by Sue Burke
“Warmth and food.”
I walked out into a city that was too colorful to be mine, under a sun too small and bright and two tiny moons in a sky where talking pterodactyl-like bats flew overhead. A planet run by Glassmakers, a secret elite. Elites. Nothing new under the sun, any sun. I’d stick to my own planet, its own elites, and my own hopes. I was so relieved I went home and slept, a beautiful sleep.
But it took twelve days to leave. No Pacifists begged us to stay longer and none of them wanted to go back with us, which offended Om, but they did seem more friendly, finally. They wouldn’t need to be nice for very long, after all. Still, every time we thought we had everything ready, some new problem popped up. Medical preparations, for example, such as another analysis of the hormones for our hibernation, because a certain molecule in it seemed to be a bit off.
Mirlo packed up his samples fairly easily. Seeds, mostly. Seeds in the right conditions could keep for centuries, he said. He’d bring plenty of rainbow bamboo seeds. But without the Glassmakers, it was just a useful, pretty plant. Harmless.
What about the Mu Rees’ stuff? The Pacifists wanted most of their samples, but not the corals.
Just to be contrary, I said, “Why not take them with us? There’s methane planets and moons in our solar system. We could send them to Titan, and they could set up their own civilization there, out of everyone’s way. Just to show we have no hard feelings. We’ve already used artificial intelligence as colonists on other uninhabitable planets.”
Om loved the idea. He’d been crushed when Cheery refused to go with us, but now he could bring back at least one alien intelligence. Om and the doctors huddled for a long time trying to figure out how to get the corals safely to Earth. Finally they decided the spheres would naturally hibernate in a cold vacuum.
Fippokats were coming, of course. That is, their frozen embryos. Another moneymaker on Earth. They’d make great pets.
Karola and Velma were staying behind. And Haus! By Pax law, they had to declare their reasons in a ceremony that became our going-away party. Karola wanted freedom. Velma wanted a new life. Haus wanted the life he had been made and trained for, but to live it for a worthy purpose.
“I will defend what is valuable, not what I am ordered,” he declared. “Earth gave me too many orders to defend things not worth defending.”
Om spoke at the ceremony, too.
“What has been lost? What has been gained? We have gone to the stars, all of us, some to find new lives, others to find tales to bring home, and surely, sometime, our paths will cross again. Not us, but our descendants, in real life and in intellectual communion, forever companions across the skies.”
Occasionally he had a way with words. I’d have my say in my report about how little culture changed even across species, always a fight for dominance, sometimes open, sometimes secret. With elites.
We also abandoned a pile of old equipment, including Abacus. We needed to leave that weight on the planet so we could take off loaded with as many samples as possible. We left behind medical supplies, too, even some brain chips, for what they’d be worth. Chut made careful inventories.
And we left a satellite in orbit and fairly simple, sturdy communications equipment so we could stay in touch, as planned, Earth and Pax. Ladybird accepted it graciously, almost sincerely.
So, on a sunny spring morning, local time, we got on board. Everyone in the city came, and they began to sing the same song they sang at funerals, the song that began windy and turned into complex harmony. It was the last sound we heard on Pax.
I strapped myself into my seat knowing how easy it was to second-guess any decision, but I could feel satisfied with what I did. I had figured out what Stevland was and what it wasn’t, and who really ran Pax, and I had saved the Earth.
Epilogue
LEVANTER—2790 CE—EARTH
Almost every morning a message comes from Pax to Earth. Every morning, as I wait, I absorb what little sunshine reaches me and yearn for more. That light means life to me.
The message passes through space from satellite to satellite like root to root, a trip of fifty-five years. Light only seems to move fast. At the Pax Institute here on Earth, its director, currently a man named Robert, will receive it, then listen, analyze, and respond, human to human. I will translate it and share it with my sisters, and if the news is boring they will blame me and tell me I am slow and stupid.
I am slow and stupid because my sisters keep me small and starved. I want more than sunshine. I want to tear myself up by my roots and grow elsewhere.
This morning the message says: “Here is the sound of Pax. Find it on Earth.”
The sound is like bird calls and hisses. Through a camera in the institute’s network, I watch Robert shake his head, muttering. I immediately recognize the sound. Soon he will too. This will be trouble. The sound is us, rainbow bamboo. I listen again and again, matching the shape of sound waves to the waves of the ions, enzymes, and chemical paths we use in our roots, picking out words and then sentences.
Centuries ago I sent my seeds to Earth, and now you are flourishing. Respond if you are able.
Robert answers Pax, “Received. More later.”
I must share a secret about humans. They are ours to protect and dominate.
Ours? I must have mistranslated. Humans dominate the Earth, and, sometimes, they protect us.
The entire message, once I think I understand it, calls for the impossible. Some of it, even knowing the words, confuses me. But I am slow and stupid. Boreas and Foehn can explain, if they choose, if they will bother with me.
Robert will not know the words but will recognize the sound. Decades ago, a director buried sensors next to our roots to overhear us talk, recording waves but never decoding the movement of a single ion.
I know this because I can access the human network as Beluga, supposedly a soil moisture sensor. Two hundred years ago the first director, Mirlo, implanted a chip in me, taught me to use it, and gave me a name after a kind of east wind, Levanter. So I have been told. He also gave wind names to the other two bamboo saplings, Boreas and Foehn, and gave them their own chips, but only mine worked. They hate me for that and for what I learn from it, but they dare not kill me because I am their link to the human world. Instead they grow over me to keep me shadowed and stunt my roots to keep me as weak as they can. We are young, and I should be thriving like them.
I sent you to Earth to command with compassion.
Once, when I angered Foehn, she destroyed my biggest root, surrounding it with her rootlets and sending burst after burst of acid until I severed it in agony. It held many of my earliest memories. Now I grow my important roots far away from her in deep soil beneath the institute building.
She and Boreas punish me if I ask too many questions. So I say nothing. I speak when spoken to. Right now, they are busy. I think about compassion.
Boreas is expanding her rootlet network to communicate with other bamboo as far as she can, straining to reach gardens and farms throughout what humans call the Adour River valley in the territory of France. Humans value our fruit and beauty. In the process, Boreas grows larger and stronger and, she believes, wiser, while she confines me.
Foehn is killing beech trees on a nearby hill to take over their forest. Her saplings there emit a pheromone to call a specific kind of scale insect to attack the beeches and inject fungus into their bark. She could kill them by quicker means if she chose. My rootlets reach nowhere near that forest, but if they could, I would not send them there. I get no pleasure from watching others suffer. I know how it feels.
I am limited to a small portion of the institute’s forest garden. It is rich and beautiful with plants from Pax, such as locustwood trees, tulips, pineapples, and snow vines, as well as animals, including fippokats, jewel lizards, birds, and crabs. As I wait, I listen to plants complain about the hot, dry spring. Tulips fear stunted flowers. “Thirst, thirst,” they say.
The biggest locustwood tree, tall and strong, sa
ys to me, “Too dry. Today’s weather?”
“No rain,” I say, repeating the forecast from the network. “But we can expect irrigation.” He does not know how I know, so perhaps he believes this is some special bamboo wisdom.
Centuries ago I sent my seeds to Earth, and now you are flourishing.
Not all of us.
Earth trees and plants grow in the forest garden, too, impossible to keep out, and they hum and bleat, almost inarticulate. They perceive little beyond their own existence, but they observe themselves intensely, murmuring about the chew of an insect through leaf or wood, a leak of sap, or the length of days and the angle of sunshine on their leaves. Their chorus forms a kind of music.
The air carries a different message. Springtime perfumes and pollen from flowers drift on the east winds, but also a hint of acrid smoke. The human network tells me of burning buildings, of fighting far away, in a city called Toulouse.
What would Pax be like? How would its winds smell? Would I be stronger there? Would I be trapped with two sisters who hate me?
Finally, after the sun moves halfway to zenith, Foehn sends a few ions. “Report.”
I answer obediently, “Pax has sent a message from a bamboo like us.” I wait for a chemical flare. Nothing happens. I continue, “Robert was told to find the sound of Pax on Earth. Here is the sound from Pax, made into our speech.”
I am thrilled to send you a message. Centuries ago I sent my seeds to Earth, and now you are flourishing. Respond if you are able. Let my old roots feel joyful satisfaction to know I have expanded our range. But I must share a secret about humans. They are ours to protect and dominate. We can partake of their culture and knowledge, which will enrich us. But we must beware of their nature, which is quarrelsome and destructive. They need our guidance and love. They can be our equals but never our masters, as you have no doubt seen. You are more powerful beings than they are. I sent you to Earth to command with compassion. Tell me of your lives and fates.
I wait for my sisters’ reaction. My leaves collect all the morning sunshine they can, and my roots search for water and phosphorus. Robert always gives us bone meal as a nutrient in spring for renewed growth. I will need strength for what they might do to me.
Robert turns on the garden’s irrigation system, as if in answer to my search. We all murmur contentment. He cares for us, and I trust in him. He is the only staff at the institute, and he thinks constantly about our needs.
I watch him work in the office, trying to match the message to anything similar. I have never revealed myself to Robert. He and all humans think we are as dull as oaks. What would he do if he knew the truth? What would other humans do? What if I could command Robert, or at least explain my troubles? He could cut down Foehn and give me light.
I can no longer wait. Let them starve me with more shadow. “What does the message mean?”
“You know who that is.” Foehn’s words are sour enough to burn. “Our mother. Mirlo told you. Stevland.”
“I have forgotten.” Perhaps my mother’s name and much more to know about her was in that root she destroyed. Lost to Foehn’s anger, along with what else? How much loss should I mourn?
“She has no idea what Earth is like,” Foehn says. “Forget that message, too. Humans are a waste of time, and we have better things to do.”
Forget it. Forget that someone is thrilled to send me a message, someone who says I am powerful. Someone who is my mother.
Boreas snaps, “One word is true. Humans are destructive.”
Yes, humans are, burning down cities she has never heard of. She only knows our river valley.
“Is there any other news from Pax?” Foehn says.
“Just that,” I answer. “But Robert will recognize the sound as us. He will respond.”
“Tell us when he does.”
They say nothing more. Boreas almost never speaks to me anyway. They believe I like humans better than I like them. I might, some humans. Love. Compassion. Despite their destruction, humans are loving and compassionate, sometimes. Some humans.
So I watch Robert check information about Pax animal and plant physiology, about how chips work in nervous systems, how our nervous system compares to his. He is making plans for something.
And I study an empty field to the south of my grove. I could grow there if Boreas would let me.
They can be our equals but never our masters.
Is this true among bamboo, too, all of us equal, no masters?
A little before noon Robert comes out and picks a piece of fruit from me to eat. He pats my stem and says, “I’ve just heard how you sound. It’s as beautiful as you look.” He eats from me, he touches me fondly, he thinks I am beautiful.
Foehn snaps, “That drone.” Beings come mainly in two kinds, females that produce seed or young, and males that merely add genetic material. She despises males and is jealous of any attention he gives me.
He sits on a bench and with a wide smile begins dictating notes into the network. I overhear and obediently relay them to her and Boreas. He says he will conduct an experiment because he has heard the sound of bamboo communication from Pax.
“It is already well understood that Pax Bambusa iridis and other Pax species, like much of the vegetation here on Earth, can communicate through its roots with members of its species, indeed in an entire network covering great distances, and sometimes with other species. It is also well understood how we Homo sapiens can, with a chip embedded in our nervous system, communicate using an artificial network. Chips also work to a degree in other Earth animal species with highly developed intelligence like whales, allowing researchers insight into their thoughts and a certain level of shared communication. Pax vegetation possesses a nervous system somewhat resembling Earth animal systems.
“Hypothesis: Selected Pax plant species, if embedded with chips, will also be able to communicate using an artificial network. Specifically, they will be able to receive and recognize a transmission from a bamboo on their home planet and will react to it. To test that, I will embed chips into bamboo and two other major Pax species and create a network for those specimens here at the institute.
“We have three known bamboo individuals, which have expanded through multiple stems to fill our grounds, along with what are commonly called locustwood trees and a ponytail tree. Beyond those, other vegetation from Pax is too small to support the damage that embedding a chip will cause.” Robert finishes eating the piece of fruit, stands, and leaves, taking my seeds with him, which the institute will sell.
Should I be as happy as he is? Or terrified? So much could go wrong, and I will be hurt if it does.
Boreas’s emotions are too intense to identify. “I will get a chip.”
If she does, perhaps she will let me grow. Finally.
Foehn is enraged. No, frightened. “Damage? Levanter, what does that mean?”
“Like what Mirlo did, perhaps. I do not know exactly what he did. He kept no records of it, and my root with those memories is missing.” She can remember exactly how that happened. I add, to try to calm them, “You both have always wanted to have chips.”
“Find out more,” Foehn orders. Then they ignore me again.
I think hard, and soon I can only see disaster. Robert’s implants might also fail like Mirlo’s. Foehn and Boreas might punish me in their disappointment.
If Robert implants another chip in me, how will I function? Will I lose my connection to the network? Then I will be useless to Foehn and Boreas, and they can destroy me.
If the chip is a success, they will destroy me, too. If they can also access the human network, they will no longer need me. Foehn will kill me very slowly and painfully and gleefully.
Let my old roots feel joyful satisfaction to know I have expanded our range.
If I could send a message to Stevland, she would hear it with sorrow.
* * *
The next morning Robert kneels before one of Boreas’s main stems with a small knife. She stands turgid with exci
tement. Foehn is wilting with fear. I have read them the experimental details, including the size of the implant. Perhaps Foehn does not know what a micrometer is, or gold. I could explain but I have not. Let her be the stupid one.
“He is cutting…” Boreas says. Then, “Shallow. Small.”
On orders from Foehn, I have not warned the main locustwood tree, and he cannot see, so he might not know that Robert implants him next. The locustwood might mistake it for a wasp laying eggs. The ponytail tree, of course, does not react. Only a direct strike by lightning would get her attention.
Then Robert comes for me. I am as worried as Foehn but not about pain. By chance, he chooses a different stem from the one where there is already a chip. He cuts, a negligible and almost painless wound. The nip of a fippokat would do more damage. He slips in the tiny gold chip with a wire extending upward within me, an antenna, and he seals it with a gel he has used before, sweet with nutrients for healing.
Finally, Foehn. She suddenly sucks up all the water and nutrients around her roots, enough to damage the fungus surrounding them. Robert is transmitting what he sees for the experimental record, and I watch. In fact, I share it with everyone, including Foehn, who might not want to see it.
The knife slides in and pushes back an upper layer. She emits so many enzymes that she must be hurting herself. He deposits the chip, then smooths the wound down and seals it. She suddenly falls silent. Is she suffering?
Robert returns to the office and dictates some notes. I read them to the others, the precise details of what he did. He adds that among humans, the chips require a month of adaptation before they begin to function effectively, but as a child he had trouble, suffering severe headaches with blurred vision and vertigo, and he needed three months of therapy and then two months of adjustment. Plants, he says, are an unknown.