Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

“Ceye ate the new grasses and became sick,” Tski tells me. “Ceye was afraid we would starve when the old grasses are gone, with your wall between us and other meadows.”

There are no other meadows, though; that is why there is a wall. It was carefully placed so that you can’t see it from here, in the heart of the forest valley, but that was before we knew the animals here were intelligent tree-dwellers and could likely see from the canopy. But still, they cannot see over it, which is for the best.

Tski swivels its body again, back and forth for a few long minutes. It is thinking. “Do your people eat the new grasses?” it asked at last.

“No,” I say, because we do not.

“Then why did you bring them?”

“It is part of our native ecosystem,” I explain.

“Even the soil and the air do not taste right any longer,” Tski says, and it picks up a stick with its tiny finger-blades and pokes the fire.

In the silence, I look around the glade. “Where are the others?”

“Desperate,” Tski says. “They have gone to look for hope.”

There is no response to give to that. “Will you paint Ceye’s tree?” I ask instead.

“When her nest is cold ash, and I can mix it with the colors,” Tski says. “Only then will I paint. I am almost out of warm-sky-midday-blue , which we traveled to meadow-by-the-five-hills to obtain. I am too old to go, and only Ceye also knew the way. Unless you also could go?”

“I can’t,” I say. Because it is not there, but also because even if it was, it is not something the council would accept. There is no way forward except forward, they would admonish me, no path to success without steadiness of thought, purpose, and action.

The burning nest has collapsed down into itself, its once-intricate woven structure now a chaos of ember and ash.

“It does not matter,” Tski says at last. “There are only the three others and myself left now, and there will be no one to paint for the last of us that goes.”

The Ofti pokes the fire a few more times, then lays its stick carefully aside. “Tomorrow,” it says.

“May I come watch?”

“I cannot stop you,” Tski says.

“If you could, would you?”

“Yes. But it is too late now. You are strange, squishy people and you move as if you are always in the act of falling, but instead it is everyone around you who falls and does not rise again,” Tski says. “And so it will also be with us.”

“Yes,” I answer in turn. It is a good summation of who we are, and what we do: we are teeth on a cog, always moving forward and doing our part until we fall away and the next tooth takes up our work in turn.

I get up from the ground, my legs stiff, and stretch. “Tomorrow, then.”

I make the walk back to the gate without looking back, but my thoughts drag on me.

The council members wait for the beginning chime, and all take their seats around the table with precise synchronicity, so that no one is ahead, no one is behind. The table is circular and is inlaid with a stylized copper cog design, so that each member is reminded that the way forward for each of them is with the others. This is how steadiness of purpose is maintained.

And hatred , Joesla thinks, as each face opposite perfectly reflects the righteous moral bankruptcy of their own. “I propose, with some urgency, that we take whatever steps are necessary to preserve the remaining Ofti population and environs before it is lost forever.”

“We already have extensive samples—” Tauso, to her left, says. He is the biological archivist, and his expression suggests he has found a personal criticism in her words.

“Forgive me, your collection is unassailable in its diligence and scope. I was speaking in regards to the still-living population,” Joesla interrupts.

“It is already too late.” Motas speaks from directly across the table. There is no leader among them by consensus, but Motas—always rigid, always perfect in his adherence to the letter of their laws—leads them anyway. “There are only four left; they no longer have sufficient genetic diversity to survive, even if we did find some way to insulate them from the planetary terraforming changes.”

“With Tauso’s collection, we could bolster their gene pool,” Joesla says.

“To what end? A great expenditure of effort and resources for something that gives us nothing in return? Your proposal is backward thinking,” Motas says.

“Not for the Ofti,” Joesla counters. “They have a unique culture and language that should not be discarded so hastily. I know it has been a long time since any of you have spent time among them, but—”

“The Ofti have no future. They are already gone, but for a few final moments,” Motas interrupts. “Does anyone here second Joesla’s proposal that we abandon our own guiding principles for this lost cause?”

Many should, but none will or do. Tauso does not meet Joesla’s eyes— and why should he, she thinks bitterly, when he has what he is required to save already? His silence is a betrayal of both her and himself.

“The matter is settled, then,” Motas declares. “Forward.”

“Forward,” some portion of the council responds, some with enthusiasm, some less so. Tauso is silent with Joesla, but it is too late, too small a gesture in the face of his earlier cowardice, and she will not forgive him this day. Now there is a necessary discussion of high-speed rail lines, anticipated crop yields in the newly reformed soil, and planning for the next wave of colonists; they cannot linger for one member’s wasteful, wasted regret.

There is smoke rising from the glade again. I try not to hurry down the path—I remind myself that I am an observer here, nothing more—but if my steps are quicker than usual, who would there be to accuse me? No one else comes here.

Tski is hopping back and forth unsteadily, whether because of its missing legs or its great agitation, beside a large, roaring bonfire. It does not have its tending stick, and the flames spark and flare and crackle with uncontrolled abandon. Dimly within the bright fire I can make out three shapes, three nest balls.

“What happened?” I ask.

It takes several minutes for my translator to make sense of Tski’s distressed whistles, but at last it speaks: “The others walked the circumference of the wall, back to where they started, and found no cause for hope. They have returned home and burned themselves. I tried to stop them, but I could not.”

I see now its awkwardness of movement is because many of its remaining legs are burned.

I do not know what to do.

“Sesh. Awsa. Eesn. That was their names,” Tski says. “Awsa and Eesn were children of my children. They should be here with their long lives ahead to remember my last days, and not this.”

“I am sorry,” I say.

“Are you?” Tski asks. The fires still rage, and some of the native grass beside the stones has caught, but the Ofti either does not notice or ignores this. Does it matter which?

“I don’t know,” I say. Through the wavering heat and smoke, I can see that Tski had started already to paint Ceye’s tree, no doubt wanting to get it done before I could arrive and be an unwelcome witness. It must have been doing that when the others returned to end their lives, as there are leaves on the ground around the base of the trunk, their cones filled with different colors, and I can see the silvery lines of etching up the tree trunk that had not yet been filled. The effect is still mesmerizing, even so unfinished, and I feel momentarily lost in it again. Then the realization strikes me: with its legs burned, Tski will not be able to finish the painting, will not take me that one step closer to elusive understanding. And at that, my heart catches in my throat, and I feel now the loss that Joesla had warned us of like a million cuts in my skin. Too late, too late!