Interference Read online

  Mirlo looks around. He sees Chirp and waves for him to come.

  Chirp shouts in Glassmade to the queens inside, explaining that the Mu Rees will let Rattle go. A chortle of voices answer, one of them Rattle. The queens agree, the baby says no, and she gets a scolding.

  Mirlo steps back and looks at the crowd, waving his arms for them to stay back. “We’re ready,” he says, and sends, “Let her go.”

  More voices come from inside. Rattle screeches, “No no no!”

  “You will come-you here outside and play and be-you happy,” Chirp says.

  “Play?” the baby says.

  “Come and play!”

  The door opens, Rattle runs out, and the door slams as Chirp picks her up and hugs her. She hugs him back, squealing with delight. They trot away together to safety, and she seems happy, the only happy person present.

  Jose, Arthur, Cawzee, and Ladybird have come running, and we have been planning. The men plant themselves at the front door, and Mirlo steps back. Ladybird circulates in the crowd. She recruits majors, and they run to the door.

  Now it is my turn. “Put down your weapons and release the queens,” I send to the Mu Rees in my best imitation of Darius. “There has been a change in plans.”

  “No! No change!” Darius says. “Kill them.” I block that message the way Karola would. But the power of the broadcast might be greater than mine, and I fear some of it gets through.

  “Let them go? Really?” a Mu Ree says.

  “Yes, now,” I order as Darius.

  Cawzee shouts instructions to the queens. Inside, we hope, the queens will overpower the Mu Rees. The men slam their shoulders into the door to break the bar inside. It opens and, as planned, they throw themselves onto the ground. The majors led by Cawzee jump over them to get inside.

  I think I hear shots. There is a lot of shouting. The men get up and remain at the door, looking inside, tense, ready. And we wait. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

  A queen trots out erect and proud, followed by another and then the rest, welcomed by their families. I smell Human blood.

  “It be-it safe,” Cawzee sends by the radio.

  “How are the Mu Rees?” I ask.

  “Queens kill them,” Cawzee says.

  “I am not surprised.”

  “Let’s keep their weapons,” Jose says. He spots Om in the crowd and motions for him to come forward.

  But as the assault on Chut’s house is concluded, Darius sends a message I cannot block to the crew from the orbital, and to Haus, the physician, Pollux, and Zivon—fifteen people in all. “Get ready to capture all the Earthlings and return to the sky and to home. We are not safe here.” Then he ends communications and does not respond to questions.

  Zivon tells Om what he heard. “This is wrong. I mean, Darius sounds wrong. ‘Return to the sky’? ‘And to home’?”

  “So you side with Pollux and Darius?”

  “I … No … I just like making trouble.”

  “I’ve noticed. If they think you’re with them, use that. Find Darius.”

  Om tells Jose what is happening. Zivon finds Pollux at his home but not Darius. Zivon explains what is happening. Pollux becomes agitated.

  “We never agreed to that,” Pollux says. “I spent all morning explaining it to him. He forgot everything we’ve been talking about. But he’s right, it’s time we went home. Let’s round up everyone and go! We can’t stay here anymore. Tell Darius to come talk to me face-to-face! He went to work in the west fields this morning, and he hasn’t come back. What is he doing? He should be here with me.”

  Zivon sends that to Om, who recruits Jose, Mirlo, and Haus to search for him. They hurry to the west fields.

  I have consulted the roots of all the stems I have in the west. Finally, I find a memory that might be Darius in the distance as he walked up a path to return to the city. He passed through a copse of trees and shrubs. I did not see him leave. I ask the rope palms in the copse about the presence of any large animals.

  “Animal come stay.”

  “Now?”

  “Animal stay now.”

  It could be a large spider, since rope palms have no reason or ability to distinguish one animal from another. Or it could be Darius.

  I radio that to Jose as they rush through the west gate. Haus sends to Pollux to say he is searching for Darius. Pollux tells him not to take Darius into custody, an order that confuses Haus since Darius may have instigated some crimes, and the conversation terminates in an argument. They both cut communications in anger.

  As they near the grove, Haus and Mirlo suddenly double over as intense static fills their feed. Jose keeps running.

  He shouts, “I see him! Darius…? Answer me.… Darius!” Soon Jose staggers out of the grove with Darius slung over his shoulder.

  Haus, hunched on the ground, sends a message to everyone: “We found Darius!”

  He gets no answer. He sends again. I can hear him, but only over my secret radio receiver.

  Haus gestures at the back of his head. “Is this working?” he asks Mirlo.

  “No. But my head aches.… Something’s wrong with the network.”

  “We knew that.”

  Jose arrives, sets down Darius, and they examine him. No signs of violence. Rapid heartbeat. Cold skin. Breathing fast and shallow. Unconscious. Completely unresponsive.

  Haus, with a grimace, picks him up and runs to the city, to the clinic, and the others follow. When they arrive, the Pacifist medic, not one of the Earthlings, greets them. He is examining Darius even before he is settled onto a cot. I watch through windows and listen.

  “Where’s our doctors?” Haus says.

  The medic points to a side room. “Go talk to them. Please.”

  They find the physician and his assistant holding their hands on their ears as if to shut out sound.

  “We’re supposed to kill him, the medic. All the Pacifists.”

  “That’s all we hear,” the assistant stammers. “Kill the Pacifists! I’d think I’m psychotic, it’s a classic symptom … but I think it’s the feed. Oh, I don’t know!”

  Haus stands still for a moment, then reaches to cradle his head. “It is the feed. We can’t all … We’re being attacked. We are under attack!”

  Mirlo backs away. Then he doubles over, too.

  “Help me,” Haus says. “Stop me.”

  In another part of the clinic, the medic and I diagnose Darius’s problem as shock. But we can find no reason for his condition. It could be allergy, venom, or perhaps some injury, yet his body has no marks. He gets saline solution, warm blankets, his legs raised, and his heart and blood pressure and breathing are monitored. He occasionally twitches.

  As soon as the medic is done, he hurries to the room where the doctors and Mirlo and Haus are. The Earthlings shout at him, mixing threats with pleas for help in an insane chorus.

  He calls to the staff, “Do we have any tranquilizers? Anxiolytics? Restraints?”

  This must be the network. It is sending messages to selected Earthlings. But why?

  I contact Arthur, Cawzee, Jose, and Ladybird by radio and explain as calmly as I can what is happening. “We must control the Earthlings. We have tranquilizing fruit at the clinic, but we must convince them to eat it.”

  “We should destroy the network machine,” Jose says. “I’ll get Queen Chut. She helped the Earthlings with their equipment.” We believe five Earthlings are in the workshop.

  The network sends to everyone in the network in an imitation of Om’s voice: “The Pacifists killed the Mu Rees and are taking prisoners. They will kill you. You kill them first. Take your weapons and kill.”

  Haus has most of the Earthlings’ weapons, and he is now disarmed, sedated, and willingly restrained in the clinic.

  “Listen to him,” Darius seems to send. “We must kill all Humans.”

  Om is still at the edge of the crowd at Chut’s house. He starts shouting. It is too noisy for me to hear what. Ladybird comes running. He stru
ggles as she takes his hands, and she gestures for help.

  Zivon and some other Earthlings are near the main plaza, and they cannot send, and they shake their heads violently, as if in pain, staggering. He sees Cawzee and Arthur. He shouts at the other Earthlings, “Let’s fight. But let’s let them capture us. Pretend to fight.”

  “They’ll kill us.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  He charges, shouting and waving his arms.

  Cawzee calls for help, and majors come leaping through the streets, some reaching for knives and tools. Zivon runs up to Glassmakers, waving his hands.

  The Glassmakers shout, “What perhaps he does?”

  “What are you doing?” Arthur yells.

  “We’re fighting. Don’t take us prisoner!” Zivon says.

  I radio Arthur, “They don’t want to fight, but they have to. The network is broken and sending them orders, and it will hurt them if they disobey. The Earthlings want you to stop them, to take them prisoner and keep them from fighting, so they can fool the network. So the network believes they are obeying it.”

  “What? Oh,” Arthur says. He shouts, “Let’s take them prisoner!”

  The Glassmakers puff confusion.

  “I’ll explain later!” he tells them. “When I understand.”

  The Glassmakers sheathe their knives and get rope. One by one, they subdue the Earthlings, who continue to struggle with what seems like deliberate ineptness. They are taken to the plaza and tethered to stone benches there.

  Perhaps this will keep them safe. Or this may be the first step toward a different attack. I convey my interpretation to Ladybird. We agree they should be treated as dangerous prisoners, but we share deep confusion. What is wrong with the network? There are too many possibilities.

  One by one, Pacifists subdue the Earthlings. Pollux is discovered wandering in a street and puts up real resistance as he is subdued.

  I receive a message from a stalk far to the southeast, close to where the Coral Plains’ swampy edge abuts the rocky foothills of the east mountains. There is fire.

  An afternoon wind blows upward, spreading the fire into the brush on a wide, long hillside. I can see it from the distance. The springtime growth is moist and burns poorly. I do not think the fire will spread to the valley, but when night falls, the winds might shift.

  The forest around the foothills has panicked. It would require three days to hike there, so my animals can do little.

  I still do not know why fires keep appearing at the edge of the plains. I have too many mysteries, and they have all come at the same time, like fruit that ripens at once. They might be the same kind of fruit, then, perhaps from the same tree. Which tree?

  In the city, the Earthlings in the network workshop refuse to surrender. Perhaps they are manipulating the network. Perhaps they are being forced to act by the network like the other Earthlings. They have always been fanatically protective of it. Jose has organized a guard and with his limited Earthling language has approached the door to attempt to talk to them.

  “Come out. We are around you here. You not can kill us.”

  “We have weapons and if you try anything, we’ll fight.”

  He sends Arthur to the clinic and Cawzee to Haus’s quarters to count his weapons, and they decide it could be true. The Earthlings could be well armed. They probably have food and water. Technicians traditionally maintain a supply of refreshments wherever they work. We can wait or decide to attack and suffer the consequences, and victory might be costly.

  But the Earthlings throughout the city continue to receive notices from the network in many voices that give them extreme pain, mentally and physically.

  In the clinic, Mosegi weeps. “Let me go. I won’t hurt anyone, just let me go to the bathroom.”

  His restraints are briefly released so he can urinate. Instead he attacks. He is subdued with minor injuries on all sides, and he voids on his blankets.

  Just two days ago, Abacus had asked about some low-frequency radio transmissions. I listen for that signal. The transmission is still there, but it is no longer mere static. It is a wavering squeal, but with the same two-beat rhythm. This did not come from the network. Where, then?

  It was here before the Earthlings. The Earthlings’ radio was disrupted in the plains. The corals can glow, and light is a kind of radiant energy, and radio waves are a kind of radiant energy. I have found a seed. If the transmission comes from the corals, it comes from the south. How can I test that?

  I radio Ladybird, who is in the plaza. “Bring me Karola.” She sends her with Honey.

  Queen Chut has come to the network workshop with a worker carrying heavy baskets of tools, and with a Pacifist from her team. “Antenna be-it there,” she says, pointing to a side roof and a wire that extends up one of my tallest stalks.

  I radio Jose, “Tell Chut to cut down the stalk.” It will be an insignificant sacrifice, given the circumstances. They begin to work.

  Honey escorts Karola to the greenhouse. She clutches her head and leans on Honey. But once she is inside the greenhouse, she starts to recover. Ladybird’s assistant brings some tea sweetened with juice from a painkilling fruit. Soon, she can stand up straight.

  “I have blocked the network for you,” I say through the speaker in a gentle voice.

  Her face says thank you. Then she says, “Who are you?”

  “Stevland. I am the rainbow bamboo.”

  “That’s right,” Honey says. “We’ve been hiding him!”

  “You can talk.”

  “Through the speakers, and via radio. And in the network. We stole a chip for me. If you stay behind and live on Pax, and I hope you do, you will need to know about me.”

  She looks at Honey, who nods. “Can you help me?” Karola asks. “Us?”

  “That is my question for you. I think the network is under attack. I need two receivers to test the idea. I can be one. Can you be the other?” I explain what I want.

  “I’m not sure I can go that low.”

  “It is very strong. You do not need to be exact. Can you find it here?”

  She closes her eyes and starts to search.

  Elsewhere in the city, an axe blow cuts into my stalk outside the network workshop. I start to sever root connections.

  Karola jumps. “I found it. It’s so strong it hurts.”

  “I want you to go outside a few steps to the north. I will try to block it.”

  “I know what you mean. I can do that, too.”

  I am about to say I learned it from her, but we do not have time.

  She leaves and asks Honey to go with her.

  I find the signal and block it, or try to. I struggle to produce a signal equally strong. Outside, Karola stops, closes her eyes, and concentrates. She opens them and takes a few steps farther back. Then she walks to the west for several steps and stops, holds her head, backs up, and lets her head go. She walks to the east of the greenhouse this time and does the same.

  The sun is setting, and it has turned clouds pink and orange. I check the fire at the foothills of the mountains, which is easier to assess in the dark. It has continued to burn mostly upward but also sideways, moving closer to our forest. In the din of complaints and fear from the plants, I hear another message of panic, and it comes from within the forest at a spot on the border with the Coral Plains. There is another fire, new but big. Is this the work of corals? How? Although the night is calm now, springtime weather is volatile.

  When Karola enters, she is pale and sweating. “It comes from the south. You think it’s corals. How?”

  “Karola, can fires be started with radio?”

  She looks so perplexed that I think I must have asked a stupid question. Then she nods. “Microwaves. You can heat food with them, and you can set the food on fire. We’ve all burned things with microwave ovens. It’s old modern-era technology.”

  “Now I understand.” If the corals managed to enter the network and talk with Abacus, they could have given it orders. They woul
d only need to learn the Earthlings’ language, and not even perfectly. How long have they been listening?

  “What?” Karola and Honey ask together.

  “Corals. They are attacking. They have used radio technology to set fires to attack the forest. And to attack us through the network. We can begin a counterattack.”

  I am not sure how to fight so many fights. I must start with what I can do. Without the large antenna for Abacus, housed in the workshop, the network—or rather, the corals—cannot attack the Earthlings as fiercely, but small antennas still exist within the network workshop. We could jam signals much as Karola can block messages, but we will need a much stronger transmitter.

  “We need Queen Chut,” I tell Ladybird. “And a technician.” We agree on Ernst. She will have him and Chut sent here.

  Three strong men escort Ernst into the greenhouse. He struggles but not very hard, obviously for show. But once he is in my protection, his expression relaxes quickly. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then opens them. “What’s happened?” he asks Karola. “I can’t hear the network.”

  “They can jam the signal in here.”

  “Really?”

  “But we need to block a signal from the south. It’s the corals.”

  “What?”

  I use Ladybird’s voice to talk through the speakers. “We believe that the corals are intelligent, and they have some sort of natural radio technology, and they’ve taken over the network.”

  “Wow. Corals.”

  Queen Chut enters. She and Ernst and I, pretending to be Ladybird, confer, and Karola translates. Honey runs errands. We must build the largest radio transmitter we can. And we must build it out of crystal, gold wire, and whatever we can scavenge from Earthling laboratories, because that is all we have. I think this will take all night. I do not believe we will have all night, even if this were to succeed. The corals are getting better at understanding how fires work.

  Out in the east fields, the lights go on and off on one of the heli-planes. No one is there, I am sure of it. Lights go on and off again, inside and out. The rotor turns a little and then stops.

  “Ernst,” I ask, “can the network fly a heli-plane?”

  “They usually do. I mean, computers usually fly heli-planes, and the pilots are there to run the computers. They can fly, pilots, I mean, if they have to, but computers can do it all. Pilots are there for safety.”