Semiosis: A novel of first contact

“Aw, come on,” Bryan said. “It attacked the field because it was a good place for it to grow.”

“It had to go too far, more than a half kilometer, and it passed better places to grow, like the spring. It analyzed us and made a decision, a complex decision. Then the other snow vine decided to become our ally. They are smart enough to do that. They can think.”

“You never said this before,” Vera said.

“I only realized it now.”

“Plants can’t think!”

Paula rapped on the table. “Let’s remember to be supportive and listen, not debate. We’re here to solve a problem, not to win.”

I gave her a look of gratitude, but she was looking at someone else with warning. I took a deep breath. “They have cells I cannot identify. On Earth, plants can count. They can see, they can move, they can produce insecticides when the wrong insect comes in contact with them.”

“It could be an instinctual response,” Merl said. “Any animal decides what to do about its territory.”

“Plants struggle against each other for survival. They fight,” I said. “This is a war, an organized fight.”

“Aw, come on,” Bryan said, then caught Paula’s eye. “I mean, this is a lot to accept at once.”

“I know,” I said, working hard to be patient. “I want us to be sure we understand that we are picking sides in a war that is bigger than we are, and we are making one side a more determined enemy.”

“Enemy. A plant enemy,” he muttered. Everyone sat quietly for a minute. A couple of crabs started buzzing near Snowman.

“Humans go to war because they’re depraved.” Vera glanced at Paula, then continued more gently. “This is an ecosystem, so it all works together as a whole.” She was an astronomer, so of course she saw the universe as stars and planets with neat and predictable orbits, everything worked out by math: the rest of nature would be the same.

“The plants are fierce,” Uri said. “Octavo is right about that. We must try to survive equally hard.”

Grun nodded. “He’s found out how to fit into nature, harsh as it is here. It’s a risky plan and it’s good of him to make sure we know the risks, but it’s a reasonable plan, and I like it.”

I looked around. We all wore the same sturdy clothes, spoke the same language, and shared the same hopes. We had debated this back on Earth and reached an agreement. We would live in harmony with nature, and nature was always in harmony, like the gears of an old-fashioned clock. I knew that the vines had killed us deliberately, with malice and forethought, but that was too hard for anyone else to believe.

“If plants are so smart,” Bryan said, “where are their cities?”

“Now, it’s an old planet, but it’s new to us,” Merl replied. “We’ve not been here but a couple of months, and there’s a lot to learn. We might be standing smack in the middle of a city and not be able to see it. Still, we can’t take too long before we decide what to do because we don’t have that much time. The fippokats have managed to live with the vines, and they’re mighty smart for animals. We can do it, too.”

“This is the first place where I’ve felt genuinely at home,” Wendy said. “We found what we wanted. We left Earth behind, didn’t we? Pax will be at peace as long as we’re at peace.”

“That’s right,” Vera repeated. “We left behind the failed paradigms like war.”

Perhaps I was using the wrong paradigm. “You are right, it is an evolutionary struggle, and we need to fit in. But I do not know what the snow vine, either snow vine, is going to do next. We will have to keep on doing whatever they want. They might outthink us, or use us and discard us. The east vine might not even fight for us.”

“Plants don’t control animals,” Merl said. “Influence, maybe, so it’s right to keep a weather eye, but they can’t outthink us.”

I thought about agriculture back on Earth. Food meant money and power, and on Earth it was easy to spot the enemy. It had its hand in your pocket or its gun pointed at your chest.

Paula said, “I think we all recognize that our decision might have unforeseen consequences. It will be all our decision, though, knowing that nothing’s guaranteed.”

“If it doesn’t work,” Ramona echoed, “it’s not your fault, Octavo. I think we ought to try being a friend of the east vine for a while.”

“It’s that or move the whole colony,” Vera said, “and we’d starve for certain, and there may be snow vines all over Pax anyway. Let’s be practical.”

They had no idea what they were agreeing to, but if they wanted to think they were living in harmony with nature, maybe they could sleep more peacefully. War was a human thing, but not just a human thing, and we had not added anything new to this planet. We were at war and only I knew what that meant. But one person knowing what to do might be enough.

Uri still argued for destroying the west thicket, but he was voted down, twenty-four to seven. I voted no because I feared that without the west thicket as an enemy, the east thicket might not need us.

I did what I could. I transplanted snow vines and aspen trees from the east thicket to the western edge of our fields as a shield. They thrived and attacked. We replanted our crops, and they grew unmolested.

Every day, I walked with a machete on the far side of our shield of vines and hacked off any west vines reaching toward it. Sometimes I found combating vines wrapped around each other in struggle, pushing and tearing. With one chop, I rescued our white knight. Underground, I knew, the battle raged even more fiercely.

One afternoon, Uri came with me, shirtless in the heat. A bandanna tied across his forehead caught his sweat. “Who would think farming would be so violent?” He chopped off a vine and hurled it toward a woodpile for burning. He walked on, poking with a stick in the brush for vines hiding like snakes. This was simply weeding a garden to him.

Around us, little lizards hooted under the blue sky and the small bright Sun. Soon we would have our first harvest, and we were planning a feast.

We had said we expected hardship, not paradise, but we really wanted both. We thought we could come in peace and find a happy niche in another ecology. Instead we found a battlefield. The east vine turned us into servile mercenaries, nothing more than big, clever fippokats helping it win another battle. We had wanted to begin the world afresh, far from Earth and all its mistakes. That had not happened, but only I realized it, and I kept my disappointment to myself. Someday I might explain to our children how we had to compromise to survive.

Uri chopped merrily away. We faced more fighting ahead, and I hoped I would be ready.

SYLVIA YEAR 34–GENERATION 2 (#ufe3d8c55-696b-5cbf-94d6-2b99edf391f8)

Nothing herein shall be deemed to infringe on the individual freedom of belief, right to speech and justice, liberty, and the peaceful pursuit of individual aims in harmony with the welfare and interests of the Commonwealth as a whole.

—from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pax

Before the roof blew away, I had to check it, I had to, and it didn’t matter who said I shouldn’t or if it really wasn’t safe to go upstairs. Summer meant hurricanes and I’d dreamed of designing a beautiful building as strong as a hurricane but I didn’t get beauty or strength because they wouldn’t let me. And this hurricane! It was the first storm of the summer and the meteorologists said it would probably be the worst ever. Rain was plowing against the lodge when Julian and I went up to the third floor. We opened the trapdoor to the attic and I climbed up on his shoulders to look at the roof from the underside.

It rocked like a boat on water. The shingles were ripped off in some places, rain slashed in and filled the attic with the smell of drenched wood, and the wind tugged on the beams and gables and strained every joint. What if I’d woven the studs and rafters as if they were reeds? Then some wood cracked in the corner like an exploding hydrogen cactus.

“Torch!” I shouted at Julian, then motioned since he couldn’t hear me over the wind. The flame flickered in the wind as he handed it up and the air smelled of burning resin, then a hard wind swatted the roof and it rocked again.

There was the problem: the improvised tie-down had broken at the northwest corner. I’d designed the roof to be set into the walls with slotted joints and crossties the way the architecture text recommended, but no one had time for the complicated work. No one wanted to give time to a child’s dream. They’d used poles and logs not even sawed into real beams. They got what they wanted.

Would the building survive the storm at all? I wanted doubled-up beams, corner braces, and extra ties. Extravagances, they said, and the building turned out weak, cramped, and clumsy.

“Sylvia!” Julian shouted, and added something I couldn’t catch. His red hair shone like flame in the torchlight and his eyes suffered for me, for how I felt about the roof, my poor roof.

I began to climb down and there was Vera standing at the head of the stairs. She must have struggled all the way up to check on us, but why? She was the new moderator of Pax so she ought to be concerned about the building but we could have told her all about it. Torchlight lit her face, wrinkled like tree bark, white hair receding like a man’s, false teeth bared.

“Julian!” She sounded like an underoiled machine. “Why did you bring Sylvia here?”

“My idea,” I yelled so she could hear me over the storm. Julian had followed me, trying to be helpful. But Vera ignored me and motioned for us to follow her.

We trudged down the steps. The wind tore at the building the way a fippolion’s claws hunt for roots, and the plaster was cracking as the walls shuddered. Vera descended step by step, leaning on a cane. It would have been disrespectful to get ahead of her, and children must honor the parents! We’d heard that since we were born, and how could we disobey?

She yelled at him all the way down, and when we arrived in the crowded, dark cellar, I put out the torch and tried again.

“I needed to inspect the roof.” I kept even a hint of disrespect out of my voice.

“Julian could have gone alone and told you about it.” She grunted as she lowered herself onto a bench.