Semiosis: A novel of first contact

Vera saw them during the evening meal out in the plaza, boxer bird soup and tulip salad. We didn’t have much because of the storm, but we sat down happy enough on the benches on either side of the line of tables. It was a comfortable evening, although the parents were bundled up, always cold when we were hot. The bats were swooping and singing, and cactus balloon plants on strings kept them from stealing food. The grandchildren, the pregnant women, and the sick ate well. I got plenty of salad and a bowl of soup with a scrap of meat. Julian got only broth from the birds he’d hunted. The grandchildren were in a giggly mood.

Then Vera frowned at the bracelets. “Those have no place here,” she said. “We don’t have time to waste.”

“Oh, I suppose you’ll want me to erase the carving on my walking stick,” Mama said. “Everything doesn’t have to be useful, does it?”

That provoked more of the endless debate about a flower garden, parents’ opinions only, children should listen and learn. Terrell thought we should look for metal, not pretty flowers.

Bryan made a show of standing to speak in spite of his stiff joints, as if we owed him something for chronic bursitis and his drooping skin with scars where skin cancer had been removed. He wanted to require childbearing “in harmony with the welfare and interests of the Commonwealth as a whole,” as the Constitution said. Parents liked to quote the Constitution and worried that if we didn’t follow it, we’d face disaster, but the Constitution talked about beauty too, and about equality. Parents quoted only what they wanted to.

“I think we’ve discussed this enough,” Vera said. “We should get rid of the bracelets. This is no time for divisiveness.”

“Oh, it’s only a bracelet,” Mama said.

“The problem is with what it represents. This is Pax. A community with peace, mutual trust, and support,” Vera said, quoting the Constitution. “The bracelet is a violation of trust. Let’s be practical. Symbols are important. The bracelets symbolize a decision we aren’t ready to make now. We have too much to do just to recover from the hurricane.”

I should have resisted, I should have spoken up, but too many people were looking at me, childless, designer of a failed roof, and a disrespectful citizen, or so they probably thought, and we children were always being suspected of being lazy and greedy. I took off my bracelet. So did the rest. Aloysha and Nicoletta made a face when they did and Julian stamped on his and broke it. Terrell burned them.

That night I was crying in my bed when Julian came to my room and he didn’t say a thing, he just hugged me until I stopped crying and we made love for the first time. I’d done that before with other boys so the parents would think I was trying to get pregnant but it was just to satisfy other people, not to make me happy.

Julian wanted to make me happy and I wanted to be happy with him, and afterward I held him and realized I wanted him to be happy forever, too. The parents would have thought the whole thing was a waste of time because he was sterile, but that night was love, real love. It was uselessly beautiful just like the bracelets. And it was the beginning of the revolt.

I looked for the rainbow bamboo in the storage shed the next day and it was gone. There might have been more at the beach but I didn’t have time to go to the lake. Julian looked for it when he hunted and finally found a twig, prettier than I remembered.

“It’s from Thunder River, at the waterfall,” he said. No one had gone upriver beyond the waterfall but the maps based on the meteorologists’ satellite pictures showed a long canyon up through some mountains that led to a wide plateau. “And I found this.” He smiled and held out some pieces of red, green, and yellow glass. “It might be obsidian or agate, but I don’t think so. What do we do?”

I thought hard before I answered. We could continue as usual, working from Luxrise to sunset, planting, weeding, building, harvesting, hunting, gathering, cooking, cleaning, weaving, sewing, caring for animals, monitoring equipment, repairing machines, watching the computers sputter and the robots stop, disassembling dead machines for their parts, helping the parents to and from the clinic, and reengineering the electrical system to run on wind and hand cranks.

We could watch the seasons go by, spring with floods and lizards hatching everywhere, summer with its storms knocking down roofs and trees and fields of grain, autumn with droughts and fires, and winter with frost and fog. Our holidays were harvests, births, funerals, and the solar solstices and equinoxes, and a holiday only meant a bit more to eat. On Earth people went to battles, carnivals, museums, and universities, and on a lucky day I got to go to the lake. On Earth there was protest, revolution, genocide, piracy, and war, and I was punished for weaving bracelets.

“I know what I don’t want to do,” I said so sadly that he hugged me.

But we kept on doing it. What was our choice? Search for the glass makers on our own? That would be a violation of mutual support.

Besides, Mama was sick with cancer from radiation exposure during the space trip and she got worse until she was bedridden. The same cancer had killed many parents already. I spent as much time as I could with her in her little room in the lodge, wondering if I’d miss her as much as Papa, and one day I asked the question that I’d always wondered about.

“What was Earth really like? Really and honestly?” Books said things, usually bad, but I could tell they didn’t say everything.

Mama’s bones hurt, her belly hurt, and she was glad for any distraction, that’s what she always said. She pursed her gray lips and thought for a while. “Stressful. And complicated. Actually, not that bad for us because we were rich, at least compared to the rest of the world. Other people died of hunger and we could get together enough money to go to the stars.”

Rich? She was rich? No one had told me that. “What if you hadn’t gone, Mama?”

“We’d have all led easier lives. You too, probably. Oh, they like to tell tales, don’t they, about pollution and diseases, the beginning of the end of humanity, but the rich got by. It was only the poor who were killing each other. Or trying not to die of one thing or another. It was so tragic.”

“But, then why did you leave? Didn’t you have to?”

“No, we didn’t, we volunteered, and we wanted to try to do better. People had made horrible mistakes on Earth, fatal mistakes for whole countries, millions and millions of people. Oh, it was shameful how the poor got so little help for problems they never created. You wouldn’t understand, but we wanted to try again. To make a fresh start of Earth. To do it right this time, without the unfairness that made some people rich and some people poor. Things you couldn’t imagine. I think we made a good new start. And I’m glad we did. Oh, there’s hardship, but we expected that. It was like coming home to Eden.”

I’d heard of Eden, a mythical paradise, but the book that told all about it wasn’t in the libraries. I wouldn’t understand anyway according to the parents, but hardship wasn’t paradise, I knew that. What would it be like to be so rich you could get any book you wanted and then have time to read it?

“For all its troubles, Earth could get boring.” Mama smiled. “Pax was exciting.”

I thought about that while I was crying during her funeral. I’d have led an easier life on Earth. We buried her near the friendly snow vines along the western fields, next to Paula, and we buried Mama in rags because we couldn’t afford to bury good clothes. Octavo stared slumped and tired at the vines. “Birth to death,” he muttered, “they have us.”

Octavo didn’t like snow vines so he might misjudge the rainbow bamboo and the glass makers. I said that to Julian one morning. He was making poisoned arrows for hunting. We were far away from everyone so that a grandchild couldn’t accidentally wander over, and we could say what we thought.

“We need to go up Thunder River and see what’s there,” I said.

“Up Thunder River,” he repeated, watching his work. He wore gloves and goggles as he dipped arrowheads in ergot and set them to dry in a rack in the Sun. “I’m a trained explorer. I can do it.”

“Both of us. We both have to look.”

He hesitated. Vera would never approve.

“I’ll go without you,” I said.

After a while he said, “You should never travel alone,” in the same voice as if he were saying Honor the parents. We started planning while he wrapped the arrows in mullein leaves. Would the glass makers and the bamboo welcome us? Why hadn’t the glass makers come to us?

Survival last, curiosity first. Better no life than this life.

So when Vera’s weather report said there were no hurricanes in formation, we sneaked off, carrying food, a blanket, a hammock, rope, a lighter, hunting knives, and clothes. All the clothes I owned fit into a single backpack, and people on Earth, rich people like I’d have been, had closets full of clothes.

We left with questions and we came back with answers to questions we hadn’t even thought to ask, with thoughts we weren’t supposed to think. I almost didn’t want to come back but I knew we had to, and so we did, nearly sixty days later, with rainbow-striped hiking staffs, rainbow bracelets, and rainbow diadems. We were skinny, our clothes in rags, our backpacks filled with tokens of another civilization and morsels of bamboo fruit that were dried and shriveled but still delicious. We entered the village, a huddle of mismatched hovels, and the lodge I had designed looked utterly clumsy, still with the improvised bark thatch roof. The fields rose on hills, thirsty, the snow vine thickets hulked like prison walls, and storm clouds churned overhead.

Cynthia saw us and shouted. We were surrounded immediately, smothered with hugs and tears and welcomes, everyone asking questions all at once.

Then Vera hobbled up. “You left us when we needed you,” she squeaked.

“We found a city,” I said.

“You were incredibly irresponsible. You most of all, Sylvia. We searched for you for days.”

“But they’re back safe,” Ramona said. “That’s what matters.”

Vera kept scolding. Enea’s little boy toddled up, yelling, “Juu!” with arms raised, ready for Julian to pick him up. I picked up Higgins, Nicoletta’s boy, and he squirmed with excitement. Octavo was limping toward us, looking at Julian.

Aloysha repeated until we heard, “What city? What city?”

“Another hurricane will arrive tonight,” Vera said, “and the buildings aren’t ready, and there are animals to be gathered in!”

“A beautiful city,” I said, “with sparkling glass roofs and gardens of rainbow bamboo.”

Octavo arrived, the wind tossing his long beard. “A city?” He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look happy to see his own son.

“Up on Thunder River, Dad.”

“That’s not important,” Vera said.

“The glass makers?” Octavo said.