Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  “It ain’t allowed,” said Mr. Oplough. “No way on Earth.” He had cackled at his joke. He had been an engineer ten years back; now he was retired and he knew his rights.

  “Twelve meters high, you say?” quavered Mrs. Oplough. “Virgil, that’s thirty-nine feet, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Virgil Oplough, scowling.

  “Just from nine till ten in the morning,” pleaded Annie. “Then just four till five. It’s to keep the baby safe.”

  “Babies!” snorted Virgil. “Some folks don’t know when to call it a day with babies.”

  But it was nearly impossible to insult Annie when she was trying to be sweet.

  Harrington had watched from the back door. She’d wanted to shout at Mr. Oplough. Yes, even though all this fuss was for It.

  Now the Hedge had been put in. That had taken all morning, with the soft but intrusive buzz of subsaws and whine of electrasonics. The neighbors hadn’t liked that, and the Oploughs had come out to squawk How long would this racket go on?

  When the Hedge was installed, Annie hit the button to bring it alive.

  The Hedge stayed invisible, and in fact actually not there, when it was switched off. Switched on, it leaped instantly into being. Thirty-nine feet of darkest green-blue foliage, so dense there were the preordered peepholes to see through. Among the mat wove the appearance of wild planet roses the color of strawberries, and Earth-type ivy. Then Mrs. Riveras’s face had appeared, unroselike, in the little hole nearest the house. (At the same moment Harrington heard, on the Oplough side, a door open, a gasp gasped, and a door slammed.)

  “Only two hours a day,” sweet-talked Annie. “Mrs. Riveras—there’ll even be days it won’t be on at all.”

  “I’m timing you, Annie,” said Mrs. Riveras, worryingly. “I’ll keep track of your hours. If you go over time—”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Harrington wanted to throw something at Mrs. Riveras, too. Yes, even though, again, it was all for It.

  The Hedge was a molecule construct, one of the latest things, and had cost two thousand IPU dollars,* which they couldn’t afford. But what the heck.

  Harrington had to admit she was quite impressed.

  There was really nothing there but airwaves, and the original low fence, just reinforced slightly to stop the plays straying into the neighbors’ yards, and the plays preferred to go to the park anyhow. Yet when that button was pressed, the Hedge towered, casting a rich green shadow, cool and safe, for the baby to crawl out of the direct sunlight, and with no apparent way for her to get out. Or anything else to get in. The Hedge felt of hedge, too. If you touched it, it felt real—leaves, roses. They even had a scent. The Hedge felt as if you couldn’t push through it—it resisted, held you back. It seemed to do that with the sun, too—though in fact there was only a shadow because of something to do with the activated molecules “bending light.”

  Annie was as strict as Mrs. Riveras. On a corner of the home computer she faithfully marked off the two hours, nine till ten, sixteen (four) till seventeen (five) in the afternoon—except every tenth day when she left the Hedge completely switched off, and Jasselly had to stay inside.

  The plays didn’t bother with the Hedge at all. Ignored it.

  But Harrington noticed that birds had started to fly over.

  A lot of the birds and animals had been driven out of the area as the town grew. There wasn’t enough space for them and human disturbance wasn’t what they liked. People didn’t seem to care. They had their pets. Sometimes in the parks you spotted wild plays or foxiles, a lizard or two.

  Birds, though…there weren’t many birds at all.

  Harrington, gazing up at the birds dark on the pale green young summer sky, realized abruptly that she had only ever really seen birds in books or on a screen.

  “Mom?”

  Annie looked around. Being called “Mom” by Harrington usually meant something was going on—good or bad.

  “What, Harry?”

  “Come see.”

  Annie, despite her major faults of (1) losing Pop, (2) liking the Guy, and (3) producing It, still had some plus points. If you said something like “Come see” in the right kind of “come see” voice, she went with you to look.

  They stood in the yard.

  The Hedge was on, and Jasselly was lying asleep on a big cushion. Harrington, sitting outside to draw, had been “keeping an eye” on her. Sort of. Touching, really, how Annie trusts me…

  “Up there.”

  They both gazed upward.

  On top of the Hedge a large bird had perched, balancing on the joined-up molecules that felt like solid twigs and leaves, fanning its feathers in blissful ignorance.

  “Wow,” said Annie.

  “It’s been there fifteen minutes. Why ‘wow’?”

  “Well, when did we last see a bird that close?”

  “It’s forty feet up!”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not scared it’ll pounce and peck Jass’s eyes out?”

  “Oh no, honey,” said Annie. “I recall these birds from years back when your pop—when I lived more outside the town. They’re called—what are they called?”

  The bird pecked at the Hedge, and though nothing came off it into the bird’s beak, it seemed convinced and pecked a bit more. Another bird just like it flew down and settled by the first bird. They began to make a noise. What a noise.

  “Like rusty nails on a glass,” exclaimed Harrington.

  “No, it’s more like—like tuning a guitar—”

  Twindle-twindle, went the birds, tweety trrr.

  “Auxicaps!” cried Annie.

  “Gesundheit!” Harrington laughed.

  Annie laughed, too. They stood laughing, looking up at the birds singing their twindle song on the Hedge above the sleeping baby.

  Mr. Oplough stood the other side of the right-hand boundary, looming over the low fence. Demonstrating without meaning to how excellent it was when the Hedge was there and they didn’t have to see him.

  “I’d like a word with you, Annie.”

  “Yes, Mr. Oplough.”

  “I have a vegetable patch just along here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Oplough? That’s great.”

  “No, it ain’t. Your damned Hedge is cutting off my sun.”

  “Only for two hours a—”

  “And my planet tomatoes are going blue.”

  “But—they do, don’t they, Mr. Oplough?”

  “Nah. I bred it outta the darn things, till you started with that Hedge.” Mr. Oplough glowered. “And besides, it ain’t hardly two hours now, is it?”

  Annie all innocence, Harrington all astonished.

  “No, I been countin’ them hours, Annie. Three hours yesterday. And two this morning.”

  “It’s because of the birds, Mr. Oplough,” said Annie, beaming at him.

  “What birds? What’re you talking about? And who wants birds anyhow, dropping their dirt all over my yard—”

  “Oh, they hardly ever do, Mr. Oplough—only every six days. No need for you to get all tense.”

  Annie pointed.

  Twelve meters up, two birds flew over and over where the Hedge had been, circling like moving paintings of birds on a green plate of sky.

  “You’re nuts!” declared Mr. Oplough. “You’re a darn nuisance. Why don’t you get back to Earth where you belong, causin’ all this trouble for proper folks, litterin’ this clean new world with fatherless kids—”

  Speechless, they watched him tramp away, and the door slammed loud as thunder.

  “I guess the gloves are off,” said Annie thoughtfully. “Mrs. Riveras told me yesterday—after we had the Hedge on too long—she’s going to L-mail* the Town Authority. She says she plans for us to be thrown out of the house. It seems we’ve ruined the neighborhood.”

  “She can’t!”

  “Maybe she can.”

  They too went back—into what was still their house.

  Annie set the stove to fi
x tea and the Ice-it to ice it.

  They sat on the living room floor while Jasselly played quietly with her fur bear. Annie and Harrington drank their tea and watched the birds circle over the lawn, through the wide window.

  Annie put down her glass.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Harrington.

  Jasselly looked up at the excited voices of these people she had come to live among. She smiled. “Yeff,” agreed Jasselly, nodding both her head and the toy bear’s.

  Annie rose in her graceful way. She had been a dancer in live theater before Pop and Harrington. She strode to the button panel on the wall and pressed the brand-new button.

  Outside, the two walls of Hedge sprang gloriously sunward, and after about five minutes more, the auxicaps floated down.

  “I’ve always liked my tomatoes blue,” said Harrington.

  “Boo,” said Jass with approval. “Thom-aif-oos.”

  Three persons united against the world.

  They were building a nest. They thought the Hedge was completely there, but maybe not quite, because they brought in the nesting material from elsewhere—twigs and leaves from the park, hair from Mr. Brand’s dog four doors down. The nest was a huge unwieldy thing, big enough for a legendary roc’s egg, Annie remarked. The birds sat on the nest in turns by day. In the evening they groomed each other with their beaks and snuggled up. They sang all night—if singing was what you could call it.

  “It says in this book that they nest for ten to fourteen days, and then the eggs will be laid.”

  “Is that quick?”

  “I don’t really know, Harry. I don’t know anything about birds, just that I like them.”

  “How many eggs?”

  “Between two and six.”

  “Hey!”

  By night, as the birds sang, the stars and moons shone down, and the Hedge gleamed as if moon-polished and star-gemmed, unseen (they had closed the eyeholes), they heard Mrs. Riveras’s silent purse-mouthed rage and Mr. Oplough’s trumpetings of fury. The birds sang louder and louder.

  “You know, it’s not so bad, the way they sing.”

  “Like badly tuned nightingales.”

  “What’s a nightingale, Mom?”

  “A bird that sings.”

  “Come on!”

  “I said. I don’t know a thing about birds.”

  “Look,” said Harrington, “she’s asleep with the rabbits.”

  “Yes. Real rabbits—I don’t know that I’d risk a baby around them. But plays are fine. Gentle. Careful.”

  “Was I ever that small?” asked Harrington, staring at Jasselly in her molecule-guarded sleep.

  “Was I?” said Annie. Harrington stared at her mother. Once Annie had been a kid, too. As if she read thoughts, Annie added, “Hated my younger sister and all. I used to plan to kill her. Never did. Decided she was okay in the end. She’s on Earth—I’d love to see her again…Maybe one day.”

  The tall man walked into the house and looked about him. His name was Dennis Rooney. He was very good-looking, but he came from Town Authority. Mrs. Riveras and Mr. Oplough had summoned him.

  “Is that the Hedge? Yes, it’s high. You can get slightly shorter models, though not by much. The shortest is, I understand, eight meters. And the cost’s the same. It would cause the same problem, too. Block out neighbors’ view and sunlight. Not everyone wants to know everybody else’s business, of course, or get fried.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset them,” Annie said. “But those are living things up there. They’ve produced seven eggs—that’s unusual.”

  “How’d you know there are seven?” He smiled at Annie.

  “I hired a tiny elevcam and sent it up. They didn’t notice—I mean the birds.”

  “Seven,” Dennis repeated. “That is impressive.”

  Harrington broke in. “You sound like you don’t think we did anything wrong.”

  “Harry, sshh. Wait.”

  “No, it’s okay, Annie—may I call you Annie?”

  “Yes, Dennis,” said Annie, and blushed.

  “You see, I’m less interested in the neighbors’ gripes than in someone who’s gotten these birds to breed again. They seemed to be dying out. As for Oplough and Riveras, they’ve already told me they want to move. They don’t like children or animals so close. We can always pay them compensation and buy them out—then we can locate people who’ll be happy to live in the two houses with a big Hedge on one side and some rare birds.”

  “What about,” said Annie, “the other neighbors—Mr. Brand and the rest of them?”

  “Oh, they’re fine. Mr. Brand actually asked me to ask you if he could drop by sometime, take a closer look at the auxies. Won’t bring the dog, he swore to me. Or his robot.”

  “The dog is welcome,” said Annie. “And Mr. Brand, too.”

  “So there’s just this form on the carry-com to sign, if that’s okay? Read it all first.”

  Annie began to read. She looked up, very pale where she had been pink. “You’re paying us to look after the birds?”

  “Sure thing. Government grant concession Number X112, Rare and Endangered Indigenes, subclause 6.”

  Harrington saw her mother was gazing at Dennis from Town Authority spouting jargon and numbers as if he were reading her an ancient love lyric from Lord Byron. Ever the soul of tact she knew herself to be, Harrington led Jasselly into the Hedge-safe yard, where they sat in the cool and watched the birds nesting and twindling high above.

  “How many do you think will hatch, Jass?”

  “Eighfs,” announced Jass.

  “Don’t be crazy—eight? There are only seven eggs.”

  “Eighfs,” insisted Jass, who, having found speech, wasn’t going to have it challenged.

  In any case, she was right. When the eggs did hatch, out tottered eight balls of fluff with beaks, who solidified enough inside a few hours to fly down with their parents to the lawn, for the bird food TA had supplied. One egg had been a double. It made the planetwide NewsNet.

  PLANET DATE : YEAR 103

  Part Three—Thinking Future: Lute

  Riding there in her single-person hoverjet, Lute heard the melody and words of old songs running through her brain.

  The jet didn’t go so fast she couldn’t take in the rolling prairie, dotted with ripening fruit trees and untended stands of grain, the wild herds of tappuls grazing, and whitehawks idling over the sky.

  It had been government policy since the fiftieth year on-planet to let certain areas go back to the wild, let the land renew itself and give the local animal life a chance to regain habitat.

  The town of Pioneer Pines was the first of these projects. And by now, according to the information site, most of the town was gone, smothered in mutating trees and rioting vines, with creatures lairing in the remains of the houses. There were even some dangerous critters now, the site overview had told her—felinxes, for example, the nearest thing to bobcats the planet had. Lute had brought a Planet League Approved stunner along with her bag, her rob, and her guitar.

  “Why in hell do you want to go there?”

  That had been the question one or two had asked her, in the city.

  Because, she thought, it’s about as far away as I can get from here.

  She was seventeen, adult status. Nobody could stop her.

  To be polite, she said some of the truth: “It’s where Harrington Rooney lived, before she moved south.”

  Harrington Rooney was the movie actress who had been the star of so many of the early planet-made movies. Lute had always admired her.

  “Wasn’t her sister a mathematician, Lute?” inquired one of the “bright” girls.

  Lute didn’t answer, but someone else did. “Jasselly? She still is.”

  “She must be old…They both must be—”

  “Kicking eighty or ninety, I guess,” said the someone else. “But Zelda Ariano lived in that house, too, didn’t she—different time, same place, right, Lute?”

  Once more
Lute said nothing.

  Inside she said this: I just want to get away so bad.

  To get away—

  But you couldn’t. Not really. For wherever Lute went, the memory went with her. The memory of Cholan.

  The rob was the first out of the jet. It trundled lightly down Main Street, navigating between arching tree roots, clumps of huge flowers, and heaps of metallic rubble. The houses and stores had been designed to break down over a period of years if unmaintained. But enough of them were still standing to get in the rob’s way.

  The town looked weird. Hollow, yet choked with growing stuff.

  Having parked the jet, Lute toted her bag and the guitar, the stunner slung over her other shoulder.

  The morning was peaceful. Nothing moved.

  Then—

  Out of the tunnel of trees shot the rob, its metal box shape whirring with dials and lights. It raced toward her in robotic panic. Lute dropped her bag and pulled the stunner around.

  “What is it?”

  A scarlet light lit: unfriendly life form—that’s what the light meant.

  The rob was flinging itself for shelter against her ankles.

  Lute braced herself for the biggest felinx on-world to burst from the trees.

  Next moment the unfriendly life did erupt out of there.

  “Oh, rob. That’s only—it’s only plays, that’s all.”

  The three one-eared rabbits dashed up, turned a couple of somersaults over one another, and darted away again into the undergrowth.

  The rob made ticking complaining noises. Embarrassed?

  Lute raised her eyebrow. “It looked like they were teasing you, pal!”

  Guided by the old street plan, Lute found the Ariano-Rooney house just after noon. Like everything else, it was tented in by vines. One wall had crumbled down, and most of the strong, unbreakable window glass had given way, as it always did without mechanical care.

  In what had once been a pretty backyard, now part of the neighborhood jungle, a single tall Earth pine, slightly tinged with blue, lifted its dark pagoda to the sun.

  Lute made her camp in the house. She was not without company. Pale-furred rodents lived in various holes, and a foxile kept a single-fox apartment on the top floor—she soon grew used to its slim orange shape padding to and fro. She would try not to disturb them all, but they might not mind her too much. It had been noted that the planetary animals had a great tolerance for small groups of people, only shying away from the vast sprawls of populated towns and cities. Even there, though, you sometimes found them, and they seemed prepared to adopt Earth humans. So many of them had become companionable pets, rivaling the cats, monkeys, mice, and dogs the settlers had first introduced.