Semiosis Read online

  “Ephedrine is an alkaloid, too,” said Blas, the medic, another child speaking up, but he was apologetic, staring at the ground. “It’s what keeps some of you breathing.”

  “The city is there,” I said. “The bamboo has fruit.”

  Vera’s wrinkles deepened into valleys. “This is outrageous. You broke the covenant, and now you bring all sorts of false charges. We need to set things right before we continue. But no more talk about this before the next meeting. It’s divisive, and we need to put our energies into productive work. And I want everything that Sylvia and Julian brought back analyzed.”

  “I can do that,” Octavo rasped. Bryan looked disappointed. I felt frustrated but I hid it. I’d never convince the parents but I knew that a few children already agreed with me. As we walked back to the lodges, I got some gentle pats of support.

  “I will give these things a real analysis,” Octavo said when he came to my room, huffing and wheezing. I doubted it because he knew they had killed Julian and he hadn’t done anything. I stared at the fruit, dying to nibble it, to feel the dried flesh become alive and sweet and rich in my mouth. “More fruit,” he said. “Good.”

  “I have glass maker bones.” I watched to see how he’d react.

  “Bones … Very good.” But he wasn’t pleased or surprised.

  “You knew about the city.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “I can analyze these,” he said, and shuffled away. Liar. But I didn’t think he liked lying. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t keep lying.

  The methane fermenters in the power units of the weeding robots somehow broke down the next morning, which was cold and rainy, so Nicoletta was too busy fixing them to have time to examine the satellite maps because the crops came first. I was sent to fix the roofs on the gift center and Cynthia met me there.

  “We can’t even talk about it,” she said.

  “So don’t,” I said. “Don’t talk about anything.”

  That evening, seven of us children ate dinner in silence. Some of the grandchildren thought it was a game and joined in. Higgins tried to hush Vera as she talked about the weather and new problems with the medical equipment, which meant more unexpected work for Nicoletta and delays for Octavo’s testing, since there wasn’t enough equipment to investigate our surroundings and care for Ansel’s perforated ulcer, Terrell’s this, someone’s that, and Bryan’s malingering joint trouble. With every sentence, Higgins shook his head, no no no! Other grandchildren joined in. Vera opened her mouth and a half-dozen little heads wagged.

  Bryan ran out of patience by the next morning. “You’re addicted to the fruit, right? Answer me!” As a reply, I took off my clothes because parents hated nudity for some Earth reason. He hobbled away as fast as he could.

  The protest caught on. Higgins and his little friends got naked and tried to undress people.

  That afternoon Vera looked me in the eye, deliberately ignoring my body, when she ordered me to make a cage for hydrogen seeds about to ripen, so I was on my way to the shed for esparto grass when Octavo limped up.

  “The fruit is fine,” he said.

  “Bryan lied? And you, will you lie?”

  “There has been enough lying, but that is not the important part. It is complicated. We can start with the fruit.”

  I wanted to start with the lies but he’d get to that eventually or I’d make him.

  He walked toward the shed with me. “It has plenty of vitamin E, which might actually help with our fertility problem. We have yet to find a good source of it. And some other oil-soluble vitamins like niacin.”

  He stumbled a little and I made him lean on my shoulder because liar or not, I still couldn’t hate him. He didn’t seem to care that I was naked but he kept rambling.

  “But vitamins are only natural, just like pyridoxine and their alkaloids. Oh, yes, alkaloids … just like the snow vines. We had to rethink the meaning of alkaloids because of that, you know.” He looked down at my face. “It is an Earth science assumption. We … had always thought they were a leftover from nitrogen metabolism stored in leaves or fruit or flowers to be discarded with them. Useful, of course.…”

  He was breathing too hard. He needed to rest a moment. I suggested finding a bench but he said he didn’t want to keep me from my work and slowly, slowly, we kept walking and he kept rambling and I kept waiting.

  “Alkaloids are part of nature, although not as common here. Which seems only logical, since the plants had more time to evolve. Monocotyledons on Earth do not make them often. Apparently … they have more efficient metabolisms. Although alkaloids discourage predation. Nicotine is a potent insecticide. The plants here create all manner of toxins.…”

  He stared at the trees and shrubs as if he’d never seen them before. I reminded myself to be patient, at least for a while.

  “The problem with potent toxins being that the learning curve is steeper than the lifetime. The predators never live and learn, which they do with alkaloids.… The mere taste is the chief discouragement. If something does not taste discouraging, there usually is not a … sufficient concentration to worry about. Addictive in this case, not surprisingly. Alkaloids often are, like caffeine, but harmful is another matter. The plant wants you dependent, not injured. Very wise choice, addiction.… You say the fruit is delicious? Bryan is too excitable. And not just about that.…” He looked around. “I am too excitable. I taught him, and I suppose I taught him that, my fault, all my fault … again, and I paid for it.”

  “Julian,” I said.

  He didn’t answer, just looked sad.

  We’d arrived at the shed and I opened it and pulled out a bundle of grass.

  “What?” he said. “Esparto? No, let me see.” He grabbed the bundle, squinted at the ends of the stems, and took out a hand lens. He studied it, then threw the grass down as if it would bite him. “Wrong … wrong veins. Where did you get this?”

  “I picked this a while ago up in the south meadow.” But maybe it wasn’t the same bundle. It looked a little smaller.

  “Ricin. This has ricin.” He bent down to rub his fingertips with clay. “Wash your hands, too. This is not esparto, it is Lycopodium ensatus. It looks about the same dried, but … you would never mistake it when you picked it. Exotoxins … it has plenty, a kind called ricin. By the time you wove this all, the skin would fall off your hands.” He picked up the bundle with his walking stick. “We must burn this. The grandchildren, you know. They could get hurt.”

  “How did it get there?” But I already knew. I hadn’t gotten the hint with Julian and I needed to get another lesson.

  He carried it on the tip of his walking stick and limped toward a hearth near the metallurgy shed. “It does not occur around here. It grows in brackish soils. Bryan…”

  “Bryan did this?” That made sense.

  “He is afraid of the rainbow bamboo. I taught him … fear of plants, but the fruit was poisonous … the bamboo fruit. After the snow vine, we thought the bamboo would be worse. Understand that. The fruit was poisonous back then. And now…”

  “You visited the city?” The lies were bigger than I thought.

  “Not me, no. Uri, Bryan, and Jill. We were excited.… A city. Bryan thought the people had been wiped out by … rainbow bamboo. It moved in … grabbed their water system.… But…” He could hardly breathe and looked bad, worse than usual.

  “The city was built to copy the bamboo,” I said. “Anyone could see that. Look, you need to sit down and rest. I’ll take the poison grass. Here, sit on this log.”

  I helped him sit, grabbed a stick from the ground, took the grass, and carried it to the hearth. I struck a spark and it burned like a torch. They knew about the city, all the parents did, but they were afraid of the bamboo, so afraid that they killed Julian to make sure we wouldn’t go back. I walked back to the log, and Octavo tried to stand up.

  “Oh, we all knew…,” he said, “the only city the satellite found…”

  “The only city? Here, don’t try to stand. I
’ll sit with you.” I wondered if I should get a medic but I needed to hear what he had to say, the truth about the lies, all of them, finally.

  “Not everyone believes plants are significantly intelligent, but … but we were all afraid of them. The glass makers disappeared for a reason.… Snow vines have been domesticated.… They are less intelligent. Bamboo … is very intelligent.” I wanted to say something but he looked too frightened, and of what? “Do you want a life worth living? It wants to keep you.… You will be slaves in a pretty cage.”

  “A life worth living, that’s what I want. You should have told us.”

  “I think so now. Lies and lies, and Julian died because we need to keep telling them.” Frightened or sad, I couldn’t tell. “But you will not … believe the truth, child. Poisoned by lies. Us and you. Poison fruit.”

  “I know the truth. The bamboo is smart. It thinks and it wants us to live there. It will help us.”

  Something about his face looked wrong. “But do not trust it. Plants are not altruistic.… Wants you for a purpose.” He could barely talk.

  “Aren’t humans altruistic? Why not plants?”

  “Not all humans. That is why we left Earth.” His right eyelid drooped. The right side of his mouth had gone slack. I took his right hand and it was limp.

  “You need a medic.”

  “No. Just rest. I need rest. I am sick, Sylvia. I will not live much longer. It is a waste to prolong it.”

  I got up and ran to the clinic as fast as I could. The medics came with a stretcher and at a glance said he was having a stroke. I followed them to the clinic. Vera arrived but she didn’t even look at him before she started yelling at me.

  “You attacked Octavo. You’ve gone too far. Much too far.” She waved her cane, but I wasn’t scared. She shouldn’t be running Pax.

  “He had a stroke. I didn’t do that. I didn’t attack anyone. You knew about the city all along, and I can prove it.” I walked out. She didn’t deserve respect anymore. Nicoletta could check the satellite scans and whatever she was doing couldn’t be as important as proving that Vera lied.

  I found Nicoletta over the hills fixing the electronic fence around the fippolions that were clearing unfriendly snow vines for us, and from far away I saw that she’d put on her clothes.

  “No,” she said, “I can’t check the satellite scans.” She wouldn’t look at me.

  “It won’t take much,” I said. “Repeating code in a photo file. The parents actually visited the place, Bryan and Jill and Uri. We can prove that they knew.”

  “And then what?”

  That was all she’d say. The fippolions looked at us dully. Electronic collars kept them on the other side of the fence but they could kill us with a swipe if they had the chance. I left her alone but at the top of the hill I looked back. It was hard to tell from that distance, but she might have been crying. What had they done to Nicoletta?

  I went south on the way home through a field of esparto just about to bloom close to western snow vines. I looked at it closely. When esparto dried, the wavy edges of the leaves would become flat and resemble the poison grass.

  Something smacked me hard across the shoulders and I flew face-first into the esparto. Maybe it was an eagle. Maybe they’d come back. I tried to get up and escape, not wasting time to look back, but I was hit again across the back and I glimpsed human feet as my face struck the ground again. Someone knelt on my shoulders and held my face in the grass. I yelled but it hurt to breathe and grass and dirt in my face muffled the sound. Who was doing this? It had looked like a man’s feet and I tried to look again, but someone else grabbed my legs and pulled them up and apart and a man’s hips slammed against my thighs as he shoved his penis inside me. I struggled against the knees on my back and tried to get up and I kept trying and trying. I wanted to stop it, stop him, to get away. He was hurting me, pushing in and pulling out, dry and tearing, and my hips ached, pulled too wide. I kicked and grabbed with my hands but couldn’t catch anything. I wanted to hurt them, hurt them more, not thinking, just pain and anger, and I couldn’t do anything.

  He pulled all the way out and dropped me. My knees scraped against the grass. They clubbed me across my back again. I gasped, and my ribs throbbed, my shoulders, my crotch, my knees. Their footsteps rasped through the esparto as they ran away. I sat up as fast as I could, but they were already out of sight and I was dizzy and I couldn’t catch them. After a while I saw that a shirt and trousers lay on the grass next to me, a message.

  My face hurt. I touched it. Dirt and something wet. I knew it was blood before I looked at my fingers. I knew why I’d been attacked. I was too valuable to kill because I could have babies but they wanted me to stop fighting, stop trying to make parents tell the truth, stop thinking that children had a right to live their own lives, better lives.

  Parents. They’d silenced Julian. They’d hurt me as badly as they could. I knew what they wanted and I knew what I wanted and nothing they’d done to me had changed anything. Except for what I was willing to do. Heresy, rebellion, and war, at last.

  Lux was approaching the treetops. I put my clothes back on. I stopped at an irrigation ditch on the way back to the village and washed everything twice, three times, and I shivered as I did even though it wasn’t cold, and all I could think about was violence.

  Children and grandchildren had put their clothes back on. Or they did when they saw me, bruised and scratched. They whispered to me, a knot of children in the plaza, about what had happened to Epi and Blas, and to Beck, Leon’s little boy and Higgins’s loyal follower, and to Nicoletta, Higgins’s mother, about the threats and beatings. I was dangerous, they were told. Remember what happened to Julian. Don’t listen to me, they were told, but they wouldn’t obey anymore. I told them what had happened to me and that made them ready to fight back, but how? Even I didn’t know.

  Aloysha saw me and stammered, tugging apologetically at the fabric of the shirt he wore.

  “Uri went to Rainbow City,” I said, not waiting for him to speak. “Your father knew. They all know, all the parents. They don’t want us to go.”

  His face puckered in confusion.

  “They’re afraid of the rainbow bamboo. And they’re afraid of me,” I said. “Sleep with me tonight.” He stared, mouth open. “With a hunting knife,” I added. He blinked, then nodded. It didn’t matter whether he understood why.

  I went to see Octavo. Blas said he was better but he didn’t look better. The side of his face had collapsed and he spoke thickly. Saliva dripped from one side of his mouth.

  “Girl, you are hurt.”

  “Vera is having people attacked. You know that. Remember Julian. We have to stop her.”

  His good hand stroked his face as if he were tracing the edge of the good part and bad part. “We expected paradise. To find paradise. Do you know what you found?”

  “A better place to live at the city. You didn’t want to go there, but I do. We do.”

  “The bones you found have DNA. Pax uses RNA. That is … why … it was the only city. Astonishing. Not from Pax. Others looking for paradise.”

  It took me a moment to understand. “The glass makers were aliens? Like us?” I didn’t know what to think and I didn’t have time. “We have to stop Vera. Can you help us?”

  “Paula made herself a leader. Vera never learned, but no one did.…”

  “Can you help us?”

  “Help you what?”

  “Go to Rainbow City.” And escape from the parents.

  “The bamboo is even smarter.… You will do what it wants.”

  “The bamboo isn’t that bad. You haven’t even seen it.”

  “It is, it is. It will make you stay.”

  “It asked me to stay. It needs water, it needs gifts, it needs us. The glass makers liked the rainbow bamboo a lot, you can see that in the city. It can’t be worse than here.”

  He seemed to be looking at me but I wasn’t sure.

  “Help us,” I said. “Tell the truth. Tha
t’s all you need to do.”

  “Tell the truth.…” He nodded unsteadily. “Yes … the truth.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your future, not mine.” He seemed unhappy. I kissed him on his good cheek.

  Blas told me he’d recover, the stroke wasn’t as bad as it seemed. He fussed over the cuts on my face and pretended to believe me when I said nothing else was hurting. I was trying not to think about it but I couldn’t stop and wasn’t thinking just about me.

  “It’s not right,” he said. “What do we do?”

  “You’ll see,” I said. Although I still wasn’t sure what I’d do. How would the parents react when Octavo started talking? Or the children? We children respected Octavo and some of us liked him. But the parents would try to hurt us. Again.

  Octavo was dozing when I left the clinic. I walked to my room through the tiny huddle of ugly hovels that was our home. Plants bribed us but they didn’t beat us or attack us. Aloysha was waiting in my room and during the night he held me tight every time I woke up trembling, dreaming I was in an esparto field.

  In the morning, we learned that Octavo had died. Vera had been with him. A lot of children doubted her story and when I whispered to them about the city, the fruit, about what Octavo had said and what he was going to say, they understood what had really happened. The parents knew about the city and the aliens and were afraid, afraid enough to kill again. Who’d be next? We had to stop them and I could. I got ready.

  Octavo’s funeral was that evening. We marched at the pace of the slowest parents, shuffling with their canes and crutches through fields that sparkled with glowworms. Those fields, those ragged patches of green, were their only hope and accomplishment. We were silent except for sobs, and I cried too, for Octavo, for how bad things had gotten. They had attacked me. They had killed Julian and Octavo. If I didn’t act, it would get even worse.

  Octavo was lowered into a grave next to the snow vines that he had hated.

  “He more than anyone wanted Pax to succeed,” Vera said. “He searched for food crops, he helped us understand our place in our new home and how to live here in peace. He gave us his mutual trust and support so we could live in a new community and make a new society.” She was quoting the Constitution, words she didn’t believe in. I got ready.