by Greg Bear
Shirla sighed as much with relief as disappointment. “I don't like being at the center of things,” she said.
Randall said, “I feel about as necessary as a man's nipples.”
A few minutes later, a train of four gray electric buses hummed through the gate to the docks and parked by the Khoragos and Cow. Twelve grim-looking men in gray and black stepped down from the buses and spoke to their colleagues on guard by the gangways.
Guards came aboard the ships and informed the masters and mates that all but a skeleton crew of four would have to get on the buses. The ships were going to be impounded, it seemed.
Randall watched these activities with a heavy frown. “That's not diplomacy,” he muttered. “It's an act of war.”
We sat crowded three to a seat, two seats across and seven deep, on rough unpadded benches made of pithy thicket-xyla. The buses were driven by older men in white and gray. Seeing the preponderance and variety of uniforms, I felt a shiver of recognition: a regimented society, each job given its rank and place and dress, ancient grand schemes reenacted on Lamarckia.
The buses took us into the tunnels through the thickets and we were surrounded by intense gloom. Shirla huddled close to me, Shatro beside her. In the gleam of headlights reflected toward the back, I saw Shatro staring grimly ahead, sweating though it was cool. He had said very little the past few hours, and did not look at anyone for very long.
Randall sat on the bench ahead of us, and Salap two benches behind. We did not talk. We all felt as though we were going to an execution, perhaps our own.
The tunnels formed a kind of road network through the thicket and the drivers seemed to know the routes well. After twenty minutes, we saw daylight ahead, and the buses emerged into a broad natural clearing. Behind, the thicket rose up in a gentle curve like the rim of a bowl, and we seemed to be in a broad crater painted with red and brown foliage.
Ahead, across a level plain covered with a carpet of mottled orange and brown phytids, the interior of this part of Hsia's ecos was hauntingly terrestrial. We might have been crossing a tropical grassland, but instead of trees, tangles of thicket woven from meter-thick vines rose like watchtowers, capped with spreading branches whose tips lanced skyward. Farther inland, after another ten minutes of travel, we saw great purple hemispheric mounds like mold growths, but each perhaps two kilometers wide and a kilometer high. At the top of the mounds, a single monumental black spike rose, a thorn to prick the thumb of a god.
The guards on the bus took this all in without excitement; this was their landscape, familiar for decades. Salap seemed as little interested. Shirla, however, leaned forward and looked past my chest through the window.
“They're taking us to a grand hotel,” said the man behind us, dressed in a white uniform—one of Khoragos's stewards. “They'll feed us like kings.”
“Tom's the joker,” grumbled a woman across the aisle. The bus lurched and we turned onto a dusty bare dirt road. Ahead, another wall of thicket loomed, but this was brilliant green—the first green I had seen in a Lamarckian silva, topped with red lances. Above this thicket flew batlike pterids with wingspans of at least a meter. As we approached, the pterids all dropped and grabbed hold of the red lances, like flies alighting on the bloody points of swords.
The buses swung into another dark tunnel, following closely through the darkness, lights blooming and fleeing on the backs of our heads. “Inner compound,” the bus driver called over his shoulder, voice husky. “We'll all get out here and walk into the Citadel.”
“Citadel,” Shirla repeated, eyebrows raised.
The buses drew up in single file beside a road paved with broad flat black stones, white cement between. We left the buses and stood in groups on the edge of the road, the sun brilliant and hot overhead, the sky tinted orange. Shading my eyes, I saw the sky was filled with tiny flying things, orange, yellow and brown, each no more than a centimeter square, flocking in thick clouds about twenty meters over our heads.
At the end of the road, a blocky stone wall rose high enough for its top to be blurred and half obscured by the yellow and orange clouds. The wall reached across a gap between two stretches of green thicket.
The guards took us from the buses with a minimum of cordiality, lined us up in two rows, and urged us forward, toward the stone wall. Shirla stayed resolutely beside me, Shatro, Randall, and Salap ahead.
“Excuse me, is this where Able Lenk is staying?” a sailor from the Cow asked a bulky, thick-faced guard. The guard shook his head, raised his lips in what might have been a smile but more resembled a grimace of discomfiture, and pointed to the wall. I studied the faces of the guards without catching their attention. Flat expressions and muscle predominated. Hair cut short but for a lock on the left side, which trailed to the shoulder. Uniforms neatly pressed, but judging from their movements, only fair military order. Some managed to talk or smile briefly to the two lines as we were marched, but their character and behavior did not reassure me. I felt as if I were back in the slaughtered village of Moonrise, and my neck hair bristled as it had not even during our time in the storm-beast.
The longer I stayed on Lamarckia, the more I felt sure I was going to die here, in an ancient and degrading fashion. I longed for Thistledown and could not imagine why I could ever have accepted such an assignment.
“I wish the storm had eaten us,” Shirla muttered.
I touched her elbow with my hand, a brushing gesture that still caught the attention of the thick-faced guard. He gazed at me out of the corners of his eyes, pulled his lips together, and shook his head slightly.
At the gate in the wall, a small deep-sunk pair of doors barely wide enough for two to enter abreast, the lines were halted and the guards milled about, making last-minute checks for anything we might be carrying. They poked and prodded us like animals, conferred, and then the senior officer—a tall, stoop-shouldered fellow whose uniform sleeves rode up on his arms—called out, and the doors swung wide.
We entered the wall.
17
Dark stone, cool shadow for several meters, then an intense milky green light that seemed to hang like a canopy of fog. The air smelled sweet and slightly bitter.
“Don't be alarmed,” the stoop-shouldered senior officer called out as the lines marched into the greenness. “It's no worse than taking a shower. We've all done it. Your Able Lenk has done it and said it was a pleasure.”
Small scions, no larger than midges, filled the air in a swirling mist and lighted on our skin and crawled beneath our clothes until we each wore a pale green coat. Shirla squirmed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tenaciously, like living green oil.
“Do not be alarmed,” the guards repeated, and the thick-faced fellow reached a xyla stick past me and poked her in the back, bobbing his head at her. I restrained a strong urge to grab the stick and shove it back. “These are servants, not pests. They clean you up for your visit with Ser Brion.”
After a few minutes of mild discomfort—more at the thought than the actual sensation—the tiny creatures rose into the air again and hovered above our heads, filling the upper reaches of a large, white-walled cell, open at the top to the sky. I turned to look at Randall and Salap. Salap lifted his arms, the last of the tiny scions rising from him like green steam. He seemed stunned, his face slack, more surprised than he had been upon seeing the humanoid skeletons.
Never, in the history of the immigrants on Lamarckia, had scions ever served humans, or strongly interacted with them in any way.
Randall stood stiff as a board, eyes half closed, and shook his shoulders to make sure he was free of the creatures. The guards moved us through the door at the opposite end of the white cubicle, and we came to a broad courtyard surrounded by densely packed, flat-fronted gray brick buildings. The courtyard, except for us, was empty, and it quickly became obvious that we were not in Naderville proper, but in some special compound—the most likely conclusion being that this was a kind of prison. Shirla took hold of my arm despi
te the poking stick of a guard. When the guard poked at her hard, making her flinch, I could not stand still any longer. I turned and grabbed the stick, wrenched it from his grip, and broke it in two.
The thick-faced fellow stared at me in dumb surprise. Around us, the other guards began to break us into groups of four or five. Still, I met the thick-faced man's stare for several seconds, until he pointed to the broken stick on the ground and said, “Pick it up.”
Shirla stooped to do so, but I brought her back to her feet with a not-very-gentle jerk. She looked between us with eyes squinted, but took hold of my arm again.
“Pick it up,” the guard repeated, his face reddening. He advanced a half step. None of the guards had guns. All my senses sharpened and I examined the situation almost dispassionately, seeing how many guards were close, judging how my fellow captives would react to an incident.
Randall intervened. “What in the name of the Good Man is this about?” he shouted, charging between us and standing stiff-legged, arms held up, fists clenched, as if he meant to fight the man himself. “What is this brutishness?”
The tall, stoop-shouldered officer had also seen the brewing confrontation, and strode to Randall's side. “Pardon this, please,” he said, his voice soft. “No harm is meant. No harm is meant.” Thus soothing and separating us, the incident was brought to an end, and we were divided peacefully enough and led through different doors around the compound. Shirla and I were separated, but there was nothing we could practically do, other than provoke another incident, which I felt we would not be able to conclude in our favor. Shirla looked at me, eyes wide, then swung her head away abruptly and walked with her group of women through a narrow xyla door. I could not tell whether she felt betrayed or simply had resigned herself to whatever was going to happen.
She hated confinement. I dreaded the prospect myself.
The rooms within the gray brick buildings were uniform, four on the ground floor and I presumed four on the upper floor, accessible through a stairwell rising from the middle to the rear. Each room was equipped with a single small square window, two double bunks, a table, and chairs. They smelled clean enough, but the sanitary facilities were primitive: a hole in the floor in one corner, a single tap for water that also served to flush the hole.
“You won't be here for more than a few hours,” the thick-faced guard said. He closed the door on Salap, a steward named Rissin, myself, and a young sailor named Cortland.
We settled ourselves as best we could, introduced ourselves, tried to pass the time. Lying in my bunk to doze, I saw something scratched into the bricks of the wall: a crude drawing, a head with round eyes and a downturned mouth, arms and legs sticking out of it, hair in jags. Beside this figure, five crude letters: B-O-B-R-T. We looked for and found other drawings scattered around the room, on the floors or walls.
“Children,” the young sailor, Cortland, said.
Salap let his shoulders droop, and lay on his bunk with a sharp expulsion of breath. “Ser Olmy, I am ashamed,” he said.
I shook my head, but could not think of anything to say.
The hours passed, and it grew dark outside. No one came for us, and no one brought information.
A single light bulb came on within the room, casting a dismal pale pink glow, a sick and depressing color under the circumstances.
“Do you think they're going to kill us?” Rissin asked.
“No,” Salap said.
Rissin began to fidget on his bunk above mine. “This is not what I thought would happen,” he said. “Not as long as we were with Lenk.”
I tried to puzzle the situation through. Either the Brionists were savages on the order of the worst human history had produced, or we were simply in crude detention, until Brion and Lenk had finished negotiations. I tried to imagine what strengths Lenk would negotiate from.
18
The door opened and the thick-faced guard watched as a man and a woman in light blue aprons brought four covered plates. The guard was now armed, I saw—a small pistol. We took our plates and the door was closed. The plates contained a thoroughly cooked green vegetable and a scoop of paste-thick wheat gruel.
The light went out. The steward and the young sailor did not notice; they were asleep. Salap gave a little grunt and moved around in the darkness.
“Olmy, are you awake?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Lenk said Brion had a great secret. Do you think he meant using the scions as servants?”
“Perhaps.”
“Do you know what that implies?”
“I think so,” I said.
“It could dwarf the importance of our little skeletons,” Salap said. “It changes the way we have to think about the ecoi...”
He lapsed into silence, standing in the middle of the room, facing the dim glow of the square window. “I am lost,” he said. “Everything I knew is turned upside down. All my studies ... Everything the explorers found, or thought they found. Brion has gone beyond us all.” Salap came closer to my bunk and whispered, “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to stay here, like you, until they come and get us.”
“Unless you're from the Hexamon.”
“What do you think, that they'd send some sort of superhuman? You want me to break down the walls and let us escape?”
Salap chuckled dryly. “If you were from the Hexamon, would you reveal yourself to Brion, or to General Beys? It could make a significant impression.”
“This is stupid talk,” I said. “The disciplinary was crazy. Randall was gullible. I'm no superhuman.”
Salap stood. I heard him rubbing his hands together in the dark. “I have no wife and children, no alliance with a family,” he said. “I have never cared much for family life. But I have always taken care of my researchers, my assistants, my students. I've failed.”
“We're all helpless,” I said.
“You don't get my meaning. I have always seen a single bright thread of destiny stretching ahead of me. And I've felt those around me would be safe, as long as that thread stretched taut...”
“We're not dead yet,” I said, finding this line of talk no more useful than the last.
“I have never known what to think of the Good Lenk,” Salap said. “When we followed him here, he seemed all-knowing, very thorough. But he has not handled the factions well. So much rancor, so little resolve ... Unwilling to crack heads, I believe.”
“You think he should have cracked a few heads?”
“I think he should have been prepared to do what needed to be done. Ready for what happened. Perhaps the dream is over for Lenk.”
Cortland stirred and poked his head over the edge of the bunk. “Have some courage,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Don't speculate about things you can't know. Brion may be in for a surprise.”
“What kind of surprise?” I asked, suddenly intensely curious. The situation had been entirely too simple, when history demanded that it should be complex and dynamic.
“I'm just a sailor. I don't know much of anything. But Lenk never plays from weakness.”
Salap made a small chuff of disbelief. “Let him surprise me, and I will be in his debt even more.”
“We're all in his debt,” Cortland said with little-boy confidence. “He took us from Thistledown. General Beys doesn't know everything.”
“You were born here,” Salap said. “You never saw Thistledown.”
“How old were you when you came here?”
“Twenty,” Salap said.
“And you?” the sailor asked, aiming his voice in the dark to where I sat on the lower bunk.
“I was born here,” I said. “I never saw Thistledown. I've read about it.”
Salap said nothing.
“I never liked hearing stories about Thistledown,” Cortland said. “Too much for any human to think about.”
“And Lamarckia is not?” I asked, chuckling.
“Lamarckia is like Lenk,” the sailor said. “Benevolent, but full of
surprises.”
“The green,” Salap said.
“Yeah,” Cortland said. “Why green?”
Salap did not answer.
Rissin the steward snored on.
I dozed a few hours and came awake just before morning. Through the window, I saw a reddish natural stone surface mottled with drooping dark green shapes like melted fern fronds. Banging noises in the courtyard of the compound awoke Salap, Rissin, and Cortland. They used the meager facilities and we stood expectantly near the door, awaiting breakfast, freedom, or whatever might present itself.
The thick-faced guard opened the door and waved us outside. We stood blinking and stretching in the brightness, watching others emerge from the doors around the courtyard. Salap adjusted his long shirt and pants, saw me observing him, and smiled at his pretensions.
Tables had been set up in the center of the courtyard. Shirla stood by one, and I glanced at the guards, who seemed to have their attention on other matters—conferring with more servers in blue aprons, or counting the people coming through doors. I walked across the stone floor of the compound and hugged Shirla.
“Not a comfortable night,” she said, clinging to me. With a small shudder, she let me go and looked around the courtyard, lips pressed tightly together. “But we aren't dead. This seems to be breakfast...”
Servers brought plates on rolling carts and food in big ceramic bowls. Randall, his stiff brown hair awry, sat at the table across from Shirla and me. We were served more greens and gruel. The guards stood back as if we were not important, or perhaps not even there. All were armed.
Randall ate his serving in silence, staring at nothing in particular. Shirla spoke about the accommodations, no different from ours, and then asked, “I see Salap, but where's Shatro?”
“Not here,” Randall said.
“Why?”
“Said he had something to tell Brion. The guard let him out last night.” Randall gazed at me over a poised spoon. “He's going to tell them about you.”
