Semiosis Read online

  A small moth flock, the first migratory group, has arrived from the south. Their custom is to bring me bits of meat to analyze in exchange for nectar, thus I have finally examined Glassmaker physiology in depth. With that information, tonight I have constructed an astonishing idea. Mutualism can be coerced. Civilization can be imposed. It would solve the situation without barbarism, but it is a complex plan that would require cooperation from our entire ecology and an untested commitment from humans and plants alike. Its failure would result in worse disaster.

  A lamp is lit in Lucille’s home. Her commitment to friendship inspired my idea. Cedar joins the guards and stalks the walls like an eagle. The restraint that has been imposed on her response to Glassmaker attacks will make my plan possible.

  Glassmakers awaken. New musicians take up the concert. The large castes gather to plan the day’s harassment of the city. They clumsily attempt to duplicate human bows and arrows. They have vandalized but not set fire to my grove.

  Lucille arrives at the Meeting House. I share the night’s news of the drama with the fippolions, and my humor root interjects, “Perhaps the children could make them earplugs.” This is nonsense considering the lions’ auditory apparatus, but nonsense is one kind of humor. She laughs and repeats the joke to Bartholomew when he arrives.

  More people come. I share my observations about Glassmakers and bows, and after a discussion, Cedar concludes that the Glassmakers lack experience to make a truly dangerous weapon. “They might learn fast, though,” she says. There is a loud screech of music. “I ought to put the poor little things out of their misery.”

  “The worker caste is overworked and exhausted,” I say. Cedar smiles unpleasantly.

  The meeting begins with all members of the Committee, along with many citizens. Without farmwork, they have little to do. Hunters sit far in the back, carefully chipping sharp edges onto glass arrowheads.

  I was not the only entity thinking overnight. Generation 4 hunters propose a surprise raid against the Glassmaker camp. The master hunters are few in number and age has made them fragile as dry reeds, but they are cunning, and their plan draws admiration for its boldness.

  “The big thing is this,” says their spokesman, Orion, whose Sun-browned skin hangs in wrinkles that almost obscure his eyes. “We have to kill them all, or we have to deal with the survivors. They’ll be hostile, since we’ll have wiped out their friends and family.” When he was young, he spent many years observing mountain spiders, and his knowledge eventually led to peaceful coexistence. “But I think we should kill as few as possible anyway. Maybe just Plaid Blanket. That means a lot of prisoners. It’s not a great plan, but it might work.”

  The plan has similarities to mine. Most of the support for his comes from farmers. “They even cut down some protected locustwood trees,” Hakon, a farmer, says. “Stevland, the trees don’t like that, do they?”

  Here is my chance. “They do not. Tulips are also angry. As are pineapples. Cotton. Wheat. Lentils. Others. They expect to be respected and cared for, but they understand that their animal allies have been subject to predation. The seed potatoes that you planted in the upriver sandy bottomland are complaining to me as we speak because they are being harvested before they can create a new generation.”

  “Our potatoes!” Hakon says.

  “They complain,” I continue, “but they are unable to act. We can act. I have a proposal. It is not entirely different from the hunters’ proposal. Before the attack, we must disable the Glassmakers by inserting stupefacients into their food. I believe I can persuade other plants to do this. When the Glassmakers are helpless, we must remove their weapons and possessions. Then, to survive, they must cooperate with us, and we will teach them to behave with civilization. I think of it as domesticating the Glassmakers, just as you domesticated the fippolions.”

  There is silence. Finally, someone says, “But Glassmakers smell.” There is laughter.

  “They bathed when they lived here,” I say, causing more laughter, although the remark did not originate in my humor root.

  “Cooperate?” Hakon asks. “Sure, they’ll cooperate just long enough to get what they need to do us in.”

  “It will take much time and attention,” I respond. “But the outcome will be tremendously beneficial to all of us.”

  “Stupefacients,” Marie says quietly. “That’s very tricky medication.” She is correct. I do not answer that observation.

  “Why don’t we just poison them?” Hakon asks.

  Marie stares at him with anger, then at Orion. “We have already set a goal of coexistence,” she says slowly.

  No one moves.

  Finally, Cedar says in a disbelieving tone, “So we knock them out and take their weapons.”

  “We take everything,” I say. “Clothing, baskets, tents. Our response has been measured so far. They will see that we mean them no harm, but that we will force them to cooperate.”

  “Maybe,” old Orion says, “they won’t cooperate.”

  “I agree that the plan has risks,” I say. “Its root is cautious development of mutual trust and cooperation through imposed nonviolence. It will take significant patience and effort to force them to be friends. In essence, we will conscript a symbiont.” There is silence. I add as encouragement, “This is often done by plants to animals.”

  “Let’s go over it, step by step,” Lucille says. She seems interested, and her interest will encourage more interest. This plan is different from the procedure I used to lure the humans from their old village to this city, and yet the core remains the same. We must reward appropriate behavior until it becomes natural behavior.

  We are halfway through when I have to report Glassmakers are on the move. Sentinels on the walls call out the same warning almost immediately. The entire force of the majors is en route, all forty of them, and their trajectory seems to be the source of the water for the city. This could be disaster. The water flows from the springs to the city through pipes, and the springs are the most vulnerable part of the water system.

  “I will notify the blade-leaf irises,” I say. A decade ago, at my suggestion, we planted the irises to guard the springs and the pipeheads. Irises thirst for blood more than I do. They secrete anticoagulants on the glasslike lancets that cover their leaves, and aboveground roots are ready to absorb all blood that falls. The lancets are loosely attached, so if Glassmakers try to mow them down, they will scatter clouds of glass blades, some small enough to be inhaled and tear apart Glassmakers’ lungs from inside with a hundred cuts.

  “That gives us time,” Cedar says, then turns and shouts, “Call up the fighters.” Archers and child messengers at the meeting run out. She shouts at me: “How long would it take to drug the Glassmakers?”

  “Two days. I must negotiate with other species, like tulips, for example, and they are shallow, slow thinkers. I must help them create the proper medications.”

  “Two days!” Cedar says. She has begun to put on fighting gear, as have other Pacifists. “Not good enough. They’ve got forty majors, right? We should fight now. We can outnumber them two to one, but that’s counting everyone who can use a bow halfway decently, even Lucille—no offense, but you know what I mean. Everyone.”

  My roots from across the river report odd movement. The workers have ceased foraging and are returning to the camp. Will they cross the river to prevent us from protecting the springs?

  “We should attack their camp,” Orion says meanwhile. “The big ones’ll still be trying to figure out the irises while we take control.”

  “If they’ve seen irises before,” Carl says, “they might give up right away.”

  I begin to flash the news about the workers’ movements even as discussion continues. I wish I had a voice, a flute, a drum. Look at me!

  Cedar says, “The majors can turn around and be back in no time. We need to move.”

  “Right,” Orion says, “so what if we take the females hostage?”

  “No, we attack the majors,�
� Cedar says. “Now!”

  Marie reads my stem. “Look at Stevland. The workers are up to something!”

  Cedar waves her arms at me. “It’s a trick.”

  “Workers are not crossing the bridge,” I report.

  “What’s the trick?” Lucille asks.

  “The workers have massed around the large tents that contain the females,” I report. “I do not understand their behavior. There seems to be a conflict.” I could add that they are singing at each other, females at workers, workers at other workers, but this is clear to anyone with ears. Occasionally I recognize a word that Marie had taught, but a vocabulary limited to terms like “no,” “water,” and “hello” has no real use.

  Cedar asks about the irises, but I am paying too close attention to the camp to answer. The voices rise like thunder. Workers fight and shed blood.

  “The majors have stopped to listen,” I report.

  “You really think we can live with the Glassmakers?” Cedar shouts as she leaves. This is obviously a rhetorical question.

  I tell Lucille, “The majors are turning around and may be headed back. Their speed is phenomenal.”

  “I have to go look. Sorry.” Lucille leaves.

  At the camp, females argue with females, workers with workers, and workers with females. As the majors approach, some workers grab tools and cut down the rope bridge. The majors stand at the river edge, brandishing weapons, threatening to throw projectiles, and shout at the workers and females, who shout back, and the noise causes my grove at the camp to become so dizzy that all growth stops. Humans on the wall have put their hands over their ears.

  Approximately twenty majors turn toward the city and address the humans emotionally, waving weapons. The females across the river also gesture at the city walls and speak with great agitation, as do the workers, but their comments amount to discordant commotion. Certain majors argue with the others. Suddenly one of the majors addressing the humans is struck from behind with a sword, an expert blow that severs its head. Another lunges to fight. Three majors grab it and a fourth slices a sword. Both corpses are kicked with disrespect into the river.

  Orion shouts, “Show your weapons!” All along the wall, human fighters raise their bows.

  The Glassmakers witness it, and a few majors jump into the river to swim across.

  “Lower your weapons! Remain ready!”

  The Glassmakers absorb the warning and slowly fall silent.

  Orion’s display is clever, clever, clever. It is rich fruit. It is a message that could not be more succinct, and it will support my plan. We could kill but we will not. After a moment, the squabble among the Glassmaker resumes, but subdued. The talk goes on for a long time. On the walls, children circulate with water, and later with food. I send some glucose to my sick grove at the Glassmaker camp. The noise of Glassmaker talk is now no more significant than a strong breeze.

  It is afternoon when all the majors swim across the river, one by one and without the natural skill of humans, although they are very buoyant, shaking themselves and their weapons dry as they climb out on the other side. Certain majors greet certain females, touching hands and heads, but most do not. The arguing workers have retreated, many returning to the fields to gather food. The singing and drumming does not resume.

  I think my proposal has been forgotten, and I learn of torrential rains over the mountains to the far west. These violent spring storms will not likely reach our valley, but if the river rises, that would complicate any attack.

  In the city, children nap and guards relax. An evening meal is prepared on both sides of the river, and suddenly several majors move quickly. They pick up weapons, surround three workers, and behead them. Blood flows into the soil. Soon I taste the iron. The music resumes.

  As the Sun sets, debate begins anew in the Meeting House. “We need to do something,” Lucille says.

  “Teach them civilization?” Hakon says. “They have that. It’s just not like ours. That was murder. No excuse.”

  “That’s the point,” Lucille says. “That’s what’s so good about Stevland’s plan. No killing.”

  Bartholomew stands up. He is an old woodworker, plump and gray-haired, who acts fussy but thinks sharply. He asks: “What is the difference between taking the Glassmakers prisoner and domesticating them?” I begin to formulate a reply, but he continues. “None. The question is, how many prisoners can we handle, and how soon? You said two days, Stevland?”

  “Correct.” Is he arguing for me or against me? I observed him and Lucille talking during the afternoon. Bartholomew is clever. He can take an idea and make it do the unexpected, as if it were a fippokat and he has taught it to fly. And this is what he does. I never thought I was such a genius, and I have never before observed Lucille as hopeful, energetic, and persuasive. I had not realized that my plan had so many advantages. It can almost fly.

  “Pax,” Bartholomew says. “That’s an ancient Earth word for peace. Our ancestors came here to create peace. We know the price of war. All of us do, humans and bamboo. Destruction isn’t the half of it. We would lose what we are. We are Pacifists. It’s time to live up to our name and make peace real.”

  Within an hour, the course is laid out. We will domesticate the Glassmakers.

  So as the night deepens, we begin. Lucille organizes planning groups. Outside the city, many plants begin as best they can to replenish their water loss from daytime, so the time is ideal to send them messages through roots. Calcium ions carry information from cell to cell in waves, each wave with its particular enzymes and chemicals and each pathway among the cells creating meaning. Most plants speak similar chemical languages, and most can produce certain useful chemical compounds at will, just as animals can create tools or build reefs. It is a question of knowledge and sophistication.

  I start with tulips, since they seem to be a favored food of the Glassmakers, and since the only good time to talk to them is at night when they have closed their flowers. They do not have sufficient intelligence to maintain a flower and to communicate at the same time.

  “Pests here,” I say, sending the message through rootlets to a thousand tulips.

  “Pests. Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad.” “Bad,” they answer one by one. My humor root observes that they have little to say but are talkative nonetheless. I am glad I grew the humor root. I can endure unpleasant situations better. The lentil trees planted among the tulips complain, too, about their own problems.

  I try to guess where the Glassmakers will forage next on the tulips. Animal behavior is too flexible to be sure, especially among animals without prior commitments to the crops, but it seems obvious to guess that they will pillage the unharvested fields closest to their camp that are easily accessible from roads and paths.

  “Helper here,” I say to those fields of tulips. “Helper chemical. Pest go.” I show an endogenous opiate, and transport that information with a bit of biotin to make it more interesting. I introduced similar opiates twenty years ago in minor amounts into my medical fruits to cause relaxation and reduce anxieties. I hope this alkaloid in higher concentrations will produce more extreme effects in the Glassmakers.

  Tulips already produce a phytohormone based on the amino acid phenylalanine. With a few additional steps, they can manufacture a heterocyclic nucleus that can become the alkaloid. I show the formula. I repeat this explanation dozens of times for each plant, since they are slow learners. Molecules slip from my rootlets to theirs. It is tiring. I move some nitrogen from the city’s gift center to their soil to help them.

  Half the nitrogen will get rerouted to create purine and pyrimidine bases to create RNA and aid in the tulips’ own growth rather than to make the alkaloid. This is one reason they have responded so quickly. They are stupid, but self-interest is not related to intelligence. I hope for a sunny day tomorrow so they can work quickly.

  Lentils also snatch up the nitrogen and whine. They are waiting to be pruned. They are hapless plants that need assistance to
determine the best way to arrange their leaves to gather sunlight. “Help me.” “Prune me,” the trees beg.

  Glassmakers are ignoring the lentils, although their buds and twigs are edible, as humans and scorpions know. I wish it were different. Lentils are always eager to help.

  Meanwhile, I contact the pineapples. They are intelligent but stubborn.

  The agreement I brokered long ago between them and the humans was simple. The pineapples produce terminal tuft fruit in the spring and fall. Spring fruit must be replanted by the humans. Fall fruit may be harvested. Humans provide protection, cultivation, and labor. The pineapples add flavors and nutrients to fall fruits in exchange. But now their fruit is being harvested even though it is spring, and they are furious. I suggest drugging the spring fruit so that the Glassmakers can be defeated and life can return to normal.

  “No,” I hear eight hundred times.

  “Think about it,” I say. “It is like flavoring your fruit. You do that according to contract.”

  A common response says, “Our terminal tufts are to be planted in spring, not harvested, not under any circumstances, and they are being eaten now.”

  “You are not being eaten by the humans.”

  “The humans must enforce the agreement. You own them.”

  “We beg your help to overcome the predators.”

  “Our contract includes protection from predators. We will add terpenes to make our fruit inedible.”

  “I propose something better than terpenes, because intelligent animals might like terpenes, the way they harvest pine wax. They can simply learn to burn the terpenes off. Your terminal tufts would make good torches that could be eaten.”

  “Poison instead,” one plant says, and it becomes a chorus. “Poison.” “Poison.” “Poison.”

  “Closer to my idea. But it is not necessary to kill the animals.”

  “These animals should be killed. These are pests. Your animals would approve. The humans extirpate weeds. This would be like eliminating weeds.”