Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

“Do you think he could be suborned?”

Bannor clucked his tongue. “If I thought that, I’d tell you to stick to him like a tick. Never let your enemies out of sight. No, I’m thinking he’s your best bet for sniffing out if something is brewing in the legation.”

“You mean sabotage?”

“I don’t think that’s likely, but as you’ve said, we’ve got no leads and no hypothesis, only nonspecific worries. In that situation, the most valuable asset you can have is a pair of eyes and ears that no one knows is a member of IRIS. So if you chat with Keith too often, or act as though you have innate trust of him, then any plants in the group will notice. That means you lose Macmillan as the one trump card that you’ve got mixed into the deck but can pull out at any moment. Keep him as a secret asset that might either tweak to a plot in the making, or who can be in the right place to reverse a — well, an unfortunate incident.” Rulaine squinted ahead, toward a cluster of low, squat conelike trees. “You would not believe how often problems arise in the most unlikely places and for the most unlikely reasons.”

Caine remembered narrowly avoided assassination attempts on Delta Pavonis Three, in deep space, in Washington DC, in Greece, at the Convocation, on Barney Deucy. “Bannor, that is one bit of tactical wisdom of which I do not need to be convinced.”

Rulaine grinned crookedly at him. “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

They reached the edge of the pseudo-tarmac as Yiithrii’ah’aash led the legation to join with a cluster of Slaasriithi from the same subtaxon as his new attendants. Continuing onward, the ambassador began gesturing and explaining something about the grove of bush-trees which they were entering.

“Come on,” urged Caine. “Let’s not miss the tour.”

As Caine worked his way to the head of the legation, Yiithrii’ah’aash continued on into a grove of immense, hypertrophied bushes which were simultaneously reminiscent of pointy mushrooms and very squat Christmas trees. “These are one of our most effective organisms for inducing xenobiots to become receptive to our own flora. And ultimately, to our settlers and other fauna.”

Trent Howarth looked around, puzzled. “Isn’t this planet already inhabited by Slaasriithi?” He glanced meaningfully at the ambassador’s shorter, thicker assistants.

“What you see, Mr. Howarth, are pioneer inducers of change, not colonists. Their life work is to shape the environment by fostering symbiotic or cooperative relationships between the indigenous biota and our own. Where that is not possible, we will establish preserves of our own biota by crowding out the native ones. These plants excel at that task.” Yiithrii’ah’aash gestured toward what Riordan was already thinking of as a cone tree. “By using their canopy to capture all the light and water that would normally find its way down to the ground, and by selectively sharing the resulting resources with our own — or receptive indigenous — biota, the trees claim the area beneath them for our exploitation. We introduce our own biota into it, and then work at inducing further mutations to maximize the harmony between the two families of bioforms.”

Phil Friel’s soft voice rose from the rear of the group. “You keep using the word ‘induce’ when you speak about changing an organism. Since you seem to have a wide command of our language, I’m wondering if that repetition is not merely intentional, but important.” Tina Melah glanced at the quiet Irishman with unveiled admiration. Of course, Tina didn’t seem to bother with veils of any type.

Yiithrii’ah’aash purred. “Indeed, we use the word ‘induce’ quite purposefully. It describes how we prefer to transform biota: to provide the correct environmental circumstances and monitoring to encourage natural change in a desired direction. Creating change by using sudden force, whether by traumatic stimuli or mechanistic alteration, rarely produces stable environmental blending.”

They left the grove of cone trees along a path that straddled an irregular border between day-glo green lichens struggling out from beneath the Slaasriithi plants on one side and a diffuse violet moss pierced by intermittent black spikes on the other side. Caine tried to recall an analog for the latter flora, but the only image that came to mind was of sea urchins trying to push up through a carpet of violet cotton candy. The ground between the two masses of plants was a tangle of runners from both, many of which were brown and lank: die-off where the two families of vegetation met, fought, and died.

Oleg Danysh squinted along their probable path, which remained in the shade of the brightside wall: the high terminal moraine that sheltered both the indigenous and exogenous biota from the steady red-gold light of GJ 1248. “It seems, Ambassador, that you mean to follow the contact margin between your own imported species, and those native to this planet.”

“Very astute, Dr. Danysh. In addition to keeping us in the shade of the ridgeline, it allows us to visit where we are making our greatest progress to transform the native life. And so, it offers you the best opportunities to learn about us.”

“Well, about your work as planet-changers, at least,” Tina Melah drawled.

Yiithrii’ah’aash’s head turned back in her direction; he did not slow his forward progress. “You may find, Ms. Melah, that the latter reveals the former more profoundly than any other behavior of ours. What we do here is no different from what we do everywhere.”

“Even on your homeworld?” she wondered.

“Especially on our homeworld,” Yiithrii’ah’aash emphasized. “We seek to reconcile and blend different species, taxae, individuals. It is the great challenge and conundrum of life, wherever it exists, that stability is only achieved by acknowledging the inevitability of change, and is only preserved by working with the forces of entropy to create a dynamic equilibrium in the natural order.”

Gaspard aimed his chin toward the rose-tinted cream sky. “And if those endeavors reveal the nature of the Slaasriithi best, which behaviors would you say reveal humanity’s nature most clearly to you?”

“We have not known you for that long.” Yiithrii’ah’aash might have sounded evasive.

“True, but you have had reports on us from the Custodians while we were a protected species, and you have had access to a full compendium of our history and media for almost a year now. Surely you have some sense of which endeavors reveal the most about us.”

“I do,” Yiithrii’ah’aash admitted slowly. “Human nature, we find, is best revealed in endeavors characterized by uncertainty, innovation and crisis. So, we find depictions of your exploration, and of rescue operations, particularly informing.”

Caine waited for the third category of activity and, when he did not hear it, asked outright. “And war?”

Yiithrii’ah’aash slowed slightly, swiveled his head back at Riordan. “Yes. Most especially, war.”

They continued up the rough trail in silence.

* * *

As the legation descended into a shallow, bowl-like declivity, a number of indigenous creatures — akin to eyeless, arthropod-legged horned toads — leaped up from the native sward. Their coloration changed rapidly from an almost pixelated purple-magenta pattern that blended into the violet of the cotton-candy moss, to a cream gray. They hop-sprinted on their stick-pole legs to a pond fed by the small watercourse that burbled down from the rear lip of the hollow. Leaping into the pond, they remained in the shallows — and promptly disappeared, their cream coloration now blending with that of the sky-mirroring surface.