by Scott Mackay
“I wonder how these were built?” asked Deirdre. “I don’t see any seams or rivets, no connective strategy of any kind.”
Cody had no answer. Moss, lichen, and flowers, all nonphotosynthetic, grew in the windblown sediment, which in some places was five meters deep. He could only gaze in wonder.
On the fifth day the hills ended. They entered wider flatter country, much of it flooded. Agatha clung to him. The wide open spaces seemed to frighten her. Lulu stayed close, too.
The wind increased steadily through the course of the morning, and their carryall was often buffeted about in the turbulence.
The wind got so bad they finally had to land.
The 3,000-plus carryalls of the Olympia Mons Clan settled on a broad floodplain like a flock of strange birds. A wide river meandered eastward toward the Ocean of Forgiveness—the name Meek cartographers were giving the world-spanning ocean.
A gigantic storm approached from the west. The Ocean of Forgiveness was undergoing its first heat-related convulsions, unleashing this violent storm in a place that had known stable weather for thousands, if not millions, of years.
Claire consulted her laptop. “Satellite reconnaissance shows a total of 19 hurricanes, and it looks as if seven of them are going to make landfall,” she told Cody. “Most are south of the equator. But there’s one directly that way,” she said, pointing west, “over the Ocean of Forgiveness, and even though we’re 1,000 kilometers inland it’s going to spawn a good number of storms and tornadoes in our area.”
Not that he was an expert in natural weather patterns, having lived his whole life in controlled weather, but Cody nonetheless felt he had to offer some advice, sensed that the storm moving in from the west was going to get far worse before it petered out.
“I think we should move to higher ground,” he told Buster, shouting over the wind. “We should try to get out of the open. It’s starting to rain, and we’re not too far from that river. There could be flooding. The navigational screen showed a few hills 10 kilometers east. It might not be much, but at least we won’t be exposed like this.”
Buster agreed.
Keeping low to the ground, the carryalls, now acting more like hover-cars, skimmed over the soggy surface of the floodplain.
Fifteen minutes later they spotted the hills, striking in their loneliness and covered with a surprising growth of trees the likes of which Cody had yet to see on the planet. The carryalls entered the hills through a multitude of passes, and the wind immediately died down.
They set up camp for the night, rigging canopies to the sides of their carryalls. Cody knelt on the ground and hammered a guide rope into place. The rain grew heavier, running in rivulets around his knee. The children ran around in the rain, thinking it was great fun. He had to smile, even though the sight of so much rain made him nervous.
The storm finally passed five hours later, and the rain diminished. Cody ventured from the protection of the canopy carrying a hatchet from his Public Works tool kit.
By this time it was the middle of the night. The clouds shone with a dull phosphorescence, giving him just enough light to see by. He walked to the nearest tree and examined it. It didn’t look so much like a tree as it did a form of giant fungal growth. Like a toadstool or mushroom, something that could grow in the dark. The trunk measured a meter across and tapered slowly to a height of 30 meters, where it was crowned not by branches but by dozens of stamenlike growths—long, flexible tubes, each with a pod the size of a pineapple on top. The trunk didn’t have any bark. Instead, it was covered with thousands of little warts. Wartwood was the name the Meek had given it.
He pressed his hand to the trunk. The trunk was hard.
He ventured farther into the forest, touching trees as he went. He lifted his hatchet and chopped a wedge out of a trunk. He lifted it. Light but surprisingly strong. No evidence of wood grain or sap. He sniffed it. Musky. A smell akin to a fresh-cut mushroom. He felt his mood lighten. He might have a decent building material here.
He slept next to Lulu that night. They made love. Not much privacy with five other people sleeping under the carryall canopy with them, certainly not the best time or place for it, especially because Deirdre and Buster were right there, but the urgency of their need for each other overcame their caution.
Buster sat in the corner of their small shelter staring at them, a blanket around his shoulders, his eyes big and mean, a heavy creosote blocker making his thoughts menacingly impenetrable.
* * *
The wind woke Cody a few hours later.
Over the whispering of the wind he heard a sound he at first didn’t recognize. He sat up. Listened. Water. Like the sound the lake made at the William Wordsworth Lake Country Habitat on Vesta … small waves lapping against a shore.
He glanced around at the sleeping people under the canopy. Buster dozed, still in a sitting position. Cody caressed Lulu’s cheek with the back of his hand, then pulled the blanket around her shoulders. He went outside.
The wind was up, the rain had stopped, and there was a break in the clouds, a huge rift through which he saw Ceres—the moon Ceres—three-quarters full, lighting up everything in the valley below. At the foot of the hill water covered the floodplain, which now formed an inland sea. The river was gone, its banks overflowed, no sign of it anywhere. Even at its shallowest the water had to be at least three meters deep. Had they been caught out on the floodplain earlier, thousands of them would have died in the deluge, and much of their food and equipment would have been washed away.
Ceres painted a gold band over the waves. He was going to miss Ceres. He wondered how the other 25 clans were doing, if any of them had lost their way, if any of their members had as yet met with death, or had narrowly escaped it, such as Olympia Mons had just done with this flood. He wondered where they all were on this vast continent the Meek cartographers called Our Home.
He turned around and headed back to the camp.
He was just about to duck under the canopy when a sudden blinking of lights in the woods caught his eye. His eyes narrowed and he peered more closely. Blinking lights, a cluster of nine in all, each about the size of a walnut, hovered three meters above the ground, flashing in a quick random pattern. They went out. There was nothing but darkness for a moment. He waited for the blinking to start again. He took a few steps toward the woods. The lights flashed once more, a little farther away, then went out again. He approached cautiously, remembering the attack of the other blinking lights, how they had downed the creature with membranous wings.
He rounded the south perimeter of the camp and found a path that led into the woods between some steep hills. The lights continued to blink, this time up in the trees. He was close enough now to see that they weren’t simply disembodied lights; they were attached to a much larger life-form. He saw, briefly, the life-form’s outline in the peripheral glow of its lights. It was fairylike, much more so than the Meek, with arms and legs and a head, and huge transparent wings. The thing stopped blinking and Cody lost sight of it in the dark. He heard a low buzz, like the sound hummingbirds made with their wings on the shores of the James Cook Coral Reef Habitat. He felt wind on his face—not a natural wind but the wind of … of wings, pulselike and quick, realized the thing had swooped from the trees and now hovered in the dark in front of him.
He took out his small guidelight and flashed it a few times.
He sensed, more than he saw, the thing move away. Had he scared it? Where was it now? He couldn’t see it. Was it clinging to the side of that wartwood tree? Or was it over in those bushes? A stillness descended over the forest. It was as if the thing were trying to figure him out.
Then he heard the buzz again, exactly like the quick flutter of hummingbird wings, felt the wind on his face. The thing was once more right in front of him. He stood rigidly, not in fear, just ready for anything. The thing blinked at him, nine lights flashing brightly, their glow shining on its body. He saw it clearly this time.
It measured a mete
r from head to toe and had what astrobiologists called “standard configuration” facial features—two eyes, a nose, a mouth—like any of the animals on Earth, but it didn’t look like an animal; it looked surprisingly human. Its body was in “standard configuration” as well, with two arms, two legs, head, and trunk, all in the usual places. Humanlike, yet alien-looking. The creature had nine light-wands on its head. Its eyes were big, round, sensitive. What made it so alien-looking was its body. It was entirely transparent, with even its various internal body structures see-through clear. Cody saw right through its head into its brain and out the back of its brain into the forest. Its transparent wings flapped at least 200 beats per minute. Cody saw right through its chest. Saw its lungs. Saw through its lungs and out its back. The thing was like a ghost. A fairy. Clear. Brilliantly transparent, like glass. The creature blinked furiously with its headwands as if it were trying to tell Cody something.
Cody was just about to respond with his guidelight when someone pushed him hard from behind. Cody fell to the ground and lost his grip on his guidelight. The creature darted away into the trees. Cody struggled to his knees and found Buster standing over him. Looking into Buster’s eyes, he realized Buster had finally been defeated by his ghost code, that he was angry, jealous, and resentful. Buster pulled out his knife. He was a different man now, thought Cody, a man whose temper, at last released, had grown murderous. Buster held the knife high over his head, preparing to attack Cody. His eyes glowed like glacial ice, their usual violet replaced by a frosty green.
Cody waited. He sensed Buster struggling against the shadow codes of his warrior days.
Buster said: You take my love; I take your life.
Yet still Buster hesitated, held the knife poised, his arm now shaking as he wrestled with his violent impulses. Cody felt Buster’s emanations like a wrecking ball inside his mind. The emanations of a Meek man, then the emanations of an orphan, the thoughts and feelings of the two sides of Buster, each warring with the other. Thinking of revenge but asking for forgiveness, overwhelmed by suspicion but begging for trust, gripped by envy but filled with admiration.
The knife came closer. Buster stopped it again. Cody waited on his knees, knowing he was defenseless.
He at last felt Buster starting to get control of himself. He felt the compassion, understanding, and tolerance of a Meek man coming back … felt Buster’s immense willpower as he challenged his own former nature. Cody tried to help. He projected himself into Buster, so that Buster would understand him as a man in full … his whole life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood—so that Buster would understand he meant no harm. Christine, grief, his five years as a widower … and now … now Lulu … how he loved Lulu … how he cared for Lulu … how he would protect her … using Meek empathy the way it was meant to be used, to establish a trusting bond, to make Buster realize he was not an enemy but a friend, and that this was not the end of his life with Lulu but simply the beginning of a new phase in it.
Buster let the knife fall to his side.
He turned away.
Cody got to his feet and put his hand on Buster’s shoulder.
He was surprised. He felt Lulu inside Buster, yes, of course, that’s what this midnight encounter was all about, but he also felt something else, something dark and troubling, something that seemed to sear Cody’s hand as he touched Buster. Something that went far beyond his upset over Lulu. Something that incidentally might have provoked his upset over Lulu but that ultimately had nothing to do with it. Something that only Buster and a few other ranking clan members knew about. A new situation that now threatened the whole enterprise. Cody could sense it, could feel the weight of Buster’s anxiety, but could hardly tell what it was. Only that Carswell wasn’t as benign as it looked.
Buster said: I’m sorry.
Cody stared at Buster—still so odd to watch a man who, after such emotional exertion, wasn’t breathing, no huffing and puffing, no chest movement at all.
“There’s nothing I can do, Buster,” he said. “I can’t help the way I feel.” He peered more closely at Buster. “What is it? I can sense your … apprehension … your misgiving. What’s happened?”
Buster said: I think all this … He indicated the wartwood forest, the encampment, the floodplain, the asteroid Ceres. I think all this was … ill-advised.
CHAPTER 24
Buster called a meeting of ranking clan members early the next day. He invited Cody to the meeting.
They gathered in a clearing among the wartwood trees. Holographic equipment had been set up.
Buster said: This is what the Phaethontis Clan reports.
A holographic image appeared in the middle of the clearing, a panoramic shot of the transparent creatures—what Buster called Filaments—descending on the encampment of the Phaethontis Clan, ripping open crates of marrow, devouring handfuls of the stuff, clan members shooing the Filaments away, hitting them with tent poles, canopy poles, whatever lay handy, doing anything they could to protect their marrow.
Buster said: They eat it. They like it.
Cody sensed that this was the dark and troubling thing he had been feeling from Buster last night. He watched the holograph. Members of Phaethontis finally chased the Filaments away, but not without first losing 10 percent of their marrow supply.
Buster said: The Filaments eat anything. They’re voracious. Phaethontis now posts guards to protect its marrow. We will do the same.
A new hologram appeared of a small test farm run by the Aetheria Clan.
Buster said: The Aetheria Clan have made exceedingly good time. They’ve already set up camp on the northern peninsula. This has given them time to test-farm. They’ve planted this marrow. See how the Filaments swoop down and eat the seedlings? They don’t even give it a chance to grow. We might be able to protect our existing supplies but we may not be able to protect our farms. We’ve tried some conventional poisons against the Filaments. They don’t work. The Filaments just eat them. If we don’t develop a workable strategy within the next few weeks, many of us who need marrow to breathe, those of the orphan line, may not survive.
A final hologram appeared, this one from the Tithonius Lacus Clan. The Tithonius Lacus Clan had traveled north, up the west coast of Our Home. The view showed a rocky steep coastline. Hundreds of thousands of Filaments clung to the bluffs, shoulder to shoulder, their wings fluttering, packed so tightly Cody couldn’t see the side of the cliff, some flying out over the Ocean of Forgiveness, others diving into the water, surfacing with fish in their hands. Like the gannet colonies of Earth, he thought. They ate the fish, tails and all. Buster was right. They ate anything and everything. They ate ravenously.
And there were just so many of them …
He went for a walk with Agatha five hours later, during the noontime break. The hills had given way to mountains again. These mountains were small, no more than 1,000 meters high, peaks gray and bare, no volcanoes anywhere. Broad valleys stretched between the mountains. The clan stopped in one of these valleys. Here in this valley the grass was high, straw-colored.
Agatha was quiet, subdued. She and Cody came to a gorge in the middle of the valley. At the bottom of the gorge was a small river. The strawlike grass had been flattened here, just above the gorge, pushed over by the wind, was soft, pliant, a good place to sit.
They sat down. Cody put his arm around Agatha. Her albino-white hair blew over his arm.
He said: There’s nothing I can do.
And left it at that because there were no words for a situation like this. He remembered his mother’s awkward attempts to comfort him after the death of Christine, how she had tried her best to say the usual things, but her words always fell short.
He said: I could tell you about time. How with the passage of time you might feel better. I could tell you how you should think of your child. I could tell you how you should stop hoping—I know you want to run off, go back to the Sea of Humility, try to find Ben somewhere along its shores. But I’m not going to tell
you any of that. I know there’s no point.
He pulled her closer.
She said: Do you think he’s still alive?
He said: No.
She turned, looked down at the river. Seven or eight Filaments flew by in formation, following the river downstream.
She said: He was humble. That’s what I liked about him.
He said: He was also afraid of mice.
She turned, stared, her brow arching in puzzlement. She said: He was?
He said: We were out in the Great Plains Growing Region of Vesta one year fixing grain elevators. He opened an access door and a mouse scampered out. You should have seem him jump. I’ve never laughed so hard.
She stared even harder. A grin came to her face, and he felt her cool pine scent in his mind. She understood. Here was a moment for her. A brief reprieve from her grief. He knew it wasn’t going to last. He knew the numbness would come back. He sensed her hard kernel of grief still there, like a chunk of ice ready to freeze her heart again. But at least now, with this tiny anecdote, she might sense that the thaw might someday come.
* * *
The clan reached the northern archipelago of Our Home the next day, a vast curving arm of volcanic islands thrusting well into the northern ocean above the arctic circle, a group of islands Meek cartographers called A Hundred Second Chances.
On the way they discovered a group of 75 Filaments who had been caught under a rock slide. Surviving Filaments pulled rocks away. Cody, who now steered the carryall, brought the air vehicle down, landing on a grassy patch some way from the Filaments. He and Buster got out and observed the Filaments.
“I think they must be intelligent,” said Cody. Cody preferred speaking to Buster now rather than using emanations, felt he expressed himself more clearly with the spoken word.
Buster said: How can they be intelligent? They live in the wild. They scavenge. They hunt the same way hyenas hunt. They’re beasts. Nothing more.
“Beasts wouldn’t show the same concern for their fellow creatures,” said Cody. “Look at the way the survivors are digging the rocks away. They understand life and death. They value life. They’re looking for survivors. They’re trying to rescue their fellow kind.”
