by Greg Bear
Cassir and Shatro met me as I doubled back along the boundary. “Go ahead,” Cassir shouted. “Walk on it. It's like spongy wood.”
The edge of the prairie resembled knobby melted wax, slumping over the shingle beach. Cassir jumped up to stand a meter above us, hands outstretched, grinning. “Biggest single thing on Lamarckia, what do you bet?”
“Salap said it was made of five scions,” Shatro objected.
“All melted together. Only master researchers—such as Salap and yours truly—could discover the components. Come on.” Cassir walked inland. Shatro jumped up before I did, and we both followed. The texture of the prairie was very much like hard cork, springy and pleasant to walk upon. We left no lasting impressions. Cassir ran in a happy circle. “It's been great here, working with Ser Salap ... But I'm glad to be off, I'll tell you. What are the women like on your ship?”
“Hard-working,” Shatro said.
“The mate and a senior A.B. keep us in line,” I added.
Cassir grimaced. “Pity we can't go to Jakarta right away. I'd love to spend time in a city again. A real chance to mingle ... I'd even sign on with a triad, if that's what it took.”
“Who knows where we'll be going?” Shatro asked gloomily. “We'll probably end up kidnapped and working for Brion.”
Cassir said, “Matthew says you were in a village the Brionists pillaged.”
“Pretty awful,” I said.
“Sure it wasn't pirates?” Cassir asked. “We've seen ships with no flags. Had to happen eventually. Another thing the Good Lenk didn't consider when he brought us here.”
“What?” Shatro said. “Should he have expected pirates?”
“No,” Cassir said, laughing. He seemed ready to laugh at anything, refreshed to see new faces. “Fates, I'm giddy just to have company. We've been up all night talking, haven't we, Shatro?”
“And drinking,” Shatro said.
“Prairie solvent.” He pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket, filled with milky fluid, and offered it to me. I took a small taste. Like pure fire, and still with the bitter aftertaste of all alcoholic beverages on Lamarckia. “We took three scion membranes from part of the prairie, arranged them in a way Lamarckia and Petain did not intend, made ethyl alcohol ... and without yeast! Salap says we can make all sorts of materials from the scions we've found. We'll make this planet more pleasant, given half a chance ... And I hope Lenk gives us that chance.”
“He's ill, they say,” Shatro said. “Getting old.”
Cassir suddenly sobered, glanced at the bottle, and pocketed it. “We'll all get old. Nobody asked us whether we wanted to or not.”
He lifted up his shoulders, took a deep breath, and swung his arm out to take in the inland prairie. “Quiet, my God, until the rain falls, and then it's like a dull, soggy drum. Do you think it worries?”
“I never saw a queen, or anything that seemed intelligent,” Shatro said. “I like to think it's alive and thinking, somewhere.”
“Oh, it is that,” Cassir said. “Very much alive and thinking ... Somewhere. Deep in the interior. Compared to Petain, Liz is a sweetie. Petain ... I imagine it, or him if I be truthful, to be a crusty, conservative old miser, except when he sets foot in the sea ... Then he gets extravagant. If we have time before the boat goes, we should swim out with some masks and look at the vine reefs. Proper big nutrient factory out there. Giant anchored membranes like nets, just bubbling away. Fast piscids, dozens of varieties. All of them taste awful. Petain is spectacular out there, but hidden by all that water. That's Petain, however. Rich and not at all generous with his beautiful daughters ... Fates, I'm drinking too damned much.” Cassir reeled dramatically, drew himself up again with a grin, and stamped his foot on the slick tan surface of the prairie. “Rain due in a few minutes, I think.” He stared out to the sea, where a low front of oily-looking clouds were moving in rapidly. “Let's get off this or we'll be drummed and sponged. Stranded until it pushes the water and nutrients down below. You can't walk twenty feet when your feet keep getting mucked.”
Cassir ran swiftly for the edge of the prairie. We ran after, springing along on the surface, skirting the deep dimples.
“Does the captain make the researchers do sailor work?” Cassir asked as we leaped off the edge, landing in the empty sand and pebbles.
“Only Ser Olmy,” Shatro said. “He isn't quite a researcher yet, however.”
“Right,” Cassir said, as if it didn't matter. “I like to climb aloft now and then ... but not if someone orders me to.”
The clouds slid rapidly across the beach, bringing at first a curtain of fine mist that spun in the morning light like whirlwinds drawn in gold dust. A few small brown disks fell and clung to my hands and face. I shrugged them off with a convulsive shudder, as did Shatro, but Cassir plucked them off his bare arms and ate them. “Quite good,” he said. “Coins, we call them. Taste like bread, and no immune challenges.”
I tried one, biting it in half. It did taste like bread—stale bread. “What's in them?” I asked.
“What the prairie needs,” Cassir said. As the clouds blew inland, I saw a haze of coins falling on the broad tan surface. “Sucks them right up. The storm—the big storm our captain is so worried about—it makes food for the prairie.”
“Salap told us that,” Shatro said, blinking miserably against the mist and the tiny slaps of brown disks.
“Yes, but there's more than even that. It makes lots of food. Some of it we can eat. Petain keeps its sea creatures pretty unpalatable, but it seems to cater to the prairie—if the storm is really alive, and belongs to Petain, as Ser Salap thinks.”
“How could it be alive?” Shatro asked.
The rain fell in thick sheets now. “Run for cover!” Cassir shouted.
We joined Randall and Thornwheel in the cabin, listening to the rain on the prairie, like hundreds of animals running. Thornwheel brewed a kind of tea from prairie skin harvested near the beach. He explained the process as the water came to a boil. “We flense it with our knives, peel a sheet off about the size of a blanket, take it back, cut it up ... let it dry in sheds. Nothing ever stays dry outside here. The prairie grows it back next day. Amazing polysaccharide complexes, and fast duplication, too.” He poured the water over minced skin and handed me a cup. “Go ahead,” he said, expression humorless. Thornwheel seemed quite the opposite of Cassir. Handsome, a little somber and sad.
The women on Vigilant would have more variety now, and would give their sweets and medical attentions to the new men...
Especially Shirla. And what was that to me?
I sipped the tea cautiously. It tasted muddy and rich, like a yeasty broth. “Drop a few coins in ... lunch,” Cassir enthused, lifting his cup in a toast. “When we get to Jakarta and present our papers, we'll be famous. Enough food in Petain to feed millions.”
“If Lenk allows it,” Shatro said.
“Could use some spice,” Randall suggested.
The rain ended twenty minutes after it began, and the clouds blew clear, leaving bright sunshine. The storm had disappeared again, as if following some familiar and habitual track.
10
The Vigilant put out to sea late next evening. The captain was relieved to be away from Wallace. He walked the deck while deep in conversation with Salap, accompanied on occasion by Thornwheel or Cassir. My elevation to assistant researcher had not yet been approved by Salap; the mate still gave me orders, and I remained with the starboard watch, working hard from just before dawn until just after dusk.
In the twilight, most of the crew rested before dinner. The winds were light, the storm that worried the captain and that Salap claimed was alive seemed to have vanished for good, the air was fresh, and the sea frothed like beer in our wake, hissing softly, a susurration beneath every word, every shipboard sound. I mused over Cassir's description of the offshore membranes, bubbling away oxygen from water ... completing the two-part respiration cycle.
Shirla stood by the rail amidships, keeping
away from the scattered labors of the port night watch, now occupied with binding a crack in the gaff on the spanker. Cathedral tree xyla was liable to split after a few years at sea; the Vigilant was ten years old and many of her yards and masts wore tight-wound rope binders to keep the splits from spreading.
I sat next to Shirla, back against the gunwale. She did not walk away, as I had feared she might. She smiled down upon me where I squatted, past irritations apparently forgotten, and said, “It's begun, you know.”
“What?” I asked.
“The pairing off,” she said.
“Don't tell Soterio,” I cautioned.
“It's a game,” she said. “You can't stop life even at sea.”
“I suppose not.”
“Talya fancies the sailmaker, but he's married,” she said. “Not that that will stop them if we get more than a day on shore. She likes his voice. They make good music together.”
Shirla was finely tuned to the wavelengths of the crew. She seemed in a mood to talk, both a little anxious and a little sad.
“Nobody's after my stern, of course,” she said, gaze fixed on the horizon. “I've never attracted fast eyes.”
“You reward close study,” I said, hoping to cheer her a bit.
“You'll never know,” she said lightly. “You're a loner. You don't want anybody knowing anything about you. So what can a mere woman do to you?”
I laughed.
She wrinkled her nose and flicked one of her ears with her fingers. “I heard Salap arguing with the master yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“They were arguing about you. In the research cabin.”
“How did you happen to hear?”
“I was painting the lizboo with choker oil. Soterio says I have a velvet brush hand. I didn't hear a lot, but Salap said he'd pick his own researchers.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Oh.”
“I didn't know you were held in such esteem.”
“Randall seems to like me,” I said.
“Maybe you should be after his stern,” she suggested, not so lightly.
“He's a married man with four children.”
Shirla squatted beside me, biting her lower lip. “I could match you with another woman,” she said. “The A.B.s in our bunk area talk about you. You attract some of them. Women with fast eyes like you.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but no. Besides, I favor you.”
Shirla stared at me as if mildly offended, then looked away, jaw clenched. “I'm no fool,” she said. “It's not as if I can't hold up my end of a conversation.”
“I never thought you couldn't,” I said.
“Don't tease me.”
“I don't mean to—”
She interrupted. “Salap said he'll watch you closely. The captain went back to the radio. He's been listening to it a lot.”
“What does he hear?” I asked.
She gave me a cautioning look. “He hears what he chooses to tell us. That's all he hears.”
“Oh.”
She paused, still squatting on her haunches, and said, as casually as if she hadn't just warned me, “Jakarta might be closed for months. We'll never get in. Salap said he was angry with Randall, but Randall got him to admit ... that they're going to need more researchers. So I guess you're in.”
“Thanks for keeping an ear out,” I said.
She shook her head, pursed her lips, and stood. “The engineer is elegant,” she said. “A firster. He came over with Lenk. Maybe I'll try him.”
Khovansk the engineer was perhaps seventy, the oldest man on the ship. He spent most of his time belowdecks forging old broken metal into new pieces. He also maintained the ship's feeble and primitive electrical system.
“Maybe the Brionists will capture us and we won't have to worry about anything,” Shirla concluded. She got up and walked forward, leaving me utterly confused.
Two days out of Wallace, the first mate spotted a pelagic scion floating listlessly off our starboard beam. It was far from Petain or any other zone ocean territories and seemed lost, its back burned gray and blistering in the sun. We circled, put out the longboat, and investigated the creature. Salap led the boat crew, and soon they had roped the scion and dragged it slowly back to the ship.
Alongside the Vigilant, floating in the ship's shadow, we had a much better view of the creature. The crew on free watch—eight of us, including myself, roused from my bunk by Shimchisko—watched from the gunwale as Salap supervised the floating of a xyla platform.
“It's still alive,” Ibert said, clucking sympathetically.
“Looking for its mama,” Shimchisko said, only weakly sardonic. The scion was a piscid, a slender orange and black torpedo shape with three lines of stiff dark purple fins spaced equidistant on back and sides.
The Captain watched from the puppis, tapping his fingers on the rail and murmuring comments to Randall.
“It's a long way from any of its brothers and sisters,” Shirla observed from the rigging above.
“No flarking!” the mate shouted. Curious onlookers scraping the decks or clinging to the shrouds, or bellied over the yards, working sails, returned to their jobs—but only for a few minutes. Soon, even the mate watched Salap and the researchers hoist the piscid onto the platform, measure it, and take pictures.
“Good Man preserve us...” sailmaker Meissner said, peering over the side in passing. He shuddered. “Hope it won't call its queen from the deep.”
Ibert scoffed.
Meissner shook his head darkly and walked on.
“Sailor's superstition,” Ibert said, but drew his lips tight as Salap prodded the piscid. The creature undulated slowly on the platform, lifting its pink, eyeless snout. It opened and closed a four-part jaw, each part sporting a horny serrated tooth.
“It's just a fish,” Soterio said, looking at us with an expression of mixed defiance and guilt, as if he might be blamed for this sacrilege. “A scavenger, I bet. The kind sent out to chew up lost scions from other ecoi or to recycle dead scions.”
“What's this?” Randall asked, approaching the group by the rail with a master's concern for brewing trouble.
“Sir, sailmaker Meissner commented we should be leaving this one alone,” Soterio said.
“We've never had trouble taking scions on land or in the rivers,” Randall observed.
“Rarely take them this far at sea, sir,” the mate continued.
“So? Most of them aren't even edible.”
“Ocean queens...” Soterio said in a lowered voice, shaking his head.
“Ah, that the queens live in the oceans ... I've heard that,” Randall said. “That they'll rise up and punish us someday. Good theory. I'll tell the captain.”
“Not my own theory, sir,” Soterio hastened to add.
“Of course not.”
“It is no longer alive,” Salap called up from the platform. He bent down, water slapping at his boots, and lifted the beaked snout. It fell back, limp. “Very far from its home waters. Lost in currents.”
“Use it,” the captain called from the puppis. Salap looked up, uncertain what the captain meant.
“Our first specimen,” the captain said. “Bring it aboard and we'll study it.”
“He thinks the queens won't know,” Shimchisko said to Ibert and to me.
“Why so afraid, all of a sudden?” Ibert asked his friend. “You don't respect anything.”
“Not afraid,” Shimchisko said huffily. “The Good Man taught proper respect for things in their places.”
“So,” Ibert said. “This poor fish is out of its place.”
Shimchisko, who had turned very pale, walked to the starboard side of the boat, to be away from the sight of the dead scion.
“What do I know, what do I know?” Ibert muttered, stalking off after Shimchisko.
That evening, Salap dissected the piscid on a table on the main deck, electric lights supplementing the twilight settling over our spot of the Darwin Sea. The water was calm, the wind steady;
a light crew tended the ship, while most of us watched Salap at work, circled around the table like an audience at a sporting event.
Salap seemed to enjoy the focused attention. The captain stood by the piscid's tail as the head researcher cut and drew his knife along the thick, tough skin between rows of fins. This took several minutes of effort, drawing grunts from the usually unflappable Salap, but finally he revealed the piscid's interior—ropy, surrounded by pale orange fluid, interspersed with orange and purple grapelike clusters. A familiar gingery, garlicky smell wafted out of the carcass, making the crew murmur and shake their heads among themselves. It smelled like one of Liz's scions, yet Liz was not supposed to venture out to sea.
“We should not draw conclusions too soon,” Salap warned, listening to the murmurs. “We have no records of this kind of scion, though it does bear some resemblance to a river whale. Interior anatomy is not unfamiliar for a piscid—these extensive ropy tissues are muscular analogs, but of course there is no cellular structure as such. We call them tissues by comparison only. They are more like bundles of actin or myosin fibrils, surrounded by networks of macrotubules which transport cytoplasmic components, much as do microtubules in our familiar cellular structure.”
He lifted the grapey clusters. “All organelles are created and controlled by these, what Shulago called staphyloform masses, which also supply and direct the flow of chemicals and nutrients. Scions are self-repairing, and have sufficient instructional genetic material to carry out that function, but no scion can reproduce its own form. That is left to the reproductive centers of the ecos itself, which, of course, are mysterious.”
Salap sliced through the ropes, which sprang aside like stretched rubber bands, flinging orange fluid across his apron and into the captain's face. The captain shook his head and asked for a towel. Salap checked to see if any fluid had gotten into the captain's eyes, but it had not. “Pelagic scions contain many substances that can cause severe chemical or allergic reactions,” he warned the crew. “Not only acetic acid in various concentrations, but ethanol, methanol, and organic compounds ... amines, steroids, enzymes and other proteins, and many types of polysaccharides. Merchant ships becalmed, out of fuel, with starving crews...” He shook his head “Some have tried to eat piscids from the deep waters. Some have died.”
