Semiosis Read online

  Some sort of answer was due. I wish that I believed Stevland with my whole heart. As commissioner I have heard many people declare that they would seek a new way to live and would abandon their bad habits, like abusing their husband or avoiding work. They may have meant it sincerely, but often, they soon returned to their old habits. Sometimes only a horrible shock could cause permanent change.

  “These are noble goals,” I wrote. “I am looking forward to sharing the job of moderator with you.” I needed to be encouraging, no matter how self-deceptive the declaration may be. “Until tomorrow, water and sunshine.”

  I have just returned from seeing Jersey. The medic monitoring her is scrupulous with his care. She has been fed and given all the comforts a mother gives a newborn, including a soft, warm, clean bed alongside a window in the clinic. Tendrils reach in from the stand of bamboo outside. One tendril snakes up her ear, another up her nose, both growing and exploring her brain, tasting the blood and tissue as Stevland looks for how the parasites made her mad.

  Could he heal her? He can cure scarlet fever. He could kill the parasites. But he wants her dead, not cured.

  Straps of wide, soft cloth keep her from injuring herself with involuntary movements. Her breathing is calm. Her skin is pink and warm. A third tendril wraps around her neck, and rootlets deliver sedatives and painkillers. Eventually, he will deliver enough sedatives to put her to sleep forever, just as he has done for other cases of euthanasia. We will bury her in the cemetery, and Stevland will send larger roots to feed on her, just as he will do to me when old age takes me.

  I climbed to the top of the city wall before I entered my office tonight. Across the field in the forest, a tree shook repeatedly, then fell. The fippolions were at work, and Roland led them in song. Bats called to each other. A grove of bamboo rose alongside the wall. Stevland can hear, but he can’t read thoughts. Even with tendrils in Jersey’s brain, he won’t know that she acted out of love, agonizingly wrong and tragically brave. How are we to know when our own thoughts lead us to unspeakable error?

  We tell ourselves Pax is a good place, and we are happy at Rainbow City, safe among the rebuilt ruins of the old Glassmakers, where Stevland is our friend, helper, and leader. Harvest is a joyous time of the year. We are a long winter away from spring’s Naked Festival, but during the festival, I will burn something that no one will recognize, and it will represent Stevland. I will make no pledge to change, though. I am too old to change as much as I need to.

  NYE

  YEAR 106–GENERATION 6

  We, the citizens of Pax, covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all sentient beings and of the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part; justice, equity, and compassion in our relations with one another.…

  —from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pax

  It figured. Right outside the city, Marie, Cedar, and Roland started to argue.

  “We should have followed the Glassmakers right away,” Marie said, “but Tatiana said no. They could be anywhere now.”

  She didn’t mind bad-mouthing the moderator, but only behind her back and two weeks after the decision had been made. Still, Marie wrote and read Glassmade better than anyone and was a total coward, so she was just what we needed for a peacemaking trip, unless she gossiped the Glassmakers to death.

  “Not then,” Roland said. “We had too much to do. Jersey was hurt.”

  “That whole investigation was a disaster,” Cedar snapped. She couldn’t stand Marie or Tatiana. Maybe it’s a generational thing. “Tatiana should have recruited more help. She didn’t have to do it all by herself.”

  “Stevland helped,” Marie said.

  “Tatiana wants what’s best for Pax,” Roland said.

  “Pity she’s too old for you.” Cedar’s voice didn’t pity him.

  Roland just smiled. He always acts like he could have any woman he wants. He has muscles and a really nice beard, but he doesn’t have to flaunt it.

  Kung and I didn’t say anything. Kung is a Greenie like Roland and Marie, but his hair is black and won’t hold dye, so he braids green ribbons into his hair. He’s big and dim, but he didn’t have to be very smart to stay out of a stupid argument. Me, I’m just starting to get whiskers, but I was experienced enough to let politicians waste their time and energy, not mine.

  All I wanted to do, all I’d ever wanted to do, was meet the Glassmakers. The five of us were the people who most wanted to try to find the Glassmakers, and we weren’t the best work team in history. The Glassmakers wouldn’t bicker like us.

  Things got worse when we arrived at the shelter for the first night. The women and Roland debated whether we should have noticed that Jersey was sick. I gathered firewood and salad greens, reheated the turnovers I had carried from the city, played a little tune on my flute to drown out the debate, and went to bed. No one complained about the meal or the music, at least.

  The next day the women debated having Stevland be a co-moderator.

  “He cares about us,” Marie said. She was a dentist and spent her days poking at diseased teeth. “He gives us everything he can, from painkillers to fluoride.”

  “He needs tight limits,” Cedar said. “We need to think about the whole situation, not just medical details, and hold him accountable.” She worked on weather and geography and scribbled up maps for every occasion, so Stevland couldn’t help her much.

  They argued for hours over exactly why having co-moderators was a good idea. It was a good idea, period! I tried to enjoy the walk. It was fall, and there was lots to see.

  Roland, Kung, and I began to hang behind them and look at migrating deer crab herds and colony bushes with big bright wings. Floating ribbons were trying to snag a spot for winter in the trees that were already losing their leaves. These were all the interesting things that women didn’t have time for because they worried about people instead of things. I wondered if they heard bats sing or the rhythm of the wind.

  When we got to that night’s shelter, we had climbed so high in the foothills that the air was already getting thin and boiling water wasn’t as hot. I cooked some good food, smoked boxer bird and potatoes, and I tried to start a better conversation.

  “I already feel like I’m friends with Glassmakers. Don’t you?” They looked blank. “I mean, when we were kids, we had all those dolls and little tools and blocks and we’d pretend to build the city.”

  Cedar nodded and sighed. She was Generation 6 like me, but she wore so many beads she’d float if she fell into water. She wasn’t chunky like Marie, or tall, but she had a way of standing that took up a lot of space.

  “Remember dancing?” I said. Two people would pretend to be a Glassmaker. One would stand behind the other, bend over, and hold the first person around the waist. Then they’d try to dance with four feet. It was dumb, but when I was a kid, I thought it was great. Real Glassmakers looked pretty different, we knew that, with skinny legs that bent out and skinny arms with two elbows, a body like a long loaf of bread, and a head sort of the same shape. Only as big as human kids, too. We used to make dolls out of sticks.

  Marie laughed like a mother, but she must have been a kid herself sometime. Or maybe not. She was the kind of Greenie who dyed all her hair, including her pubic hair for the spring festival, but she made sure she let the hair on her head grow a while between dye jobs so we could all see that she was gray. Maturity meant wisdom, supposedly, but I’d never voted for her for the Committee, even when she was unopposed.

  “They had a bigger population,” she said, very teacherly. “And they must have a more complex social structure, since they have morphological castes. I’d like to see how it works.”

  “Me, too.” Different bodies for different jobs.

  I used to have dolls in all three kinds, the big females, the sturdy major caste, and the little workers. The majors and workers were asexual, although I didn’t understand asexuality when I was a kid. I mean, why call them females if there were no males and
they just popped out babies when they felt like it? But that was the names they themselves used, according to Stevland, and rainbow bamboo had three sexes, which was even weirder.

  Anyway, I wanted to find out how castes worked. I wanted to meet them, not be stuck in a cabin with gossiping politicians. I had my job on the team, to cook, play music, act friendly, and be a teenage boy so they could see different ages and sexes of humans.

  “Stevland hasn’t been much help,” Cedar said.

  “Stevland had no frame of reference for them,” Marie answered, “and they communicated for only two years before the Glassmakers left.”

  “Poor little orphan,” I said just to pull Marie’s greenies.

  “He’s very lonely,” she said. “It didn’t help his socialization to grow up with no cohorts.”

  Cedar used Marie’s tone of voice. “Well, now he’s one of us.” She has two little kids that she kept saying she missed. I felt glad I wasn’t one of them.

  “What do you think it will be like to meet someone new?” Roland said. He gave me a sneaky little smile for some reason.

  “We have our instructions,” Marie answered. “We are diplomats. We will be calm and friendly.”

  “Calm, friendly, sure,” Roland said. “But how will it feel? Someone you’ve never met. We won’t know a thing about them. Totally new.”

  “Not even like meeting an animal,” Kung said, grinning with crooked teeth. “With a lion, you know what a lion is, huh? But Glassmakers, no.”

  “We know a lot about them,” Cedar said. “We know how they built the city, what they ate, how they dressed. We know their level of technology, which was higher than ours right now.” She was right. They had radios and lots more metal.

  “We don’t know why they left and why they’ve stayed away,” Marie said. That was actually Stevland’s complaint, and he had a point.

  “I can’t wait to hear Glassmaker music,” I said. “Better yet, I can play with them. A duet. They played flutes, too. They’re in the murals, so we have music in common.” I had dreamed about that ever since I started playing the flute. Really. That was why I wanted to make music my best.

  “Music.” Roland still grinned at me. And Cedar looked annoyed.

  I tried to ignore them. “And I want to ask where they’re from,” I said. “I can point out Sol.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Marie said, not like a mother or teacher, finally.

  I got up the next morning happy that we’d be at the waterfall by afternoon. I’d seen it when I was ten, which wasn’t that long ago, or at least it didn’t feel long. Back then, before we left, I had heard all about it and seen drawings and was sure I’d like it, and the waterfall was everything I’d hoped for, but the sky was the best. I had never stood and seen the horizon actually below my feet, a pale line far, far in the distance.

  We heard the roar of the waterfall like a drone note a kilometer away, and saw the mountains around us so tall they touched the clouds. We’d be going through a damp, stony pass, and then we’d see the waterfall again. It leaped off a red stone cliff and fell narrow and straight so far that you could count ten heartbeats before it landed in the pool below. The path led down to a wide grassy terrace alongside the waterfall, and when the Sun was out, you could see rainbows in the mist that came up from the pool. The Glassmakers had built some houses just like the ones in the city with rows of colored glass blocks in the roofs like rainbows. Stevland had a stand there, twenty full-grown stems, but they didn’t connect to the rest of him because of the mountains.

  We hiked through the pass around boulders and cliffs, and the thunder of falling water got louder. Kung made the final turn around some rocks and stopped. I thought he had stopped so we could catch up and look together, but he stopped because of what he saw.

  The bamboo had been burned to the ground, the houses smashed like eggs. We stared for a long time, and the water seemed to roar in rhythm with my heart, fast.

  “Earthquakes aren’t impossible,” Cedar said, but she didn’t look like she believed herself.

  “Earthquakes don’t start fires,” Roland said quietly. He looked behind us, then all around the terrace.

  Marie sighed. “See anything moving…? No? Then let’s go.”

  Kung grunted, and we hurried down. When we got there, he set down his packs and began to poke at the ruined buildings. Marie stared at the remains of the bamboo.

  “Inspect the area,” she said. “Stick together, and everybody, stay in sight of someone else at all times. Who knows what we’re dealing with.”

  “Bears, river wolves, and mountain spiders. And eagles and dragons,” Cedar said. “Oh, and wild lions and slugs.” Marie gave her a mean look. “Just keeping us on our toes.”

  “Thank you,” Marie answered.

  I decided that someday I’d try to use that tone of voice in music. Not all music has to be beautiful. Maybe it could be nervous, too, a lot of little notes, waiting for something to become a tune, to make sense.

  “Where’s the fippokats?” Roland whistled for the colony that nibbles the lawn. He finally found a kat hiding inside the remains of a house, and it took him a while to coax her out.

  Those four inspected the area, but the afternoon was getting late, so Marie told me to cook. I inspected the firepit. Bamboo had been burned in the firepit recently, judging from the ashes, but Stevland hates fire and never lets us burn him. I cleaned out the charred bits before I began. I baked some yams and boiled water to make tea in a ripe yellow cactus that I’d caught that morning on the path, but as I did that, I kept thinking so hard about the Glassmakers and the ruined buildings that I burned a finger on an ember.

  Roland held the kat on his lap while we ate. I had never seen a kat sit that still. Kung said the houses had collapsed when digging undercut the foundations.

  “A lot of things dig,” Cedar said, “but what wild animal wants to dig long and hard enough to destroy four buildings?”

  “Eagles might have wrecked the houses, huh?” Kung said. “They have fire. They eat kats.”

  “Maybe it was Glassmakers,” Cedar said. “They’re around, after all.”

  “No,” I said, “they wouldn’t do that. Those are their own houses. They built them.”

  She never liked anything. Maybe she already hated the Glassmakers, too.

  “They’re not their houses now,” she answered, looking at me as if I were stupid.

  “Maybe they’re afraid of us,” Roland said.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Marie said. “Stevland knows what happened, if his roots are still alive, but right now, we need to make a decision. Should we go or stay?”

  I would have bet she wanted to leave, being a coward. We were supposed to wait ten days to see if any Glassmakers happened to visit the waterfall, but we could leave earlier if we thought we should. Roland wanted to stay and find out what happened. Kung wanted to stay and begin repairs on the houses. Cedar said stay, but she would have said go if Marie had said stay. My vote didn’t matter by then, but I said stay because I wanted to believe the Glassmakers hadn’t wrecked things. They were our friends. I was their friend, at least. This was my chance to meet them.

  So we began waiting. Kung built a wood-and-leaf roof over the remains of one of the houses. It would be cozy, all of us in half a house. Roland curled up inside with the kat and napped. He’d take the late-night watch. Cedar and I hiked around the area. We found a big bluebird reef, good news since they love slugs, some colony bushes and some vegetables, a bead bush with huge seeds, and a big surprise, a rag of heavy red-brown cloth on a thorn.

  Cedar took it from the thorn. “Flax. Dyed after being woven. We always dye in the wool or the yarn.”

  “It’s Glassmaker, then?”

  She looked at me and opened her mouth to say something, then looked away and sort of laughed. “That’s one guess.”

  We went back and talked about it while the Sun set. Glassmakers had been there.

  “Maybe the Glassmakers came lat
er, after eagles or whatever had wrecked the place,” I said, and Cedar laughed again like I was an idiot, but Marie said it might be possible.

  I had the first watch, and I played a few lullabies on an alto flute to help everyone calm down. It was hard to control my breath in thin mountain air and it was too cloudy to see auroras. At what I guessed was midnight, I woke Roland.

  “Thanks,” he whispered. “Here, take my bunk. It’s warm, and the kat would like company.” I had a wet dream, of course. Fippmasters have that pheromone on them from the lions, and it affects everyone. I should have expected it. He knew it would happen and he did it just to annoy me.

  The next day, Kung found a feather that might have come from an eagle in the pile of ruined stones in a house. He showed it to the kat, and she panicked. Definitely eagle. That didn’t prove anything, though, Cedar said. Merchant crabs use eagle feathers to frighten away other crabs from their burrows. They trade feathers over long distances. But we didn’t see any merchant crabs.

  We got bored. The women pecked at each other, Kung hauled stone and dirt, Roland babied the kat and explored, I found food and cooked it, and in my spare time, I played the flute, trying to make us noticeable to Glassmakers. We’re here. We’re not hiding. Hear us. Come meet us. I have flutes to share with you.

  I thought about the Glassmakers, and I saw them in my dreams. The Glassmakers had us beat in a lot of ways. They’d be beautiful because their city was beautiful. They’d be wise because the city was laid out logically. We humans couldn’t have built that city. I’ve seen the old village, what’s left of it. It was nothing.

  They must have been more efficient than us because they had the three castes so they could divide work logically. They wouldn’t snipe about work groups and specialties and who’s sleeping with who. And they kept their technology working. We couldn’t.

  There had been two or three times more Glassmakers in the city than us because there were so many houses, but we didn’t know how they were organized or what their families were like. That was just one little detail to learn, and we wanted to find out everything. Soon we would.