Seeds of Earth (6 page)

'I was not aware of this plan, Great Elder,' the Listener said, bowing his head. 'But I am confused as to the uses of such a new clade.'

A good question,
Chel thought.
Are we expected to use Human weapons in battle}

'There are a number of constructions on Umara, built in the time of our earliest forebears, built to merge with the powers of the ancient, greater Segrana and protect these worlds. It will be the task of the Artificer Uvovo to study them and bring them back to life in preparation for whatever we may face.'

'Are the Humans to be made aware of this approaching enemy, Great Elder?' said Faldri. 'Are we tc cooperate with them?'

'There have been exchanges with their leadership,' the Pathmaster said. 'They already know about the Dreamless and are making their own arrangements. Cooperation may become inevitable, should events turn unfortunate.'

'Forgive me, Great Elder,' Chel said, 'but what is it that draws the Dreamless here? What do they want?'

The Pathmaster sighed. 'For long ages we guarded it, serving the Great Purpose, thinking that finally all knowledge and memory of it had passed irretrievably beyond the veil of the past. But some dreams persist longer than the lives of the stars and lurk and wait in hidden places for their time to come round again.' Dark eyeless hollows regarded him. 'The edifice atop that prow of rock, Waonwir, is not some old Uvovo temple of devotion as the Humans have surmised. Beneath its walls and foundations lies a gateway to the framework of the universe, a source of power once used to defeat the first enemy, the cause of the Great Purpose, a terrible adversary now long vanquished. If the Dreamless were to gain control of it, all thought in this galaxy and beyond would become enslaved to their will and life would have no song.'

He paused a moment. 'Now you know what you are meant to know. Go - return to Giant's Shoulder and wait for the command to travel northward.'

As the Pathmaster fell silent, his image blurred and dissolved into the pale, falling mist. With his vanishing, the light in the clearing dwindled suddenly, like a door closing, leaving Chel feeling adrift and burdened with portents.

War is coming,
he thought, and J
am to become a Listener even though I have been a Scholar for only four hem-seasons . . .

'I am not ready,' he muttered.

'On that I can only agree,' said Faldri, brushing off his long garments as he got to his feet. 'But higher counsel has determined the course of your doings - now we must wait to see if the meeting of fate and dream aids or hinders you.' He took his stave from where it leaned against one of the
vaskin
trees, and started up the slope. 'Come, Artificer, let me see you safely back to your
lohig.'

CATRIONA

On the moon Nivyesta, beneath the lush, living canopy of the forest Segrana, it was forever dusk. Through humid green shadows a
trictra
swung, long hooked limbs finding purchase on branches, heavy vines and creeping webs, descending into the well of gloom. Catriona Macreadie clung to its dumbbell-shaped torso, strapped firmly into a woven harness and uncomfortably warm in a grey concealing robe, feeling slight waves of vertigo as the creature dipped and swooped in the moon's lower gravity. In front, Pgal the herder sat easily in the notch behind the
trictra's
head, directing it with prods to either of its frontal joints or with single-syllable cries. Periodically, Pgal glanced back with his doleful eyes in a wordless query but Catriona, despite her discomfort, would shake her head and point onward and downward. The hunt was on and she was not for turning back.

Clouds of insects parted and swirled in their wake while innumerable creatures noticed the disturbance of their passing, mammalian
kizpi,
their large eyes staring from leafy niches, or
umisk
lizards startled and darting away. It was an exhilarating display of Segrana's biodiversity, which Catriona had charted and studied for nearly two years, filling scores of datacubes with profiles, reports and commentaries, as well as hundreds of images. She had seen how liexaformity was a trait common to different species, and how some subspecies exhibited tripartite or even quadripartite life cycles, changing their physical attributes as they aged, while others did not. She understood how the vast, continentspanning biomass of Segrana shielded its multifarious denizens from the moon Nivyesta's weather patterns, regulating the many microclimates found beneath its canopy, while the lower gravity aided the growth of wider, taller trees and other plants.

She also knew that the map was not the territory and that Segrana hid many secrets. Satellite surveys confirmed that while Segrana's topmost extremities grew to nearly a mile above sea level, some of the unseen valleys fell to almost two miles below, which implied that the forest's roots went even deeper, an ancient and ubiquitous grasp. Almost half an hour after receiving the trip signal it was down there that Catriona was headed, seeking proof for a wild theory.

To either side massive trunks sloped up towards the light, some spiralling around each other for strength and support, others criss-crossing to form junctions where Uvovo villages nestled, glowing clusters of lamps and conical roofs, indistinct figures walking or climbing from dwelling to dwelling amid the entwining dimness. One such township lay directly below, but Catriona had given Pgal clear instructions earlier and he was swift to guide their
trictra
off to one side, behind a dense screen of cultivated symbiotic flora. She tugged on the cowl of her baggy robe, keeping her human features concealed from any chance Uvovo observer. Yet they were still taking risks, since only Listeners went about the underforest swathed in this manner.

Moments later the village was behind them as they plunged on into the depths. From beneath her robe she took a small direction-finder orb then tapped Pgal's shoulder.

'Leftward a little,' she said.

The Uvovo herder just nodded and guided the spidery
trictra
down one of several long, thick vines. Like the mooring hawsers of some immense ship they curved away into the gloom, bearded with lichenous webs. Others snaked up the gnarled, mossy sides of trunks and branches like veins, leaching away moisture and nutrients which in turn served to feed a further array of parasitic plantlife. As the
trictra
clambered down one of these great living towers, Catriona looked from side to side, smiling as she spotted a familiar beetle or reptiloid, reflexively matching them against the entries in her codex memory. Whenever she caught sight of something apparently new she stored it away in her reminder file for later reference.

All the memory advantages of Enhanced genes,
she thought,
without the self-programming skills which would have earned me a well-paid, high-level research post. Hoiv tiresome would that have been . . .

Catriona was a failed Enhanced. Her germ plasm came from the
Hyperion's
cryostocks and had been genetically re-engineered to increase memory capacity and allow conscious, detailed control of information. The refined higher functions allowed an Enhanced to use their own cortex as a programmable computer , to from any chance Uvovo observer. Yet they were still taking risks, since only Listeners went about the under forest swathed in this manner.

Moments later the village was behind them as thev plunged on into the depths. From beneath her robe she took a small direction-finder orb then tapped Pgal's shoulder.

'Leftward a little,' she said.

The Uvovo herder just nodded and guided the spidery
trictra
down one of several long, thick vines. Like the mooring hawsers of some immense ship they curved away into the gloom, bearded with lichenous webs. Others snaked up the gnarled, mossy sides of trunks and branches like veins, leaching away moisture and nutrients which in turn served to feed a further array of parasitic plantlife. As the
trictra
clambered down one of these great living towers, Catriona looked from side to side, smiling as she spotted a familiar beetle or reptiloid, reflexively matching them against the entries in her codex memory. Whenever she caught sight of something apparently new she stored it away in her reminder file for later reference.

All the memory advantages of Enhanced genes,
she thought,
without the self-programming skills which would have earned me a well-paid, high-level research post. Hoiv tiresome would that have been . . .

Catriona was a failed Enhanced. Her germ plasm came from the
Hyperion's
cryostocks and had been genetically re-engineered to increase memory capacity and allow conscious, detailed control of information. The refined higher functions allowed an Enhanced to use their own cortex as a programmable computer, to run macros and test their own and others' theories; the best of them could illuminate solutions with their own flashes of insight. But Catriona had been part of the third and final generation, brought to term by surrogate mothers at a time when anomalies still emerged at unpredictable stages of development. She had begun to lose the ability to self-initiate neural pathways at fifteen years old, after which the pathway net she had already created in her head began to desync. By the time she was seventeen, her peers were strides ahead and she saw herself as being no better than an ordinary kid with an excellent memory.

And that just wasn't good enough for the martinets who ran Zhilinsky House,
she thought bitterly.

Yet this, combined with her obsessive interest in the ecologies of Darien and Nivyesta, gave her something to hold on to after leaving the Enhanced programme. It led her along a career path that proved fruitful and satisfying, as well as aggravating when it came to putting in equipment requisitions.

Still, occasionally she yearned for that long-gone fledgling talent, especially when trying to get her head around the astonishing complexity of the forest Segrana and the Uvovo's place in it. There was an underlying story or relationship to it all which she had only caught glimpses of so far. Of course, deducing the Uvovo connection to the temple on Giant's Shoulder had opened entire new areas of possible inquiry, but it had also made the speculation wilder and more tantalising. If she had been a full Enhanced, rather than a cripple, she would have seen through to the truth by now, she was sure of it.

The descent to the deep valley floor took another half-hour, including pauses to rest the
trictra.
All he chirping, whirring sounds of the underforest, vhere most of the species lived, faded to a high, distant murmur. Down here the light was filtered and grainy, and the air was still, warm and very humid.
The Uvovo call it Segrana,
she thought,
the living forest. I can almost believe it - this forest moon is itself an anomaly and its all-encompassing ecology constitutes a strange, beautiful world. Sometimes, it's almost as if I can hear it singing, feel it watching . . .

Following the glowing pointer in her direction-finder, they at last came to the base of one of the forest Segrana's oldest and biggest trees, a titan measuring almost 200 feet across. Massive knotted roots showed through the layer of decomposing foliage that blanketed the forest floor. Quiet streamlets trickled among some of the roots, pouring down towards a still deeper part of the valley. A family of dumpy six-legged
baro grubbed
for roots a short distance away, while ophidian
pasks
hunting bugs in the mat of decaying leaves made rustling sounds.

But Catriona's attention was fixed on a point about 20 feet up the side of the giant tree. She pointed across at it and the herder Pgal nodded, urging the
trictra
across the surrounding root tangle and up the tree's rough, dripping flank. Catriona could feel her heart beating as she spotted the cam's stalk lens protruding from the surrounding snarl of fibrous lichen, rootless and creepers, and once their mount was close enough she reached into the wet foliage and retrieved the device. She grinned as she studied it, blew away waterdrops and leaf fragments, then looked over her shoulder at what it had been observing.

Several yards away, six tall triangular stones stood in a circle on a flattened mound oddly free of saplings and bushes. Her first visit here had been brief and tense as her guide, an outcast Uvovo scholar called Amilo, had been terrified of being discovered by the Listeners. He had been equally edgy on their second visit two days ago when she had secreted the cam on the tree, setting it to record anything over a certain size moving in or near the stone circle. When she called Amilo yesterday, though, he refused to help a third time but did put her in touch with Pgal, a young cladeless
trictra
herder who was unconcerned about anything as fanciful as Pathmasters.

She weighed the little cam in her hand for a moment, then pushed the lens stalk into its socket before tucking it away in a shoulder pouch. Yes, with any luck she might have something to prove that the Uvovo did indeed have a third stage in their life cycle after Scholars and Listeners, namely the Pathmasters, who were supposedly no more than folk tales. She turned to tell Pgal to head back to the canopy but paused when she saw him looking up, eyes wide. She followed his unblinking gaze to see a larger
trictra
hanging several yards overhead, clinging to the tree with a large garment-swathed figure perched on its back, one hand holding a herding stave.

'Ah, Mistress-Doctor Catriona,' said the newcomer. 'A pleasant surprise to meet you here in Segrana's field of birth and decay' As he spoke he tugged aside his cowl to reveal the ageing, bony features of a male Uvovo she knew very well.

'Greetings, Listener Weynl,' she said. 'Seen any Pathmasters today?'

The Uvovo Listener's smile made his elongated face seem skull-like, but his demeanour was full of patient good humour.

'None yesterday, Mistress-Doctor, and none today. For they are only a
ssu-ne-ne,
a kind of myth or . . .' He frowned. 'There is another word in your Noranglic tongue - ah, yes,
fable,
an instructional tale, nothing more.'