Semiosis Read online

  It would not be like eliminating weeds. If a field is cleared of nettle, there is always nettle elsewhere. If the Glassmakers are eliminated, there are no other Glassmakers, and even if there were many, killing them would be uncivilized. But I do not explain that, since the pineapples would not understand that I am a Pacifist. Instead, I say, “We wish to domesticate these animals. We wish to control their behavior. They are too valuable to destroy.”

  “You must make a contract with them,” a pineapple orders.

  “Indeed. They must be taught how to make contracts.”

  “The humans made a contract with us readily.”

  “I had already domesticated the humans.”

  “You must domesticate these pests,” another pineapple says. “Yes, domesticate them,” others interject.

  “I wish to domesticate them, and I need your help. Help us help you.” I wait for their replies.

  Above us, stars shine. Bats swoop and whistle at each other. Fippolions howl, perhaps in protest to the Glassmaker music. A wild lion answers. Far, far to the south, a thunderhead flashes and rumbles. Nighttime flowers scent the air. Lizards chirp. I isolate a grove from my root network for a moment and enjoy the night as a human might, small in size but intense in outlook, entirely and pleasurably alert to nothing beyond my immediate surroundings, a luxury I can take only for a moment, but it is amazing how being small is a qualitative rather than a quantitative difference. The shape of the external world changes. I return my attention to my network of roots. Lentils continue to whimper. Most Pacifists and Glassmakers sleep.

  One by one the pineapples agree and pressure their neighbors to join the majority. I show them how to combine urea and malonic acid to make barbituric acid, and I transport some urea from the gift center to close the contract.

  And so the night goes: leeks, potatoes, yams, lettuce.

  I did not expect to hear from the locustwood trees. Their custom is to select a speaker based on seniority and health, which means the biggest and most aggressive. It also becomes the sole breeding male; their sexuality is bipolar but elective. The theory of evolution brought by humans from Earth explains the outcome. They are self-selecting for escalating aggression, and they had already achieved significant success before human protection allowed for a supermature speaker.

  “What do we get, bamboozler?” the locustwood speaker asks. “We are being cut down by the intruders. We value our relationship with the city animals, too. We have much to offer.” A taste of ethylene in the message makes my rootlets freeze as the auxins are inhibited. As I said, he is aggressive.

  I try to respond with self-assurance, but I can barely squeeze out, “What exactly can you offer?” All they make is decorative wood and edible autumnal seedpods.

  “We propose a reasonable concession in the future in exchange for additional planting in the southern forestland.”

  “We need help now,” I say.

  He extrudes more ethylene. “We will fulfill your reasonable request whenever you make it. Be warned, we will not make this offer again. If you wish our help, this is our demand.”

  I am distracted. The lentils are sobbing. As kindly as I can, I say to the lentils, “We understand your problem and will help you soon.”

  Painful blasts of ethylene from several locustwood trees get my attention. Tatiana would have called this extortion.

  “I have nothing for you to do,” I say.

  “We will do anything reasonable, but in exchange we want a southern colony. This is important to us.”

  My humor root suggests moving them all far to the south. An old root notices that the speaker’s communication skills and perhaps intelligence have made a quantum leap with age.

  “We have excess ethylene,” the speaker says. “That would hurt many plants, including pineapples and tulips.”

  “I have no choice but to agree. You know that.”

  “We offer a fair bargain.”

  If Tatiana were alive, she would offer useful suggestions for coping with delinquency, but she is dead, and I need to answer quickly before my roots suffer permanent damage. “I agree. When conditions allow additional planting, planting will be done. But be prepared to follow my orders when I give them.” My humor root suggests ordering suicide.

  Meanwhile, I have begun to communicate with the snow vine that grows along the river. This could be crucial. I can use the vine’s instinct to control animals to make it do what I want.

  “New animal to control,” I say. It has never realized that it is being used as a dike to stabilize the riverbanks during floods. It has easy access to water, it has attention, it thinks it is the ruler of the riverbanks and the master of the humans. The Glassmakers are using it to grow their snowflake-shaped scale bugs, and workers in particular like to eat the bugs, provided there are some left after the larger castes are done eating.

  “You must control bugs,” I say.

  “Bugs no eat fruit,” it answers. In other words, how can you control an animal except with fruit?

  “Change sap for bugs. Like this.” I show a chemical. “Sap will control animals.”

  “Bugs no eat fruit.”

  “Bugs drink sap.”

  “Yes,” it says. “Bugs no eat fruit.”

  “Change sap for bugs because bugs drink sap, no eat fruit.”

  “Bugs no eat fruit.”

  I realize that we are related plants, both bamboos, in fact, and our shared physiology is the only reason I can have a conversation of any complexity. The hedge along the river is too small to have many sentient roots. The presence of other snow vines triggers an aggressive growth, but this hedge has lived alone and is content to lead a manicured little life parasitizing its aspens and putting down more guard roots than it needs, thus serving the humans without realizing it. It has no need for intelligence, none at all.

  “Change sap for bugs,” I repeat, hoping that repetition will of itself prove persuasive. “Big animals eat bugs.”

  “Bugs no eat fruit.”

  “Big animals eat bugs.”

  “Big animals eat bugs,” the snow vine repeats. I have made progress.

  “Yes,” I say. “Change sap for bugs.”

  “Big animals eat bugs.”

  “Yes. Change sap for bugs. Like this.”

  “Bugs eat sap,” it says. “Bugs are pests.”

  “Bugs are good. Big animals eat bugs like fruit.”

  The snow vine stammers some meaningless chemical compounds and finally says, “Bugs are like fruit.” This is very significant progress.

  “Bugs are like fruit,” I agree. “Bugs eat sap. Change sap. Sap will control two animals.”

  “Sap will control bugs. Big animals eat bugs.”

  “Yes. You must change sap for bugs and animals.”

  “I will change sap for bugs and animals.”

  At last! “Yes. Change sap like this.” I deliver some prototype chemicals.

  All these plants. Long ago I behaved no differently from them. We grew together. We braved the storms, we suffered in droughts, we traded remedies for pests, we kept out dangerous corals and root-eating animals, we bargained for sunlight and nutrients, we timed our flowerings to share pollinators, and we staggered the ripening of our fruit to maintain seed-dispersing animals. We spoke simply because thinking requires energy, and the strongest among us could survive well enough almost without thought because our lives were simple. I have grown but they have not, and my needs run in tandem to theirs in ways they could never imagine.

  Only intelligent creatures also create civilization. Civilization creates the idea of peace as well as war, and makes both possible. I am a Pacifist. I have chosen the idea that I intend to make real.

  The Sun rises. I am weary after a busy night. Sunshine sends photons, and in my leaves they split water into oxygen, hydrogen ions, and energy. I am large. I will renew myself as efficiently as possible because we face even more difficult times in the campaign to domesticate the Glassmakers.

  Mari
e comes to the Meeting House. Her skin color is too yellowish. I wish she were able to eat more because food would give her strength. “Exactly what chemicals are you making?” she asks.

  “Something related to morphine, and it should have a strong depressive and hypnotic effect on the Glassmaker central nervous system, as I understand it. Also barbiturates to depress brain function.”

  “Dangerous combination.”

  “Dangerous because they produce strong reactions. Their effects may be cumulative. The goal is to disable them. We have seen that they are willing to kill.”

  She sits. “We can’t control how much they ingest, though. Overdoses could cause respiratory failure.”

  “Correct. I have thought of an additional concern. Females and majors eat first and eat to their contentment. Workers may get none. We must review Orion’s plan of attack. We may need to physically subdue the workers.” Subdue almost sounds peaceful, my humor root interjects.

  She nods. “We’ll need to plan for injuries as well as overdoses. We’ll probably lose some. I don’t even know how their circulatory system works, just that they have one.”

  “I will supply antidotes for my drugs.”

  “We don’t know how they’ll work without tests, and we can’t do tests.”

  “Correct. Much will rely on the skill of the medics.”

  She leans back, closing her eyes and letting sunshine fall on her face. The warmth of sunlight feels pleasant to animals. “Lucille’s good,” she says eventually. “She’ll have us ready.” She opens her eyes to look at my talking stem.

  “She has proven to be a wise choice,” I say. “And your efforts are vital. You have done incalculably much for Pax already.”

  Perhaps I should mention to her that after spending a night talking to plants, I am more acutely aware of why I am so pleased to have intelligent company. Humans have made my life happy. I wish they lived longer.

  I avoid thinking about what might happen if my plan fails. I am large. Humans are fragile. They might all be killed, but I would survive in one form or another despite anything the Glassmakers might do to me, and I would be desolate beyond imagination.

  LUCILLE

  When Stevland got the plants to start drugging the Glassmakers, there was a fantastic party at their camp across the river for a day and a half. At first the stupefiers made the Glassmakers silly and loud, with lots of yelling and singing and stumbling around. Then they argued and started fights, and Glassmakers got tossed bleeding into the river. At least one drowned. Bats even brought food to Monte to ask him what was going on. The drumming got off-beat. It had to be scary for any Glassmaker who could still think straight.

  I kept pretending to be cheerful and optimistic, trying to balance the medics and Stevland, who worried about all sorts of details. Cedar saw setbacks every half hour: eating too much, eating too little, too aggressive, too sleepy, too much optimism on our (my) part, too much pessimism, always some damn thing.

  Finally, on the second day, toward sunset, the Glassmakers began to pass out. The females and majors collapsed over dinner, and when the workers saw them sleeping, they scurried to eat the leftovers, and pretty soon they fell facedown into the feeding bowls. That was our sign. We sneaked out of the city by the back gate, threw a rope bridge across the river at a ravine downstream, and crept up the riverside road toward the Glassmaker camp. The old hunters led. And Cedar, of course.

  Marie hiked right ahead of me, stooped under a backpack, and when she tripped on something in the dark, glass bottles full of antidotes clinked. It had to weigh a lot, but I couldn’t help her carry it since we wouldn’t stay together. I carried nothing, especially not weapons. They might fall into the wrong hands if … well, it wasn’t my job to think about failure. Hathor had already done that thoroughly. She was too old to fight herself and stayed safe and sound back in the city. I’d been too nervous to eat all day.

  The hundred of us creeping toward their camp accounted for most of the able-bodied adults and older children of Pax. Another fifty hid on the other side of the river, ready to cross it in boats as soon as they could. There was more than one of us for every one of them. We’d win, they’d lose, but with how much damage?

  “Paralytics, that’s what was in the food tonight,” Marie had told everyone before we set out. “Overdoses aren’t just possible, they’re inevitable. They also might choke on the food in their bowls and drown in the soup. Check the breathing first of all.”

  We couldn’t carry lanterns, so we couldn’t see what was ahead, and it was cloudy so we didn’t even have starlight or auroras, but we could hear a lot of whiny snarls.

  “Snoring,” Marie whispered.

  Piotr stifled a laugh. He’d painted his face with big gray eyes and a vertical stripe across his mouth and nose to look like a Glassmaker. Camouflage, he said.

  “Listen,” he said, “everything’s quiet.” Right. Nothing barked or sang or sparkled in the night.

  “Lizards eat vegetables,” Marie said. I wanted to ask if this would hurt them, but that question would have to wait.

  We were close to the camp, silent with fear, straining to hear. The old hunters and the best fighters had arrived at the camp ahead of us. No big noise. Translation: No big trouble—probably, but I couldn’t see a thing, so I didn’t know.

  A bark like a bluebird called to us from the underbrush. One woof. Good. It was a sign that things were fine. We kept creeping forward. “Woof!” again. But then a Glassmaker moaned far ahead, something fell, a bowstring twanged, probably to deliver a tranquilizer-tipped arrow, and humans whispered angrily. Piotr gasped and held his breath. I kept creeping.

  We knew they wouldn’t all be asleep. Some of them would have eaten too little, or wouldn’t be as susceptible. But how many awake? Why wasn’t anyone yelling anything? That many overdoses? Something else thudded, something crunched like a basket being crushed. What? Should I bow-wow a question?

  “Woof” came from just ahead, then a lot of whispers and a big thump like a tent falling down.

  In a few more steps we turned a bend in the path, and we found Orion with a bow over his shoulder, holding up a flickering red lantern, and a woman was leaning over a motionless Glassmaker, listening to its breathing and untying weapon belts. Farther ahead, a purple lamp with a tiny flame glowed, and vague shadows hurried around. Someone to my left imitated a bluebird whine perfectly, a call for a medic. Marie hurried toward the sound.

  I kept looking for my field commander—there, his amber lantern. The old hunter gestured thumbs-up, everything woofy, then pointed to a female slumped on a mat. Mine to check, to strip of everything I could, including clothes. Lamplight reflected on her gray eye. The eye twitched. A good sign, really; she was awake, probably fine, just incapacitated. I thought she’d smell bad close up, but she didn’t, more like ripening truffle and bitter cloves, and not strong at all. She must have bathed recently.

  I took off her blanket, soft and fluffy and folded several times, bigger than I thought and really warm. The next morning, I half helped, half shoved her onto a raft and across the river. I felt small next to the females. Their heads were almost as high as mine, but their bodies were lots bigger, bulky and long, balanced over spindly legs. Marie said a lot of thorax space was devoted to lungs and hollow bones, so we weighed about the same.

  The drugs turned out to be a little too strong, as we expected. We lost five majors and nine workers to respiratory failure. Two more Glassmakers got injured and died when they struggled, and four died of injuries from drugged fights before they passed out. Our side took a few hurts, too, including a hunter who accidentally shot himself with a tranquilizer arrow. A Glassmaker child stayed in a coma for a whole terrifying day, and most Glassmakers woke up nauseated, throwing up, and panicky. A few got hysterical, including Gray-Eyes.

  Stevland got morose. “A toll of twenty percent is excessive. I committed a major misjudgment and caused a needless slaughter, a repeat of the depraved history of my species. I have so
badly betrayed the Glassmakers that they will never accept mutualism.” Et cetera. I asked the Committee for permission to talk to him alone. The counselor-medic gave me a questioning look but spoke in favor, and the motion passed, with Stevland abstaining. I didn’t know why he abstained but it didn’t matter.

  So, everyone left the Meeting House, I shut and barred the door, sat down in front of Stevland’s stem, pulled out the knife, and started talking: “Nice weapon, right? I got this from Tatiana. She got it from Sylvia.”

  “I have never seen it before. It is metal.”

  “Steel. From Earth. It’s a secret. It’s the knife Sylvia used to kill the old moderator, Vera. You know that story? Well, I mean the real story. Everyone says Sylvia’s revolt was just a vote, they say the moderator got voted out, the first and only time that’s happened. Well, that’s not what happened. Sylvia wanted to come here to Rainbow City but the moderator didn’t and the Parents didn’t, and she finally had to kill the moderator. With this knife. Other people got hurt and killed, too. Sylvia even left some Parents back in the old village because they didn’t want to come here. They were afraid of you.”

  He didn’t say anything. He was probably shocked giftless. That was kind of what I’d hoped for.

  “Sylvia gave the knife to Tatiana and she gave it to me so I would know that being moderator isn’t a game. It isn’t easy. It isn’t fun. We’re not fippokats, happy and gentle and everything. Well, maybe we are. Kats can kill if they have to, they can kick something to death like little lions. We can make mistakes, but we can do the right thing, too, even when it’s a terrible thing to do. The hard part is knowing what to do.”

  “The Parents were afraid to come?”

  “You’re the one always saying how big and powerful you are. You can be frightening.”

  “I did not mean to be frightening.”

  “Don’t worry. It was their job to know when not to be scared.”

  “I wanted you to come too much, perhaps.”

  “We’re glad we did.”