Semiosis: A novel of first contact

Semiosis: A novel of first contact
Sue Burke

‘This is up there with Ursula K. Le Guin: science fiction at its most fascinating and most humane’THRILLIST‘SEMIOSIS combines the world-building of Avatar with the alien wonder of Arrival, and the sheer humanity of Atwood. An essential work for our time’STEPHEN BAXTEREscaping conflict on Earth, an idealistic group of settlers arrive on a distant planet – Pax – with plans for a perfect society.The world they discover is rich with life, but this is not the Eden they were hoping for. The plants on Pax are smart – smart enough to domesticate, and even slaughter, its many extraordinary animals.To survive, the colonists realize that they must strike bargains of their own. But if they are to make Pax their home, they must go further, searching for a way to communicate and coexist with these utterly alien intelligences.

Copyright (#ufe3d8c55-696b-5cbf-94d6-2b99edf391f8)

HarperVoyager

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Sue Burke 2018

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Cover layout design Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishersLtd 2018

Sue Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008300777

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008302528

Version: 2018-05-10

I owe thanks to Gregory Frost, whose writing exercise about a special kind of wall led to this novel. Thanks also to my sister-in-law, Kathleen Daley Burke, who lent her childhood imaginary animal, the fippokat. And thanks to the many people who helped with critiques and suggestions. A version of chapter one previously appeared in the magazine LC-39.

Contents

Cover (#ubdaf158f-aa23-5e5d-b842-fce513f99575)

Title Page (#u29f21000-9829-5ec0-b147-fee00e8b9793)

Copyright

Octavo: Year 1–Generation 1

Sylvia: Year 34–Generation 2

Higgins and The Bamboo: Year 63–Generation 3

Tatiana: Year 106–Generation 4

Nye: Year 106–Generation 6

Lucille and Stevland: Year 107–Generation 7

Bartholomew: Year 107–Generation 5

About the Author

About the Publisher

OCTAVO YEAR 1–GENERATION 1 (#ufe3d8c55-696b-5cbf-94d6-2b99edf391f8)

Grateful for this opportunity to create a new society in full harmony with nature, we enter into this covenant, promising one another our mutual trust and support. We will face hardship, danger, and potential failure, but we can aspire to the use of practical wisdom to seek joy, love, beauty, community, and life.

—from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pax, written on Earth in 2065

The war had begun long before we arrived because war was their way of life. It took its first victims among us before we understood what was happening, on an evening that seemed quiet. But even then, we knew we could easily be in danger.

My wife, Paula, shook her head as she left the radio hut in the plaza of our little village. “There’s too much interference again. I’ll try one more time, but if they don’t answer, we’ll start a search.”

An hour ago, three women had gone to pick fruit. They did not come back, they were not answering their radio, and the Sun had sunk almost to the top of the hills.

Around us, tiny lizards in the trees had begun their evening hoots and chimes. Nine-legged crabs silently hunted the lizards. The breeze smelled bittersweet, perhaps from something in bloom. I should have known what, but I did not.

Uri and I were fixing an irrigation pump, but I knew his mind was on one of the women, Ninia. He had just begun living with her, and he was squinting up the path through the fields where she had gone. And then he was jerked back to the present when the wind tangled his long blond beard around the pump handle. He knelt to free it. I pulled a jackknife from my belt, stroking my own short beard. He saluted with one finger. He was a Russian Slav, and a proper Slav never cuts his beard.

Paula went back to her work at a rough-hewn table nearby, trying to make sense of weather data. A wide straw hat held her red hair in place and protected her skin from the Sun. She took a deep breath and stretched her stiff back. We all struggled with the stronger gravity. Finally she entered the radio hut again.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened. The hut’s walls were panels scavenged from a landing pod and the roof was tree bark, so the sound carried.

“Hello? … Ninia? Zee? Carrie?”

Static.

“Hello? … This is Paula. Do you hear me?”

Static.

“Ninia, Zee, Carrie? Are you there? Hello?” After a moment, she came out to the plaza. “Maybe the batteries died again. Let’s look for them.”

She kept her voice reassuring as she asked Ramona to bring a medical kit and Merl to carry a radio and microphone to listen for emergency whistles. We would also need people to carry three stretchers and someone to bring a weapon: standard operating procedure. Uri picked up his rifle.

We set off westward up the steady slope of a meadow toward a white line of vines and trees a kilometer away, hiking as fast as we could. Low clouds dotted the sky, some already tinted pink. The stronger gravity meant that the atmosphere thinned fast above us, so the clouds were always low. We passed the long field that we had planted with a native grass resembling Earth’s wild wheat, whose green shoots stood almost ankle-high. The air smelled of moist soil, and spiny caterpillar-like creatures the size of fingers inched across the surface, swallowing big mouthfuls of dirt and excreting dark castings that seemed to be good manure. The caterpillars might have been larvae of some sort. We had no way to find out except by waiting.