Semiosis: A novel of first contact. Sue Burke
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the area carefully for resources. During our hike up the valley, Julian had told me all about a fault line that made the waterfall on Thunder River near the village and about the granite mountains that surrounded the plateau where the glass maker city was. He had a map with enough details to show the major cataracts in the valley and the river snaking through the forest in the plateau. The city’s roofs should have flashed out at any observer, but we used the meteorologists’ maps and had never seen the survey pictures themselves.
Julian figured it out fast. “They knew. Mom, Vera …”
“They saw it every day on the weather scans.”
“They knew. They covered it up. Why not tell us? Why?”
“We should ask them. But we should do it in a way to make people want to move to the city.”
I convinced him not to confront Vera right away although we wanted to when we got back to the village. We’d discuss her un-community-minded behavior at a Commonwealth meeting. I knew there’d be one and I was right.
Back in the village, the day after the little hurricane, we were answering questions even before we left the cellar. Julian went to hunt and I went to the plaza to make a couple of baskets to sift wheat, and a lot of people seemed to have tasks to do in the plaza.
“Are there fippokats?” asked little Higgins.
“Yes, and they play and slide just like here.”
“Is the soil good?” a farmer asked.
“Well, the trees are bigger.”
“How was the climate?”
“You’d have to ask Vera, she has the weather data, but it seemed cooler and damper. The fields wouldn’t need irrigation. And we know hurricanes break up on the mountains, so we wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore.”
“Were there ground eagles?”
“Probably, but the town has a wall around it.”
“What happened to the glass makers?”
“Maybe an epidemic, or maybe they moved and live somewhere else.”
“How much bamboo fruit was there?”
“Plenty.”
I learned that while we were gone, the tomography machine had failed for good, Nicoletta’s father had died of space travel cancer, and a new kind of lizard had been discovered, tiny and iridescent yellow, that fertilized tulip flowers.
I folded in the spokes to finish the first basket and I measured and cut reeds for the second one. “The rainbow bamboo probably wants what the snow vine does,” I said, “gifts and a little help.”
“Was it beautiful?”
“You can’t imagine.”
Ramona limped up to us, leaning on a pair of canes and draped in a shawl. It was odd to see her out of the clinic where she worked and at first I thought she’d come to hear about the city, but she looked too sad. Maybe another parent had died and she’d come to tell someone. But she came over to me.
“Sylvia, I’m so sorry,” she said. She leaned against my worktable and took my hand. Hers was cold and twitched with Parkinson’s disease. My parents were dead, so what could she be so sorry about?
“Julian is dead. He made a mistake with a poisoned arrow.” She went on to explain but I hardly heard her. Julian was dead. Julian.
That couldn’t be right.
Ramona hugged me. She was thin and shaking. “I’m sorry. I know you’d gotten close.”
I tried to talk and realized I had stopped breathing. I deliberately took a deep breath. “What happened?”
“He died. Julian died when he was hunting.”
“How?” Even with one small syllable, my voice shook.
She explained again and I made myself listen. She said it was just a hunting accident in the forest near the lake. He was putting a poisoned arrow on his bowstring and it slipped. But she was lying, I knew it, another lying parent. He’d never have made a mistake like that. He was a fine hunter, as silent as an owl in the woods.
They lied about Earth, they lied about the city, and now they were lying about how Julian died.
He was dead. They killed him.
Everyone told me they were sorry and hugged me and cried. The children’s tears were real. And mine.
I’d known him all my life and he wasn’t there anymore. I thought about climbing up the valley with him toward that first stand of bamboo on top of the cliff, hand in hand, hoping a glass maker would pop up from behind the next rock. I thought about the long walk home after we’d both learned so much. I slept with him, ate with him, talked with him, expected to be with him my whole life.
Now life was different, never the same again.
We held the funeral that night. Octavo wouldn’t talk to anyone and didn’t go to the grave. For his own son! He didn’t go because he knew it was no accident. But he wouldn’t do anything about the people who killed him. Or maybe he couldn’t do anything.
I followed Julian’s corpse as it was carried to its grave, thinking that I did not, not, not want to die there, did not want to lead a hard, ugly life under the dictates of lying murderous parents and finally be carried in rags through the desolate fields and be left to feed the greedy, stupid snow vine. Vera gave a short bland funeral speech. I didn’t say anything. I probably couldn’t have. Children were only allowed to praise the dead, anyway.
Late that night, in my room, I ate a dried bamboo fruit, sweet and spicy, and felt worse to know that more waited for me, wanted me to come, gardens decorated with fruit in a city that sparkled in the Sun and that Julian would never see again with me. He was sterile and expendable. He was a warning, the sort of crime they did on Earth, what the parents left Earth to escape, but they were still Earthlings. And I could carry on without Julian. I had to.
I was quiet the next day and the day after that, sometimes pretending he was still with me, sometimes imagining I was back at the city with him or that I was at the city in the future, we’d all gone there to live, and I was looking at the places where we’d been together. The worst was at night, alone, trying to sleep in the same ugly building as the people who’d killed him. I thought about how to get back to the city, about what I had to do, about why they killed Julian to keep me quiet, but I wouldn’t be quiet. I’d make them talk.
Bryan told people he’d tested the dried fruit and when they asked him about the results, he sighed. He said he’d explain at the meeting.
That evening, I arrived at the plaza as the benches were being lined up and Cynthia came up to me and asked about the city.
“It’s big and colorful,” I said.
“Why isn’t it on the satellite pictures?” She did a lot of foraging and depended on maps.
“That’s a good question.”
She frowned and curled a lock of hair around her finger, thinking, as bats wailed overhead.
Vera emerged from one of the lodges with a parent being carried to the meeting in a cot. She called everyone to order and we all sat down. “A long meeting would be difficult for some of us, so let’s start. Sylvia’s broken the covenant of the Commonwealth, and we must decide how she will be punished.”
“What did I do?” I said. She glared at me because I was talking at a meeting in a challenging tone of voice. Aloysha made a fist and winked.
“You ran away,” Terrell said.
Octavo said softly, “We ran away from Earth,” but no one paid attention.
I didn’t have time to waste. “The city is visible from the sky.”
“That’s