by Greg Bear
“I just wanted to tell him,” Kaytai said.
“I'm sorry, Ser Olmy,” Raytha said, putting her arm around her mother's shoulder. She turned her head to look at me. “I don't disagree with my mother, but there are better times to talk. And we haven't even asked what your views are.”
“He's young,” Kaytai said. “He should know. Who will tell him?”
Raytha drew the curtain and the apartment became quiet again.
I took Nkwanno's slate from the backpack. The walls of books were too formidable. High-level texts, papers written by researchers for other researchers. I had to prepare myself with basic knowledge before I tackled them. But by morning, I had to be ready for further conversations with Randall and with his friend, the important and well-known Captain Keyser-Bach.
I studied Nkwanno's personal files again, trying to piece together the clues to unravel his code. There were many bookmarks in texts by Henry David Thoreau, laid in with quotes from Henry Place, the head ecologist during the construction of Thistledown. I tried combinations of these names and of various titles as keys, without success. Then, half by accident, I found a highlighted passage from Thoreau:
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
After the quote, a laid-in note from Nkwanno: “Thoreau has the Earth in him. ‘Unless you know where you are, you don't know who you are.'”
“Place,” I thought. “Rabbits, partridges. Place ... Country. Thoreau. Rabbits...”
Thoreau has the Earth in him. Not had, but has.
I tapped the slate against my knee, getting more and more irritated. It was right in front of me. I knew it...
Earth. Thoreau.
I saw the letters, and matched them name to name. Thoreau did indeed contain Earth, with O and U left over. UO. OU. Ou. I checked the dictionaries in the slate for O and U and U and O. Ou, the slate told me, was French for where. “Unless you know where you are, you don't know who you are.” That was a quote from a twentieth-century author named Wendell Berry, often used by citizens of Thistledown.
The slate's simple computer was tracking my searches, a small icon revealed. I felt as if Nkwanno watched over my shoulder as I riddled his little puzzle.
I keyed in, “Earth. Where. Place. Thoreau. Berry.”
A box suddenly popped up on the screen of the slate. “Do you know the place where Thoreau is buried?”
I entered, ‘"Earth.'”
The box wrote in new text:
“Thoreau is in the Earth. The Earth is in Thoreau. But where is Thoreau buried?”
I went to the old Greater Starship Encyclopedia that had come as standard issue with these slates when they had been made—reproductions of twentieth-century antiques—for divaricates on Thistledown. The slate had lasted all these years; I wondered how many twentieth-century batteries had been brought with the immigrants, for their special humble slates, but there was no place to remove batteries and replace them. As I searched the encyclopedia for entries on Thoreau, I realized that the slates must have been equipped with contemporary power supplies, which could last centuries. Divaricates often made such choices, after careful consideration with their philosophical leaders. The usual dispensation for modern technology was given following the phrase, “The Good Man would have approved of this, for it is human-centered and does not make us less than what we are.”
I could not disagree that Nkwanno's slate was human-centered.
There was no specific answer as to where Thoreau was buried in the encyclopedia, or anywhere else in the slate's references, but it did say that he had last lived in Boston. I keyed in, “'Boston, Massachusetts.'”
“Access given,” the slate replied.
I now had Nkwanno's personal journals open to me. I remembered his smooth, musical conversation, when I had met him as a child on Thistledown, and even then, his keen intellect had impressed me. I knew I would find some of the perspective and clues I needed.
I began with entries from more than thirty Lamarckian years before:
Crossing 4. Fall 67.
Much discussion today about Lenk's plan to formalize our search for edible scions. From his perch in Jakarta, Lenk listens to his various lieutenants, and suddenly realizes how hungry we at the edge of the human territories are ... Everybody is hungry. The crops do not grow fast enough, nor in sufficient quantity. Harvests are poor. The soil is metal-poor, and that includes trace minerals. We eat scions in desperation, and some of us have sickened and died. We know that whitehats—so we have named the slow, flat, three-cornered scions that walk on their downturned tips—are not edible, yet two of Moonrise's children have died in the last week trying to eat one.
Some successes. For a long time, we have trimmed mat fiber from low-growth broadfan epidendrids, which prosper near Moonrise, and used it as a kind of tea and in making fabric. Chewing it provides some satisfaction—it contains a mild elevant, not yet isolated by our chemists—but little nutrition. The most successful food we've discovered so far is a pulpy paste made from the thick pelt of purple and red tendrils on the so-called asparagus phytid. The pelt regrows quickly, the paste tastes like mild fish, and it provides substantial protein. No one has yet analyzed all the phytids, and it is likely that some of what we eat may hurt us later—but for now, hunger rules, especially in places like Moonrise, on the edge of Lenk's domain.
Crossing 7. Spring 78.
The first two years after Able Lenk brought us all here, I remember the silva would sing every night. It sang a gentle whistling, whooping song, the arborids drawing air through slits on parasol leaves, other scions making their own unique sounds, like instruments in an orchestra. Nobody knew why the silva sang. It just did, and we accepted it, and grew used to it.
But as the years passed, the nightsong declined. Some nights, the silva would produce only a few scattered sounds, haunting and lonely. Some nights there would be no singing at all. Now, the silva sings perhaps once every ten days. I think I understand why it sings, but I do not know why it does so less frequently.
The ecos must have many ways to keep track of its scions. We have seen speeders on their accustomed trails through the silva, like three-legged greyhounds, zipping between the phytids and arborids at speeds up to thirty kilometers an hour. We know some of the paths of gliders and avids, who swoop above the silva. I believe (and I'm not alone) that all of these creatures play a role in the ecos's internal communication. Like messengers, they carry information ... perhaps about conditions in the south, or the north, about intrusions from other zones, or just general gossip. They carry them somewhere. Something listens, considers, contemplates...
Or so I hope. I would like to meet the heart and mind of an ecos. I have many questions to ask of her—or it.
Crossing 8. Spring 43.
Today saw a herd of parasol sweepers, like great two-headed giraffes, pushing through the silva half a kilometer outside Moonrise and a few dozen meters from the river. Infrequently see them in daylight, and never in such numbers, and of such size—one was tall enough to touch the brushes of a cathedral tree! I wondered if the ecos was reassigning them to another region. They move on three parallel tracks, like the feet of slugs. On close inspection (when Hilaire killed a small one by accident with a tractor one night) each track reveals itself as a parade of thousands of sucker-tipped feet, each no more than an inch long, yet supporting the weight of these creatures large as Earth's dinosaurs ... And bearing them some resemblance.
They do not ingest—I hesitate to say “eat"—the parasols or fan-leaves unless the stalks have been injured—perhaps by wind—or are otherwise not functioning. When we first arrived, some of us thought these were herbivores, as we might expect on an Earth savanna or in a jungle. Now we know much more about them, yet not nearly enough.
Also today saw many
whitehats feeding from a lizboo, like aphids on a rose stem. They remained there for hours, but usually feed in a few seconds, then leave. No one knows what purpose the whitehats serve.
Received a package of documents from Jakarta today. The reconvened Research Standards convention has finally decided on classifications and nomenclature for Lamarckian biology. We must deviate substantially from old terrestrial standards, for obvious reasons.
There seems to be no higher classification than an ecos. Ecoi will be described and defined by geographic location or the name of the discoverer, and a zone number (e.g., Elizabeth's Zone or Zone One). Determination of boundaries and proof of relationship to an ecos will depend on observations and genetic analysis, the latter still crude and uncertain. Observation seems to be the principal and most reliable method for the time being.
Clades within ecoi come next. Arborids or treelike clades, phytids, annulids, polygonids, etc., define these groups of scions. Next come related scions, or forms, that vary little in design. Thus, whitehats are classified as Elizabethae Polygonon Trigonichos.
No doubt the classifications and nomenclature will change and improve, but at least we have reached some agreement on how to begin.
I skipped ahead, scrolling rapidly through the hundreds of pages of text:
Crossing 22. Winter 34.
My wife has been dead for almost twenty years, and l have not remarried. I began this journal when she died. Women have borne the brunt of our coming to Lamarckia. We live our philosophies with a vengeance now, and deep are the hurts and regrets. Some say deeper still the satisfactions. But I remember my wife, and her gentle ways, and the dismay on her face at the pain of birthing our first child. I felt so much pain myself, that my lust, my insistence, should put her in this state. There was of course her recovery and joy after ... But I can't help but think the women look back on our time in Thistledown, and feel regret at what they left behind. It is because of their true courage that they don't complain more.
My wife's time came far too early. Something failed within her, and she just died. Death can arrive a simple friend for those who die. It is never simple for those who survive.
Crossing 23. Summer 7.
With the village children from the Lenk School, I have walked through the silva. We have captured scions and brought them back to the school for study, always releasing them within a few hours. The most poignant capture for me was last week. William Tass Fenney, age eight, found a small six-legged transporter with seven young phytids. At this early stage, Elizabeth's phytids—especially the smaller ones we call sprouts—are little more than blobs of dark gray or purple gelatin the size of a finger, filled throughout with tiny white threads. William brought the transporter back to our school in a cart. We looked at the wriggling bowl with its leathery lid, and at the young phytids within, and made our notes. I then told William to take it back to where he had found it, and he said, “But I don't remember where that was.”
We tried to walk back along some trail into the silva, but William had left few marks, and his cart's wheel tracks had vanished in the springy soil. Finally, with less and less of the day to spare, and lessons on other subjects beginning soon, we placed the transporter and its cargo on the silva floor. It turned in a circle several times, emitted a small sigh, and fell to the ground. Then it dumped its load of phytids. They lay like finger-sized worms, wriggling on the dark, clumpy earth.
Angela called from the school building, so I took the children back, but vowed to return as soon as I could. A few hours later, I found the transporter in a morbid condition, and all the young phytids desiccated and crumbling.
We had interfered with the transporter's simple instructions, or removed it from a track scented or otherwise marked, and replaced it where it did not belong.
I think often of that carrier. What of our own children, removed from their track?
Crossing 25. Winter 15.
Joseph Visal visits again from Calcutta. He came from Athenai and arrived in Calcutta just yesterday, then took the Wednesday boat immediately to Moonrise. We have spent many hours the past evenings catching up. In the daytime he travels with his researcher friends farther south along the river, but they always return by dusk. I fear none of them are more than dilettantes. But they take joy in their small discoveries, some of which may be valuable...
He brings more details of the attempted assassination of Able Lenk, news of which horrified us all two weeks ago, when we first heard it on the radio. The would-be-assassin belongs to the Gaians, a group much rumored and about which little has ever been learned, making me think perhaps they are more legend than fact; but this would-be-assassin, Daw Tone Kunsler, whom I have never met, claims to be of them. Joseph tells me that the Gaians are active everywhere, and know each other by secret signs.
Quaint. We left Thistledown to create a new kind of heaven, and instead find ourselves on roads to old, insipid hells.
Joseph also brings word that Lenk is approving a new research program, against the advice of his counselors, particularly Allrica Fassid, a small woman who is a formidable adversary. For once Lenk does not listen to her. The program will be called the Lamarckian Year, and all communities will participate—by which they must mean allocate resources to some central distribution point. There will be much protest. Our resources are still scarce, though the famine has passed.
I suppose we may sacrifice a tractor and send it to Athenai.
A new exploring expedition will begin, led by Baker and Shulago, two of my former students at Jakarta. They are brilliant but argumentative and I fear they may not be good leaders.
After a dozen entries in Nkwanno's journal, I went to the shelves of books and found two thick volumes, introductory texts that were not filled with technical terms and words I could not easily cross-reference. They would serve well enough as introductions to what the immigrants knew about Lamarckia, or at least about Liz.
I read all that night, until just before dawn, when I grew restless and my muscles began to cramp. As in Thistledown, there were no locks on the doors. I stole out quietly and walked north up the alley. I needed to see Calcutta alone and think about what I had read.
I had not counted on the profound darkness of Calcutta in the early-morning hours. No electric lights burned along the alley or on the streets outside, and only a few were visible on the hills below. Clouds had moved in over the river delta and not even the starlight helped. I felt my way back down the alley, counting doors, fingers scuffing rough lava brick and the grain of the lizboo in the door posts and doors, until I came back to what I thought must be Randall's.
With some relief, I lay on my cot in the library and considered all the simple things I would have to learn.
5
Randall accompanied me the half kilometer from his house to the court building below the Lenk Hub. We passed through a crowd of angry, curious citizens. Some of them recognized Randall and me from the engagement on the river and clapped us on our backs, expressing their thanks and congratulations. We came to a cordon of court security guards, and the officer in charge checked our names and let us through.
Outside the main courtroom, a group of five citizens rank, two grim-faced older men and three women past childbearing years, greeted us stiffly. Before hearing our testimony, they were taking a short break in the annex, standing in their dark gray robes and sipping mat fiber tea. They had been busy since dawn that morning ruling on how and when to send the captured Brionists to Athenai for Lenk's disposition.
Larisa Strik-Cachemou sat on a bench nearby, alone and silent.
The last of the Brionists to be arraigned that day were led out of the court as we arrived, seven men and a woman, all wearing the clothes they had worn the day before though dried and cleaned for them, all trussed neck to neck and foot to foot with thick ropes. Iron and steel were too valuable for chains, and I suspected there was little need for chains in Calcutta.
The crowd outside began to shout and jeer as the prisoners came
in sight. Their guards guided them swiftly down an open alley and away from the hub complex.
A few minutes after we arrived, the disciplinary Elevi Bar Thomas and two of his deputies walked into the annex. Thomas nodded at Randall, Larisa, and me, and walked closer. “I hear we both had a skirmish,” he said. “We met the three flatboats snagged above Calcutta. They passed us upriver. A few shots were fired, but we knew we couldn't stop them.”
“Did you wait for the other boats?” Randall asked.
“Until last night. Then I decided it was useless and we came back to Calcutta.”
Randall was not impressed by this story, but he did not say anything critical.
“The citizens did well here,” Thomas said. “I wish I could have been here to help them.”
After five minutes, the clerk announced the citizens rank would reconvene. Randall excused himself and invited me to come down to the Vigilant at the docks after and meet Captain Keyser-Bach. The rest of us moved into an interior, windowless room, brightly illuminated by electric incandescents. Here the city smells lapsed into mustiness and stale air. The citizens rank took five chairs on a low dais. Thomas stood beside them, facing Larisa and me. Larisa rose from her cot and sat gingerly on a chair.
“What are her injuries?” asked the eldest woman with a sympathetic tone. Her name was Sulamit Faye-Chinmoi. Small, lean-faced, her hands wrinkled and bones showing in fine ridges beneath ivory skin, she focused her attention on Larisa, brow wrinkled in concern.
“Grief and shock,” Larisa replied sharply. “Betrayal.”
“Exhaustion,” Thomas added. “Days without food.”
“Are you strong enough to tell your story?”
Larisa rolled her eyes and clenched her jaw muscles. “I've told already. It hurts to chew on it again and again.”