Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two Page 3

  “Ugh,” I said. “It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does,” she sighed. And then after a moment of grim silence, she continued. “Do you want to hear the very worst? A few months ago, we began hearing reports of a different kind of revelation—one unprecedented in Linnean history. Several people have reported actual physical contact with the eufora. The contacts have occurred all in the same area, and the ‘contactees’ have all described the eufora in similar terms. Remember the ‘golden child?’ These new stories include golden men and golden women. ‘They sparkle and glow with heavenly light.’ And . . . several of these stories of encounters with eufora now include reports of . . .” She rubbed her nose; she didn’t like what she had to say next. “. . . Reports of sexual intercourse. Traditional and otherwise. None of the contactees reported the experience as unpleasant—although most of them reported feeling strangely lightheaded the next day. All of which leads us to suspect that the Hale-Stones have used drugs to create hallucinatory episodes, during which time they’ve taken physical advantage of their victims. One of the young women may have gotten pregnant. We don’t know. She seems to have disappeared from public view.

  “Those who have reported such contacts, describe the eufora as mostly human in appearance, but glowing with radiant light all over their body. Sweet music fills the air around them. They smell of flowers. And sometimes they heal sickness. . . .”

  Smiller looked at me. “Pheromonal perfumes. Antibiotics. Lights. Hidden speakers. If you don’t have electricity, everything looks like a miracle. And if you use a mild narcotic or hallucinogen to disorient your victim, they’ll have a physically pleasant experience. The perpetrators have probably stimulated the victim’s pleasure centers too, and that would account for some of the sexual stories. We don’t have a lot of information about that aspect. The Linneans don’t discuss sexual matters; but we do have whispered rumors, and the different stories do have some consistency of detail.

  “But nothing we’ve heard lies in the realm of the supernatural—except in the telling of the person who experienced it. If you don’t know what hit you, and if all the evidence suggests a supernatural experience, then you’d have to assume that a spirit had touched you, wouldn’t you?

  “We think we know how to duplicate the effects described. We think the Hale-Stones have somehow obtained the appropriate smoke and mirrors. Most likely, they have associates working in the transit stations, but we have no idea who or how they can move so much through the Gates without detection. But then again we have so many installations under construction on this world and so many crews working here and so much traffic passing through the Gates, that ample possibilities exist for ‘evil mischief.’ Administration will definitely have to reexamine security procedures on the Linnean Gate.

  “We have several high-tech installations on the Linnean side. We don’t normally discuss them, Kaer, but if you ask me, I think we’ll have to look there to find our own little maizlish, acting like a good little helper, while secretly working to destroy the greater mission. I tell you this because when we get there, I want you to bundle up good, put your hood up, and stay close behind your da, the whole way. I don’t want anyone to see you. They might wonder why we’ve brought a child with us.”

  “But they’ll see the chopper—”

  “By the time we land, the sun will have set. We’ll have all our lights off, and a hand-picked crew will send the chopper through the transit-tunnel. And just in case, we have some friends there who’ll stage a minor diversion just before we land. A little leak—nothing serious, but the fail-safes will lock down every pressure door in the entire installation. That’ll keep anyone with curious eyes from wandering around the station, especially into the transit section, while we cross over. It should work. If we can just get across without the Hale-Stones hearing about it, we might just give them a very unpleasant surprise—and maybe we’ll finally get our people out.”

  Second Crossover

  We landed with a bang and I came awake with a start. Da put his hand over mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You slept so soundly, Kaer, I didn’t want to wake you. Just stay seated.”

  We were rolling, but I couldn’t see anything out the window. Everything was dark. If I craned my head sideways, I could see the faintest glimmer of a spotlight at the front of the chopper, nothing else. I thought we might have been moving toward another set of pressure doors, but I couldn’t tell for sure. I couldn’t see anything. A moment more and then the rotors above us stropped slowly to silence.

  “We’re here,” said da, unbuckling his seat belt. “All right, remember the plan?”

  I nodded.

  Everyone else was already standing, but I stayed seated. Da kissed me quickly and headed for the door. He gave me a reassuring smile before heading down the ramp.

  Someone had put a blanket over me while I was sleeping, so I wrapped it tighter around myself. The last to debark was Smiller. She came over to my seat and pulled a pack of some kind down from the overhead rack. As she swung it over her shoulder, she glanced down at me and put a single finger up to her lips—shh—then gave me a thumbs-up signal and a smile. Then she ducked out through the door of the chopper, following everyone else.

  Something outside smelled of industrial cleanser again. Probably it was something they sprayed to reduce the chance of accidentally sparking an explosion every time they opened the pressure doors. All that oxygen and methane floating around had to be risky. You could drop a wrench, strike a spark, and blow up a building. I guessed that the tools were all carbon-polymer and all the floors, even the hangar floors, were carpeted. And they must have mist-sprayers running constantly, spraying retardant. Or something. That was probably that awful peppermint smell. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask.

  I stayed in my seat and waited, trying to keep as low and inconspicuous as possible. For a while nothing happened and I thought about falling asleep again. I was tired enough. Then there was some banging underneath the machine, I wasn’t sure at first what it was, but then the chopper began rolling forward and up a gentle slope and I realized that it was being mounted on a truck-bed or a transit-platform, just like I’d already seen back at Earth-station. I could hear voices, men shouting at each other in English, talking about checking mountings, locking things down, stuff like that.

  Someone was fussing about the chopper’s weight. There was a discrepancy, it was too heavy, and he was unhappy. He didn’t want to get fined or fired if someone was smuggling something. Another voice said, “I’ll check inside.” Uh oh. . . .

  I looked around, there wasn’t any place to hide. Smiller hadn’t told me what to do if someone boarded—and then it was too late to do anything because the owner of the voice climbed into the cabin of the chopper. He was a stern-looking fellow in a white isolation suit, but his hood was pushed back, so I could see his face. He looked like he could eat a bear and spit out the bones. He must have taken frowning lessons from Jorge.

  The man made a show of peering forward into the cockpit, then he walked to the rear of the chopper, right past me as if he didn’t see me at all, and peered into the galley and the head. Nope, nothing there either.

  He couldn’t have missed me. I sat in my seat, wide-eyed with fear, wondering what to do. Should I try to get out. . . ? But no, Smiller had told me to stay seated, no matter what.

  As the frowning man came forward again, he methodically opened and checked each and every overhead compartment. When he got to the one over my head, he opened it and peered into it carefully with his right hand . . . while his left hand pulled a chocolate bar out of his shirt pocket and held it directly in front of my face. Uh—after the slightest hesitation, I took it quickly. I gave him my best smile, but he’d already turned away to check the last two compartments. He’d never looked at me once. He went back to the door and hollered out to the owner of the other voice. “I didn’t find anything. Check your fuel manifests, I bet you’ll find the discrepancy in the ox
ygen tanks. Y’know, they use that stuff for breathing too.” He jumped down out of the aircraft and the argument diminished in the distance.

  Finally, a louder voice said, “Worry about it later. Give me that, I’ll sign for it. I’ve got a pressure leak topside to worry about, and I need every hand upstairs. Send this thing through and get it out of here already.”

  Two seconds after that, the chopper started rolling again. I stayed low in my seat as still as I could, the chocolate bar still clutched in my hand. I felt like laughing out loud. I didn’t know how she’d arranged it, but I knew that it was Smiller’s little joke.

  I heard some pressure doors close behind me. The machine was rolling through the tunnel now. I wanted to peek, but I knew I didn’t dare. Any second now, I’d cross over to Linnea—all the same feelings of excitement and panic started building up again. I thought I felt it when the gravity shifted, but it could have just as easily have been the transit-platform lurching forward.

  And then the aircraft rolled through another set of pressure doors and I could smell a difference in the air. It smelled alive. I smelled trees. The air was cold and clean and strangely familiar.

  We were on Linnea.

  The Old Woman and the Fire

  A very long time ago, in the time before time, an old woman lived in the grass. She lived in a house of grass, she slept on a bed of grass, and she wore a dress of grass. She sang of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth and the grass grew tall and strong around her.

  But when the grass grew so tall and strong, the wind could blow the sand and the dust across the world in great stinging clouds, so the wind tried to stop the old woman from singing her song. First, the wind tried howling around the old woman’s house, so loudly that the thatch on the roof danced with the noise, but the old woman tied the thatch down with stronger cords so it could only rustle angrily.

  Then the wind tried driving great clouds of locusts across the sea, landing them all around the old woman so they would eat the grass and destroy her home. But the old woman responded by singing a song of invitation to the birds of the sky and the birds of the ground and the lizards and the bears and the kallikacks. And they all came to eat the locusts, for the locusts made a good meal for all. Great flocks of birds came dropping down from the sky to gorge themselves. And the birds of the grass came flapping through the sea. The lizards came out of their burrows, and with swift snapping tongues, they fed themselves heartily. The bears and their cubs stuffed great handfuls of grass and locusts into their mouths, and even the kacks snapped and crunched at the fat green insects. The feeding went on for days, but the animals ate as fast as the locusts arrived, for they had suffered a long hungry winter, and they all needed to replenish their stores of fat before the summer ended. And afterward, after the locusts had fed and the grass still stood tall and strong, all the birds and animals left their rich dark droppings in the sea, returning the bounty to the soil, so that the next year the grass grew even taller and stronger than ever before.

  This only made the wind more furious with the old woman. And so it circled the sea, looking for another answer. Finally, far north of the old woman’s grass house, it found a range of rising hills. The grass rose tall and strong across these hills, soaking in the deep orange rays of the sun. The grass held the water of the sky in the soil, releasing it back to the air in measured amounts. It sent roots deep into the good dark earth and held it there so the wind could not hurl it about. But the wind had an idea, and it circled these hills for days and weeks and months, drying out the grass. The wind blew steadily, sucking the water from the dark green stalks, a little bit more every day, until the ground had dried out and the grass was hard and brittle and flaked away as dust.

  Now, happy at its success, the wind began to sing a new song. It soared out to the end of the world and back, moaning and howling. And when it came back, it drove a wall of storm clouds before it, piling them up in great massive thunderheads. The clouds grew angry at such treatment and began storming among themselves, bruising the sky with flashes of lightning and claps of booming thunder that shook the ground like a drum. But the wind didn’t care. It circled the clouds around and around until they started slapping the ground with their anger. Again and again, the sky lit up and the ground sparked, and the wind shrieked with excitement.

  And finally, one stroke of lightning found the driest patch of grass at the top of the highest hill. Here the stalks of grass had thirsted for water for too long and had given the last of their moisture to the air. They caught the full fury of the lightning and erupted into flame. The wind held its breath for half a moment, waiting to see if the flames would catch and spread—and as soon as it saw that the fire had caught, it howled with glee. And now it began to sing the angriest song it knew—the song of fire.

  The wind forgot the clouds above, they had done their job; now it began to sing of a wall of flame driving across the sea like an unstoppable nightmare—straight toward the grass house of the old woman.

  But the old woman heard the song of the wind and saw the glow of the fire reflected in the sky, and she knew what the wind had done. She knew that a wall of fire would soon come screaming over the horizon, racing through the grass straight for her tiny haven.

  The old woman began to sing a song of her own. She made a torch of kindling from her pile of dried out grass. She stuck it into her fire-pot and held it there until it caught. Then, singing a song of repentance and apology, she walked as far south as she could and began to light the sea on fire.

  The old woman sang to the grass. “The time has come to give yourself back to the good dark earth so that your children can grow as strong and as tall as yourself. The time has come to feed the soil. Do not grieve, do not fear, for you will return as green and as fresh as ever.”

  At first, the grass feared the fire and it would not burn. It still held too much of its life-giving moisture. But the old woman sang and the fire burned hot and the grass listened and heard. So it gave its water to the fire, letting it free in bursts of green steam. And then, finally, the stalks began to burn—slowly at first, and giving off a greasy acrid smoke. But the old woman sang to ease the fear of the grass and soon the grass took up the flames, spreading them south in a celebration of its own vigorousness. “We shall return as tall and as strong as ever.” The fire caught itself and sped joyously away from the old woman, to the south, leaving behind only the scorched and blackened earth.

  Tossing aside her torch, she went back to her house of grass and gathered all her most precious belongings. She did not own much. A fire-pot, some beads, a knife, a grass hut which she cut loose from the ground. She loaded her life onto a grass sled that she dragged behind her and walked into the south, following the fire that she herself had set. She did not have to walk far, for as soon as she reached a place where the fire still coming from the north would find no fuel, she stopped. Here, she began to rebuild her home. She dug a new fire-pit and began to make herself tea as salty as tears.

  The next day, when the fire from the north arrived, all roaring and angry, it found it could go no further. It had nothing to burn, nothing to eat. And so, it died as suddenly as it had begun. It lay down in the dirt and flickered out with a whimper.

  Soon, the wind came to see what its fire had done. It cackled with glee, because everywhere, the ground lay black and smoking. The sea had turned into a desolate and endless flat from one horizon to the next.

  But even in the middle of such destruction, the wind could not claim a victory. When it came looking for the bones of the old woman, it found that she had not died at all. She sat calmly in her chair, holding her bowl of tea, sipping it gently. The smoke had turned her face black, and her hut sagged a little on one side. But she had her chair and her bed and her bowl of tea. So she sat and she rocked and she sang her song.

  The wind howled in defeat and went away for many days and months and did not come back until the first snows began to fall. But by then, the grass had come back stronger as ev
er, as tall as a man and taller. It curled over the old woman and protected her against the cold nights of the winter. And when spring came, it grew taller still and by the time a full year had turned, the sea had restored itself as green and lush as if the fires had never burned.

  And the old woman—she lives out there still, singing of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth.

  Linnea

  The chopper was rolled down off the transport platform, and then nothing happened for a while. And then a lot of things started happening all at once. All kinds of thumps and bangs and things going klunk underneath. I could smell airplane smells now—fuel and concrete and rubber tires.

  Da climbed up into the chopper and came over to me. He said, “Smiller says you can get out now, if you want.”

  I shook my head and whispered, “I don’t think I should.”

  “Why not?” he whispered back. “And why do we whisper?”

  “Because I think the spy works on this side of the Gate. How else could he signal the Hale-Stones if he didn’t? So if I get out to stretch, he might see me. I should stay onboard.”

  Da considered the thought. “Good point, Kaer. All right, you stay onboard. I’ll tell Smiller.” He started to turn away.

  “Da—you should find something, a robe or a blanket, when you go back out. So it looks like you came back aboard to get something. Otherwise, someone might wonder why you got back on.”

  He laughed. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

  “I just want us to win.”

  He patted my shoulder, stroked my hair. “We all do. You keep thinking that way and we will.” And then he ducked out again.