Terra (8 page)

Terra turned. -
Aren’t I? Aren’t I less clever?
she asked angrily.
Aren’t Ymns stupid and primitive? Wasn’t that the whole point of bringing me here? So I wouldn’t grow up like them?

There was an awkward silence as Lbbp took the time to frame his response as carefully as possible.

-
It was a spur of the moment thing. You were in danger and I made the decision to help you. It wasn’t any sort of judgement on the Ymn race in general or even on your parents in particular. I just found an abandoned baby. The fact that it was a Ymn baby was a secondary consideration.

Lbbp breathed heavily. That seemed to come out all right. Terra was still staring out of the window. Lbbp needed to cheer her up and, if at all possible, change the topic of conversation, and at that moment he suddenly thought of a way to stun two drftgrf-bgshns with one bdkt, as the saying had it.

-
Look,
he said,
they don’t particularly need me at the Life Science Hub for the next day or two. Those cell cultures can develop themselves without my help. How do you fancy a trip somewhere, just you and me?

Terra turned towards him, smiling. He already knew what she was going to suggest.

-
Rfk?
she asked.

Lbbp smiled. -
Rfk it is!
he said.
Tomorrow, first thing.

I think I got away with that,
thought Lbbp.

T
he nature reserves along the coast at Rfk had been Terra’s favourite place on Mlml ever since Lbbp had first taken her there at just three orbits old. Lbbp had watched, beaming with pride, as the tiny Ymn girl had capered through the forest and along the shore, agog with fascination at the plants and wildlife. How gratifying that she should share his love of nature. A parent always hopes that their children will share their passions, but it’s by no means a certainty that they will. This is doubly true of adopted children, and several thousandly true of adopted children from different planets.

Lbbp had made a point of taking Terra to Rfk at least once an orbit ever since. Several times an orbit, if work and other commitments permitted. The place had many guises, all beautiful in their own way. During the hot season, towering tree-sized flowers and delicate flower-sized trees would be in full bloom, a festival of colour around which bird-sized insects and insect-sized birds would buzz and flutter. During the cooling season, the foliage would turn a deep blue as it dried and fell, forming great cushiony piles which Lbbp would expressly forbid Terra to jump into, before joining her in jumping into them. During the cold season, icicles and frost would decorate the land and vegetation like glittering baubles, which Terra found curiously moving for reasons neither she nor Lbbp could guess at. During the warming season, the tree-sized flowers would punch their way through the ice like deceased warriors of legend, resurrected by their ancient gods to fight another battle. It was all especially fascinating because the climate within the city had been artificially controlled since eras past, so one had to venture out into nature in order to experience ‘weather’ at all.

That morning, Terra had set her sleep-well to wake her early and had Lbbp’s configuration 11 ready for him by the time he woke up. They had made up a bag of food – slices of configuration 9 (it tasted better cold than the other configurations) some wsht rolls, pt-ssh paste and a flask of hot zff. They fitted their gravity bubbles (-
Did you remember to charge your bubble?
-
YES, I remembered to charge my bubble
) and packed spare power cells; it was almost a whole cell’s journey to Rfk. They set off just as everyone else was floating to work and study . . . Lbbp and Terra exchanged mischievous grins as they floated off in the opposite direction to the flow of traffic. No work for them today.

The sun was high in the sky by the time they arrived. They set down on the beach, a stretch of crystal sand which refracted the light in rainbow patterns along its length. The sea, reflecting the sky, was a deep pink. Terra gazed out towards the horizon and breathed deeply, all thoughts of Interfaces, gshkth practice and singed hair cleansed from her mind.

-
Wonderful, isn’t it,
said Lbbp.

-
It is, it is indeed,
replied Terra.

They sat in silence for a moment, drinking it all in.

-
Lbbp,
asked Terra,
what’s Rrth like?

There was a heavy pause.

-
Well,
said Lbbp,
a lot of it is very beautiful.

-
As beautiful as this?

-
Some of it is pretty close, yes,
said Lbbp.
At least it was the last time I was there.

-
How do you mean?

-
It’s the Ymns. They’re not as . . . careful as they could be with regard to their planet,
said Lbbp, choosing his words with care. He knew that the way Ymns were perceived by Fnrrns – primitive, savage, stupid even – had become a difficult topic for Terra, and this Interface business hadn’t helped one bit. He didn’t want to make matters worse by launching into some bitter diatribe about Ymns despoiling their home world. He’d got most of that out of his system many orbits ago, he recalled with a shudder.

-
Is there hope for the Ymns?
Terra asked, with genuine curiosity.

-
There’s always hope,
replied Lbbp after a moment’s thought.
Culturally and technologically they’re about where we were five or six eras ago and we turned out all right. Mind you, we’d never developed the sort of weapons they have on Rrth now.

-
Weapons?

-
Weapons that can destroy a whole city in one go,
said Lbbp.
They’ve actually used the things, too. I’ve seen pictures. And no you can’t see them, it would scare you out of your wits. They’ve made enough of these weapons to kill everyone on Rrth several times over.

-
Why?
asked Terra, distressed.

-
Who knows? By the time they’d set off the first few there’d be nobody left to set off the rest. There doesn’t seem to be much logic to it. And given that they seem to be willing to go to war over the tiniest thing – minor tribal variations, ancient superstitions, even differing economic theories, if you can believe that – it seems pretty inevitable that they’ll wipe each other out sooner or later. That’s assuming,
said Lbbp, rather hitting his stride,
that they haven’t done already.

-
What?
Terra was genuinely alarmed now.

-
Well, think about it; we can see Rrth from here using astroscopes and the like, but the light we’re seeing left Rrth many orbits ago. It could all be over on Rrth already and we wouldn’t be able to tell.

Terra’s face fell and Lbbp suddenly realised how stupid he was being. The implication of what he’d just said hit him too late; he could see that it had hit Terra already. She’d come to terms with being the only Ymn on Fnrr (although it seemed to be weighing rather more heavily on her these last few days); the idea that she might actually be the last Ymn left alive was truly disturbing.
You fool,
thought Lbbp,
letting your scientific enthusiasm run away with your mouth. You’re talking to a child, not addressing a symposium.
He decided to change the subject.

-
Hungry?

-
Starving.

They went to eat their food in the shade of the forest, the sun being quite fierce now. Fnrrns turn a bright blue if they get sunburnt, and Lbbp didn’t want to turn up to work with a blue face in the morning, since he’d made no mention of trips to nature reserves, but rather had told his colleagues he’d be working at home today.

They found a clearing with a carpet of soft red grass and made themselves quite comfortable. Lbbp leaned his back against the stem of a giant lgsh-chr flower and chewed blissfully on his configuration 9. The stem swayed in the breeze, with an almost hypnotic effect.

Lbbp’s eyes snapped open suddenly. Had he been asleep? He felt weirdly vulnerable; it was the first time he could remember being asleep out in the open. Fnrrns had been using gravity-wells to sleep in for eras and found the notion of lying down to sleep, as animals do, to be slightly degrading. Lbbp himself hadn’t just dozed off like that for a long time.

-
You were asleep!
giggled Terra
. Flat on your back like a jrrg or a big grey gff-gff.

-
Or a Ymn,
reminded Lbbp.
You’re having a Ymnising effect on me.

-
Don’t worry, I won’t tell your clever Postulator friends that you fell asleep in the forest and lay there snoring away like a big—

-
I do not snore!
protested Lbbp.

-
How would you know?

Lbbp got up and stretched. The slice of configuration 9 was still in his hand. He took another bite, then asked -
How long was I asleep for?
Fnrrns don’t dream, not adult Fnrrns anyway, so they can have difficulty keeping track of time while sleeping. For all Lbbp knew, he could have been unconscious for six shades or half a cycle.

-
About half a spectrum. Don’t worry, I kept myself busy.

-
What have you been up to?

Terra was holding her slate. She’d sketched the flower that Lbbp had been leaning on. The flower was three times her height and was changing colour, almost like a clock; purple, red, orange, red, purple, blue.

-
It does that to attract lots of different birds and insects,
said Lbbp.
They all have a different favourite colour, so this way it gets them all sooner or later. Look, the hjj bugs like the red best.
Terra noticed a little swarm of blue insects hovering around the flower.
Ingenious,
Lbbp went on.
Makes it difficult to draw, though.

-
Look,
said Terra holding up her slate. She’d animated her drawing so that it changed colour like the flower.

-
Clever,
said Lbbp.

-
And here . . .

Lbbp looked at the bottom of the drawing. Terra had sketched him, leaning against the stem with his eyes closed.

With a giggle, Terra tapped the figure of Lbbp on the slate and it began to make little snoring sounds.

-
A bit TOO clever,
said Lbbp.

Terra laughed and tapped the slate to make the sound stop. The sound didn’t stop. Or rather it did, but a similar sound carried on. A snorting sound, then a rustling sound. Terra and Lbbp exchanged curious glances.

The sound was coming from behind a hedgy patch of purple bush. -
What is that?
asked Terra. She put her slate down on the grass and skipped off to investigate.

-
Just a moment,
said Lbbp, but Terra was gone. He put down his slice of configuration 9 and went after her.

Terra found herself in a clearing overgrown with tall reedy grass. She looked through the grass towards the rustling sound. She saw nothing. She was about to decide that whatever she’d heard had already gone when a great section of undergrowth moved. She gasped and kept very still.

What had looked like a grassy mound was in fact an almost perfectly camouflaged animal. Twice Terra’s size, it crawled along the forest floor, visible only when it moved. Terra couldn’t quite make out its shape; it was covered in long purple quills which were almost indistinguishable from the grass. She couldn’t tell which end was the head, or even if it had such a thing as a head. A brightly coloured sknth, a small furry arboreal creature, was scampering down a tree trunk about an arm’s length away from the creature; at that moment, the creature settled the question of which end was its head. It reared up and bared a set of sharp yellow teeth, taking the sknth with one swift chomp.

Terra froze in fear. She watched the creature chewing its prey in horror and fascination. Something touched Terra on the shoulder. She started in fright. It was Lbbp. She wanted to punch him but was afraid to make any noise.

-
A znk! A wild znk! Fantastic!
whispered Lbbp.

-
Fantastic?
hissed Terra.
I know at least one sknth who wouldn’t agree with that.

The znk spat out a ball of multicoloured fur.

-
Isn’t it beautiful?
enthused Lbbp, getting a little louder.
These were almost extinct an era ago, you know. It’s so good to see them re-establishing themselves in the wild.

-
Shouldn’t we, er, be keeping quiet?
whispered Terra, remembering those teeth.

-
Don’t worry,
said Lbbp,
their sense of hearing is terrible.

The znk raised its head and made a sniffing noise. It swung round to look directly at Lbbp and Terra.

-
Their sense of smell, however, is excellent,
said Lbbp, who knew he’d forgotten something.
Terra, listen to me and do exactly as I say. That flower you were sketching?

-
Yes?
whispered Terra, trembling.

-
Look at it. Look directly at it. Whatever you hear, don’t take your eyes off that flower.

Terra turned her head slowly and fixed her eyes on the flower. It continued to change colour; blue, purple, red, orange, red . . . She could hear sniffing and shuffling, but did not turn her eyes away from the flower . . . orange, red, purple, blue, purple . . .

-
It’s gone,
said Lbbp.

Terra exhaled. -
Why did I have to look at the flower?

-
You didn’t. Well, not the flower specifically, anyway. I just needed you to focus your attention on something that wasn’t the znk.

-
Why?
asked Terra, as they walked back to the clearing.

-
Well, like a lot of predators, znk are only interested in other animals if they’re a threat, or possible prey. It has just eaten so it’s probably not hungry at the moment, but if it felt threatened by us it would attack to defend itself. That’s why I needed you to keep still and look away. If you’d looked right at it, it would have taken it as a challenge, and if you’d tried to run, its hunting instinct would have taken over and it would have chased you whether it was hungry or not. As it was, it decided you were irrelevant so it left you alone.