by Greg Bear
“There only is. There only is.” The figure lifted one foot, turned slightly on the other, and placed the free foot down awkwardly, bending forward to compensate. It returned to its original posture, but where the foot had lifted away, a small pucker remained. Though it knew the figure of Caitla/Hyssha would never pass, never enter the realm of a human ecos undetected, it still worked to finish its peculiar scion, the interface for its own selfless and eternal curiosity, the purest and most biological urge to know.
“There's more,” Brion whispered. “Planets and planets and planets. In the sky. Wherever there are stars.”
At the mention of stars, the lights within the inner frame, scattered in profusion over the braces and walls, dim blue and white, shone out in sudden splendor.
“Stars,” the figure said.
Brion turned to Frick and Chung. “I know it isn't Caitla. I know I'll never see Caitla again. But I could stay here and tutor her. I could be happy doing that.”
Frick rubbed his hands together in front of him, not relishing what he had to say. “Ser Brion, you are needed. We need you.”
Brion's brief resurgence of hope withered. He screwed his face up and imitated Frick's gesture of rubbed hands, then pushed his nose with the tips of his fingers. “Beys can take care of those things,” he said.
Chung said, “You put far too much on Beys. Someday he'll discover he doesn't need any of us.”
Brion jerked his head up at that, as if to make a sharp reply, but his eyes turned inevitably to the figure, and all expression melted away.
“You have other responsibilities,” Salap said soothingly. “Everybody else here has other responsibilities. None of you ... pardon me, Ser Brion, not even you ... is prepared to study and teach here. I am.”
“What would you teach her?” Brion asked resentfully, unwilling to give up this last possibility of fulfillment, of peace.
“I would study her,” Salap said. “And then I would watch her die. I do not think this palace, this field, will be alive much longer, nor any of its kind across Hsia. You and Caitla gave her a very powerful ‘name.’ I think she uses ‘name’ to mean the chlorophyll you presented to her. She used the name. And that changes everything.”
“The balloons,” I said.
Salap nodded. “They carry larval seed-mothers, not just scions. If I'm right, in a few weeks, all this will wither.”
“Old names die,” the figure said.
“Nightmare,” Brion said, words venomous with disappointment. “It's all nightmare.” Brion turned to me. “Ser Olmy, you know history. That much change means death and destruction everywhere. The Hexamon must come. I've said it ... I've felt it. You must repair Lenk's clavicle, tell the Hexamon what's happened here.”
There was nothing I could say. For Brion to make a plea on behalf of the humans on Lamarckia seemed ludicrous. Yet he was right. There was one last thing left to do: find the clavicle, and see if it could be repaired.
Brion stepped closer to the figure and touched its face. It did not react, but even as he stroked its cheek, it said, “Are more names? Bring more names.”
We left Salap with several weeks’ worth of food from the two boats, Brion's and the one that had carried Hyssha Chung and her attendants.
“I won't die here, no fear of that,” Salap told me, walking back with me through the sea of green. “I'm a tough old vulture, as you doubtless know. Brion, on the other hand...”
Brion had returned to the boat in an impenetrable daze, ignoring us all, and squatted on the bow, staring down the waterway. He had let the string unwind and carried it pinched between thumb and forefinger, lying in loose coils on the polished and painted xyla deck.
“Watch him,” Salap told me. “He still holds a dangerous amount of political charge, as does Lenk. They must be eased together ... or apart.”
We stood on overgrown dock, with the new silva—the jungle—rustling like grass in a wind, though there was hardly a breeze. Salap held me by my shoulders. “Even if you never get through to the Hexamon, even if they never come, some of us can survive.”
26
“Did you ever find the clavicle?” Yanosh asks. I am finishing my story outside the hospital. Yanosh has been dragged away by greater responsibilities, and has returned to find me making progress. We leave the hospital to see some of the sights of the Axis City.
I am removing myself from the memories of one long and difficult life.
Now we drift and tract beside each other in the Wald, the great weightless and terribly green forest in Axis Euclid. My body is so much sweeter and more comfortable, yet I still miss my old life, my impending death, and still ache so much I have incessant thoughts of suicide. If I return through the gate to Lamarckia and try to find Rebecca...
But I can't do that. Yanosh tells me the gate is sporadic, that years have passed on Lamarckia even since I was retrieved. I do not want the new life, but I will not reject it. In this I have a sense of duty to something much higher than the Hexamon.
“I found it,” I say. The Wald's green oppresses me, as it did on Lamarckia, where we ran from continent to continent, and finally from island to island...
Fleeing the power of the “name” of chlorophyll.
“What did you do?” Yanosh asks.
What he really wants to know is, did I finally act? The story I have told so far is one of observation and hiding, of trying to put pieces together and understand a pattern. But I never did understand completely. The pieces never fit smoothly.
I made my decision in ignorance and uncertainty.
27
Brion did not say a word to anybody in the eighteen hours it took us to navigate the length of the canal, back to Naderville. The green had progressed dozens of kilometers through the silva, and along its borders with the thicket, the old growth had wilted, making way for the new. Balloons dotted the horizon and flew overhead, lifting free of the land, blowing with the winds outward.
I watched this with a grim numbness and a sense of abject failure. I could not judge Brion as I once had; if anything, I had become more angry with Lenk. But Lenk was old and could not bear the weight of all blame.
The futility of blame was apparent, but did not lift my gloom. I needed Shirla to bring back my sense of life and reality.
Frick took coded messages on the radio within the cabin, and brought them forward for Brion to read. He read them and handed them back, shaking his head. Frick became increasingly agitated. Something was happening.
Brion sat on the bow, arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees, and stared into the sunset, eyes almost closed, lips drawn into a simian grimace of puzzlement.
We motored past the entrance to the lake. I tried to persuade Frick to return me to the lake so that I could rejoin the ships docked there. He looked at Brion, shook his head as if I were a buzzing fly, and finally just ignored me.
The guards stood on the rear deck of the small, elegant boat, watching me intently. I thought of diving into the canal and swimming to the shore, or up the offshoot to the lake, but knew they would shoot me if I did.
Smoke rose above the tall cliff edge of the silva as we approached Naderville, but for some minutes, the town itself remained hidden. The harbor came into view first, and it was filled with sailing ships. I counted eight, ten, twelve, and as the full harbor was revealed, seventeen—of all types, full-rigs, schooners, big-bodied four-masters, small barks. Flashes erupted from the sides of several of the ships, followed by the heavy blasts of cannon fire and the rushing whistles of falling shells. More flashes from the shore, puffs of smoke, and deep thumps announced explosions.
The pilot immediately increased the speed of Brion's boat, and Chung's boat hastened to keep pace. As the boats cruised out of the canal entrance, I saw Naderville again, hundreds of homes and buildings arranged along several hills, backed by high dark thicket.
Gouts of flame crept from street to street up the hills, and more shells fell, shearing the roofs off buildings and sparking more fire
s. At least a third of the town had been set ablaze. Shouts and screams carried far and thin across the harbor. Brion stared at the black pillars of smoke with an astonished, hurt expression, then crawled the middle of the boat and ordered his binoculars.
“Lenk lied,” Brion said tightly, swinging the binoculars right and left across the city. “He used himself as a blind.”
Brion lowered the glasses and screamed across the water, “Why didn't Beys know? General Beys, where are you?”
We swung toward the northern shore and docked in the early evening at a small private wharf. Chung's boat pulled alongside, and Chung stared at us, grim and frightened. Her assistants, Ullman and Grado, leaped from the boat and tied it, then helped her ashore.
A hundred meters away, warehouses burned sluggishly, throwing up thick, sour black smoke. The house adjacent to the wharf was beginning to burn as well as embers landed on its roof.
Brion stood with one foot on the gunwale and stared down at me in utter contempt. “You are nothing,” he said. “The Hexamon has sent us nothing.” He seemed ready to order me shot, but he shook his head and took Frick's hand, climbing up onto the wharf wall.
Brion, Chung, Frick, and all the servants and guards ran from the wharf, leaving me alone in the boat. They ran up the harbor road that pointed to Naderville.
For a few minutes, I could not move. My legs and arms tingled. I was mesmerized, watching the fire sweep down toward the wharf and the boats, the xyla burning with slow, curling orange flames, thick oily smoke smearing across the dark blue sky. I climbed out of the launch and stood on the harbor road. Wind blew against my back, rushing to feed the fires in Naderville. A woman in a long black dress with a sash of red ran along the shore road, alone; this part of the town had already been evacuated, probably as soon as the ships appeared in the harbor.
My first impulse was to get back on the boat and cross the harbor, wait on the south shore until the conflagration and fighting had settled. I knew my mission: I was not to interfere, and I was to bring information back to the Hexamon. I could not do that if I was dead.
I searched the ships in the harbor for Khoragos and Cow, but as I had suspected, neither were visible. Lenk was no doubt keeping them out of the harbor and away from the fighting. I hoped Shirla was with him, and of course Randall.
I was sick of the divaricates and their politics; Lenk's obsessions and calculations, all gone wrong, and his hounding of Brion and Caitla (if in fact that was true). I could not fathom Brion's handing power to Beys, and Brion's gift of green to Hsia seemed to me obscene, the ultimate monkey-play arrogance.
If a gate was to open now and pluck me out of the pilot's seat on the boat, and close forever on Lamarckia, I would not regret leaving—
Except for Shirla. She was essential, an anchor against my drift into this madness. She was not particularly beautiful, not particularly intelligent; nothing about her shone with an ineffable flame. She was merely a woman with a decent set of presumptions and a simple set of goals. She wanted to live a life among friends and peers, live with and love a decent man, raise children to be human beings in a known and familiar place.
I loathed any part of me I had seen reflected in Lenk or Brion. Their smallnesses and failures could easily be my own. Even Brion's grief for Caitla seemed cheapened by his arrogance, his presumption that people of such a high standing could not die, that some magic must keep them alive.
How did that differ from me? On Thistledown I would undoubtedly opt for juvenation—life extension and even body replacement.
Caitla and Brion had acted on their beliefs, however skewed or inadequate, and so far, I had done nothing—used none of my expertise, exercised none of my (admittedly few) options, managed to always find myself in positions where aloofness was the best choice.
Lenk's activism had brought his people here and subjected them to immense suffering. Brion's brash militancy and drive had led to war and murder and had culminated in the madness of the spreading green. What had once dwelled in comparative balance was now overturned and could not be set upright again.
My inaction seemed saintly by comparison.
Shirla's face kept popping into my thoughts.
My mission was over.
I had to make a decision, or I would be nothing more than a man filled with vacuum, a nonentity standing always on some thin line.
I stepped back from a rush of flame as the wall of the house collapsed. The gust of burning hot air and embers jarred me and I turned toward the wharf.
With the flames roaring behind me, I studied the harbor, judging the strategic position of the ships and boats, the layout of Naderville itself. There was fighting in the town—I could see troops moving through the streets, hear the crack and continuous popping of small-arms fire.
Lenk had indeed lied to Brion, or expected the worst, and had been prepared. He had kept in reserve a ragtag navy assembled of merchant ships and transports. They were now laying siege to Naderville. The fourteen vessels had crept into the harbor a few hours before, perhaps signaled by the departure of the two diplomatic ships Khoragos and Cow. The steamships were not visible—Beys must have taken them out of the harbor, perhaps heading back to put more pressure on Jakarta. Lenk's ships had surprised the small defense force and had landed several hundred troops. It had all happened very quickly.
There were no masters on Lamarckia, there were only children. Some of the children, however, were more crafty than I had imagined. Lenk had turned out to be smarter—or luckier—than Brion, after all. I suspected that Lenk had the superior force, selected from the more capable of the angry citizens of Tasman and Elizabeth's Land. Brion's troops—to judge by the poor fool on the flatboat—might turn out to be little more than opportunistic thugs, poorly trained and cruel, no match for that kind of avenging passion.
All of Brion's invincibility had crumpled. The ultimate failings of a frightened, grieving, and angry little man were written all over the hills and streets of Naderville.
As the flattened house behind me crackled and exploded, I returned to the deserted boats and examined their supplies and reserves of power. The batteries in Chung's boat were almost drained. Brion's boat, however, had a spare set, fully charged. I carried the spare set of batteries to Chung's boat—less identifiable than Brion's elegant launch—removed the flag at the bow, and prepared to push off. I cruised quietly through shrouds of dense, choking smoke, not to the south side of the harbor, where there were few if any buildings and no visible fighting or shelling going on, but west, along the shore, under the line of fire of the ships in the harbor.
Twilight was fading fast. I guided the boat around a smoldering hulk that had once been a wooden merchant vessel. Its crooked trees stuck up out of the water like broken fingers. I wanted to thoroughly understand the strategic situation, find the best vantage point, and then walk into the town and join Lenk's troops.
The gate opener had placed me in a very interesting time indeed, stuck me here like a fly in amber. There would be no returning.
Naderville rested on two main hills, with a line of smaller hills along the peninsula between the harbor and the ocean to the north. East of the two main hills, between the town itself and the lake and Citadel, a patch of thicket silva had been allowed to remain. The silva would be mined through with tunnels, and if Beys or his subordinates had positioned any last defensive troops—or hoped to fight a final action—I surmised they would be hidden in that patch of thicket, or perhaps at the Citadel itself, and when opportunity arose, certainly after the artillery barrage, storm up one or both of the hills.
I saw a group of soldiers marching down a street on a hill, almost hidden in the shadows of a row of buildings still intact in that quarter of town. They marched about a kilometer and a half from the boat. I could not tell whose troops they were, of course—it was possible that none of Lenk's troops had uniforms, but I couldn't make out the cut of their clothes, or even determine the color.
It was necessary to survey the to
wn from farther south, to get a better view of the streets and buildings, the centers of potential conflict. I guided the boat south, away from Lenk's ships. Locking the wheel for a moment and searching through the cabin, I found a piece of paper in a drawer, and quickly sketched the harbor, the town, and the streets visible. I used the binoculars to gather details—likely administration buildings, a water tower, and what seemed to be a radio mast on the western side of the town. Any one of these could be crucial objectives.
By this time, I was starting to attract unwanted attention from Lenk's ships, less than two kilometers away. A gunner had targeted the boat and a shell landed barely a dozen meters away. I did not know what type of guns they had, and how accurate they might be, but I could not risk staying on the water any longer. I headed for the docks again. Another shell drenched me with spray. I was less than a dozen meters from shore when a direct hit split the boat in two and flung me backward into the water.
Dazed, I floated on my back in the black water of the harbor for several minutes before swimming for the docks. I crawled up a ladder and stood in the darkness between two warehouses, one of them shattered by the shelling but not on fire. I tried to get my wits together. A piece of xyla had cut a bloody groove across my forehead. I wiped the blood away with my wet sleeve. The map was gone, but I had most of the details firmly in memory.
Naderville was divided by four main east-west streets and seven or eight wide streets running north-south from the harbor to the hills. The buildings that seemed most likely to be administrative—still intact, surprisingly—lay on the slopes of the easternmost hill, off of a north-south boulevard. I walked toward these buildings.
A few civilians still lingered in the town, and the scenes I saw, heading for the eastern hill, could have been several thousand years old. Bodies littered a small courtyard where a shell had exploded: two large ones, two small. Children. I wondered if Lenk had killed some of his own children.
