Terrarium

by Scott Russell Sanders

  “That’s me—Zuni’s little echo.”

  “I can see how her voice would get inside your head and stay there.”

  Teeg grew thoughtful. “I carry a lot of echoes from my mother, too.”

  He was seized again by the thought of Portland, that impossible destination, as doomed and unreachable as ancient Troy. The air of the sleepchamber, thick with the breath of plants, felt clammy against his chest. Something moved with tiny clicking footsteps in the nearest tub of ferns. “What will we eat all that time?”

  “Mushrooms and bearded moss.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously,” she replied, taking his hand in hers, “my hero is once again a wee bit nervous about Teeg’s adventures. But Teeg has delivered him safely to gameparks and oil tanks and Oregon beaches, has she not? And she now solemnly promises to deliver him to and from Portland in one piece.” With that she spread his cupped palm over her left breast.

  He grinned in spite of himself, leaving the hand on her cool, cushiony flesh. Heart mountain. “I like it when you’re serious.”

  “Look how easy it will be.” Using his index finger as a pointer, she drew an imaginary map on her torso. “Here’s Whale’s Mouth Bay,” she said, touching his finger to the pit of her arm. “We climb the coastal ridge about here,” skimming up the curve of one breast, grazing the nipple, “then along Salt Creek into the Willamette Valley, like so,” down the slope between her breasts, “ride the river thisaway,” over stomach past naval, “wriggle through the brush,” into the curled thickets of her pubic hair, “until we arrive at our destination where the two rivers meet,” she concluded, leaving his alert hand at the joining of her thighs.

  Miraculous geography, he thought, forgetting about Portland, slithering down beside her into the pouch.

  By the middle of June there were snow peas and lettuce and early squash to vary the diet of algae. Phoenix gaped hungrily at the innocent trout, but Arda assured him it would take months before any of the fish would be ready for eating, and the first ones would not be trout, anyhow, but the dark bewhiskered catfish. Jurgen netted some halibut and gigged some flounder from the raft. Indy’s tests showed they were too contaminated for eating, however. Even with her bad eyes, Zuni proved to be the shrewdest at locating mushrooms and clams, some of which turned out, by Indy’s tests, to be safe.

  One afternoon at low tide, Phoenix was mired halfway to his knees in the muck of the bay, helping Zuni dig clams. She probed with her shovel, bent down to retrieve a clam, plopped it in her mesh bag. Although she still napped at midday, she was fully recovered from her trip, and when she was fresh she could work Phoenix into the ground. Her eyesight was very poor, had always been, she told him as they rested on their shovels. “Maybe that’s why I’ve seen things in such large patterns. Cities, Enclosures, starships.”

  What did she see, he wondered, when she rested on the shovel and tilted her face toward the tree-fringed cliffs? Could she tell that lichens scattered like green snowflakes over the black rock? Could she make out the white glint of gulls sailing in and out of caves? And what did she see when she closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun? In its full glare her wrinkles vanished and she looked momentarily like a tow-headed girl. In those moments of sun-gazing her beauty was troubling, because it was accessible, it was the loveliness of a woman who could have been his lover.

  Phoenix tried to break the spell by asking her, “What do you see when you face the sun that way?”

  Zuni turned to him, eyes still closed. As the sidelight caught her cheeks, the wrinkles spread across her skin like fissures, and she became safely old again. “I listen for things. Like the grass growing … the moon spinning. Like those sea lions calling in their caves. Hear them?”

  Leaning on the clam shovel, feet mired in mud, Phoenix listened. Surf. Gulls. Sizzle of wind through spruce trees. Purr of Salt Creek Falls back in the meadow. Then he heard the faint barking, like children calling to one another at a great distance … sea lions. In her first breathless report about Whale’s Mouth Bay, Teeg had described hearing them. And now he had been here six weeks, with their chatter constantly in the background, and only Zuni’s words made him notice. “Yes,” he replied, “like kids in a gamepark.”

  “It sounds as though dozens of them have survived.” Zuni bent for a clam, dropped it into her bag where it clicked against the others. “That’s remarkable, on a diet of poisoned fish.”

  Phoenix groped in the muck but found nothing. With a luscious sucking noise he lifted first one boot then the other, picked a new spot, bent over again. “What’s still alive, do you think? What’s going to make it?”

  “It will take hundreds of years to know for certain. Most of the large creatures, the ones high on the food chain, are probably doomed.”

  “Is it going to be the dinosaurs all over again?”

  “Let’s hope not. Remember the dinosaurs were starved out when the debris from an enormous meteor blocked sunlight for a few years, upset the photosynthetic cycle. Thousands of species died out along with the dinosaurs.” She swept an arm toward the green-fringed coastal hills. “Plants don’t care so much about our poisons, as long as they get rain and dirt and sunlight.”

  Finding a clam, Phoenix hefted its rough, prehistoric weight in his palm. “Don’t you think we should be keeping records about the weather and birds and such?”

  “Why?”

  “So people will know what life was like back here in the last third of the twenty-first century.”

  “You think if we weigh fish and count bird’s eggs, that will tell them what life was like?”

  “At least it would help. And then we wouldn’t just be drifting along from day to day. I mean, ever since we came out here, I’ve been wondering what everybody would do, once the colony is all fixed up.”

  Zuni gave him a bemused look. “Making music isn’t enough for you? Or painting, telling stories, building sand castles, meditating?”

  “But I mean useful things.”

  “Like planting trees?”

  “Exactly, something that would make a difference to the earth.”

  “Then we could blast a few canals,” she suggested soberly, “level the hills a little bit, pave the meadows to keep down weeds …”

  Exasperated, he said, “No, that’s not what I meant at all.”

  “But don’t you see it’s our compulsion to do something visible, to fix things up, that has nearly ruined the planet? Nature is infinitely complex, and our actions are pathetically simple. Can’t we just let things alone for a while? Sure, plant trees, but be humble about it. If we can just live lightly on earth, not harm things, and grow deeper—that’s a great deal.”

  Zuni’s stare held him transfixed. Even knee-deep in mud, with the bay yawning around him, he felt more than ever like a city man. Would he ever unlearn the impulses that had created the Enclosure? Should he?

  In the way she had of seeming to read his thoughts, Zuni said, “The earliest sea creatures that floundered onto the beach took a very long time to get used to the land. And their bodies never forgot the sea.”

  “Like I’ve floundered out of the city into the wilds?” said Phoenix.

  “I’ve floundered a bit myself. Don’t think it’s an easy thing for me to shake off forty years of dreaming about the Enclosure. Look, I still carry it with me.” From her waistpouch she plucked a tiny wire ball on a chain. “It’s a model of the Enclosure, you see, with silver wires for tubes and beads for the cities.” She dangled it close to his face. “The glass kernel inside there is Terra.”

  A deep longing came over him, for the orderliness, the security, the bustle of Oregon City. But immediately he thought of the oppressive crowds, the costumes, the numb days at work followed by frenzied nights of chemmie-tripping or eros parlors.

  “Teeg and most of the others have never wanted anything but the wilds,” Zuni added, swinging the silver globe hypnotically before him. “They’ve always regarded the Enclosure as an abominat
ion. So life is a bit more complicated for you and me, Phoenix. We recognize the beauty of inside and outside both.” She pocketed the globe and twisted shut the neck of her clam sack. “Don’t you suppose we’ve dug up enough of our little friends for one day?”

  Phoenix nodded. Discovering this bond with Zuni had moved him deeply.

  They waded inshore, the mud clinging to their boots. The bags of clams thwacked against their legs. At the mouth of Salt Creek they stepped onto a glass walkway. Zuni tapped the black surface with her shovel and said, “You see? Just fixing things up. Keep the trail from getting muddy. Next thing you know we’ll roof it over.”

  Phoenix studied the wrinkled geography of her face to make certain she was teasing. Then he played along. “Yes, we could do with a gamepark or two. Then block out the sun and get some decent lights in here.”

  “And a disney,” said Zuni.

  “Certainly. With plastic shrubs that never lose their leaves and flowers that don’t fade and some mechano-bears and deer and such that stay out in the open where you can see them. None of this sloppy wild stuff.”

  They both laughed. Zuni curled her arm about his waist, light as a birdwing. They continued on that way, blotting out the landscape with mural-screens, erecting syntho-stands at every bend in the path, covering the meadow in one vast bubble, filling the purified air with synthetic smells and tastes. By the time they reached the colony’s entrance lock, they were both staggering with laughter.

  Teeg, who was pulling her boots off at the entrance, blinked at them and said, “What have you two been eating?”

  “The bread of understanding,” said Zuni. “Haven’t we, Phoenix?” She hugged him against her side with one of those bird-light arms.

  “Loaves of it,” he agreed.

  Teeg looked from one giddy face to the other. Slowly a grin spread over her features. “Sure, mother and child return from playing on the beach, dizzy with joy. I remember that.”

  * * *

  * * *

  TWENTY-ONE

  Patience, patience, Teeg kept reminding herself. You have waited seventeen years, you can wait a few days longer. But she grew more and more edgy as the trip to Portland was delayed, first by rainy weather, then by a series of mishaps at Jonah Colony. While testing dirt samples, Indy cut a finger and fell ill with blood poisoning. She had no sooner recovered than Jurgen came down with a fever, broke out in a rash, and spent three days writhing on his sleepcushion while Hinta and two helpers pinned him down. Soon after his fever broke, Arda discovered all the bluegill floating belly-up in the fish-tanks, casualties of some chemical imbalance, and several people had to go out hunting for wild stock to replace them.

  And so departure was put off day by day. Phoenix seemed glad of the delay. “Give you time to think it over,” he told her. She thought of little else. Every kilometer of the route was mapped out. She could visualize each range of hills, each river and thicket, right up to Portland. But there she drew a blank. What would the place look like? When she had first arrived in Portland with her mother, the city had been abandoned for three years. Here and there a roof had caved in, weeds and saplings had burst the pavements, fires had devoured a few old neighborhoods of wooden houses. But most of the city was built of metal and plastic, and so had endured, which was why her mother had been sent there. Dismantling a city, her mother used to say, was like plucking a chicken, and then carving the meat off its bones, and then whittling away at the skeleton. There was very little left of Portland at the end. Since the wooden houses were useless, they were spared along with the brick-paved streets. Most of the stone buildings were framed in steel, which meant they had come down, and the towers came down, wires and pipes were dug up from the ground, every appliance that had not been stolen was melted, thousands of abandoned vehicles were shredded, and the city at last was stripped bare.

  Teeg carried both these images in her head—the city with its avenues of glinting towers, its domed malls, its monorail tracks gleaming overhead, its quaint wooden houses … and the city carved clean to the bone. Why had her mother chosen to settle in such a place? Maybe it was for the hills full of wild roses and rhododendron, or for the snowy crown of Mt. Hood looming up to the east and the Columbia surging massively by.

  At length everyone in Jonah Colony was healthy, including the fish. Teeg packed tent, sleepsacks, a fifteen-day supply of food, medicines, and filters, and last of all the river raft. It was all she could do to persuade Phoenix to stop tagging after Zuni long enough to try on his backpack.

  “What’s a small boulder on a back like mine?” he bragged, tottering about the sleepchamber with the bulky weight on his shoulders. “I figure I’ll last about a kilometer per day lugging this thing.”

  “Which would get us back here a year from this fall,” Teeg observed dryly.

  “Of course, we could just stay home and save ourselves all that trouble.”

  After driving him away with a scowl, she transferred some of the gear from his pack to hers, to make the going easier for him. Journeying to Portland was her obsession, and she regretted having to saddle him with it; but the others were right, she would be foolish to go by herself. She would also be very lonely. The thought of making love in their tent on some forested ridge, with no breathing soul except rabbits and possums nearby, kept her in a mild fever of excitement.

  Each night during the last week of June she waited for the word of permission to emerge from the ingathering. Once Jurgen regained his strength and Zuni opened fully to the spirit, the nightly meditation became rapturous. In the great chamber, circled about a pale yellow flare, they quaked and trembled on their mats. No one, least of all Teeg, wished to break this potent spiritual circuit. Yet the burden of her journey lay heavy upon her.

  On the last night of June, after an especially powerful gathering, Marie announced: “I am of a mind that Teeg and Phoenix should go now.”

  Jurgen spoke out gruffly: “Yes, go in peace and return in peace.”

  The word of agreement passed quickly around the circle, like a flame passing. When all had spoken they held hands for a moment in silence, to let the decision settle.

  Afterward, everyone offered them advice for the journey. Don’t cross a light corridor or you’ll trigger an alarm in Security. Don’t signal us except in an emergency. Don’t taste any water without filters. Wear a breathing mask if you must tramp through boggy land. Watch the radiation detector and steer clear of heavy concentrations. Never let one another out of sight.

  When the others had withdrawn to their sleepchambers, Zuni stayed behind to sit a few moments with Teeg and Phoenix. Her face still shone with the peacefulness of the ingathering. The lines in that face were like the grain in wood, Teeg thought, or something softer than wood, like folded cloth, like the surface of a creek.

  Presently the older woman said, “No matter what you find in Portland … you will come back to tell us? Not just stay there?”

  Having brooded for weeks on this question, Teeg said, “But if Mother is there?”

  “That’s not likely, and you know it.”

  “But if she is?”

  “She may be a stranger to you. Time has forced each of you down many separate branchings of the path.”

  “If she’s alive, she can’t possibly be a stranger to me.”

  As the two women spoke, Phoenix shifted his attention from one to the other, like a spectator at swat-ball.

  “If you choose to stay with her,” said Zuni, “you’ll break our circle.”

  “I’ll mend hers by going there.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps,” Zuni answered skeptically. “Just remember that some wounds are slow to heal. Some never do.”

  Teeg imagined the older woman was thinking of her home village in the mountains, where lasers had left a scar of cinders and bubbled glass. “I promise to come back here, at least for a while,” Teeg said, “no matter what I find in Portland.”

  “Me too,” said Phoenix.

  His slightly crazed, devote
d expression was that of a queen’s fool, willing to follow his mistress to triumph or disaster, and Teeg realized that was exactly how she and Zuni had been treating him. A feeling of tenderness swept over her.

  “Teeg, you are fortunate in love,” Zuni said, kissing foreheads with Phoenix.

  “You sure are,” said Phoenix with delight.

  In the morning Teeg discovered Phoenix stealthily moving gear from her pack into his own. His body, whittled down by months of training inside the Enclosure and by weeks of labor out here, was thin but muscular. His movements had lost most of their city awkwardness, and he was growing more beautiful to her every day. What she liked most right at the moment were the muscles in his back, flexing as he bent to stow her things in his rucksack.

  “You’ll catch a cold traipsing around like that,” she murmured, opening her eyes as if just waking, “and then what earthly good are you?”

  He turned to her, naked, and it was evident that his body had been dwelling on something other than a journey. They made love swiftly, fearfully, and Phoenix clung to her in silence long after climax. What was he thinking? What happened to last night’s carefree fool? Who was this quivering child she held in her arms? His weight against her was a bag stuffed with mysteries.

  Later they air-showered, then joined the others for breakfast. Everyone seemed glum. Because we’re breaking the circle by leaving, Teeg realized. Coyt added to the gloom by reporting that he had overheard scraps of HP broadcasts: something about exiles and camp and the garbled name of a bay. He had tried in vain to catch the drift of the message, but the receiver would only pick up advertisements from the commercial channels. It couldn’t possibly be us, he announced without conviction.

  His news was received in silence. Even Jurgen, whose good spirit was normally as abundant as his flesh, pushed the food around on his plate and kept mum. Teeg was afraid the trip would begin that way, in gloomy silence. But as hands reached out to help them shoulder their rucksacks, Marie began the traveling song. Voice after voice picked it up, as they had picked up the song for Sol, and like the death song this one had the sound of rivers in it, the sound of wind through trees, the sound of earth’s movements. With this melody in her ears Teeg led the way up Salt Creek to the falls. As she and Phoenix climbed the rockface, the voices merged with the sound of water.