Semiosis: A novel of first contact

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.”