Semiosis Page 30

  “Hey, that’s something.”

  “She read the labels out loud, that one.” He pointed to a female with a row of curly black hair down her back, the one that had been most responsive to the mission last fall. “It’s written in Glassmade as well as Pacifist, and they quarreled over something. Well, quarrel is too strong a word. They were upset over something. They had a discussion about something. They were deeply moved by something. You know, the label that starts, ‘Rainbow City was founded about four hundred years ago by space travelers like us.’ They came right back and haven’t stopped talking since. Listen.”

  “They’re interrupting each other.”

  “As usual. It says in the museum that there were a thousand Glassmakers in the city. I believe that’s what they’re talking about. I’ve seen them counting on their fingers. They’re planning something, that’s what I conclude.”

  Bellona grabbed the letter and waved it around. Bartholomew and I exchanged glances.

  “Nothing stupid, I hope,” I said.

  “They’re not stupid.”

  They kept talking with their impassive faces, squawky shrieky voices, and the curly-backed one had a lot to say. I set down a few Go stones to complicate Bartholomew’s game for him and listened. Curls picked up a loaf of bread and slapped Bellona across the face with it. Then she yelled so loud my ears rang.

  “They like the food,” Bartholomew said. “Marie! Good morning!”

  I turned, and there she was hurrying to the tent. The morning wasn’t cold, but she was bundled up in sweaters. She looked yellowish and exhausted. “Good morning, Bartholomew. How are they eating?”

  “They eat everything we give them.” He got up to give her a hug. Greenies do that.

  “Even the stews and salads?”

  “They love the stews.”

  “Good. Stevland ran some tests overnight. They’re all malnourished, severely malnourished, beyond the point of illness. They’re crippled and stunted. It’s…” She shook her head. “It explains a lot. I’ll show you. The queens are as bad off as anyone, and they’re the leaders, supposedly. They’re in no condition to lead.”

  The queens kept arguing and ignored us. Marie walked right among them and started pointing and talking, shouting to be heard.

  “Look at their eyes! Look at the individual facets! Some sparkle and some don’t! This female, look, she’s completely blind!” It was Gray-Eyes. “That one, see that grayish area around the edges of her eyes? See how wide it is?”

  I took a few steps closer and squinted. “So she sees only with the center? That’s not even half. Damn.” I looked around. Curls had eyes that were almost all sparkly. And she was leading some sort of scheme.

  “Yes, blindness,” Marie said. “But it’s worse. Look, here, at the skin around her eyes and mouth.” Gray-Eyes twitched under Marie’s touch like a bug had landed on her. “Those marks that look like wrinkles, they’re actually sores or scars from sores. There are more but you can’t see them under the fur. Their teeth are in their throats, and in the ones I autopsied, the teeth were bad. These Glassmakers aren’t like the ones in the museum. I mean, they’re the descendants, but their health—their proportions don’t look right. There aren’t enough old ones, and if no one lives to be old, they all die young of something. If you’re malnourished, you’re susceptible to all sorts of problems.”

  She waved angrily toward the slit trench being used for a gift center. “There’s blood in some feces and all sorts of parasites. A simple purgative would do them a lot of good.” She dropped to her knees in front of a child, the same one that had been in a coma from the tranquilizers, and took it by the hands. “Look at this child. The eyes are already going bad. The fur is thin, these claws are malformed.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. The child shifted nervously.

  I felt like I ought to do something.

  “These leg sores aren’t healing,” Marie said. “Ulcerated sores on a child!” She touched the joints and it squealed. The queens had stopped talking and Curls came closer to watch her. “Malformed joints. And I hate to think”—tears slid down her cheeks—“what this means for mental development. It’s hard to keep us well fed. It takes all our skills and a lot of help from Stevland. We’re not made for this planet, but we can get what we need.”

  She began to sob, too sick to stop herself. “We can help them. We can make the Glassmakers well. If they let us.”

  I knelt down and put an arm around her. Those words hit me: If they let us. Why were we waiting for them? This was forced friendship. We decided what would happen. We’d make them accept help. We were the ones in charge, and the damn queens had to get used to the idea, the sooner the better.

  Then I took a deep breath. Anger wouldn’t help.

  Curls was saying something to Bartholomew.

  Communicating! Even if we couldn’t understand what she said.

  He got a slate and began writing. “She be-her sad,” he read out loud, pointing to Marie. “All you be-you sick.” He held it out to Curls, who studied it, following the lines of writing with a finger. She could read!

  He wrote some more. “You need good food. We be-us sad because you be-you sick. We give-you good food.”

  Curls read it and turned back to the other ones and began yelling at them again. Bartholomew looked at me and winked.

  “Do you want to talk?” I shouted at her. If they liked to argue, I could, too. “I want to listen. Chek-ooo! Kak!” She turned toward me. “Bartholomew, tell her—no, make her come talk with me at the Meeting House. One-on-one. I have things to say.”

  “Make her?”

  I waved at the rainbow bamboo around us. “It’s time to get aggressively friendly, right, Stevland? Her and me, no more damn games. We’re going to become best friends. Starting now.”

  Bartholomew glanced in Marie’s direction. “It’s time to try something else, I suppose.”

  “Bring her.” I was co-moderator. I could give orders. I helped Marie to her house to rest, which she didn’t want to do, then went to see Stevland at the Meeting House.

  “Hey, water and sunshine. I’m going to force friendship. No more being nice.”

  “Warmth and food.” Pause. “You are a likable person, and this new tactic holds promise, but you will not like the promise I made.”

  The door was open, so we weren’t meeting in secret, but no one had come to the Meeting House. Everyone had too much work to do.

  “I’ll always like you.” I sat down. His cheerfulness was probably a front, like mine.

  “I promised the orange trees that you will cut them down.”

  “What? Damn, I’ll never understand plants.”

  “They do not wish to be cut down. But they do not wish to produce nutritious catkins for the Glassmakers, who need ascorbic acid and thiamine, with copper. I can transfer copper to the orange trees for this purpose. You can harvest at levels that will still permit pollination. But they refuse to fortify their catkins. The animal equivalent is a lion challenging the fippmaster.”

  “Fippmaster Stevland?” I meant that as a joke. He answered slowly.

  “Perhaps I did not make a perfect analogy, although the image you invoked is humorous. Their behavior is perverse. Additional copper would allow enhanced production of cytochrome enzymes and plastocyanin in their chloroplasts. They would benefit from this activity. They refuse because oranges are naturally insubordinate. They routinely refuse to join us other plants in synchrony to share pollinators or maintain frugivores for seed dispersion, perhaps because they grow in shade and need not negotiate for canopy rights. But they are not unintelligent. They will see it is to their advantage to help us.”

  I knew what a chloroplast was, at least. “If we cut them down, we can’t harvest anything.”

  “I suggest trimming one to ground level, which is close to barbarism but necessary. And we must act quickly. Their catkins are budding now. If you trim the tree severely, it will suffer, not die, and the entire grove will be frightened. We do not h
ave time to wait. The Glassmakers have been sick for a long time, and if we can make them healthy, they will be more responsive. They will see that we mean them well, and that sharing lives with us is to the mutual benefit of everyone. We must appeal to the intelligence of the Glassmakers. I have observed that intelligent creatures are easier to control because they can foresee the results of their actions farther ahead.”

  “Control?” Tatiana had said he wanted too much control over us.

  “Exactly. With very little effort, you humans and I were able to enter into mutualism, which involves mutual control. I am a social creature, so submitting to social control is a desirable thing. The Glassmakers will submit, but we must act quickly. I am tired. I know you are. Marie’s health is failing. You must cut down an orange tree this morning. The wood is very useful. I can direct a forester to the optimal tree to frighten the oranges.”

  That didn’t sound too scary, the mutual control part, at least.

  “Perhaps the forester can bring a lion,” he said. “Trees fear lions. Lions eat roots. The animal equivalent is someone attacking your face. Both you and the Glassmakers are not native to Pax. For that reason you do not thrive naturally. I have worked hard to keep you healthy, and without assistance, the Glassmakers are failing. But when they lived here earlier, I was not capable of helping them as I have helped you. Malnutrition may have led to the city’s demise, if, as Marie speculates, it leads to social breakdown. I do not know. Ignorance is another kind of imbalance. I can make only general guesses about their needs, but we are learning many things quickly.”

  It began to rain outside. I thought about shutting the door, but then we’d be alone. “Good. The queens, well, you saw. They’re up to something.”

  “They realize the situation is completely unexpected. This may give us opportunities to communicate and create new balances. Bartholomew has persuaded a queen to come. I believe his shouting and anger was an act. Humans are exceptionally able at dissembling.”

  “Right. I can shout, too.”

  “You must balance her behavior. I believe this will be a pivotal moment. Correction. I hope it will be a pivotal moment. We would all benefit if the current stalemate is ended positively.”

  “Balance, balance, balance.”

  I heard Bartholomew’s voice: “This is where we’re going. Here. No, here!”

  “Chek-ooo!” I said. The queen and a worker entered and stopped. “Come in!” I said, waving her over. Bartholomew shooed her from behind, holding a palm-leaf umbrella, and she moved closer, the worker following. Even from across the room I could see that the worker was sickly and a bit blind, now that Marie had taught me what to look for.

  Curls looked around.

  Bartholomew sat down at the table with a bit of show to demonstrate how we did things in the Meeting House. She took a few steps closer. “She insisted on the worker. That’s what took so long.”

  “No problem.” I picked up a slate and brush. “We propose-you friendship. We will talk-us of future. I be-me Lucille” (I wrote as phonetically as I could) “and I be-me leader of city.” I turned to Bartholomew. I wasn’t good at writing. “Is the grammar right? The imperative?”

  “Almost.” He corrected a word. The queen leaned her head over to look. I remained sitting, eye level with her big body, within reach of her four-fingered, clawed hands.

  “Well?” I said to her. “Tell me what you think.” I pushed writing materials toward her. She stared at them. She made a sound that seemed to be disagreement.

  I stood up. “Hell, we can’t wait forever, you and us. We have to get something going here.” I gestured at the brush, slate, and ink pot again, and as queenly as I could, I said, “Write something, damn you. You’re alone, you don’t have to argue with the other queens, just with me.”

  She looked at the writing materials suspiciously. She picked up the brush like an unfamiliar tool, testing how to hold it in her four fingers, two of them small and opposed, two straight but jointed like human fingers. A stiff line of flesh, sort of like a fingernail, covered the backs of her fingers. The cuticles alongside them had pulled away in some places and had fresh scabs. She began to write slowly and formed the letters shakily, as if she’d never written much.

  “You steal-us things.” Translation: We’d taken all their possessions. True.

  “Write this,” I told Bartholomew—he could write faster and better than me. “We won’t keep them. You know we want friendship, not fighting. We can share the city.”

  She read the words and muttered something, then settled onto a bench, legs underneath her body, sitting. The worker sat on the floor next to her, very close.

  “You perhaps no need-you friend,” she wrote. I swear she wrote the word “friend” with disdain.

  Stevland answered. “No, we have-us no need. No need be-it art. Our art be-us befriend-you.” It was a play on words, since art and need were spelled almost the same. Bartholomew pointed at Stevland’s stem. Curls looked and said something like “Eep!” She nodded and swiveled her head. Teeth ground in her throat. The worker wiggled closer to her.

  In Glassmade, he continued: “I be-me Stevland. Your ancestors knew me. I be-me pleased perhaps to address you.” Translation: What’s your name? She pointed to him and looked at me, and started to say something, but stopped.

  I nodded. “Stevland,” I said, pointing. “Lucille. Bartholomew.” I pointed at her. She said something like “See-You.” That’s what I repeated, anyway.

  “You chose intelligence to share-us city,” Stevland wrote. “You be-you sick. Your sisters be-them blind. Your children tremble of type of hunger. We will feed you. We will make you healthy.”

  She snorted. With her thin, scabby fingers, she dipped the brush in ink and began to write, maybe the word “we,” but she crossed it out and wrote again, slowly, constructing the word with effort: “Slaves.”

  I took a brush and wrote, “No. Never slaves.” But why? I looked at Bartholomew. “Explain the law for her.”

  “Our writings,” Bartholomew wrote in Glassmade and read out loud in Pacifist “order us to do equality. No slaves. Would you like to read our books?” He got up and grabbed the original copy of our Constitution from a table where it stood framed under glass and set it in front of her. “I can translate for you.” She leaned forward to eye it.

  Nye entered carrying a tray. I wasn’t expecting that. It was heaped with food.

  “Warmth and sunshine, Nye,” Stevland said in Glassmade. “I ask-Nye bring-us food.”

  “You return-us weapons,” she wrote, apparently ignoring Nye.

  I thought about how to explain, but Stevland beat me to it: “Weapons be-they with equality, you will understand, because we also believe in caution, and you try to kill us.”

  “Us. You be-you plant,” she wrote, and said it aloud. I thought I understood the screech for “be.”

  “I be-me equal,” Stevland said.

  She snorted again as Nye laid out rainbow fruit, nut spread, meat, roasted vegetables, and reddog tea. There’s lots of vitamin C in reddog tea.

  I showed the way—I hadn’t had breakfast and I was hungry. She hesitated, but soon was delicately lapping up tea from a little bowl. Nye sat next to the worker and smiled at it, offering it a plate of vegetables. Grayish streaks marked its eyes, and creased scars glowed red in its furless inner elbows. Its claws grew small and curled, like a fingernail after you smack it and it grows back. I explained what this meant to Nye.

  He stared at the floor for such a long time that See-You noticed. Finally he looked at the worker again. “Stevland, tell me what to feed them and I’ll make it.”

  “Ask them what they wish to eat, and I will help you make it healthy. They will eat more if we offer food they consider desirable.”

  Bartholomew set down his plate, picked up a slate, and relayed Nye’s questions to See-You. More sweets? More salt? Roasted onions? Meat? What do Glassmaker children like? The questions seemed to annoy her.

  “We w
ant-us clothes.”

  “Hey,” I said. “We were waiting for you to ask for them.” I got up and opened a chest alongside the wall and hauled out blankets. “Just grab yours.”

  Instead, she picked up a plate of roasted deer crab meat, sniffed it deeply, then stared at it. After a moment I realized: Glassmade words for different foods decorated the rim. She said something quietly. The air seemed a little sweeter. Some smell-word?

  She took up a stylus. “Perhaps we not all agree-us.”

  “That’s tricky grammar,” Bartholomew said. “Perhaps we won’t all agree among ourselves, she said. That is, the queens will argue, as usual. And that gives us an interesting situation. Or rather, highlights the existing situation. We’ve seen them fight among themselves. Do we need to treat them all the same? Or do we divide and conquer?”

  “Tell her that those who agree get not just clothes and food, they get shelter.” Bartholomew looked at me with an eyebrow raised. “Well, I said aggressive, right? I mean that. Cooperate and get a house. Look at that rain.” I held up a blanket. “Is this yours, See-You? Kak? House, blanket, shelter, food! We’ll even let you work. Know someone who wants to be a baker? How about this blanket? Yes? Tseee! Here it is.” I came over and, trying to act like it was a great honor—and it was—I draped the gray-green blanket over her body.

  A pivotal moment.

  Bartholomew began writing.

  “I want-us house,” she answered before he could finish.

  Cedar ran in, dripping. “I hear she’s talking!”

  I decided to assume that she’d like the new aggressive friendship policy, even though she probably wouldn’t. She threw her raincoat on a rack by the door, strutted over like a fippmaster asserting status, and began to read over my shoulder.