The Meek Read online

  Which was exactly what the Filaments did. They pulled rocks aside. They dragged injured survivors out. They dragged their dead out. They lined up their dead side by side, showing a sense of geometry, symmetry, and design that could be construed only as the work of intelligent creatures. They blinked their headwands at each other like they were communicating with light. The more Cody watched them, the more he grew convinced they were intelligent.

  Buster, having walked through Cody’s mind, said: You make assumptions, Cody. Symmetry and design aren’t necessarily hallmarks of intelligence. Look at a wasp’s nest and you’ll see symmetry. Look at a spider’s web and you’ll see design.

  The uninjured Filaments buried the dead Filaments. They piled dirt, sand, and rocks over them. Several flew away behind the mountain and came back with handfuls of white mud, the discharge of some geyser nearby, and smoothed the white mud over the dark mud. Two of them then picked up sharp rocks and drew designs through the white mud. Right into the dark mud, so that the designs stood out in sharp relief.

  “They’re using tools, Buster,” said Cody. “Not only that, they bury their dead.”

  Buster said: Several creatures bury things.

  “How can you plan to poison them when you can plainly see they’re intelligent?” asked Cody.

  Buster said: Again, you make assumptions.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

  But then the Filaments did something even Cody couldn’t explain. They began to pile dirt and rocks on top of the injured survivors. They buried them alive. It was all Cody could do to stop from interfering. Several of the injured crawled away, plaintive cries coming from their mouths, but they were dragged back and buried just the same. Buried the way a cat might bury its business in a litter box. The way a sea turtle might bury its eggs. The way a dog might bury a bone. Out of instinct? Or through intelligent intent? He simply couldn’t tell.

  The migration continued over the next several weeks.

  After camping for a night on one of the islands of A Hundred Second Chances, the clan turned south and headed back through the scorching equatorial spring. For Cody, one day blended into the next, a constant and endless cycle of travel, then camp, travel, then camp. When it rained, the rain was as warm as bathwater. They were plagued by constant storms, particularly near the end of the day. They had to stake down the carryalls so they wouldn’t blow away.

  The manned mission from Earth arrived in the middle of the third week. By this time the Olympia Mons Clan was three days south of the equator, into cooler weather, and 1,000 kilometers away from where the Earth mission landed. The Earth mission crew met with members of the Mare Tyrrhenum Clan. Buster monitored all contact scrupulously. Cody followed the whole thing with interest, an unusual and noteworthy occurrence in the monotonous succession of days.

  “How big’s their spacecraft?” Jerry wanted to know. “Can they take any of us back to Earth with them?”

  Buster delegated Cody to investigate this possibility. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be done.

  “Their planned slingshot maneuver around Venus has been calculated to specific crew and fuel weights,” he told a disappointed Jerry. “And the spacecraft is too small anyway.”

  The eight Earthlings were allowed to take their samples, conduct their experiments, take their pictures. And then they went back to Earth with no idea about what was happening with the Filaments.

  The Meek had to ration their marrow in the interest of making it last until they came up with a solution for the Filaments; there would be no point in farming marrow, until they solved the filament problem. Cody watched as Filaments were captured and tested against a vast array of poisons and pesticides, none of which worked. Cody offered Buster his thoughts on the subject.

  “In a place where food is scarce and nutrients have to be found in even the most unlikely places, the Filaments have evolved to eat plants or grasses that might contain toxins—toxins they can easily digest with no ill effects,” he said. “As omnivores, they’re equipped to deal with these poisons. All the plants and grasses on Carswell have mushroomlike qualities, can grow in the dark. We’ve learned that many of them contain a variety of poisons. The Filaments eat them all.”

  Buster reluctantly abandoned the poison and pesticide approach. He concentrated Meek efforts on developing an effective biological or viral weapon against the Filaments.

  Buster, much to Cody’s alarm, didn’t at first see the irony of this plan. Cody pointed it out as bluntly as he could.

  “What you’re proposing is a bioextermination,” he said.

  Buster said: We’re still looking at other alternatives. The virus under development will be used only as a last resort.

  Once they reached the southern tip of Our Home, and had set up camp on the shores of the Bay of Redemption, five Filaments—Scar, Ears, Hunchback, Tumble, and Bigfoot (names bestowed for the attributes they described)—attached themselves to Olympia Mons the way stray cats or stray dogs might. The Filaments down at this end of the continent didn’t seem as shy as the ones further north, Cody observed. They exhibited a greater degree of curiosity and fearlessness, as if perhaps there had never been any real predators down at this end of Our Home. Cody spent many hours watching them, sitting on a hillside above the sea, enjoying the ocean breeze on his face, remembering the ocean breezes from the James Cook Coral Reef Habitat. Scar, Ears, Hunchback, Tumble, and Bigfoot seemed to be a set group, and in fact, the Filaments down here seemed to travel around in such groups. Cody repeatedly observed their instinct to attach to a larger group, which at least partly explained why their five mascot Filaments attached themselves to the Meek. As it turned out, this was convenient because the Meek wanted to test some nonlethal methods for deterring the Filaments.

  Buster said: The five make good test subjects, a stable control group our scientists can identify from day to day and chart in a coherent fashion, without the anomalies unknown subjects might introduce.

  Olympia Mons established several experimental plots of marrow for the purposes of testing a wide variety of more flamboyant strategies. Cody went out into the field and helped break the soil. He wanted to work. He was getting restless, not having anything to do. Because the marrow grew so quickly—in less than 32 hours—they were able to grow enough of it to pilot a number of different options. Cody observed everything. As the first seedlings poked through the ground the five mascot Filaments flew in from the surrounding hills and attacked the crop like a flock of marauding crows. They were quickly joined by swarms of others.

  Olympia Mons tried sound, blasting music of all types through huge speakers mounted on big silver tripods, a variety of noises, dogs barking, lions roaring, but the Filaments simply looked up at the speakers, then went back to devouring the marrow. Cody stood by the side of the field leaning on his hoe, amused but at the same time apprehensive about the ineffectiveness of the strategy. He watched the bewildered scientists chart the dismal results on palmtop computers. Some technicians wheeled in an array of bright lights. Lulu came up beside him and slipped her hand onto his arm. Olympia Mons tried the light, but other than a bit of squinting, the Filaments seemed unaffected.

  “They’re impervious little guys, aren’t they?” said Cody.

  The next strategy was more drastic. Meek soldiers came in with particle beam rifles and shot the Filaments. (They spared Scar, Ears, Hunchback, Tumble, and Bigfoot.) The scatter-shot wiped out a dozen Filaments at a time. But it didn’t matter. They were quickly replaced by others.

  “Did they have to do that?” asked Cody. “I don’t think it achieved anything, other than a lot of unnecessary carnage.”

  Next, they let Meek children shoo the Filaments away. Scar and the gang moved off no more than a few meters then settled back down, the way pigeons in a busy city square might.

  They had a meeting about everything later that night.

  Artemis Axworthy, growing frailer with each passing day, suggested the only humane way to solve the Meek’s dil
emma without resorting to the wide-scale deployment of a viral weapon against the Filaments was to rewrite the Meek’s code so they wouldn’t have to depend on marrow for their oxygen supply.

  “But to rewrite Meek genetic code so you can breathe without marrow … that would take at least a year,” he said. “And we just don’t have the time, do we?”

  He shook his head as if he blamed himself for not having foreseen the unforeseeable.

  Cody had a thought. “Can’t we have the Meek of the human line go without marrow altogether?” he said. “Wouldn’t that extend our marrow supply a little further and give us more time to find a better solution than killing all the Filaments? The human-line Meek might get sick, they might have withdrawal symptoms, but at least they won’t die the way those of the orphan line will.”

  The Father shook his head skeptically. “We’ve already thought of that, Cody,” he said. “Buster and I talked that over several days ago when we first realized we had a problem. Unfortunately fully three quarters of the Meek are orphan-descended. Even if the human line goes without, we can’t make the marrow last forever. We have to grow more. And in order to do that we have to solve the Filament problem in the next couple of weeks.”

  Buster offered an update on the latest interpretation of orbital photographs: After reexamining the trans-cloud satellite photographs, clan specialists have concluded that the so-called migratory scars detected on Carswell’s surface earlier are in fact scars left behind by the extensive feeding forays of the Filaments.

  Cody shook his head as he came to his own depressing conclusion about the Filaments. These delicate transparent creatures who looked nearly human, who buried their dead, who spoke to each other in a language of light, and who daily showed a growing curiosity about the Meek, behaved more like locust, born to raze, scourging the countryside, stuffing their faces with a callous disregard for everything else.

  Yet over the next few days, as he continued to observe them, he saw that they treated one particular species of native flora—known as the milkberry among the Meek—with unusual diffidence and respect. He watched as Scar crouched in a patch of milkberry bushes and delicately turned the small yellow leaves aside to look for the wild berries. There were hundreds Scar could have chosen but he seemed to be looking for the right berries. He finally picked out two. On occasion, Cody had seen him pick out three. Cody’s eyes widened as he realized this was an unvarying pattern. The Filaments would pick two, sometimes three, never one, never more than three. Scar broke the berries open so the milky fluid ran over his thumb and fingers. Then he popped them into his mouth and flew away.

  Cody couldn’t figure it out. He watched Scar grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear. The Filaments never gorged on the milkberry like they did on everything else. He recalled the tests the Meek had run on the milkberry: highly alkaline, nonpoisonous, and loaded with complex carbohydrates. Cody got up off his haunches, walked into the milkberry patch, picked one, and tasted it. Sweet but tart. Nothing unusual about it at all. He wondered if it had pharmaceutical properties. Yet the Meek tests had detected nothing medicinal.

  He looked around at the berry patch. So why did the Filaments treat the milkberry with such diffidence? Did it have a special significance to them? And if so, was it a cultural significance? A religious significance? A significance that confirmed their intelligence?

  Lulu said: She wants you. Despite the perpetual night at the south pole, the weather was warm, balmy, and the air smelled sweet with the white-and-orange blossoms of a ground-clinging vine the Meek called Alms for the Poor. She needs you. She loves you. Comfort her.

  The Bay of Redemption whispered beyond the wartwood-choked bluffs. Scar, Bigfoot, Tumble, Hunchback, and Ears played among the stamenlike branches, pulling them back and whacking each other with them, an activity that caused them no end of amusement.

  Cody said: And what of Buster? He needs you. He loves you. He wants you.

  She looked away, gasped suddenly for breath, her long-unused lungs from the days when she had still called herself Catherine spasming into life as she went into another withdrawal episode from marrow rationing. She coughed several times but finally caught her breath. Her hair had taken on a decidedly darker tint, reverting to the chocolate shades of her girlhood.

  She said: We give of ourselves. It’s the way of the Meek. Her emanations were weak, compromised by lack of marrow. I’ve forgotten that. But now I remind myself. They need us and we should go to them.

  Cody lay next to Deirdre that night. He felt her fear and uncertainty. They lay away from the rest of the group under the open sky, their groundsheet emanating warmth, biotherms stitched into the fabric. He held her.

  “I think of you as my friend now,” said Deirdre. “How long have we known each other?”

  “Ten years,” said Cody.

  “I’m sorry Christine died,” she said.

  “I’m finally accepting it,” said Cody.

  She looked up at him questioningly. “Does sex get in the way of friendship?”

  He knew he had to make a decision. He turned on his side, propped himself up on his elbow, and looked at her. She was pretty in an earnest serious way. Fair skin with freckles, green eyes. He pressed his palm flat against her stomach. She watched, waiting to see what he would do. She reached up, stroked his beard.

  “You’re going to go with them, aren’t you?” she said.

  He wasn’t going to lie to her. “I love Lulu,” he said.

  She nodded, accepting this. “And I love you,” she said.

  “People can’t help the way they feel,” he said.

  He leaned down and kissed her. Giving comfort, the Meek way. Her lips felt soft, sensual. He pulled away and saw that her eyes were almost closed, her breath coming in short warm gasps. They made love. He gave comfort and he received comfort. Sex as an expression of friendship, one of the oddest and perhaps most satisfying feelings he had ever had, free of all the usual freight.

  When they were done Deirdre had a soft grin on her face.

  “Whatever you do,” she said, “I know you do it for the right reasons.”

  He nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed and she pointed past his shoulder. “Look,” she said.

  He turned around. Scar, Bigfoot, Tumble, Ears, and Hunchback hovered above them, ten meters up. The Filaments held hands, formed a circle. They turned clockwise, moved in a marked rhythm. Their headwands flashed in unison. Their shoulders jerked back and forth synchronously. Tumble moved to the middle of the circle and spun counter-clockwise, his headwands flashing in the exact same pattern, only twice as fast, his shoulders jerking to the same rhythm, only twice as fast. Twelve other Filaments flew up from the surrounding grass garlanded with Alms for the Poor. These twelve formed a circle around Scar, Hunchback, Ears, and Bigfoot. In the middle, Tumble spun double-time counter-clockwise, the other four turned normal speed clockwise, the twelve new ones spun counter-clockwise half-time. The twelve blinked the same pattern at half-speed, jerked their shoulders at half-speed.

  “They’re dancing?” asked Deirdre.

  Cody stared at them. “I think so,” he said. “The numerical relationships … the rhythms … the patterns … they’re complex.”

  He grew more convinced than ever that these creatures were intelligent.

  Tumble left the group and flew toward them. The others dispersed and disappeared into the night. Tumble came in for a landing, and as usual, he tumbled. He got to his feet, flapped his wings a few times, flinging bits of grass from them, brushed himself off, and approached Cody and Deirdre with a bowlegged gait. Deirdre, still a little nervous about the small see-through creatures, moved closer to Cody. Tumble came right up and looked at them with his big round eyes. His headwands blinked, lighting up his face. He peered closely at Deirdre’s breasts. He poked the left one.

  “Hey!” said Deirdre.

  Tumble rooted among the nonphotosynthetic grass and weeds and picked an Alms for th
e Poor. He sniffed the white-and-orange blossom a few times—Cody could see his little lungs expanding inside his chest—then offered it to Deirdre. Deirdre reached out and took the flower.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The two humans and the Filament stared at each other for a few moments more. Then Tumble flew away, his flashing headwands growing fainter as he headed toward the point.

  The next day the sun rose for an hour above the northern horizon, brightening the cloud cover to a uniform gray; a brief taste of dawn after a week of nights, an intimation of the raging summer that would swoop down from the north.

  Cody and Lulu went for a walk along the beach during this brief dawn. The sand under his feet was soft and warm (the planet seemed to radiate warmth), and the green and foamy surf rolled onto the beach in a musical rhythm. A grass-covered slope rose to the left, the grass bending in the wind coming off the bay. Shells the likes of which he had never seen before littered the beach, shaped like the triangular poppy seed turnovers his mother used to buy from the bakery down the street.

  Lulu said: You were with her?

  He sensed no reproach. Rather, she was glad he had given Deirdre comfort. He motioned at the deserted beach.

  “I was,” he said. He spoke to her, trusted his voice more than his emanations, could better control tone and inflection, felt more at home with his voice. “Tumble gave her a flower last night.”

  Lulu said: He did?

  “I can’t help wondering about it. I mentioned it to Buster. He frowned, wouldn’t respond. But I think it’s another indication, don’t you?”

  Lulu stared off over the waves. Buster’s had some of the scientists run intelligence tests on Bigfoot and Ears. Nothing. Their brain waves exhibit not the slightest trace of advanced cognition. But then there was a lot in the tests the scientists had never seen before. She grinned. I think giving a flower to a pretty woman like Deirdre is sign of intelligence, don’t you?