9

 

By late afternoon, the last boatload had been delivered, and the captain and Salap stood on the beach, staring out to sea. The storm had swung in close to the coast again, thirty or forty miles offshore, filling the northern horizon almost east to west with pillars and whorls of cloud arranged in spreading, stacked layers. This close, the clouds had a scintillant quality, as if filled with flakes of mica. 

Shatro, Thornwheel and Cassir stood by the boat, waiting to be taken to the ship. I stood beside Randall, a few meters from the captain and Salap. 

“He still hasn't explained,” Randall said in an undertone. He looked around anxiously. “We should put out immediately or we'll be blown onto the beach or the vine reefs. I'd hate to weather that bastard in any case—but I'd rather meet it at sea.” 

The captain motioned for all of us to join him and Salap. “We've been talking,” he said. “We both agree that things can be finished here by tomorrow afternoon, or by morning if we put our backs into it. We'll need to help rig and test the equipment we just delivered, and then we'll—” His words trailed off, and he stared at the storm as if lost in a dream. 

“It never comes ashore. It sends emissaries,” Salap said. 

“Mansur, you have my infinite admiration, but I'd like to know what to expect,” the captain said sharply, “in clear language.” 

Salap seemed to enjoy the captain's discomfiture. “The emissaries are small fronts of cloud, rich with water and materials picked up within the storm itself. Difficult to describe.” 

“How strong?” Randall asked. 

“A few knots of wind. Enough to blow them in gently—not enough to hurt the ship, or rip up the fabric on the prairie.” Fabric was what Salap and the station's researchers had come to call the shiny brown tissue that spread over the prairie—and concealed the inner workings of the five types of scions. “In truth, the storm serves many purposes. It stirs the sea, grows nutrients like a gigantic bio-reactor ... and it controls the weather. For hundreds of miles, there is no storm but the one storm.” 

The captain was torn between scientific elation, concern for the storm, as a sailor should be concerned about all storms, and what might have been incredulity. “A remarkable discovery,” he allowed, “but I think I'll feel more secure when we're all on the boat.” 

The captain returned to the boat before dark, taking Salap with him to arrange the equipment and specimens aboard Vigilant. Shatro had been waiting for this moment, and when Randall was out of sight—walking off the dinner Salap had prepared, a dubious feast of unfamiliar bits of prairie fabric—the three researchers found me on the beach, watching the storm in its unmoving, ever-changing grandeur. 

“We have some questions,” Thornwheel said amiably enough. He wore a roughly trimmed beard, which gave his high forehead and plump boyish cheeks some maturity, but not a great deal. They sat beside me on the mottled dark sand, picking at the rough rounded quartz and granite pebbles. 

“Matthew tells us you have little formal training,” Cassir said. He gave me a hard look. “We wonder how little.” 

“Enough to get by,” I said. Their expressions—a little flat, with unconvincing smiles—forecast some sort of trouble. 

“We're just curious,” Cassir said. “We like to know who we're working with. What you're capable of.” 

“I'm self-educated,” I said. “Lenk school, but no secondary after.” 

“Shatro tells us you were lost in Liz for two years,” Thornwheel said. 

“Hardly lost.” 

“Liz is old and familiar by now,” Shatro said. 

“I never got familiar with Liz,” I said. 

Thornwheel chuckled. “Our scientific paramours, right? Scholar's mistresses ... books and dreams of queens.” 

Shatro was not mollified. “What did you hope to learn? Without equipment, without training ... We've been trained by Salap and Keyser-Bach. There are no better teachers on Lamarckia.” 

“I haven't been so fortunate,” I admitted, trying to avoid the confrontation Shatro seemed to want. “I spent most of my time trying to track the behavior of mobile scions. Whitehats, vermids, but especially aquifer snakes...” I had read enough in Randall's library about the kilo-meters-long fluid-bearing tubes, part of which I had seen outside Moonrise, that I felt I could hold up an argument for several minutes, at least. 

“I tracked one when I was a second in Lenk school,” Thornwheel said. “Never found the beginning, and never found the end.” 

“I tracked one that was three kilometers long, at least. It dipped into the Terra Nova at one end...” 

“What about the pink shells?” I asked, trying to get the focus off me and my experiences. “I never did see where they came from. Do you think they're remains of scions?” 

Cassir took the subject eagerly. “Whitehats,” he said. 

“We don't know that,” Thornwheel said contemptuously. “Don't rely on folk gossip. But we've never seen living things inhabit the shells.” 

“Salap says he's sure whitehats deposit them as soil enrichers.” 

Thornwheel shook his head. “They're the cast-off remains of vermids.” 

Shatro shook his head in turn, more vigorously. The third degree had been averted, at least for now. He took one last shot at me: 

“What did you learn that we don't know anything about? You spent two years there—did you see pink shells being deposited? Did you see aquifer snakes hooking up to feed another scion, or water a silva bed?” 

“No,” I said. 

“Nobody's seen any of those things,” Thornwheel said. “There just aren't enough of us, and too many mysteries.” 

Randall walked along the beach and joined us as the last ribbon of light in the west faded. “I'd like to try to reach Athenai on the radio, now that it's night,” he said. “The storm doesn't seem to want to throw much lightning now, does it?” 

“No, ser,” Shatro said. 

“Maybe we'll get lucky.” 

Cassir got up and we retired to the small cabin the researchers shared with the small radio. We were not lucky, however. The radio produced nothing but hiss and voices too distorted to understand. 

“The captain could do anything he wanted, under these conditions,” Shatro said. Randall gave him a passing glare, but said nothing. 

 

In the morning, before dawn, I came awake from a vivid dream of Thistledown City. The city had been almost empty of people, and the buildings had become like limp balloons. The message was clear enough: a city was nothing without its people. 

But what about people, without the city? 

I walked along the boundary of the prairie, savoring its extraordinary monotony, wondering what Lamarckia had to offer that could replace a city, or all the components of civilization. 

Salap and his assistants seemed contented enough. The captain and Randall found challenges enough to amuse them. But what about me? I wondered what I would grow to miss most... 

Already I missed Thistledown. I missed the straightforward flirtations and courtships I had been so good at; there was nothing to either constrain or slake my physical needs but willpower, and that left me bluntly frustrated, unable to respond in kind to even the simplest gestures, which were all that Shirla seemed capable of. 

Cassir and Shatro met me as I doubled back along the boundary. “Go ahead,” Cassir shouted. “Walk on it. It's like spongy wood.” 

The edge of the prairie resembled knobby melted wax, slumping over the shingle beach. Cassir jumped up to stand a meter above us, hands outstretched, grinning. “Biggest single thing on Lamarckia, what do you bet?” 

“Salap said it was made of five scions,” Shatro objected. 

“All melted together. Only master researchers—such as Salap and yours truly—could discover the components. Come on.” Cassir walked inland. Shatro jumped up before I did, and we both followed. The texture of the prairie was very much like hard cork, springy and pleasant to walk upon. We left no lasting impressions. Cassir ran in a happy circle. “It's been great here, working with Ser Salap ... But I'm glad to be off, I'll tell you. What are the women like on your ship?” 

“Hard-working,” Shatro said. 

“The mate and a senior A.B. keep us in line,” I added. 

Cassir grimaced. “Pity we can't go to Jakarta right away. I'd love to spend time in a city again. A real chance to mingle ... I'd even sign on with a triad, if that's what it took.” 

“Who knows where we'll be going?” Shatro asked gloomily. “We'll probably end up kidnapped and working for Brion.” 

Cassir said, “Matthew says you were in a village the Brionists pillaged.” 

“Pretty awful,” I said. 

“Sure it wasn't pirates?” Cassir asked. “We've seen ships with no flags. Had to happen eventually. Another thing the Good Lenk didn't consider when he brought us here.” 

“What?” Shatro said. “Should he have expected pirates?” 

“No,” Cassir said, laughing. He seemed ready to laugh at anything, refreshed to see new faces. “Fates, I'm giddy just to have company. We've been up all night talking, haven't we, Shatro?” 

“And drinking,” Shatro said. 

“Prairie solvent.” He pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket, filled with milky fluid, and offered it to me. I took a small taste. Like pure fire, and still with the bitter aftertaste of all alcoholic beverages on Lamarckia. “We took three scion membranes from part of the prairie, arranged them in a way Lamarckia and Petain did not intend, made ethyl alcohol ... and without yeast! Salap says we can make all sorts of materials from the scions we've found. We'll make this planet more pleasant, given half a chance ... And I hope Lenk gives us that chance.” 

“He's ill, they say,” Shatro said. “Getting old.” 

Cassir suddenly sobered, glanced at the bottle, and pocketed it. “We'll all get old. Nobody asked us whether we wanted to or not.” 

He lifted up his shoulders, took a deep breath, and swung his arm out to take in the inland prairie. “Quiet, my God, until the rain falls, and then it's like a dull, soggy drum. Do you think it worries?” 

“I never saw a queen, or anything that seemed intelligent,” Shatro said. “I like to think it's alive and thinking, somewhere.” 

“Oh, it is that,” Cassir said. “Very much alive and thinking ... Somewhere. Deep in the interior. Compared to Petain, Liz is a sweetie. Petain ... I imagine it, or him if I be truthful, to be a crusty, conservative old miser, except when he sets foot in the sea ... Then he gets extravagant. If we have time before the boat goes, we should swim out with some masks and look at the vine reefs. Proper big nutrient factory out there. Giant anchored membranes like nets, just bubbling away. Fast piscids, dozens of varieties. All of them taste awful. Petain is spectacular out there, but hidden by all that water. That's Petain, however. Rich and not at all generous with his beautiful daughters ... Fates, I'm drinking too damned much.” Cassir reeled dramatically, drew himself up again with a grin, and stamped his foot on the slick tan surface of the prairie. “Rain due in a few minutes, I think.” He stared out to the sea, where a low front of oily-looking clouds were moving in rapidly. “Let's get off this or we'll be drummed and sponged. Stranded until it pushes the water and nutrients down below. You can't walk twenty feet when your feet keep getting mucked.” 

Cassir ran swiftly for the edge of the prairie. We ran after, springing along on the surface, skirting the deep dimples. 

“Does the captain make the researchers do sailor work?” Cassir asked as we leaped off the edge, landing in the empty sand and pebbles. 

“Only Ser Olmy,” Shatro said. “He isn't quite a researcher yet, however.” 

“Right,” Cassir said, as if it didn't matter. “I like to climb aloft now and then ... but not if someone orders me to.” 

The clouds slid rapidly across the beach, bringing at first a curtain of fine mist that spun in the morning light like whirlwinds drawn in gold dust. A few small brown disks fell and clung to my hands and face. I shrugged them off with a convulsive shudder, as did Shatro, but Cassir plucked them off his bare arms and ate them. “Quite good,” he said. “Coins, we call them. Taste like bread, and no immune challenges.” 

I tried one, biting it in half. It did taste like bread—stale bread. “What's in them?” I asked. 

“What the prairie needs,” Cassir said. As the clouds blew inland, I saw a haze of coins falling on the broad tan surface. “Sucks them right up. The storm—the big storm our captain is so worried about—it makes food for the prairie.” 

“Salap told us that,” Shatro said, blinking miserably against the mist and the tiny slaps of brown disks. 

“Yes, but there's more than even that. It makes lots of food. Some of it we can eat. Petain keeps its sea creatures pretty unpalatable, but it seems to cater to the prairie—if the storm is really alive, and belongs to Petain, as Ser Salap thinks.” 

“How could it be alive?” Shatro asked. 

The rain fell in thick sheets now. “Run for cover!” Cassir shouted. 

We joined Randall and Thornwheel in the cabin, listening to the rain on the prairie, like hundreds of animals running. Thornwheel brewed a kind of tea from prairie skin harvested near the beach. He explained the process as the water came to a boil. “We flense it with our knives, peel a sheet off about the size of a blanket, take it back, cut it up ... let it dry in sheds. Nothing ever stays dry outside here. The prairie grows it back next day. Amazing polysaccharide complexes, and fast duplication, too.” He poured the water over minced skin and handed me a cup. “Go ahead,” he said, expression humorless. Thornwheel seemed quite the opposite of Cassir. Handsome, a little somber and sad. 

The women on Vigilant would have more variety now, and would give their sweets and medical attentions to the new men... 

Especially Shirla. And what was that to me? 

I sipped the tea cautiously. It tasted muddy and rich, like a yeasty broth. “Drop a few coins in ... lunch,” Cassir enthused, lifting his cup in a toast. “When we get to Jakarta and present our papers, we'll be famous. Enough food in Petain to feed millions.” 

“If Lenk allows it,” Shatro said. 

“Could use some spice,” Randall suggested. 

The rain ended twenty minutes after it began, and the clouds blew clear, leaving bright sunshine. The storm had disappeared again, as if following some familiar and habitual track.