Balance of Nature

by Heather Jarman

  A retinal scan allowed her to pass through the exterior gate, through an archway, and into a hive of confusion. A Green rushing between hatching sacks, a Red nurturer filling thin plastic feeding tubes (shaped like the flower stamens ancient Nasat young fed on in the forest) with fruit-pollen pulp. A Brown attended to wall-to-floor-to-ceiling hexagon-shaped hatching tubes, a swollen pupa residing in each tube. The Brown fussed with the temperature/humidity controls in an effort to assure that the maximum number of pupae hatched. Pattie watched interestedly, never having spent much time in the nurseries, and no one noticed her for a few minutes. A Yellow shell, holding a newly hatched charge, clicked the nonsense rhythms of Nasat nurturing songs as he swayed back and forth in his seat-hammock. Pattie had a vague recollection of those chants. All Nasat nurturers knew them; they aided newly hatched shells in language acquisition. I wonder if that young one he’s rocking will be able to click back those words, Pattie thought.

  The Yellow looked up from his charge. “Greetings, Blue. Can I be of assistance?” he asked.

  “I’m examining your facility. That’s all I need if you don’t mind me observing for a few minutes. Are you taking in any larvae this season?”

  “Of course,” answered the Brown shell that was tapping commands into the hatching tube console. “While at present our nests are filled to capacity, we expect our young nymph shells will soon move into their own paddocks. Are you ready to deposit today?”

  Pattie shook her head. “I’m on shore leave from my starship. I had hoped to find a nursery before I had to return to duty.”

  “If you’re interested, take one of our datachips.” She gestured at a bucket sitting beside all the feeding gadgets. “Everything we need to know to properly gestate your larvae. How long since they’d been laid, if you know any information about the fertilizing shell. Fertilization isn’t such a big issue unless there are specific genetic markers we need to be concerned with. Once you’ve filled out the forms, submit the request to our database. You don’t even need to be planetside. We can retrieve your larvae from wherever you’ve stored them.”

  Pattie removed a chip from the bucket and dropped it into the pouch mounted on her belt. “Fertilization happened so many seasons ago that I don’t recall who the partner might have been, but as a rule, I tend to avoid partners with shell degeneration or impaired limb function.”

  “Always a wise precaution,” a Brown shell said sagely. “I hope we can be of help.”

  She asked a few rudimentary questions, primarily to get a sense of what types of shells her larvae would encounter once they hatched. The odds were against her ever knowing her progeny after they hatched, so she wanted to make sure she could look out for them while she could. When she felt she had enough information to make an educated decision, she said goodbye to the nursery workers and went on her way to the research site.

  Though she knew she’d be checking out other facilities, Pattie had a good feeling about this one. One thing she’d learned from softs was to trust intuition. More times than she cared to recall, one of her crewmates had said something along the lines of “I have a bad feeling about this,” and the feeling had proved to be an accurate barometer of the situation. As she walked down the corridor, she fingered the pouch containing the datachip. Yes, I definitely have a good feeling about this.

  * * *

  Noting the cracked floor planking, Pattie stepped gingerly onto the sector of deck platform, wondering how long the damaged structure would hold the weight of all the shells working in the area. She saw a repair team equipped with plasteel seamers hiking up a peg-pole; she supposed they were starting to mend the cracks in the ceilings and walls. Several shells stood around with computers, laying down protective sensor grids that would warn of minute shifts in the structure that might indicate impending collapse. In the corner, issuing orders, she saw a Green shell—M9 Green was her designation, according to the governor. She had squeezed a plasma clipboard between a pair of limbs and was frantically scribbling notes with a stylus. Pattie watched for a few moments, reluctant to interrupt, when she concluded that this was an individual who would continue working until she was forced to shift gears.

  “P8 Blue reporting for duty, sir.”

  M9 looked up from her clipboard. “Ah yes. The governor let me know you’d be working on our team. Structural engineer?”

  Pattie nodded.

  “Tell you what, P8, we’ve pretty much surveyed every damaged paddock for ten kilometers. Why don’t you join the squads rappelling below the decks to check out the mother-tree? Your skills are too valuable to waste with tasks any shell with a seamer can handle.”

  M9 produced a security ID that Pattie clipped to her utility pocket, explained the basic layout of the work-site to her, and introduced her to the various team leads. Pattie’s team was headed by a young Brown, Y29, that Pattie instantly took a liking to. Pattie’s job would be to survey the branches beneath the lowest township deck for structural integrity. Though the decks were built from fabricated materials, the architects utilized some of the mother-tree’s massive branches as support struts. A compromised branch could doom a sector to collapse.

  Y29 and Pattie passed through rows of ordinary residential buildings to the outermost rim of paddocks. When they passed the last paddock, they turned into an L-shaped hallway with a maintenance door at the end. Exiting through the door, Pattie discovered that she was walking on a narrow plank path that followed along the building’s edge. A railing, about limb height, with thin, fibrous netting was the only barrier between Pattie and the forest.

  With wonder, she gazed out into the verdurous curtains, the tangle of scarlet flowers and twig nests, the delicate, mottled petals of fungi growing in branch hollows as slivers of sunlight tessellated on leaves larger than she was. Pattie felt small and alien in this wild, grand landscape. This has surrounded me most of my life, and I feel as if I’ve never seen it before….

  While she had lived most of her seasons on the homeworld, Pattie, like most Nasat, had matured from nymph to adult with the rain forest surrounding her. Her earliest nymph-songs had been animal squawks and tweeting and the gentle shush and plink of the late-day rain splashing on waxy leaves. During class, the overripe sweetness of rotting fruits and moldering leaves had wafted through windows. Wherever she roamed, she felt the forest’s presence. But in actual, measurable time, Pattie had been outside the protective township barriers only a limbful of times in all her seasons. The Nasat brought the forest into their dwellings, but rarely ventured out into the open forest. Even with their position as the dominant sentient species on this world, the Nasat remained vulnerable to the aggressive predators that lurked in the world beyond the township. Being a peaceable species, they preferred keeping to themselves instead of aggressively colonizing or controlling the forests. All manner of animal and plant life coexisted, relatively undisturbed by the Nasat presence.

  So for all her otherworldly experience, Pattie had never truly known her home planet. This deficit hadn’t been obvious to her until now, as she meandered along the farthest rim of Nasat civilization, gazing out at the gaping maw of wildness.

  Y29 provided her with equipment and a brief set of instructions on how to use the gear. A flush of excitement filled Pattie as she fastened climbing crampons onto her lower limbs, strapped herself into a harness, and waited in line for her chance to go over the edge.

  Dozens of Nasat managed the climbing lines. Each line was attached to one of hundreds of hooks mounted along the platform’s outer edge. The hooks were ostensibly provided for botanist-attenders (those who cared for the mother-trees) and maintenance workers, who routinely rappelled beneath the township decks. Accessing power conduits or examining the tree’s health was more easily accomplished outside the township.

  Pattie’s turn came. She paid close attention to the orientation when her group assumed the frontline positions.

  “We’re looking for abnormalities. Evidence of sabotage,” a Yellow clicked. “Malfunct
ioning equipment. Infection. Anything that looks like it isn’t supposed to be there.” She pointed to a flat computer panel built into the harness. “If you find something that needs evaluation, this sensor panel can take a reader and transmit both picture and analysis to the base team up here. This companel also functions as your communicator. Questions? No. Then good searching.”

  Pattie surrendered, a little nervously, to a brusque Green who snapped the rope into place on her harness, demonstrated to Pattie how the automated controls worked—how to take up the line slack, how to let out more line—and told her it was time to drop over the side.

  Not that different from zero-G, Pattie thought as the air whistled past her ears. She worked her way down the trunk with measured jumps, covering the equivalent of two or three decks of distance before she reached her assigned branch. Peering down the length of the branch, she guessed she had a kilometer or so to cover. Giving herself enough rope slack to move comfortably, she began slow, deliberate switch-backs, surveying the mature branch as she walked, holding her tricorder out in front of her.

  Pattie was pragmatic enough to know that her study would take time. Like a complex piece of machinery, a mother-tree’s health was subject to more variables than could be swiftly assessed. Minor bark beetle infestations or leaf rot didn’t warrant a call to base camp. What Pattie kept foremost in her mind were the images she’d seen on the newsfeed last night.

  Pictures of the damaged sectors (the one she presently worked in being the worst) showed evidence of scarification on the building and tree surfaces—almost akin to an acid spill—but the color, pattern, and characteristics of the scars resembled nothing she’d seen in her labs. She looked for the small, almost unnoticeable puddles of the same residue that appeared to be related to, if not the cause of, the scarification. It was a stretch, she knew, to assume such a minor thing could be related to the massive destruction she’d experienced last night; but Pattie knew to never rule out any possible evidence until you had to. Patience, she admonished herself as she walked back and forth.

  How long she’d been walking, how far away from the trunk she had gone when her tricorder finally flashed a match, Pattie didn’t know. As the permutations of the brown and green landscape had begun to blur to her eyes, the beep startled her. She shook herself back to awareness and studied the reading.

  The tricorder had “seen” a marking similar to the one Pattie had noticed on the footage. What if I’m onto something? she thought. Nervously, she squeezed her pincers together. She squeezed her eyelids down hard a few times to help her alertness and then she read the tricorder reading. And reread the analysis. Dropping down on all her limbs, Pattie studied her discovery.

  A pocket of dark brown—almost black—stickiness oozed out of a crusty laceration in the branch’s bark. She nudged it with a gloved finger and a puff of smoke erupted. Whatever it is, it’s nasty, she thought. Using a small, sterile slide from her harness panel to collect a sample, she ran a preliminary analysis and transmitted the specs to the base team. When they knew how they wanted her to proceed, they’d contact her. In the meantime, she decided to see how widespread this symptom was. She activated the wood adhesives on her crampons, assuring that she could walk the circumference of the branch without falling, and gingerly crawled over the side. Steadying her breathing, she moved one step at a time until she hung, shell down, beneath the branch.

  The attack hairs on her neck bristled; she gasped.

  For as far as she could see, similar pockets of black-brown ooze dripped off the branch. Thick ropey vines and ferns prevented her from seeing too far into the jungle, but the dark shadows staining the pale ochre faces of upturned flowers that grew below the branch were unmistakable. As the substance dried, scars formed on the bark surface. She activated her computer panel and began transmitting pictures.

  After she’d passed most of an hour hanging upside down and accumulating sensor data, her signal receiver crackled.

  “P8 Blue, this is base. We want as many pictures as you can manage. Follow the branch as far as the rope line will let you. Copy.”

  “Acknowledged, base. I’ll head deeper into the forest.”

  Scrambling back on top of the branch, she activated the control that slackened her climbing line and began her hunting expedition.

  * * *

  She walked until the tree trunk and her teammates had long since passed from sight. In her aloneness, she jumped at the echoing chirps and animal skrees, wondering if a sharp-toothed sloth, prepared to pounce, waited in the next hollow. Rope or no rope, the prospect of dangling in midair, several kilometers off the ground with only a finger-thin rope to hang on to terrified her. Gradually, she acclimated; the hollow thumps of nuts falling from higher branches stopped startling her. She stopped worrying if a misstep would send her careening off the branch so she moved more swiftly, with confidence. Parting tangles of plants, stepping over furry mosses, and skirting the edges of laito monkey nests, she hunched over her tricorder, diligently taking readings. Life seethed on every side. Instead of fearing it, she found her environs comfortable, cozy.

  When she reached a fork in the branch, she decided to take a break. A water seep trickling daintily from the upper reaches had smoothed a hollow in the bark where she could sit. For a late-cycle meal, she ate her fill of orange jahang berries and sipped beads of water off a leaf. Let’s see whether all this walking is getting us anywhere, she thought, transferring data from her harness companel to her tricorder.

  As the sensor input was received, the data was broken down and cross-referenced with every available Federation database, a time-consuming process. Consequently, Pattie didn’t expect conclusive results would emerge until later. The rudiments of the problem, however, had begun to take shape. Sensors identified the unusual substance, not surprisingly, as an organic toxin with no known link to any disease, pest, or invasive organism native to the homeworld. She read the computer’s prognosis with concern:

  LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO TOXIN CAN RESULT IN IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE AND/OR DEATH TO ANY ORGANISM.

  A rustle.

  Startled, she turned to the side. Must be the wind.

  She turned back to her tricorder. NO KNOWN ANTIDOTE EXISTS.

  The shadows deepened. She looked up at the sky where clouds had blanketed the sun. But the forest—the forest felt…darker.

  Another rustle…scraping twigs…soft squish…fruit falling

  Leaves trembled as if a wave had passed through the tunnel of gnarled twigs behind her. Something’s here, she thought. Maybe someone caught up with me. Or a team member transported down.

  Cautiously, Pattie eased into a standing position, cocking her ear toward the deep forest. At first low and intermittent, a hum rose, gradually increasing in pitch until the sound’s acuity made her wince in pain. She tried raising two limbs to cover her ears, to block the horrifically sharp noise, but her limbs stayed fixed—paralyzed at her sides. Unwillingly, she listened and while no words came from the sound, images formed in her mind. Warm dizziness suffused her. Her eye membranes dropped, bounced up, and dropped again. Around and above her, long reeds rippled and waved; the light dimmed as the green ceiling lowered, coming closer….

  Abruptly, the hum stopped.

  The warm feeling abated. Pattie stirred from the trance she’d been in; panic engulfed her. She spun around, checking the forest on all sides of her; she saw nothing unusual. Whatever presence had been here had departed. Sunlight sliced through the clouds, refracted through mists, and painted sprays of rainbows in the air. Snippets of jewel-blue glowed bright between wisps of clouds. Maybe I drifted to sleep for a few minutes, Pattie thought. I have been awake for three straight cycles. I should probably check in. See if anything new has come up.

  She touched her combadge, which she had tied into the companel on her harness. No response. Only a few kilometers separated her from the base station, so distance wasn’t an issue. She shrugged off the equipment problem, assuming that her sensor transmissions must
have depleted her power supply. Maybe the combination of humidity, minimal nutritional intake, and the stress of the past few cycles had resulted in a little forest madness. Heading back to base before the hallucinations started seemed to be a good idea. She’d only covered a short distance when the companel crackled to life.

  “P8. Is that you? We lost you on our sensors for a minute. What happened out there?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound emerged. Not a click or a squeak. A garble of words flashed through her mind. Moving her jaw back and forth, moving her teeth up and down, pushing her tongue against the roof of her mouth—none of it created sound. She massaged her neck in hopes that relaxing the muscles around her gullet would help.

  Nothing.

  “P8? Are you there? We’re sending down a team if you don’t copy this message.”

  Covering her eyes with her limbs, she opened up her throat, willing a squeak, a scream, a click, to emerge.

  Silence.

  What’s happened to me?

  Chapter 6

  “Whatever it is that happened out in the forest seems to be temporary,” Zoeannah said, attaching the neural sensors to Pattie’s head. Sitting on a wheeled stool, she scooted back and forth the length of the bed, adjusting the biobed settings and checking the readouts. “You seem to be communicating just fine now.”

  “By the time the pair dispatched by the base team found me, I’d regained most of my language skills,” Pattie explained, feeling more than a bit frustrated. “Before that, though, I can’t explain why I couldn’t speak. I tried all my usual techniques, but nothing seemed to work.”