Semiosis Read online

  I had to pay attention. I was in the Meeting House, but it was a different night now, and I wasn’t terrified anymore. But I was tired, very tired.

  “We would like to resume language classes,” Nye was repeating for See-You. “We wish to become part of the city as quickly as possible.” A few people nodded. Soon, their voices might become a normal sound, and I wished for that perhaps more than Violet did.

  And then Cedar limped in and took a seat toward the front, clutching a piece of paper. She whispered to Hathor and Forrest, the Generation 4 twins. I probably could have overheard if everyone else wasn’t whispering—about her. “What right does she have?” “It’s about time.” “Be brave!” And: “She doesn’t look well.” That was true. And: “But what about Stevland?”

  Cedar had an odd look on her face, maybe anger, maybe sadness, maybe even fear. Or pain. Orphans had attacked her with shredders for rayon working, making tatters of her skin. As mourning clothes she wore a loose, threadbare dress instead of her usual slacks and sleeveless shirts, a ragged scarf around her head that covered bandages, and lots of strings of beads—battered, broken, discolored, some singed by fire.

  Violet tapped her fingernails on the table and frowned. Amazingly, the whispering died down. “Any other reports?”

  A few: hunters, bakers, children’s activities, assessments of the damage from the spring floods, and the weather forecast. Finally, it was time for new business. Violet recognized Cedar, who stood.

  “I propose that Stevland should be voted out as co-moderator,” she nearly whispered. She was not the same Cedar of three days ago, when she had said that there were no good Glassmakers, that she ought to be head of our defense, that we needed to control Stevland. We knew how to fight and we ought to fight!…

  I shook my head to clear it.

  “I have a formal complaint. Violet said to bring one.” She began reading stiffly:

  “Stevland should be removed from office immediately. He is not in sympathy with the spirit of our Commonwealth. He has different goals for Pax. He does not understand human culture. He is a parasite on us, and mutualism is a lie. He can control us with drugs, and he does, because he believes he is superior to us, and he does not trust us. He lies, and he keeps secrets.” She paused, teeth clenched. “He is timid and patient because he is rooted in one spot. His mistakes cost us lives and livelihood. He is too powerful to be controlled. He should be removed from office and have his citizenship revoked.”

  She looked around, eyes narrowed. Stevland’s stem showed nothing. No one said anything, but the looks being exchanged between people debated the issue in depth. For some, she was a true fighter. For others, a nuisance or worse.

  I stood, wanting to say that the Constitution did not allow for the revocation of citizenship, that her complaints were self-contradictory and a waste of time when we had important things to do, and most of all she was blaming Stevland for her own misconduct. When he was burning, she had said that there was lots of Stevland, as if hurting him didn’t matter, and as for Lucille and Marie …

  With forced calm, I said, “I can speak for Stevland. He would like the opportunity to make a formal rebuttal and would like both the complaint and his response to be evaluated by the Committee and by the people of Pax. This complaint deserves the utmost deliberation. This won’t be quick or easy, and we urge the Committee to act without haste.”

  I noticed that See-You had left the room. When? Why?

  “He wants to waste time,” Cedar said. “We need Stevland out now. He’s not fit to be moderator. He should resign and save us a lot of trouble.”

  “But he’s not doing anything,” the old hunter Orion said, waving at the blank talking stem. “There’s no reason to worry about something that’s nothing.”

  “How do you know what he’s doing?” she said. “And the Glassmakers, they don’t belong here. They tried to kill us and they’ll try again, and they’re eating our best food. We should throw them out.” A few Beadies applauded. It was shameful.

  Daisy, thank goodness, exploded. “Throw them out?” She stood, arms outstretched, pleading. “That would be tragic, and after so much tragedy, how could we bear more? Stevland is so exhausted by what happened he can hardly endure to speak.” She started crying, as usual, to add dramatic effect. “The Glassmakers mustn’t be sent away. We’ve worked so hard for peace and now we have it.”

  “Cedar was right about the Glassmakers,” a Beadie said.

  “Just about the orphans,” a Green answered, “and they’re all dead now.”

  Violet should have called for order, but she just sat there looking expectant. A wind had begun blowing outside, then developed into a faint chant, filled with whistles and buzzes. The sounds of Glassmade. What were they doing? Out in the streets again, scurrying through them like orphans preparing to attack? But the queens wanted peace, and they were smart enough to know they couldn’t survive without us. We could trust the queens. But what were they doing?

  Daisy didn’t seem to have noticed the noise. “Oh, how can Cedar even think of such a thing? These are our friends!”

  “They’re not citizens,” Cedar answered, “so we can do what we want.”

  Orion tilted his head, then tapped Carl on the shoulder and made some hand gestures that hunters used to communicate. Nye and Violet exchanged little smiles. Others began to listen to the chant.

  Cedar wasn’t listening. She said: “Peace! Talk! People like you are going to drag this whole process out until something awful happens again. ‘Let’s domesticate them!’ And look what happened.”

  The sound outside grew louder, became a tune, and split into harmony.

  “Glassmakers,” Orion announced.

  They were singing, but nothing like the horrible songs they had used to harass us. This was a sweet lullaby by old Uncle Higgins. It surrounded the Meeting House, one part of the harmony on the west side, another at the north addition, constantly moving and changing.

  Cedar looked wild-eyed from one side of the room to the other. Violet had closed her eyes with eyebrows raised like they were riding a dream. Nye frowned, concentrating.

  The melody split again into more harmonies and grew louder, the lullaby about a gentle snowfall that had soothed us all as children, but it reminded me of drums and singing at night, of trying to sleep during the siege and, because the Glassmaker noise was keeping me awake, worrying hour after hour about how much worse things could get.…

  But I was awake, in the Meeting House. I had clutched my pen so hard that the reed tip was broken.

  The song ended the reverse of the way it had begun, with harmonies coalescing and regrouping, and then the melody faded away into the wind.

  “That was beautiful,” Violet said. Cedar stared at the floor. Hathor and Forrest nudged each other, lips pursed. Orion sat still and smiled. I inspected a scratch on my finger from a reed splinter.

  The Glassmakers walked in, the queens leading their families up the center aisle. “That was beautiful,” Violet repeated.

  Everyone applauded—except Cedar and her followers, of course. Stevland remained blank. The queens knelt on all four legs and lowered their heads, and their families repeated the gesture. The air smelled like roses.

  Cedar asked, “What was that about?”

  “Now, Cedar,” Daisy said. She was well past her crying spell.

  “The Glassmakers sing to honor our dead,” Nye announced. “The harmony divides and moves apart to indicate lives leaving us, and then they join to show that the lives become treasured memories. They offer their condolences and their thanks for—for everything, for their chance to live in the city again.”

  “That was beautiful,” Violet repeated again. “On behalf of all of us, thank you. And thank you, Nye.” She looked around. “So, is there anything else? I don’t think so.”

  “My complaint,” Cedar said. “But you won’t consider it. We have to treat Stevland nicely, we have to humor him, we have to defer to him because—”


  “Because without him we have about as much chance to survive as the Glassmakers did,” Daisy snapped. “Oh, why can’t you see that?”

  Violet looked around the table. “The Committee will accept the complaint, right?” No objections. Technically—unfortunately—none were possible. She looked at Stevland’s stem, still blank, and she said something else, but I couldn’t hear her over the din of voices, everyone with something to say about the meeting, the music, or Stevland. The Glassmaker song hadn’t changed many minds.

  * * *

  I visited Stevland the next morning, bringing reddog tea, bread, and a piece of his fruit, feeling achy although I had slept well, or at least I thought I had slept well. He was speaking before I had time to sit down.

  “I have spent significant time over the past few days meditating, which was why I have been quiet. I have tried to imitate human existence by isolating groves to experience your viewpoint, although isolating my viewpoint in my humor root offered insights of doubtful utility.”

  “I’m glad that you’re feeling better.” It was about time he started talking.

  “The world offers many surprises when one is a small individual, because concentrated awareness is highly sensual. The Glassmakers’ music last night caused emotional changes for my isolated grove. How did you react?”

  “I … remembered other music.” Counselors had told us that grief caused unstable emotions.

  “Beauty is a link among Glassmakers, humans, and myself. The beauty of their architecture and music shows that we regard the world more alike than unalike. These similarities make our mutualism a joy and a satisfaction.”

  I looked for a pen and paper. “Let me make a note of that for our reply.”

  “We must participate in each other’s beauty. I will make a request of the Committee. During the orphan attack, I identified a need to make sounds of warning. I would like a voice, perhaps even the ability to sing.”

  A singing plant.

  “My humor root suggests that I am becoming more like an animal.”

  And if he were burning again, he could scream. I tried not to imagine it.

  “You were right not to allow me to resign. The complaint says that I am patient and timid because I am rooted to one spot, but I can act aggressively. Moreover, I am a dominant species, and it is my nature to dominate. Each of us needs to be what we are, perhaps even be more of what we are. If we are true to ourselves, we will help our best natures flourish.”

  The bakers had boasted that the morning bread had been made by the Glassmaker apprentice start to finish. I bit into it, and it could not have been more tender. “Does this mean you won’t resign?” That was a relief. A big change. Troubling, actually, because he had changed so fast.

  “I was wrong to wish to resign, as Cedar’s complaint has helped me see clearly. I owe the citizens of Pax my best. She has physical and psychological injuries, but not scarlet fever brain disease. I checked while she was being treated in the clinic. Cedar can be befriended if I apply mutualism with sufficient rigor.”

  “I don’t think she wants to be your friend. And I think that she’s a serious problem. She has followers.”

  “Befriending her does not mean emotional compatibility, it means removing her necessity to fight. She is a valuable member of Pax, and we must redirect her aggression to a suitable target, such as an ecological threat. She has provided leadership at decisive moments, despite her recent failures.”

  “You know, your mood has changed a lot since yesterday.”

  “I have isolated my emotional imbalances in particular groves, so each grove can work toward balance, leaving my major operational roots more able to deal with immediate problems. One imbalance wishes the orphan attack had not happened at all, so I have centered it in the roots of the grove that the orphans burned, where the reality is most undeniable. Does that seem reasonable?”

  “I suppose,” I said, but I couldn’t parcel out feelings here and there. I had learned that long ago.

  “However, I am still sorrowful. Higgins sang a song about grief ever-green. It is a rich metaphor. When your wife was killed by coral, was it like losing an arm or an eye?”

  I didn’t want to talk about that. But he needed help, and that was my job. “Yes. More than an arm or eye. I lost decades of time, our future together.”

  “Have you not grown another, correction, healed, since as an animal you cannot grow a lost body part?”

  I had been at the top of the bluff when the boat came back from the coral plains, the boat Bess had taken in a trip upriver. Her traveling team lifted her out of the boat, her stiff corpse like a log wrapped in her blanket, and at a glance I knew what had happened, and I turned and ran back into the city, everything void. “No, I merely adapted. I can’t replace her.”

  “Please elaborate about replacement.”

  I thought I had made myself clear. “Some people change partners like … like bats changing roosts, one is as good as another, but Bess—I can’t replace her. I don’t want to replace her. No one could be like her. What I did was continue to love her even though she isn’t here.”

  After several moments, he said:

  “We plants keep the venatoris coral out of our forest to protect you, but we cannot control the plains. I am sorry that Bess died. Others had esteemed her for her kindness, and observing her I learned much about the idea. It may be that Cedar wants to keep an enemy the way you want to keep Bess. But by my balance, it is better to maintain love than hate. Is it easier?”

  “Yes.” Bess had kissed me and left, and the next time I saw her face, she was in a funeral basket, and for a time I had thought I had lived a day too long, not realizing how much more I would love her after losing her. During Lucille’s funeral, for the first time I felt glad I had not traveled upriver with Bess and seen her die. “Yes, she was kind. Thank you.”

  But he was wrong about Cedar. An enemy kept the blame off her, and that was why she wanted one.

  I looked at the angle of the sunshine on the roof. “I should go to help with the orange trees. Water and sunshine.”

  “They are enemy trees. I am sorry for more killing, but I hope this will be the end of slaughter. The locustwood will help. Warmth and food.”

  * * *

  Erasmus, the senior lumberjack, sized up the volunteer work team, about twenty of us plus a dozen kats playing leapfrog while they waited, a large team considering how much else needed to be done, but a small one considering how much people hated the orange trees. Erasmus was Generation 4, tough and square as a brick, although a wispy beard and white fringe of hair somehow made him look frail.

  He nodded in approval and turned to size up the orange trees: tangles of slim, supple trunks, each unable to hold much weight, so every branch sent down a dangling root that eventually became another trunk. Big green leaves veined in black made the trees look dark and hulking, and thorns like arrowheads studded the trunks and branches.

  Ugly trees. Guilty trees. Another chance to fight the orphans and win, using a normal, everyday Pax work team. An emotionally charged work team. A team ready to finish the destruction that the orphans had started. One woman already sniffled tears.

  “It’s like this,” Erasmus said. “Suppose we start cutting at one side and work our way through. The tree’ll tip and fall on the logger. We have to chop branches as well as trunks, easier to say than do because of the thorns. We’ll need ladders. That’s the reason we don’t harvest them often. Locustwood, now there’s a tree that’s a pleasure to cut down. Cooperative, too.”

  “Why don’t we set fire to them?” said Fabio’s father, a man deep in his suffering, axe in hand, fondling it, dreaming of worse things to do. He turned to me. “They got your son, too. How about it?”

  “I’m only here for justice,” I said. Fire … I was trying not to remember fire.

  “Fire,” Erasmus said. “Not a bad idea, and I like the sentiment. The thing is, the fire would hurt other trees, like that ponytail over there next to th
e oranges, those pines, even these friendly little palms. No, wouldn’t be right. Good thinking, though.”

  People nodded. It wouldn’t be the Pax way.

  Piotr stood next to me. The downy hairs on his upper lip had darkened in the last year. He had loved Lucille and he would have been blind not to, the only grown woman in Generation 7. She had been his future, and she had died before his eyes. Could he heal, or could he replace her? If I talked about Bess, would he understand?

  “Did you paint your face green to be like Lucille’s?” I asked.

  He looked away, fumbling with something in his pockets. “No.” Then, “Yes,” in a louder but not stronger voice on the edge of a squeak.

  “That’s a nice gesture,” I said. He nodded and tried to smile and failed utterly.

  Maybe we could have saved Lucille. Did he need to know that? Cedar had refused to act, but then Pacifists arrived, fought, and almost won. Almost. If the fighting had started a minute earlier, maybe … No. The orphans already had the acetone, they already had a plan to burn the women to distract us.

  But Cedar hadn’t known that. Could I forgive her? Would that be good for Pax? Would that be just?

  Piotr was suddenly hugging me. “Take care of yourself,” he said, as if I were the one needing care. He turned and left down a path, whistling in something like Glassmade, and two Glassmaker majors followed him. They’d bring back locustwood saplings to plant in place of the oranges, and the locustwoods would hunt and kill any remaining orange tree roots.

  We fetched ladders and got to work, one tree at a time. I held a ladder for Fabio’s father and tried to hold it steady, but he chopped wildly, long swings with more force than precision, almost knocking himself off the ladder, though he didn’t seem to notice. He couldn’t notice. He was attacking in his own private battle, and how could I not sympathize with the loss of a son? Tears or sweat filled the fine lines around his eyes. I kept my feet planted firmly, my eyes on his swinging arm to know when to tense, listening to the rhythm of other axes and the crunch and crackle of live wood yielding to steady assault, and to sniffs and sobs and relentless progress making way for good trees.