Semiosis Read online

  “Attract animals,” I say. “Kill for blood.” I show the alarm and attack smells. Irises are like tulips in intelligence, but unalike in temperament, so they snatch up the molecules, eager to make more, eager to hunt and kill.

  “Good!” “Good!” “Good!” “Good!”

  “Also this,” and I pass on Bellona’s identity scent in quantity because irises cannot make a such a complex oil quickly enough.

  The eagles run toward the city, now only a kilometer away, but I see them slow to sniff, look around with suspicion, and listen to the din from the city. One drums. Another answers. They slink on, cautiously.

  I move the scent westward. Human patrols have already opened the gates. I begin to emit attack scent outside the gate. The orphans follow, believing they are about to kill more humans.

  At the last minute, Bellona realizes that they are being expelled from the city that she meant to take over. She organizes a final stand, screeching commands and scents, and many of the orphans near her turn around. They mass near Tatiana’s former office, preparing to charge.

  But the humans are prepared. Three archers have scaled my trunks and hidden in my branches, and now they launch arrows.

  “Aim for Bellona,” Carl yells.

  They do, and she is a large target. A hail of arrows flies in her direction. One arrow glances off her side, another sinks into her shoulder. A major waving a pitchfork rushes forward, but stumbles when an arrow hits its rear haunch.

  Piotr has approached closely on foot, a foolhardy act, but he knows the terrain, crouches at the corner of a house, and patiently takes aim. His arrow lands in Bellona’s eye.

  The orphans watch her fall, and while they are immobilized by shock, two more fall. The scent of flee fills the air, and they dash out of the city.

  Piotr is among the first to rush to shut the gates. A cheer rises from the gate and spreads throughout the city.

  I wait for a several minutes, wishing I could cheer with them, before I have the girl singer warn about the eagles.

  “Eagles coming from the south, looking for food.”

  Archers return to the walls with sad, tired faces.

  Carl shouts, “They’ll eat the orphans.” The cheer is ecstatic.

  The cries of an orphan who has been lured into the irises attract others. Plaid Blanket rushes in, then realizes that it has rushed into a trap and desperately shrieks a warning before it falls. The remaining orphans huddle, uncertain.

  The eagles arrive. They smell the fresh blood of the iris patch, and the eagle pack is larger than I had thought. They slip through the pineapple field unnoticed until they attack.

  The night hides much slaughter. Glassmakers are fast and intelligent, but eagles are the superior predator. Their drumming tells us of their success. They light a fire, and I observe how they kill at their leisure. Compared to the orphan methods, it is decent and fast.

  At sunrise, the eagles dance and drum, jubilant, around butchered corpses. Monte has slipped off to the lion pack. Its members seem relieved to be asked to challenge the eagles, and its males bound toward them, the females close behind. They stand in a line, howling and growling and tearing at the dirt with their claws.

  The eagles size up the threat and seem unimpressed. Then thirty screaming archers run out to stand alongside the lions. The entire population of the city is on the walls, chanting. A few eagles step backward. An archer fires and hits an eagle, not a clean hit, not a mortal injury, but the eagles take note and gibber at each other. One drums. None answer. Then, as if with one mind, they turn and grab all the meat they can, watching the Pacifists and lions over their shoulders, and sprint west toward the nearest mountains.

  They are wise enough to know they have exhausted the easy hunting possibilities. But they are intelligent enough to remember where they found easy hunting. They will be back eventually.

  In the light of day, Pacifists assess the human death and damage. They find only one surviving orphan, a cowering worker.

  Twenty-one humans are dead, many of them children, at least fifty are injured, some gravely, and there is much property destruction. Cedar is among the injured. She is uncharacteristically quiet.

  It is clear that I killed the orphans, and that humans alone could not have done it. They mourn their losses and they thank me. The female Glassmakers thank me.

  Plants rejoice, too, and not just the irises.

  “Smart work,” says the locustwood. “You bamboozled the pest animals to death.”

  “Good riddance,” pineapples say. “There’s no need for bad animals.”

  The oranges are silent.

  The orphans made themselves expendable, but this is not at all what I wanted. Most of the Glassmakers are dead. Far too many humans are dead, each one with a name, each one a treasure, and I will miss Lucille the most. She said moderators can do terrible things whether acting rightly or wrongly, and I now understand.

  I am the ultimate cause of the situation. I acted out of selfishness. I wanted Glassmakers to join us Pacifists and help us, and I ignored my doubts. I wanted more service animals so that the city would prosper, so that someday we could go to the stars. Instead, I could not control the situation. I failed my animals and myself.

  Rainbow bamboo is made to create slaughter. When the time came, I could kill as efficiently as my ancestors. Like all plants, I am naturally aggressive. But unlike a tulip or a snow vine, I am intelligent. I am the biggest and most powerful creature on Pax, and the most dangerous, and I have made mistakes I cannot rectify.

  But I meant well. I meant greater happiness for all. I meant to create a new and different and better life. I thought I would not repeat the past.

  I failed.

  BARTHOLOMEW

  YEAR 107–GENERATION 5

  A moderator may resign at any time by giving written notice to the Committee. A moderator may be removed by a two-thirds vote of the entire Committee at a meeting at which not less than three-fourths of the entire Committee is present.

  —from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pax

  “Water and sunshine,” I said, and made myself comfortable, physically, at least, in the chair in the greenhouse. Would Stevland answer? He’d hardly spoken since the attack three days earlier, and if he didn’t answer, then I’d have to do what I could by myself to solve his situation, and we all had enough to do already. He ought to be more considerate. And yet we who were functional had to protect the shattered.

  I arranged my books and papers. Sunlight sparkled on the broken edges of the glass block dome overhead—not a big hole, but enough to change the greenhouse into a new and discomforting place. Outside, broken glass and crockery still lay in corners of the streets and gardens, and several houses were burned-out shells reeking of smoke. The clinic’s beds were full.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the somber voices in the street, including the chortles and whistles of Glassmade. Only three days ago, destruction had filled the city. We’d since buried the dead and resumed our lives as best we could, but we still wore old clothes for mourning. Blood stained the paving stones. It would take years to get back to normal.

  Outside, a Glassmaker screeched. For a moment I was back in that night, with Bellona shouting orders, majors rushing toward me, and Lucille pleading.… Not again. I snapped my eyes open. I had work to do.

  I hadn’t wanted to take the job as Stevland’s advocate, but someone needed to defend him in the coming legal procedure and I was most suited to do it. I wanted to defeat Cedar more than anyone. And he needed to collaborate, to talk to me.

  I took a deep breath to tell him so, then remembered Tatiana’s habit—may she sleep soundly—of never speaking quickly. Stevland knew why I was there. But he hadn’t even given a eulogy at Lucille’s funeral, a dereliction of duty, pure and simple. Most people had forgiven him, since he had saved the city, after all—although not by himself. He still did his job at the clinic and provided minimal reports at the nightly Committee meetings, and perhaps he w
as too exhausted or sorrowful to do more. Grief had brought down a number of people, but he was the moderator, and we needed him.

  I rehearsed a few words to scold him. As the counselors said, talking helped, and so did getting on with life. Busy and duty-filled days, that’s what I strove for, and as a woodworker I had plenty to repair. Other people could dissolve their evenings in truffle or lotus root, lie in bed unable to move, or wander at night unable to sleep, weeping and jumping at nothing. No sense scolding, though. We were all suffering.

  I looked at the Constitution again. It was a flawed document, yet I was going to have to make it work. I imagined myself at the Committee meeting that night: “Speaking for Stevland…” What would I say? Enough waiting.

  “Obviously,” I began, willing to talk to myself if I had to, “we have no real precedents for removing a moderator. The details involving Vera are inapplicable—”

  He interrupted: “Vera was not voted out.”

  What did he know about that? For the past year, I had been thinking of writing a history of Pax as my best so we would understand where we had been and where we were going. But if anyone else had read the old record books, they never talked about it, and neither did I. Sylvia’s revolt had been quite different from a vote, and the accepted history much more than a lie. But I could question Stevland about that another day. “That’s not an issue now. Our concern—”

  “I will resign. I will plead guilty and resign.”

  “No, you won’t.” Grief had unhinged everyone, and I was getting tired of it. Envious of it. But I wasn’t about to hand Cedar a victory.

  “You cannot tell me what to do,” he said.

  “I can tell you what you ought to do. First, we don’t know what the exact charges are. Second, I believe you are incompetent to enter a plea.”

  After a moment, he wrote, “Then I am incompetent to be moderator also.”

  “An interesting paradox. But irrelevant, at least for me. Cedar wants you voted out. My job is to be your advocate throughout the process. Period. I believe you saved us from disaster. I believe Cedar used the attack to—”

  “I caused the disaster, and many humans and Glassmakers and plants and animals died because of me. My error killed your son because I was unable to provide a warning.”

  “Orphans killed my son. You saved my life and the lives of many people.” Words began to appear on his stem. “I am not going to debate your resignation.” And I wasn’t going to relive that night through yet another pointless debate.

  “Then there is nothing to discuss.”

  “Still, I have things to advise you on, and you have choices to make. At this point, we must agree to procedure, which the Constitution doesn’t give us, unfortunately. We owe it to Pax to set the best precedent we can.”

  No response.

  “So, on your behalf, I will call for a step-by-step process. We’ll want a specific written complaint from Cedar that will be reviewed by the Committee. We may wish to ask for a hearing or a trial. Anything you say to me will be held in strictest confidence. I will give you the best advice I can.”

  “However, you will not follow my instructions.”

  “I’m your advocate, not your servant. Do you agree to insisting on a thorough process?”

  “If it is good for Pax.”

  “Good. I’ll speak on your behalf at the Committee meeting tonight.” I began to gather up my papers, since I had repair work to get to and then a visit with my grandchildren.

  “The orange trees must be cut down,” he said. “The entire grove.”

  “Yes. We’ve been busy, but we haven’t forgotten. We ought to use the wood to make a memorial, but we can’t decide how. Do you have any suggestions?”

  No response.

  I stood up. “Until the Committee meeting tonight. Water and sunshine.”

  He didn’t answer with, “Warmth and food.” Should I have felt miffed or worried?

  * * *

  As a little boy, one day I was stamping on rainbow bamboo shoots—for no good reason, just a little-boy antic, destroying things because it was possible. Because at that age almost anything was a novelty. Because at that age, stamping on a plant seemed like an appropriate way for me to assert mastery over my environment.

  Sylvia saw me and picked me up. Her face, the same age then as mine now, at the time impressed me as unimaginably old, and it was unimaginably sad.

  “The rainbow bamboo is our friend,” she said. “Many plants are our friends, but this is our special friend. Did you know it can talk to us?”

  I had noticed a fuss about it. I nodded, too intimidated to talk.

  “What do you suppose it might say?” She set me down and pretended to stamp on my foot. “Oh, no, you’re stamping on me! You have to think about what you do. You can hurt your friends and not mean to. We all have to help each other. If we hurt each other, we hurt ourselves, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I blubbered.

  “We should tell the bamboo that,” she said, and led me to the front gate, where the leaves on the tall stalks were still a rainbow of colors, stalks that loomed over me like giants, and I knew that the bamboo filled the city and much of the land around it. I blubbered again that I was sorry, wondering how something so small—me—could be important to something so big. It was as if I took a personal interest in every caterpillar in the fields.

  And yet Sylvia seemed certain the bamboo was personally interested in me, thus I believed that must somehow be true, and I also stopped stepping on caterpillars intentionally because they were good for the dirt, so they were our friends, too. Now Stevland and I were equal citizens under the Constitution. The little boy, now a man, was defending him the way Sylvia had.

  But now I knew why Sylvia’s face had been so sad, and it had nothing to do with Stevland.

  As for me, how could I understand Cedar’s refusal to rescue Lucille and Marie? Combative, smug, unreasonable—that was Cedar, and it wasn’t the Pax way. I needed to defeat her the Pax way: peaceful, proper, reasonable—and soon.

  * * *

  Cedar hadn’t arrived at the Meeting House when the Committee meeting began, but we had a lot to handle before her part of the agenda, anyway.

  The human co-moderator presided at meetings even in normal times. Violet, the head of the Philosopher’s Club, had volunteered for the job—a capricious, youngish Green, a farmer with a too-delicate jaw overwhelmed by heavy dyed-green eyebrows, and her best was raising uncommon cacti. She kept a garden of them tethered around the main plaza, sometimes arranged by color, shape, size, age, or species, according to whim, which changed often. Most of the cacti had survived the attack.

  If it weren’t for defending Stevland, I would have volunteered to preside. I had coached Violet on what to expect from me so she could handle that part of the meeting adequately. At least she couldn’t blame me if things went wrong.

  I sat at the Committee table near Stevland, ready to speak for him. See-You sat on a bench at the side of the room, with Nye explaining the proceedings. Some people thought she should already have a seat on the Committee, sidestepping everything involved in citizenship, but the Constitution didn’t matter to everyone. She would deserve the seat eventually, if Glassmakers indeed shared the Commonwealth’s goals, and likely they did, but matters had to be handled correctly. Stevland had proven himself over generations.

  Violet opened the meeting. “Things are getting back to normal, aren’t they? That’s what we need.” But she fidgeted with her collar, which wasn’t normal.

  And no one chatted during the opening, they sat grimly silent. Usually, a few citizens always came with concerns or complaints about their work group assignment or procedure or size, but I knew the Beadies had come to see Cedar lodge her complaint. Yet the Meeting House had room to spare because most people had too much work to do or didn’t have the emotional energy to sit through a contentious meeting, and some Green generation members had encouraged abstention to protest Cedar’s complaint. That was norm
al, the split between Greens and Beadies, and as a Green myself, I would have just as soon been elsewhere.

  Lumberjack report: Firewood split and ready for the next three days. “Cutting down those orange trees tomorrow,” the old senior lumberjack said. “The team is taking volunteers.”

  “Who has time?” someone whispered.

  “It’s too bad Harry died,” Violet said, ignoring the whisper. “He could make a fitting memorial. Although, I don’t know, do you think it ought to be with orange wood? It seems kind of spiteful.”

  “Spite is just fine,” a Beadie said.

  “It’s not the Pax way,” a Green answered.

  “Now, let’s be nice,” Violet scolded.

  “I thought you wanted normal,” Hathor said, and someone chuckled.

  People muttered. Cedar had supporters, and they were as detestable as she was.

  The fippmaster reported: Two kat teams available tomorrow. One team could help with the orange trees—if there was a kat task, and there was, holes to be dug.

  The cooks reported: Glassmaker and human dietary requirements overlapped enough to cause minimal problems. “Stewed trilobites tomorrow because the flood has made it easy to gather a lot, so come with an appetite.”

  “That would be normal,” Hathor joked, since who really liked trilobites?

  More mutters, and then people shushed the mutterers because at least there would be plenty, and someone said, “I’m still too upset to eat anything.”

  More reports: Injuries mending, some crops replanted, urgent repairs under way, Glassmakers joining work teams, an uneven march toward recovery, but Stevland remained abnormally mute, which Violet ignored.

  Still no Cedar.

  “And how are the Glassmakers getting along?” Violet asked with a strange smile. See-You apparently knew the question was coming, for without waiting for Nye to translate, she whistled and kakked a report, and something she said reminded me of queens arguing that long night in the Meeting House, but their voices couldn’t drown out the screams from outside, and my eyes had filled with tears. From fear? Or from a horrible smell the Glassmakers were giving off, the smell of fear, and we were all terrified, but I had to pretend I was not. I had to …