by Greg Bear
Shirla turned and asked, “What about you?”
I frowned and shook my head in disgust. “A stupid story,” I said.
Randall focused on nothing again.
The stoop-shouldered officer walked to the northern side of the compound, followed by another guard carrying a small crate. The guard placed the crate on the ground and the officer stepped up onto it, shifting one of the odd curved batons from hand to hand. The thicket above and behind the western buildings of the compound glowed brilliant gold-green in the morning sun.
All around the compound, a distant whirring alternated with faint, high-speed chuckle-ducks—the first sounds I had heard that seemed to come from the ecos.
“Hello,” the officer said to the assembly around the tables. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, clutching the baton in both hands now, ill at ease. “I realize this part of your visit has been a little boring, but I hope you understand. I can tell you that talks between Ser Able and Ser Brion have been going well.” He stopped here, and we glanced at each other, clearly not feeling much encouraged.
“There is no danger. Our manner may seem harsh, but we mean no harm. We have reacted to very difficult circumstances with increased resolve and order. You should not believe all those stories ... those things that we have been accused of.” This awkward phrasing seemed to irritate him, and he drew his eyebrows together, slipped the stick into a loop in his coat, and clasped his hands before him. “Now that you've finished your meal, we will clear the tables, and you will...” He conferred with the guard, who whispered in his ear. “You will gather in a single group in this corner of the compound.” He withdrew the stick again and used it to point to the northwestern corner.
“What the hell is that?” Shirla asked. “A whip?”
“Looks like a thin boomerang,” said an older woman A.B. beside her.
“So please, let us begin,” the officer concluded. Then, as an afterthought, “My name is Pitt, Suleiman Ab Pitt. Your host attendants will answer individual questions.”
Shirla's concern of the night before had dissolved into quiet contempt. “What a cargo,” she muttered. “They think we're idiots.”
All around, with fatuous smiles, the guards urged us to our feet and we followed them to a broad double door at the far end of the courtyard, still in shadow. Brion must have had some reason for subjecting newcomers to this passage through door after door, I thought, but none came to mind. My old cynicism returned in force. Nothing made sense. I tried to keep my mind blank. The only positive in this personal cloud of negative emotions was Shirla's closeness. It seemed that through her, I could attach myself to the simple fact of being human; however much bad examples came to mind, she countered them.
But Shirla was not in an optimistic frame of mind, either. We followed the stoop-shouldered officer, Pitt, surrounded by guards, through the broad door, four and five abreast, and came to a flat green space on the other side. For a moment, my eyes refused to believe, but then I saw it for what it was: a well-manicured lawn, covering perhaps fifty acres. Trees—terrestrial varieties, oaks, maples, elms—rose all around, throwing their shadows through a rising, patchy ground mist. At the borders of this garden, intensely green thicket rose in a tortured wall to a height of twenty meters, casting its own shadow over the grass. The guards encouraged us to walk onto the lawn. Salap bent down and touched the grass, and across the nine or ten meters between us, his eyes met mine. He seemed now always to seek out my face when confronted by the unexpected, as if I might explain things to him.
But he called out, “Not grass.”
Shirla's shoulders trembled and she shivered all over, as if touched by a ghost. “I've never seen grass,” she said.
“We didn't bring this kind of grass with us,” Randall said. The sailors and other members of the crews stood like sheep on this unexpected sward, uncertain what was expected of them.
“Brion shows you the beauties of the world he foresees,” Pitt called out. The role of master of ceremonies did not suit him. His eyes remained flinty, his shoulders drawn down, no matter how broad his smile and generous his tone. “We have formed an alliance with the ecos, and it works with us, for us.”
Salap shook his head, still disbelieving. One by one, embarrassed but gaining in courage, the crews kneeled and felt the grass, or walked over to the nearest trees and touched the apparent bark, the branches and leaves.
Not a leaf out of place, the lawn as perfect as a carpet.
I kneeled and touched the blades. They were cool and stiff, much stiffer than the grass I had walked across in parks in Thistledown.
A commotion began at the south side of the garden. I looked up from several blades of grass I had pulled loose: they writhed slowly in my hand like tiny worms.
Keo and Ferrier were arguing with several guards. Pitt walked over briskly like a tall gray crow, pointing his baton straight down by his side. More words were exchanged. Salap and Randall came closer to Shirla and me. “Someone's upset,” Salap said.
A tall woman with golden-brown skin and long black hair, wearing a rich white and gray gown, entered the garden and took Pitt aside. Pitt listened intently.
Keo and Ferrier looked on in some satisfaction. The crews stood frozen, scattered across the false lawn, watching the woman and Pitt as if their lives might depend on the result.
Finally, Pitt approached a group of four guards, gave them quick instructions, and shouted, “There has been a misunderstanding. The following people will come forward.” He took a list from Keo and read: “Nussbaum, Grolier, Salap, Randall, Olmy, Shatro.”
Shirla let go of my arm and stepped away. I glanced at her, puzzled, but she nodded toward Ferrier, Keo, and Pitt. “Go,” she said.
I did not want to leave her. Salap walked a few paces and stopped, looking back. Randall joined him, and Shirla gave me a nudge. “Maybe it's something important,” she said. “Come back and tell me.”
Keo and Ferrier greeted Nussbaum and Grolier, and then turned toward us. “Able Lenk didn't suspect they'd take you off the ship,” Keo said, walking toward the gate. “He's very upset.” We all followed. The tall woman in white and gray stayed behind, still talking to Pitt. “He's calling for his researchers. Where's Shatro?”
“He left the compound last night,” Randall said. “We don't know where they took him.”
“Well, we'll find him. We've seen pretty terrifying things. Changes our perspective, I'll tell you.”
We passed through the doors and crossed the compound.
“Grass,” Ferrier said, shaking his head in amazement.
19
“Brion's confessed to sending the pirates,” Keo said. We walked between three guards and behind the auburn-haired woman, whose ubiquitous presence had not yet been explained. We did not even know her name. “Everybody else denies it. I think he may be a little mad.”
“He is not mad,” the woman said sharply. She carried herself erect, footsteps delicate and precise, gliding over the ground, her dark-red gown swishing around her ankles with a sound like little rushes of water. Her skin was a rich, pale brown, and her eyes deep black, surrounded by ivory-colored sclera. She did not seem at all impressed by us.
Keo cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows. We came to a wall made of round stones the size of a human head and smooth as pearls, glued together with a translucent, glistening mortar. The wall rose almost fifteen meters and was capped by the drooping, melted fern shapes I had seen through the window of our room in the compound. A hole had been knocked in the base of the wall, and a smoothly planed xyla door had been set in the hole. It looked out of place. Salap touched the surrounding stones lightly as we passed through.
Our eyes adjusted slowly to the dark beyond the door. The auburn-haired woman took a lantern from the wall and switched it on. From all around, the stones returned muted reflections, surrounding us with thousands of dim, sleepy eyes. The stones rose in a free-form arch that came to a point about ten meters overhead. Beyond th
e arch, pillars marched unevenly into gloom relieved only by a few lanterns. The floor felt resilient underfoot.
I strongly doubted that Brion's people were responsible for this construction. It seemed poorly adapted for human use. If the architecture called to mind anything, it was the palaces on Martha's Land. While these chambers were empty, however, they were not in ruins. Hsia seemed to build for the ages.
The woman guided us through the pillars toward a point of orange light, surrounded by a peculiar granular halo, twenty or thirty meters away. The light and halo resolved into a large lantern mounted on the pearl-stone wall beside another inset doorway. The wall around the door glowed faintly, sunlight seeping through the translucent mortar surrounding the stones.
A guard stepped forward and opened the door. Temporarily blinded by daylight, we stepped through into a rich vegetal tangle of green vines, smooth branches, spreading leaves, helical creepers and aerial roots, melted ferns, pendulous waxy fruits: an orgy of green growth.
Bright late-morning sun cast speckles of tinted light on a carpet of discarded and shriveled leaves and branches. Randall muttered something I did not hear clearly. Salap wore a wise half smile, as if nothing would surprise him now.
“This is the vivarium,” the woman said. “My sister spent much of her time here, before she died.”
“It's wonderful,” Salap said.
The woman walked ahead.
A few dozen meters down a trail, we came to a broad clearing covered with the same stiff, well-manicured “grass” we had seen before. A lattice of smooth bright-green branches, like the weave of a wicker bowl, overarched and shaded three square gray brick buildings on the edge of the clearing.
“Some of your people are quartered here,” the auburn-haired woman said. She stopped at the door to the nearest building, still refusing to look directly at us.
The guards stood aside and we passed through the door. Inside, a small, square room with narrow windows, lighted by two electric lanterns on poles, was furnished with couches and two chairs.
Allrica Fassid entered through a door opposite the entrance, skin pale, deep lines around her nose and lips and across her brow. She whispered a few words to Keo, then faced Salap, Randall, and me. She pushed her shoulders forward and inclined her head, looking to one side, like a young girl about to perform some unpleasant chore. “One of your researchers tried to visit Brion. It appears Brion received him. We don't know what they talked about.” Her face tensed and her eyes bore into us, but that passed and her weary expression returned. “Did Ser Keo tell you what we've learned?”
“Only that Brion has done some confessing,” Randall said.
“Of a sort,” Fassid said. “I'd call it bragging. He has a smile that makes me want to kill.” She sniffed and drew her head back, speaking more forcefully. “He's made some unbelievable claims. We need all the expertise we can muster to evaluate them.”
“They've done extraordinary things with the ecos,” Salap said. “That's obvious.”
Fassid faced Salap squarely and took a small, shivering breath. She was swallowing pride, anger, and frustration, and the effort made her seem like a marionette in the hands of a nervous puppeteer. “My apologies. I wish I could apologize to Captain Keyser-Bach, as well.”
Salap's grin faded. He stared at her with the complete lack of emotion that I had learned to interpret as extreme irritation. “Why?” he asked.
“Brion has caught us by surprise,” Fassid said. “If we had known more ... about Lamarckia, about Hsia, we might have anticipated some of what we've seen the past few hours...”
Salap folded his hands, taking no obvious pleasure in this triumph. “How can we help the esteemed Lenk?” he asked quietly.
20
Lenk stood by a broad window overlooking the vivarium. The furnishings and decor of the large but spare rooms assigned to Lenk and his aides fit the deliberate air of drabness seen everywhere. Brion did not revel in luxury.
Lenk showed all of his eighty-four natural years, and more. With his slumped shoulders and inclined head, his chin drawn deeply into his neck, he looked painfully old.
“Brion keeps referring to his triumph,” Fassid said, pressing the window with one extended finger, until the adjacent knuckles met the glass. “He also calls it his mistake. He says he made Hsia an offering. Somehow, he's collaborated ... allied himself with the ecos.”
“Is that certain?” Salap asked. We sat on frame chairs opposite the window, suffused by the cool green light of the vivarium's lush growth.
“It's what he says,” Lenk murmured.
“What does your researcher say?” Salap asked
“Ser Rustin won't venture an opinion,” Lenk said.
“Brion and his wife somehow persuaded the ecos to grow them food,” Fassid continued. “They brought Naderville out of the worst famine they had experienced, but according to our intelligence, Brion very nearly had a rebellion on his hands. Some of his people thought a sacrilege had been committed.”
“We did not hear that from Brion,” Keo said dryly.
“Brion's tenure here has not been all that smooth. But our information about Hsia has always been fragmentary,” Fassid said. “We learned even less after Brion gave almost all government authority to Beys.”
Salap shook his head, plainly trying to get past what were to him irrelevancies.
“There was so much of our own pain to deal with,” Lenk said, his deep voice quavering.
Randall asked, “Do you know where Shatro is now?”
“No,” Keo said. “Our chief negotiator says he's offered his services to Brion.”
“He's been through a lot of trouble,” Salap interceded, like a mother protecting a wayward child. This sudden mildness surprised both Randall and me. Salap regarded us with eyes half closed, the elfin smile back on his lips. “He would not be much help to us now. Strictly a technical fellow. No brilliance in him.” Salap folded his hands in his lap.
The door to the room opened and a tall, loose-jointed man about my age, with sandy brown hair and a broad, sheeplike face, came in, followed by a short young woman with intelligent eyes. Fassid introduced the man, Lenk's head researcher, Georg Ny Rustin. Salap and he seemed to know each other, and Rustin was not comfortable in Salap's presence.
“We've learned nothing new,” Rustin said to Lenk, Keo, and Fassid. “Nothing more surprising, at any rate.”
Salap turned toward Lenk's researcher. Rustin had been on the Cow and, until this moment, we had not met. “Ser Rustin, I assume we will be working together...”
“I disagree that I've reached my limits,” Rustin said quickly, glancing at Fassid and Lenk. Then, realizing he had showed his suspicions too plainly, he said, “Of course, I welcome your opinions.”
“Is it your opinion that the ecos here has understood our genetic language?”
“Not at all,” Rustin said. “All we've been shown so far could be adaptive imitation. We've seen it before. Imitation of the outward physical form of scions, but not the internal structure.”
Salap leaned his head to one side. “These forms that resemble terrestrial plants ... are purely imitative?”
“I've only been able to make preliminary tests, and that woman Chung has hovered around us ... but yes, I'd say they're purely imitative, with little deep-structure resemblance.”
“Have Brion's researchers learned whether these new forms ... these collaborations, let's call them ... use our genetic methods? Terrestrial genetic syntax?”
Rustin shook his head again. “They do not. They're megacytic, with fluid-filled spongelike tissues rather than true cellular structure. We've confirmed that positively with samples put through our own lab kits.” The dark young woman lifted a black case that presumably contained the lab kits. She seemed eager to speak, but protocol held her back.
“Have you given any thought to what Brion intends to do with these new forms?”
Rustin shook his head. “Other than what we've been told ... no.”
“Well,” Salap said. “You were never one for going beyond the immediate evidence and drawing far-fetched conclusions.”
Rustin did not know whether to receive that as a compliment.
“Are these new green scions similar to the food varieties Brion claims saved them?”
“I don't know,” Rustin said.
“You have found chlorophyll in these imitations?”
“We've examined the entire pigment range. Besides the usual varieties of Lamarckian pigments, they contain chlorophyll alpha and beta. These pigments do not occur elsewhere on Lamarckia,” Rustin said.
“And what does that imply to you?”
Rustin blinked nervously. “It's new,” he said. “It's possible Brion's somehow managed to...” He raised a hand, waved it vaguely. “Pass on clues to the ecos. But I don't see how.”
Salap turned his gaze to the red-haired woman. “You are Jessica McCall, or do I remember incorrectly?”
“You have a marvelous memory,” the woman said, clearly pleased to be in his presence.
“What do you think, Ser McCall?” Salap asked.
McCall swiftly studied the faces of Fassid and Rustin, glanced at Lenk, who had his back turned to us, and said, “I'm very concerned, Ser Salap. If the ecos understands the benefits of these far more efficient photosynthetic pigments—”
“I am also concerned,” Salap interrupted. “Ser Rustin, you have done your job well.”
“Brion's people are not at all cooperative,” Rustin said. Then, in a frustrated rush, “This Hyssha Chung in particular has been very difficult. She claims the vivarium is a memorial to her sister. She refuses to let us conduct thorough studies on the remarkable scions it contains.”
Salap made a humming noise and nodded. “Able Lenk, I would like to reorganize this team of researchers ... to take advantage of all our talents in the most efficient manner.”
“Why?” Rustin asked, Adam's apple bobbing, dismayed by the sudden request.
Lenk looked at Salap sadly, one eyelid twitching. “If it's necessary,” he said.
