Semiosis: A novel of first contact. Sue Burke
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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. That’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.
She turned to pick up a shovel alongside the grave, not even considering that someone would speak, especially not me.
“Octavo was a liar like the rest of the parents,” I said.
She turned. “How dare you!”
“You all know the city exists, you’ve known it all along.”
She raised the shovel like a weapon, teeth bared. She stood several meters away. I ran toward her, pulling the knife with a poisoned blade from a sheath inside my shirt.
The wrinkles on her cheeks lined up in waves as she shouted, “Step back!”
She didn’t deserve to be obeyed. I batted away the shovel. It fell to the ground.
“Stop her!” she screamed. “She can’t do this!”
But all I could see was everything that had happened and everything I could stop. I raised the knife and brought it down. The blade bounced along her ribs horribly and she wailed like a swooping bat until I twisted the knife and forced it in with both hands and then pushed her into the grave. I took a deep breath. There was still more to do.
I turned to see Aloysha and Blas wrestling with Vera’s son, Ross. Bryan already lay on the ground yelling, and Nicoletta stood over him, holding his cane like a club. The parents squalled that I’d violated this or that, and Nicoletta and Cynthia shouted back that I was right. The little grandchildren were shrieking and Higgins stood in front of them, fists raised at the parents.
Vera whimpered and was quiet. Was that how Julian died? I couldn’t look into the grave. The new Pax was beginning the wrong way and I had to do something. I raised my hands, one of them with Vera’s blood on it. Children’s voices called for quiet.
“They all knew the city was there,” I said, “and they were afraid. Something happened to the glass makers and they blamed the rainbow bamboo.”
Bryan began to say something. “Quiet!” Nicoletta told him.
I continued. “But that’s not why the parents lied. They had a dream. They wanted a new society, a better version of Earth. They thought they could make it with hardship, and the more hardship, the more they thought they had a new Earth here.”
“That’s right,” Bryan called out.
“But it’s not working,” Nicoletta said. “It’s not better.”
“They have their new society,” I said. “It is us. We can make our own choices. Us, the children. Octavo asked me if I wanted a life worth living. I do. There’s a better place to live than here. It’s time for a new moderator.”
I looked around. Everyone was still, watching me.
“Who wants Pax to be more than endless hardship?” I said. “Who isn’t afraid to change? Vote for me. I’ll be the moderator, and we’ll do more than survive. The parents wanted a new Earth. What we want is Pax. The time of the parents is over. Vote.”
Hands went up for me: Aloysha, Rosemarie, Daniel, Leon, Nicoletta, Cynthia, Enea, Mellona, Victor, Epi, Blas, Ravi, Carmia, and Hroc. And Higgins and many of the grandchildren. And one parent, Ramona. I didn’t call for the hands of those who were against me.
So that was the revolt. I became the moderator by a minority vote and in spite of the fact that at eighteen, I was seven years too young according to the Constitution. But by the time we’d moved everything to Rainbow City, I was actually old enough and Aloysha and I had had two healthy babies. Vera’s son, Ross, was probably one of the men who attacked me but once he saw Rainbow City, he wanted to stay there and he worked harder than anyone to get it ready. By the time we left the village for good, only four parents were still alive.
I didn’t want to abandon them, although their half-blind eyes looked at me as if I were a murderer in those final days. We even offered to carry them! When I left the village the last time, the Sun was rising bright red. When it set, we were camped in the valley above the waterfall. The bats began to swoop and wail, and I heard Vera dying again. It was the end of Earth.