Drowning World

by Alan Dean Foster

  Quick as was Aniolo-jat's mind, he was hard pressed to keep up with the avalanching chain of complaints. Eight hundred thousand credits? Paid into A'Jah and Y'Hua accounts? He decided to respond with the first thing that came to mind. That his reply was completely honest only served to exacerbate the already tense situation.

  “I know nothing about any such funds.”

  Ears flicking forward, the elder murmured to the unblinking Sesesthi-toa, “I told you he would say that.”

  Heat rising in his own ears, Aniolo-jat barked back, “I know nothing about any such funds because there can't be any such. If our AAnn friends were going to transfer such an amount to us, the first thing they would have done was inform me about it.”

  “Maybe they did.” Though an attractive female, Sesesthi-toa looked anything but mating material at the moment.

  Primordial instincts threatened to overwhelm progressive thought as Aniolo-jat almost reached for the traditional long knife slung at his waist strappings. “Are you calling me a liar, Hata-yuiqueru?”

  “The money exists. We want our share.” She was not in the least intimidated by his attitude, his glare, his weapon, or the fact that she was a guest in his house.

  With an effort, he forced himself to stay calm. Tranquillity provided room for thought, and thought led with blinding realization to a sudden revelation.

  “This is a trick!”

  Sesesthi-toa was not so easily dissuaded. “The money is real. How is that a trick?” A visitor could have smelled the tension accumulating behind her.

  “To get us fighting among ourselves. It is trick of . . . of . . . the Deyzara! This is typical of them. If the clans fall to fighting each other again as we have always done, we will have no time for the Deyzara. They must realize this.”

  The elder with the business acumen responded, “No Deyzara could persuade, or pay, a true Sakuntala like Geladu-tiv to participate in such a scheme. You will have to do better than that, A'Jah thief.”

  Under ordinary circumstances, such an explicit insult would have called for immediate retribution. But the present circumstances, Aniolo-jat knew, were anything but ordinary. He saw years of careful planning, of organizing and preparation, coming apart like a soumeth flimsy. And the worst of it was, he didn't know how to put a stop to it because he did not know who or what was behind it.

  Rising from his chair, he moved to pick up a communicator. He was immediately surrounded by his aroused guests.

  “Calling for help?” Sesesthi-toa challenged him. At least, he reflected, she had not yet drawn a weapon of her own.

  “Calling the AAnn Thessu. He will put this right. If you not believe me, will you believe him?”

  The war chief glanced at her senior adviser, then over at several of her kinfolk and allies from the three other clans represented in her group. Finally she thrust both ears forward. “Call the hard-skinned ones.”

  He tried. Several times. But their AAnn allies seemed to have evaporated. Even the carrier wave was gone. It was as if the two toothy officers had vanished from Fluva itself.

  Slowly, he set the expensive imported communicator aside—but not before furtively fingering one touch-spot on its surface. “They do not answer.”

  Sesesthi-toa's head bobbed knowingly. “For some reason, I not surprised.”

  He started backing away. As he did so, a host of armed clansfolk appeared in the doorway in response to the hasty emergency call he had placed via the communicator. Sesesthi-toa eyed the watchful arrivals impassively.

  “So. This is how war chief of the A'Jah shares the spoils of battle with his allies.”

  “There are no spoils of which you speak, I am tell you! There is no eight hundred thousand Commonwealth credits. This is a deception to bring good friends to blows. Look at yourselves: it working!”

  Sesesthi-toa hesitated. One did not become war chief of a clan as prominent as the S'Toa by being a fool. But behind her, knives were already being drawn, and she felt emotional as well as spiritual pressure against her back. Purely as a precaution, she started to draw her own weapon.

  Aniolo-jat was among the most composed of all Sakuntala. But he was not made of stone. Indeed, he did not even know what stone was, having never seen such a thing. As the six fingers of Sesesthi-toa's left hand reached for the long knife at her waist, he brought his own weapon around in a horizontal slash. His intent was only to make her keep her distance. Unfortunately, she was pushed forward from behind and his blade sliced into her arm. Blood spurted.

  Pandemonium filled the house as visitors and occupants clashed in violent but archetypal Sakuntala combat. By the time it ended with the arrival of Yeruna-hua and reinforcements, both Sesesthi-toa and Aniolo-jat were dead, along with an inexcusable number of warriors representing six different clans. Despite Yeruna-hua's attempts to keep the incident quiet, word inevitably escaped. Across the settled Viisiiviisii, clan promptly set upon clan in time-honored Sakuntala tradition. With the indigenous thus engaged, apprehensive but hopeful Deyzara began to return to their abandoned dwellings and ransacked places of business.

  Aniolo-jat, Yeruna-hua, and their clannish co-conspirators never did figure out what had hit them.

  Lauren Matthias was greatly pleased by the most recent news. With the Sakuntala once more fighting among themselves, the extremists' uprising against the Deyzara was dying of internal conflict and uncertainty. As soon as the combatants exhausted themselves battling one another, the more moderate elements among their kind, as exemplified by the Hata Naneci-tok, would step in to reassert control over the immature and hotheaded. These efforts would be discreetly supported (so as not to suggest favoritism among the clans) by the Commonwealth Authority, with favors and with credit.

  Amazing what could be accomplished through the judicious distribution of a little money, she mused.

  As for the refugee situation that had threatened to overwhelm the Authority itself, it was gradually being brought under control as more and more Deyzara were repatriated to their homes and businesses. Those Sakuntala who had not engaged in the uprising grudgingly consented to their return. Stores and shops reopened in town after town. Commerce resumed. Promises were made—and, more important, kept. Programs designed to foster mutual understanding and improve communication between the resident sentient species of Fluva were funded and activated. Though it was far from back to normal, life in parts of the inhabited Viisiiviisii once again began to approach the tolerable.

  But there was still fighting going on, she knew. Still too much hatred and envy. Somehow, that would have to be dealt with.

  She did not expect Jack to show up and practically drag her away from work.

  “Where are we going?” He had hardly given her time to don her rain cape. A heavy downpour was in progress and some of the tepid water leaked through a small gap in the hydrophobic charge to run down her back. She struggled to seal the opening. “What's the hurry?”

  “You'll see soon, love.” He led her toward the Administration complex's small skimmer hangar.

  “It must be something special, for you to haul me out of the office like this.” She studied his face. “I haven't seen you this excited since Andrea agreed to stop visiting the forest with that intern from Hydrographics.”

  “It's special squared.” Once inside the hangar, she was able to properly fasten her rain gear. “I had a visitor this morning. He showed me something. I could just tell you about it, but I think you should see it for yourself.”

  “Well, what is it?” Despite the press of her own work, she knew how important it was to show an interest in her mate's vocation.

  When he turned back to her, his eyes were alive with the childlike delight all scientists express at times of great discovery. “A mushroom.”

  She started to say something, closed her mouth. There were no mushrooms on Fluva. A mushroom was a terrestrial growth. But there were innumerable analogs among the flourishing fungi of the endless forest. “Mushroom” was Jack's way of preparing her to se
e something familiar.

  It better contain a genetic chain for curing something significant, she decided firmly. Or taste like Kansastan veal. She didn't like having her time wasted, even by her husband.

  A driver was waiting for them in the open skimmer. As she climbed in, she noted with some discomfort that his greeting grin was directed not at her face but at a less public portion of her anatomy. This despite her official standing and the presence of her husband.

  Settling excitedly into one of the three empty seats, Jack introduced the driver. “Lauren, meet Hasa. Hasa, this is my wife—the chief administrator.”

  Their pilot had the canopy sealing and the skimmer ready to go even before she was properly seated. “Pleasure, Administrator. What the hell took you so long to send someone out after me? And as long as you were at it, couldn't you have sent a couple of competent human techs instead of a stinking two-trunks and a moronic long-monkey?” Raising the skimmer, he scraped not one but two other parked craft as he recklessly gunned the compact vehicle out of the hangar and toward the forest, sending several pedestrians and the angry pilot of a delivery vehicle scattering for cover.

  And that was her introduction to the exceedingly clever and much reviled Shadrach Hasselemoga.

  After more than an hour in the skimmer with him, she, too, would not have been especially disappointed to see him vanish permanently into the depths of the unforgiving Viisiiviisii. But when they finally set down in a pile of fallen, decaying trees and Jack began to explain what their guide had located, she forgot all about his rude stares and loutish behavior.

  Like magic, the black tendrils responded smoothly to her hand movements. Around them, the varzea sang and hooted and cackled. Hasa spoke while keeping watch, side arm at the ready.

  “I came out searching as soon as I got cleaned up and had a decent meal. Took a few days, but it was a lot easier since I knew exactly what I was looking for. Found this occurrence a couple of days ago. Flew back into town, called for a meeting with a suitable specialist in the science division, ended up talking to Jack, here.” He spit at something slender, bright, and chartreuse that scrambled to scurry away from his spit. “Didn't know he was married to the chief administrator. Makes things easier.” He indicated the bobbing, weaving rhizomorphs. “Ask it which way to town.”

  “Ask it?” Kneeling beside the hypnotic ebon filaments, she looked questioningly at Jack. “Even if it could understand me, it has no ears.”

  Her husband was grinning like a little boy who'd just had his allowance doubled. “Turns out there are cilia on specialized rhizomorphs that can sense and interpret vibrations in the air. Not all that different, really, from the way the tympanum in your ears handles sound waves.”

  As might be expected, she still found it all hard to believe. “Okay, I'll accept that. But sensing vibrations is one thing. Understanding them, deciphering them, is something else.”

  Moving close to her, Hasa reached down to caress the dozens of erect rhizomorphs. They lay down against his open palm like cats' paws. Observing the interaction, it was difficult to deny that some kind of connection was being made.

  “I've been trying to train this one. Get it to connect words, sounds, with actions. It's very slow. For something so vast, it's not very smart. On the other hand,” he said as he drew his hand back, “it's hard to say what kind of smarts the pannula does have. I'm not the guy to find that out.” He nodded at Jack. “That's a job for your partner and his fellow dirt-rooters. Me, I just find stuff. Like my women, all my evaluations are quickies.” He moved a little too close. “Go on, Administrator. Put your lips right up next to the filaments and ask it, ‘Which way to town?' ”

  She hesitated. Given their present proximity, deliberately moving away from Hasa would only alert Jack to her disquiet. So, doing her best to ignore the husky, shameless presence beside her, she did as she was told, leaning forward until her mouth was almost touching several of the coiled black strands.

  “Which . . . way . . . to . . . town?” As she mouthed each word slowly and deliberately, she saw what appeared to be very fine hairs lining several tendrils quiver as if in a gentle breeze.

  As soon as she finished and straightened, every one of the dozens of slender tendrils dropped flat against the wood they were slowly decomposing. Flat and pointed in the direction of the center of Taulau.

  Hasa rose triumphantly from his crouch. “Don't know why the pannula never made direct contact with the Sakuntala. Maybe their smell, maybe something else. Sakuntala don't know, either. Same goes for the Deyzara. Another mystery for the mycologists to resolve.” He gazed paternally down at the tendrils, which had begun to rise skyward again.

  “I'm gonna call it Xenoarmillaria fluva hasselemoga.” He eyed her husband. “Jack says the naming of it is mine by right. Ain't that right, Jack?”

  “Xenoarmillaria fluva would be taxonomically easier,” the scientist replied.

  “Nope. Xenoarmillaria fluva hasselemoga it is. Unless you or one of your squinty-eyes is gonna argue about it.”

  “No.” Jack sighed good-naturedly “As you are the discoverer, it's yours to name.”

  Lauren had turned to inspect the handsome reddish-purple basidiocarps emerging from a nearby fallen trunk. “What about input from your companions on your difficult journey to the village where you were finally picked up?”

  Hasa made a face. “They didn't see anything. I found it. Me. They didn't believe me about it even after I explained everything to them. I'm the sole discoverer, and I expect to be treated as such.”

  “I'm sure you will be.” Commonwealth citizen or not, she decided, she positively did not like this man. Skilled and qualified he might be, but he was also vulgar, shallow, boastful, conceited, and self-centered. Furthermore, she did not like the way he looked at her at all. It was certainly not with the respect due the Commonwealth's ranking representative on Fluva.

  “I want a parade,” he declared brashly. “I want an official proclamation acknowledging my accomplishment. It's not every day a new intelligent species is discovered.”

  She eyed him dryly. The more she learned about the pannula's discoverer, the less enthused she was able to be about the undeniably astonishing discovery itself. “Anything else you want?”

  He leered at her so blatantly she would have slapped him except for the distance between them. Jack never noticed the voiceless exchange. He was too busy examining exposed mycelium.

  There was not much she could do by way of reprisal. Jack and a totally enthralled team from his department validated the obnoxious bioprospector's claims. The two members of the first rescue party, the Sakuntala Jemunu-jah and the Deyzara Masurathoo, did not dispute Hasa's claim of sole finding. As much as she disliked having to do so, she was forced to affix her official endorsement to the affidavit of discovery that was forwarded a week later to Commonwealth Science Headquarters on Earth and Hivehom.

  Compensation for having to tender congratulations to a repellent specimen like Hasa came in the form of an unexpected and unusually expeditious reply from Earth to her most recent communiqué. She read through the lengthy space-minus response several times. Only when she was sure it meant everything it said and that she fully understood all the implications did she decide to call the summit.

  20

  It was as big a room as could be safely, easily, and reasonably erected on Fluva. Considering that the entire structure was suspended by strilk cables from a combination of pylons and trees, it was relatively spacious. The astonishingly lightweight dome itself was made from an aerogel alloy. Not as strong as plexalloy, but it didn't have to be. The crystal-clear structure had been blown into place, not poured or welded.

  Beneath the arching transparency were curving walls of similar material, stained to translucence to block out views of the town and varzea outside. The sturdy interior walls had been covered with patterned tri-reliefs of scenes from the Viisiiviisii and of Deyzara and Sakuntala village life.

  Filling the wall at the
far end of the circular edifice was a grand semidrift map of the Commonwealth, framed with quotations from the United Church and symbols of both secular and spiritual power. The overall effect on someone entering from the outside was inspiring without being oppressive. It ought to be: the entire layout had been vetted by the appropriate branches of the Commonwealth Department for Contact with New Sentient Species, Class V sector. Every visual effect was intentional and nothing had been left to chance—or improvisation.

  Matthias liked the building. She would have preferred to have had her offices in the large, airy space. But the dome had been designed to accommodate and impress large groups, not to facilitate the often dull, boring work of daily administration. It was entirely functional, but not for bureaucrats.

  The dais behind which she stood was equipped with instrumentation that would allow her to amplify her voice, have it instantly and simultaneously translated into as many as a hundred different languages, defend her position from attack by explosive and energy weapons, project elaborate tridee diagrams and constructs into the air between her and the audience, and, if necessary, supply a quick meal. It faced dozens of seats. Some balanced on three legs in the style favored by the Deyzara. Others were suspended in the fashion of the Sakuntala. Not from the dome, which could not handle such weight, but from graceful arcs of supportive composite. No column of rain fell through the center of the building in the manner of traditional Sakuntala meetinghouses. Humans desired to avoid the relentless, unending downpours of Fluva, not invite it inside their buildings. That much leeway in construction had been granted to her predecessors.

  The steady patter of rain was a distant susurration high overhead. Unlike individual rain gear, the roof of the gathering chamber was not static-charged to repel moisture. Raindrops ran in all directions from its apex, forming an attractive pattern overhead that gently dispersed the light falling within. The combination of smoothly dispersed liquid and distant beating had a soothing effect, which was exactly what its designers had intended.