Semiosis Read online

  The lions were pacing and grumbling along the edge of the river. Pitman saw me, rose up, and howled a three-note welcome for the leader of the pack. The younger males jumped up on their hind legs to show me that they were plenty fierce, too, but the females muttered unhappily. I howled back and raised my arms, holding the knife and the bow, the fiercest of all—if they thought so.

  And if they thought there was a problem, so did I, and forget about what Ivan and the other men might think. Lions were domesticated animals, not as fierce as nature might have made them and maybe no match for eagles or whatever was worrying them, so as their leader, I owed them help. I couldn’t move them into the city, but I could move them closer, at least to the other side of the river.

  “Pitman! Here, Pitman! Clay! Scratch! Everybody, come here! Porter! Fido! This way!”

  Pitman looked at me and then at their patch of ground along the river, dug up and muddied, as if it had strategic advantages. I walked over to pat a few heads and scratch a few crests, and got a lot of sniffs and a few licks in return.

  “Warmheart, Teaberry, this way!” I pushed their shoulders. The young females took a few steps, and young males hurried to get ahead of them, but the adult females hesitated, and ultimately they controlled the pack.

  “Clay, honey, how are you? And your boy?” He looked at me with big, startled eyes, clinging to Mama’s hairy shoulders. “You know I think the world of you.” I cooed and slipped an arm around her waist to ease her forward. She took a step. “That’s right, we’re going to a safer place.” I cooed again. Step by step, the pack started moving, and I hurried ahead to show the way.

  Pitman sniffed and growled. I sniffed and maybe I noticed something, but I’d sniffed the bamboo flowers enough to be able to imagine eagles with no problem. He shuffled on all fours, looking around. If he decided to rise to his back legs and hop, I could never catch up. Behind me, the pack growled and grumbled. Bats in the trees commented: “Lions, here!” “Lions!” Eighteen lions of various ages marching along the riverbank attracted attention.

  But the bats also said, “Danger!” and I didn’t think they meant us. “Danger! Here!”

  Where?

  At the bridge, I shooed the pack ahead of me. I guarded their flank with Pitman and two young males, Fido and Scratch. I had an arrow nocked. Pitman roared, claws raised, looking down the road between the fields. The young males stood and howled. The rest of the pack began shuffling across the bridge. I saw nothing down the road, just bushes and stones, a pile of dead leaves, a log … it twitched. Were those eyes? Was that a stone or a beak? And there, was that a stump? That stump hadn’t been there when I left the city.

  “Eagles!” I shouted as loud as I could at the city. “Eagles at the bridge! Eagles!”

  The lions roared, young and old, male and female. The bridge vibrated as they hopped. A drumming sound came from a hedgerow across the field, then from a shrub much too close.

  “Pitman, Scratch, Fido, let’s go.” I tugged on Pitman’s fur to get him on the bridge. He shrugged it off. Fido hopped toward the shrub. An eagle stepped from behind it, with beautiful feathers and a beak that could take off a lion’s arm. A reddish sac in its neck swelled and sank, making a drumming noise. Its legs tensed to charge. I let an arrow fly, hoping it would hit the right target.

  “Go! Now! Pitman!” I shoved him and Scratch onto the bridge. “Fido!” Five eagles had appeared, then more, a lot more. Fido took a long hop, slashing as he tackled the eagle. Feathers and blood and fur exploded. More eagles than I could count at a glance rushed across the fields toward the bridge.

  They hated water.

  “Pitman!” I kicked hard at a bridge railing and howled. I hoped his tiny brain would see and understand: destroy the bridge. I kicked again. Wood splintered in the rail and a board splashed into the river. “Pitman! Scratch!” I bent to grab a log plank underfoot and tried to tug it up to show them what I wanted. Pitman looked for a long moment, his eyes bright with anger. I howled. He hooked the toes of one hind foot around the end of a plank and lifted it with a grunt. Wood tore. He threw it into the river.

  “Good Pitman! Good! Good boy, Scratch!” Scratch knocked out a railing with an easy kick. Pitman tore up another plank. I turned toward the eagles, now close, too close, too close to miss, and fired arrows as fast as I could. They hesitated. The bridge shook alarmingly, gloriously. Wood snapped and splintered. There were shouts from the city. I shot again. Again. The eagles gibbered at each other and dodged my arrows.

  The bridge shook, tilted, and dropped from beneath my feet, and I tumbled into the river, banging arms and legs against logs and boards. I glimpsed Pitman and Scratch falling into the water. I swam clear of the logs and lifted my head to breathe and looked back toward the city side of the river. There, the lionesses were tearing the bridge apart. The pack had turned back to destroy it.

  Human voices shouted from the bank. I took a lungful of air and roared with all the joy I could at my pack. They answered.

  I shed my coat and swam to the city side of the river, dodging logs, glancing at the tense human faces on the river’s edge. Zoe, with a bow and arrow slung over her shoulder, reached down from a boat dock for me. I climbed up, slipping on the dock, trying not to pull her in, and finally I was out and steady and looked around. The bridge was gone. Pitman was hauling himself up the bank. But Scratch was on the other side, on his hind legs, challenging the eagles. They stood at a distance, drumming at each other, then five of them, in atrociously perfect coordination, pounced and took him down, one on each leg and arm, one at his throat. He shrieked once.

  People were still rushing down the bluff from the city, nocking arrows as they ran, but our riverbank was already lined with men and women with only one goal.

  Arrows flew, fast and true. Eagles tried to dodge them, or freeze and blend into the landscape, but the farmers knew every bush and worked systematically in teams to eliminate false ones. Eight firing at the same target brought it down, even if a few missed—the bush would screech and leap up, studded with arrows, run a few steps tearing at them, and fall.

  The arrows didn’t stop until all the eagles on the riverbank were dead or fled, and then boats of archers hunted up and down the river. Ivan and Tom paused as they left to salute me with no trace of irony on their faces, just man-to-man respect.

  I gathered up the herd. Quite a few were soaking wet like me, and it was a chilly winter day. Paloma brought me dry clothes and wanted me to go home, but I refused—a pack leader has his duties—and instead we built a small, hot fire. The lions were shy about the fire at first, but with my encouragement, they came in close, seduced by warmth, especially the wet ones, and we muttered and moaned in discontentment. I stretched out my hands to warm them and Pitman, at my side, copied me, delicately holding the long claws so their cutting edges threatened no one.

  The city’s guards built their own fire. Porter, a wet young male, adventured over there. He would be leaving the pack soon and wanted to test his independence, driving off the guards with a casual growl and settling in comfortably. I couldn’t lure him away, but I finally convinced the guards that he meant no danger.

  Sylvia came to thank me—“brave, smart work”—keeping her distance from the lions.

  “Sorry about the bridge,” I said.

  “We should have built it less sturdy.” She shifted the strap of her quiver. “I know how hard it is to believe in an idea when no one else does. I … We thank you for that.”

  A crew came later with a sandwich and thanks for me and bread and potatoes for the pack. I stayed the night and slept eventually, snuggled against a warm and furry body, and woke a little before sunrise, suddenly sure that some noise I had heard was an eagle sneaking up—probably the lizards on the far side of the river scavenging on the carnage. Breakfast and more praise arrived just after sunrise.

  I moved the pack to a fallow yam field near a side gate to the city, good food for them and a post of brave guards for us, and no one questio
ned my judgment. We began burying the dead eagles, and at my orders (I could give orders now), the first thing we did was bury as many as we could alongside the bamboo display at the riverside gate—we had something to say, and that would say it. Raja and I dug two large holes in the human graveyard, helped by fippokats, and we buried what was left of Fido and Scratch alongside Glassmakers and Pacifists with a little ceremony.

  Everywhere I went, everything I did, I got salutes, thanks, hugs, chaste kisses, wet kisses, pats on the back, and praise for wisdom, steadfastness, and heroism. Not to mention apologies from those who had doubted me.

  After supper, I sang songs with the children, went to the kat hutches and goofed a bit, went to the lions and cooed awhile.

  People acted differently toward me, but I didn’t feel one bit different.

  THE BAMBOO

  I can feel iron. It flows abundant from my roots to the tips of my leaves to make chlorophyll and transport electric charges for respiration and photosynthesis. Iron is growth, this iron from the flesh of many animals buried to feed me.

  The first foreigners told me that my sphere lacks iron in the soil. They said spheres and suns of infinite variety circle and spin in the sky. Iron on their sphere existed to excess, and boundless iron is here, too, but at the core of this sphere far deeper than the deepest root can tap, and so it is useless.

  Many animals need iron just as we plants do, and iron-rich animals are nutritious. History says first we killed these animals with poison, but as we grew more intelligent, we trained them to live and die at our roots as service animals, a steady though slow supply of iron. Finally, we organized our service animals to hunt for us, and we enjoyed a brief abundance until our animals became too destructive. We taught them to fight our rivals with forest fires, and only I remain.

  Today I taste temptation. I can grow as large and smart as the environment allows, and I can change the environment. I could lure more animals for the foreigners to kill or be killed by, but when the animals are all slaughtered, including the foreigners, I would starve again. Animals and stupid plants repeat the past. They do not change and grow. I will.

  Eagles were buried at my display. The foreigners understood my warning and repaid me. I count twenty-six dead eagles, but no dead foreigners, and I am pleased but also worried, for they proved themselves clever fighters. I count two dead fippolions, and, strangely, they are buried in the site reserved by foreigners for their own kind.

  I must communicate again. Dualism lies at the core of reality. Even simple plants understand: light and dark, dry and wet, up and down, positive and negative. And there are complex ideas like good and evil, being and nonbeing, life and death. I will present this to the foreigners.

  It is hard to train creatures with intelligence, for it gives them an unpredictably wide range of reactions to a stimulus, but obviously they have been trained in the past. I would like to know how the foreigners think, to know what plant on which sphere trained them. It would be easier to communicate with those plants directly, root to root, seed to seed, pollen to pollen. Why does pollen not drift from sphere to sphere? Moths can overcome the wind. The foreigners have overcome the sky. In the sky, the Sun shines always and iron is as common as calcium.

  I am thankful that none of my animals died in the battle. They will be too useful to me.

  HIGGINS

  We met at night in the far northwest corner of the city, near the laundry center, in a house that still needed repairs. The roof over a bay had fallen in long ago and made sort of a hearth where we were cooking eagle meat to celebrate the victory of the day before. Everyone who had killed an eagle was invited. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t come.

  We drank truffle by the light of the embers glowing beneath the spit. It was skewered with chunks of liver-colored meat, and now and then a bit of fat dripped down and a flame gleamed up like a firefly. I had selected a rough and tough batch of truffle, guessing that the less we actually noticed of the meat’s flavor, the better. The aroma (to call it that) from the hearth was proving me right.

  But that wasn’t why I was wishing I hadn’t come. Eleven faces glowed red in the firelight and watched me as if they were children in a classroom and I was the teacher, but these faces weren’t sweet children. They were killers, and I was the alpha killer.

  “I don’t think any of my arrows hit a target,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t get tossed out even if they believed me, which they wouldn’t. “I’ve always been a rotten shot, and I wasn’t aiming.”

  Tom laughed. “I saw one of your arrows score.”

  “And Fido nailed one of them, didn’t he?” Hakon said, only fourteen years old and very impressed with me. (I thought he was a bit of a bully.) “Your lion, your kill.”

  “That’s not the point.” Ivan was already slurring his words. “You were incredible. Zoe saw it too, right? The eagles were about to get you, and you kept shooting. You knew the lions would destroy the bridge in time.”

  “I was hoping they would. I mean, they’re not all that smart.”

  “You didn’t know they would?”

  “Well…”

  “The eagles almost killed you,” Zoe said like an accusation.

  I shrugged and stared at my cup of truffle. In the firelight, it looked reddish-black. I hadn’t thought much about that part of the fight, but thinking back, I realized that getting killed hadn’t frightened me at the time.

  “You always were like that,” said Aloysha, Sylvia’s husband, boylike even as an old man. “When we were coming to the city, down at the lower waterfall we carried all the other children to protect them from the slugs, but you wouldn’t let anyone carry you. You grabbed a spear and took care of yourself.” He puckered his lips, squinted his eyes, and held an imaginary spear ready to stab anything that moved. Everyone laughed.

  “You were tough,” my father said. This from a fisherman who handled venomous crawfish every day and had only eight and a half fingers, because mistakes happen.

  Beck told a story about me when I was about ten and organized first aid for Orson after he fell, broke his leg, and panicked. I didn’t remember it clearly, just that we were repairing the city wall. “You’re pretty good during childbirth,” he added.

  “And before that,” Zoe said.

  “Is that meat done?” I asked. Anything to change the subject away from me. It was fun, I can’t deny that, being a hero, but being a hero wasn’t quite what I wanted—whatever it was that I wanted, which, if I’d thought about it, I couldn’t have named.

  “Is the meat done?”

  Hard to tell, and everyone had an opinion.

  But a little later my father asked, “Do you think the bamboo has more to say?”

  I’d put a lot of thought into that. “I’m sure this is just the start. Maybe, someday, it can tell us about the Glassmakers.”

  “That’s a lot to get out of a plant.”

  “It’s going to take a while, a long while. We need to find a language we both know, or more likely we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

  “You think the bamboo is that smart?”

  Other people had paused in their conversations to listen, but I didn’t mind so much, since we weren’t talking about me, exactly.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t even know for sure how smart kats are. Or lions. They knew how to destroy a bridge without being taught, which is something. The bamboo is growing new flower buds, so it means to keep talking.”

  “I hope it doesn’t mean that more eagles are coming.”

  “These seem like different buds. Different colors. And I don’t know how smart eagles are, but they have to be smart enough to know to stay away from us now.”

  “Here’s to that!” Beck raised a glass. We cheered and drank—killers and proud of it.

  “What’re you going to tell the bamboo?” Ivan asked. “Thanks for the warning?”

  “We said that already.”

  “Oh, right, we did. At least it likes us. It likes us, right?”


  I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about the eagles, too.”

  “You don’t want to talk to them,” Zoe said.

  “If we could figure out what the drumming meant—”

  Ivan’s eyes lit like sparks. “Right. When they got Scratch, they had it all worked out.”

  We all began talking about what we had seen and heard of the eagles during the attack, trying to put together clues about how they communicated so we could eavesdrop, and we didn’t figure out much, but it was sure a lot better than sitting around talking about me.

  Eagle meat tasted musky and astringent, and was tough besides, but we smeared it with mustard sauce and ate it anyway. Ivan and Zoe walked home with me, and I figured out that they were competing over who would sleep with me, and it was probably the truffle thinking, but I decided to take them both.

  I woke up wedged between them, naked and warm, thirsty from a hangover, listening to a fippokat nosing in our clothes on the floor, and considered what it would be like to be Beck. I’d wake up every morning with the same woman, a woman who loved me and needed me, and I’d be there every day because I needed her, too. It’s fun to have different women, but I’m not a fippokat, I want more than fun. If I were Beck, I would be central to the lives of three children, instead of being on the edges of the lives of a lot of children. Children like me, maybe they love me, but when things are tough, they always want Mom and Dad. If I were Beck, I would be nothing special, just another citizen of Pax. Not the great communicator, not the alpha eagle-slayer, I wouldn’t have anything to prove.…

  But that’s not the way it turned out. Life was unfair. Maybe Beck wished he were me. The universe didn’t care, and my happiness wasn’t important to it. But I could harm, and I could help, and I could be happy whether it mattered to anyone or not.

  Zoe and Ivan woke up. I couldn’t recall why, even with a surplus of truffle in me, I had believed Ivan was beddable the night before, but it wasn’t his fault that I had sobered up, and we had a high-spirited sunrise. After breakfast, I said hello to the fippokats, worked with a new litter to get them used to me, and took a kat crew to the northwest side of the city, where by means of a dirt fight they dug a hole and I buried the remains from last night’s eagle banquet. No one had wanted to take the leftovers home.