointed at the polluted water. “They’re killers here.”
“Back to Earth, that’s where?” I said. Darius shook his head. “Can’t you fly without machine assistance?”
“Of course, that’s one reason I got this job. I can fly all over the surface. But space is big.” He bent down and picked up a rock. “Here, take this stone and try to hit that old statue, you know the one I mean? Over there.” He pointed across the river, and I knew what he meant, the Higgins statue. “Take a throw and hit it. But you can’t even see it from here. We don’t know where the ship is.”
“We can’t see it?”
“With the one little bitty telescope they have here? And if the network is turned off up on the ship, and it could have been turned off when Abacus went down, then the ship isn’t making corrections, so its orbit is going to decay. It’s flying low already, so it won’t take long. The orbit will change constantly, so how good will our observations be? For as long as it’s still up there.”
I looked at Pollux. For the first time ever, we agreed. “We’re stuck,” he said.
“Om said it, we rely too much on tech,” Darius answered.
“It’s our own fault we’re stuck,” I said.
“No,” Pollux said, “we were attacked. And not just by the coral. They hate us here. Whenever it’s good for them, they’re going to kill us.”
“You’ve been saying that since we got here.”
“I can fly all over this planet,” Darius said. “Let’s go live somewhere else.”
“That’s even more crazy.”
“No,” Pollux said, “that’s a great idea. There’s nothing crazy about wanting to survive.” But if Darius’s eyes were crazy, Pollux’s were crazier.
“Yeah,” I said, “and then there’s suicide.”
“Otherwise we’ll be great slave labor,” Darius said.
“Better than dead.” I walked away.
>
“He just talks big,” I heard Darius say as I left.
“We could never trust him,” Pollux answered.
They’d both spent the entire morning of the attack talking to coral, spilling their guts so it could attack better, and never noticed that they weren’t talking to each other. That’s how much they secretly despised each other. And now they wanted to found a colony together. I wasn’t going with them, that was for sure.
When I entered the city gate, Mirlo was sitting on a bench, staring morosely at the huge stalks of Stevland growing there.
“I know not everyone wanted to go home,” he said, “but I did. My job was to investigate, and I did, and I’ve made some amazing discoveries, and I wanted to bring them home.”
Maybe, lost in glumness, he could tell me something about Stevland if I approached things right. I was sure he knew something. Stevland was scary, too big and too capable. More than just a plant that ate corpses.
“On the bright side of being stuck here,” I said, “hundreds of years will have passed, so if we went home it still wouldn’t be home.”
“It would be different, but it would still be home, and we wouldn’t be alone. We’re not the only ones gallivanting around the stars. There were other expeditions when we left, and there’s probably hundreds now, and they’ll come back, and we’ll be just like them, gone for a couple centuries or so. We wouldn’t be alone.”
“Would you take seeds from that bamboo?” I hoped not, I really did.
“Of course. Pretty plants that make fruit with caffeine? Everyone would love it. They’ll plant it everywhere, and I’d get the royalties. I could even make my own farm, a forest of them, something like that.”
“The Pax medics say it makes all kinds of things, not just caffeine.”
“A superplant. That’s what Earth needs.”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s bringing in an exotic species.” We weren’t really about to go back to Earth. I knew that and I still wanted to talk him out of it.
“Oh, it would grow fine. In fact, with all the iron in Earth’s mantle, it would grow better.”
