Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World

by Caroline M. Yoachim

  “I still don’t understand what I’m supposed to be learning. Where were these vids taken?”

  “Not where. When. These vids are old, from not long after we humans first arrived.” Zara looked at the clock. “It’s late, and it will take you quite some time to return to your den.”

  “You could let me stay with you,” Freet said. She knew better than to argue, but she missed the feeling of being cared for, missed the way her parents had tended her when she was a pup. The humans provided for the ratlings, but they were distant. Something was missing from the relationship, though Freet was not sure quite what.

  Zara shook her head and held the classroom door open for Freet. Usually Zara accompanied her to the edge of the city, but today her teacher remained at the classroom door while Freet crawled down the school hallway. Many things about today had been troubling. Tomorrow, perhaps, would be better.

  Freet woke and crawled into the city. Zara was not there to greet her. Instead, another teacher, one who usually taught the oldlings, met her at the entrance to the school and walked her to her classroom.

  “Zara will be here soon,” he assured Freet. “Go ahead and start watching the vid.”

  - Press Play To Watch It Mate -

  The beginning of the vid was boring. The Redbark sapling had grown into a tree. It was a distinctive tree, with one stray branch that grew low, well below the canopy. Its other branches blew in the gentle winter breeze. The low branch remained still. This lasted for a long time on the vid. Branches in the wind, nothing else. The ratlings, Freet assumed, were hibernating.

  Spring came, the windy season, and finally the ratlings emerged from their dens. The Redbark branches whipped wildly, releasing clouds of orange pollen that blew across the forest and swirled up into the clouds before drifting back down to the ground. Everything, everywhere, was dusted in a fine orange powder, including the ratlings. Orange was the color of mating. Even at her advanced age, the orange powder-coated males in the vid piqued her interest.

  - Press Pause -

  Zara rushed into the room, slightly out of breath. “I’m sorry I did not come to the door to greet you. I had to be in another part of the city for a meeting.”

  “What kind of meeting?” Freet asked. “Where in the city?”

  “We must finish your lessons first,” Zara insisted. “These are important lessons. What did you learn this time?”

  “The Redbark life cycle is interesting. The pollen is orange, like the color of ratling fur in the mating season.”

  “You’re still focusing too much on the ratlings, and not enough on the Redbarks. Did you not hear the mating songs of their branches? Can you not see the conversations they have in the rustling of their leaves?”

  “They are trees,” Freet said. “Beautiful trees, but they aren’t even animals.”

  “They are the ones who will save you.”

  “From what?” Freet asked.

  “From all the mistakes we humans made.” Zara pointed to the vid-player. “Keep watching. Soon it will start to make sense.”

  - Press Play to Watch It Love -

  Freet flicked play with her longest tongue, but before the vid began she flicked her tongue out a second time.

  -pause-

  She had a question, and Zara hadn’t left yet. “They love after they mate?”

  “The winds are in the spring,” Zara said, “and the ratlings nest in the summer.”

  “They love the ratlings?”

  “Watch the vid.”

  -play-

  Two ratlings cuddled in a den at the base of a Redbark. Clearly these were mates, and soon the female would bear her pups. In a pinch, a den would do for pups, but nests were better. Safer. A pup couldn’t crawl out as easily from a nest and wander off.

  The female ratling climbed the Redbark, and the male ran in widening circles until he came to the next tree, the nearest tree. Carefully, both ratlings climbed high into the trees, letting their weight bend the branches downwards from the sky, sideways, until the tips of the branches were almost touching. Reaching out with their long tongues, they each grasped the tip of their partner’s branch, and pulled the branches together.

  The ends of the branches grew delicate tendrils and the branches wound around each other. When the bond was secure, the ratlings scurried back to the trunk and repeated the process with a new set of branches, each of them bringing several branches to the nest. The juncture where the branches came together grew into the shape a deep bowl, almost a complete sphere, exactly the right size for the ratling parents to raise their pups.

  The female climbed into the nest and soon after gave birth to a healthy litter of six. She stayed in the nest and nursed them, and her partner brought immature green Redbark fruit for her to eat. In even the lightest breeze, the nest of Redbark branches rocked, lulling the pups to sleep.

  - Press Pause -

  Freet was starting to understand the lesson, perhaps. “The Redbarks provide for the ratlings.”

  “Yes,” Zara said.

  “What happens when the nesting is done?”

  “The branches grow together, solidifying the bond. The Redbarks begin to pass chemical signals through the branches almost immediately, but as the branches get bigger, the communication is greater, almost as though the pair becomes a single Redbark. It is a more efficient form of communication than the sounds they make on their branches.”

  Zara looked at the clock. “It is time for you to go, if you want to return to your den. But there is only one vid left, and time is growing short. Just this once, you may stay in the city.”

  “With you?” Freet asked.

  Zara nodded. “Yes. Just this once.”

  To Freet’s surprise, Zara lifted Freet onto her lap and stroked her fur.

  - Press Play To Watch It Die -

  The last vid moved at a different speed than all the others. It was a series of still photographs. At first there was a photo for every few minutes, then the pace gradually accelerated to a photograph for day followed by one for night. Seasons passed, and the Redbark forest grew ever more tangled together.

  Seedlings sprouted and grew, mated and loved.

  In the center of it all was the Redbark that had been the focus of the previous vids, the one with a stray branch that hung lower than the canopy. Far in the distance, the tops of cities became visible above the treeline. Green patches started appearing on the trunks of the Redbarks. Freet recognized it as a foodplant the humans sometimes gave her. Nutritious, but with a stringy texture, and not as tasty as fruit.

  The green patches spread over the trees. Humans came and stripped it away, but it grew back. Branches began to rot and fall off the trees. There was less purple fruit, but the ratlings ate the green foodplants instead, and for a time they thrived. Even so, as the seasons turned, there were fewer ratlings. Humans came again, and this time they collected not the green foodplants, but the black fruits of the trees and any ratlings they could find.

  Branches fell away from the Redbarks. In the wind, their now brittle branches cracked and the only song they sung was one of pain. Bark peeled away, revealing the wood beneath. The trees became the pillars, and the landscape in the vid matched the world that Freet knew.

  - Press Pause -

  “It was our plants that destroyed your trees,” Zara said sadly. “We didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “But we don’t need the trees, now that we have you to care for us,” Freet said.

  “We cannot stay. Our foodplants would kill the Redbarks again.”

  “There aren’t any Redbarks.” Freet wiggled free from Zara’s arms and ran around the room in tight circles of distress. “We will all die. Your survival classes and self defense, they will not be enough. If you go, we will all die.”

  “You don’t have to die,” Zara said. “We saved seeds from the Redbarks. We’ve stopped planting our food crops, and yesterday I burned the fields that have already been harvested. We have enough food stored to stay until the
Redbark seeds grow and start producing fruit, and to feed ourselves on the journey home. We can’t live here anymore, but you can.”

  “You picked Redbarks over ratlings,” Freet said. She bared her teeth and growled softly.

  “My father translated the songs the Redbarks sang with their branches, and recorded the chemical messages they sent down their trunks. We didn’t know it at first, but the Redbarks were the most intelligent species on the planet—even after we humans arrived.”

  Freet bristled at the insult. “If the Redbarks were so smart, why didn’t they save themselves from your plants?”

  “They kept the ecosystem of their forest in balance for tens of thousands of years, but they are slow thinkers, slow speakers, slow as sap in everything they do. Humans are not as smart as Redbarks, but we are far quicker. Besides, they did save themselves, after a fashion. They asked us to make the vids and taught us how to care for you. When they started to die, we collected as many seeds we could.”

  Zara opened a small box and held out one of the black fruits, harvested from a Redbark tree. Not a fruit, Freet realized, but a seed pod.

  The smell, oh the smell. Freet wanted nothing more than to swallow it. She even reached for it with her tongues.

  “Not here, my little Freetling,” Zara said. Her eyes glistened with tears as she put the seed pod back into its box. “And not quite yet. It must be soon, for autumn is almost over, but not today. First you must decide, you and the other oldlings, if this is what you want. They’ve been watching the vids too, but I think they will do whatever you decide.”

  Freet flicked out her tongues at the lingering smell of the seed pod.

  “If we refuse, will you re-plant your food crops and stay to care for us?”

  “Yes. That was the meeting we had. If you refuse to eat the seeds, at least some of us will stay behind when the ship returns to Earth. It will wreak havoc on the ecosystem, but it is your planet and your ecosystem. We will stand by what you choose.”

  Freet slept at the foot of Zara’s bed. It was warmer than her den, with soft blankets, like cuddling beside a mate. The first light of dawn angled in through the window.

  Images from the vids crowded into Freet’s mind. What was the proper choice? The ratlings in the vid had been dependent on the trees. They did not have lessons and cities. All they had were the Redbarks. But the trees had tended them as carefully as humans ever had, perhaps even more so. Was returning to the old ways a step backward, or sideways, or forward into a better future? Freet didn’t know. She was old. It was almost time for her to sleep the longest sleep.

  Zara stirred. “Good morning, little Freetling.”

  Freet nestled up to Zara and smelled her human smell. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and while she liked the familiarity of her teacher’s scent, it did not pull at her the way the seed pod had. The Redbarks had tended to ratlings for a long time. They fit together in ways that humans and ratlings did not.

  “If we choose the Redbarks, and you leave, what will become of the cities?” Freet asked. “What will become of the school?”

  “The cities will be yours, and the school as well,” Zara answered. “The Redbarks believed that after a period of adjustment, the ratlings would regain all the advances you have made. They have promised to do the best they can for you.”

  “My pups are oldlings now, but what of their pups? What will happen to them?”

  Zara shook her head. “The first few generations will probably run wild. It will take the Redbarks time to grow back into what they once were. But they store knowledge in their seeds. They will remember their promise, even if the ratlings don’t.”

  Humans had made no promises, and they did not need the ratlings as the Redbarks did.

  “I will swallow the seed,” Freet said. “Take off my collar and walk with me to the proper place.”

  - rewind -

  - Press Play To Watch It Born -

  Freet swallowed the black seedpod. She ran frantically in widening circles around the base of a pillar, the sun-bleached core of a long-dead Redbark, until finally she stopped in a patch of bright sunlight.

  She used her foreclaws to dig down into the dirt. She dug until she was entirely underground, and then kept digging, not bothering to clear the dirt from the tunnel behind her.

  - pause -

  Zara watched the vids in her quarters, over and over again on the long ride home to Earth. The new generation of Redbarks was bearing fruit, and the ratlings had gone wild. She hoped that the forest would recover, that the ratlings would thrive and the Redbarks would sing in the wind. She hoped that the Redbarks would keep their promise, and help the ratlings make use of the cities. Perhaps someday they would send messages to Earth, vids of a healed forest and an even stronger symbiosis.

  NINETY-FIVE PERCENT SAFE

  Nicole went to visit her best friend, Grant, the day before his family left for Opilio. She was jealous that he’d be part of the second wave—the first wave had already done the hardest work of establishing the colonies, but the floating cities would be nearly empty, an abundance of unclaimed living space. She’d heard rumors that families had so much space that each person had their very own room—a place that was theirs even if they went out.

  “I got you something,” Nicole said. She held out a small cube with a mini-mint plant inside. The 4-inch cube provided everything the tiny mint plant needed to survive a trip through space. For how small it was, the plant had been astonishingly expensive. Nicole had traded all her recreation credits for the last three months to get Livvy to give it to her.

  He shook his head. “You keep it.”

  Nicole frowned. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s amazing, but I don’t have anything for you. Keep it, and bring it to me someday in Opilio.”

  Grant had it in his head that this was a temporary goodbye, but there was no way Nicole’s mom would ever let her ride the worm—five percent of the pods that went into the wormhole never came back out. No one knew why. “We aren’t coming to Opilio, Grant. Take the plant?”

  “The colony is a better place, a better life. Think about it—floating cities in an orange sky. Jellyfish the size of a space station. Here, I’ll pass you the commercial.” Grant put his hand over hers, and when she authorized the transmission he copied the data to her storage implant. “You’ll be sixteen in a couple years, but if you get tired of waiting, you can go as a default.”

  “And then what, I can come live with you?” Nicole tried to think of something else to say, but thinking about Grant leaving made her want to cry, and talking about Earth stuff seemed pointless now. She hated goodbyes. She shouldn’t even have come over today.

  “Let’s get this over with. Bye, Grant. Don’t be wormfood.” She tried to make her voice sound light and completely failed. She hugged him and then bolted out of his family’s homespace before she burst into tears, barely hearing him call out goodbye behind her. She felt like hurling the mint plant at the wall, but she knew she’d regret it later, so she tucked it into her purse.

  The walk home took her past the base of the default elevator, a thin column of metal stretching up to the cavernous metal ceiling of the city. Baine was gray on gray on gray, an underground city of steel towers where the tallest buildings doubled as supports to keep the roof from falling in. Above the roof was the topside station, constantly bombarded by the raging snowstorms of nuclear winter.

  Even the clothes the city provided were gray, although these could at least be programmed to look more colorful if you had the credits to buy overlays. Nicole’s jumpsuit was crimson with a scatter of black flowers to accent her waistline. It was prettier than the navy blue student uniform, but Grant hadn’t said a thing about the outfit. She wondered if he’d noticed, then reminded herself that he was leaving.

  “You lost, sweetheart?”

  Nicole flinched away from the voice, a man dressed in a default gray jumpsuit. She shook her head and kept walking. Mom had warned her a bunch of
times to keep clear of the default elevator, but it was the fastest route to Grant’s building. The area was always crowded. Hundreds of people in default gray lined up each morning to ride the pods up to the surface and then onward to the colonies.

  A few miles away there was an elevator for people who could afford to pay. That was where Grant’s family would go. That elevator had scheduled departures and nicer pods, but the wormhole ate everyone indiscriminately, so his odds of getting to Opilio were the same as the defaults waiting here.

  Nicole paused at the entry to her building to reprogram her clothes to basic navy before going in, but before she could manage the change Mom came up behind her.

  “Nicole Morgana Blackensmith, please tell me you did not go walking around in that outfit.”

  When they got inside, Mom programmed their homespace into a single room with an old-style wood table in the center. Nicole suspected that Mom called this particular configuration “family meeting,” but Nicole called it “Mom is cranky.”

  Mom sat across from Nicole. Dad sat at the far end of the table with three-year-old Tommy on his lap. Tommy was fiddling around with a game cube that was programmed way too advanced for him, a racing game with colorful cars on curvy looping tracks. He twisted the cube around, then shook it. When the cars skidded off the tracks and crashed, he laughed.

  “Your father and I want to talk to you about. . . well, about a lot of things. The clothes that you uploaded, and that commercial that Grant gave you—”