CEMETERY GRASS HISSING IN THE WIND

© Dana W. Paxson 2005

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CEMETERY GRASS HISSING IN THE WIND

1563 4D

After Indrio had drifted silently out, Arlen sipped a gray-green stimulant. He reached into a recess under a low table and carefully drew out the familiar transparent block a little larger than his clenched fist. Holding it up in a shaft of light, he studied the deep convolutions and tunnels marking its surface. The outlines of the openings, shaped like the heads of spears, all pointed upward to a dull apex. He looked in through one of the larger apertures; shadowy conical protuberances sat like slightly-pointed mushrooms on a tiny level floor. Chairs for strange bodies.

The last children of tiny starfarers. When their descendants the human giants thrust them into the forgotten corners of this world to die, how did they feel, facing extinction? Did they know that these giants would follow them into death? Many times he had looked inside with microptics, walked with the archive ainon, trying to read the wormtrack glyphs that festooned floors, walls, ceilings indifferently as if gravity meant nothing in such a scale of life.

The starship builders, after millenia of sending slow vessels, had finally teamed with the genengineers. Make us a vessel for our genome, they must have said, a vessel that can pack genes for a thousand people into a creature the size of a fingertip, a creature that can thrive in twenty-five-gravity acceleration indefinitely; make us this vessel, and we will make you a ship that will take it to the stars in a fraction of the time we need now. Arlen turned the block in his hand.

They had done it all, creating tiny living vessels, who had come here from Earth, and obeyed their makers, and spawned their makers’ children, and stepped aside into extinction. Perhaps some day he would recover the secrets that had made this possible. And the secrets that explained why their makers’ children had all died, and why the humans in the slow ships sent so much earlier and arriving so much later, had so far survived. The aliens knew.

He had tried so many ways, for so many years, to learn the secrets. If he could only get at the aliens and their ships… The writing trailing through the minuscule chambers spoke in Arlen‘s mind like cemetery grass hissing in the wind.

And that led to one more thing. Putting the block away, he said, “Secure. Secure. Secure.” The light in the chamber settled to a blue dusk. The walls faded to shadows. He retrieved a small keypanel from under a chair cushion and pressed a series of keys. He still wondered why the aliens bothered with this primitive toy. The panel rose once more from the floor; this time it flickered with an archaic scanned image. Four faces stared out at him in the perpetual insect startle of the aliens' chosen form. “Greetings,” he said.

“Greetings to you, Arlen,” buzzed a response. Did the buzzing mean bad sound reproduction, several voices interfering, or just the way aliens sounded aboard their ship? He still couldn’t tell. “We’re on the way in. We should be in port in two hours.”

“We have some complications. What are you shipping in this time?”

“Do you want the detailed list?” The image flicked, undulated to narrowness, and righted itself.

“No. Just tell me the categories of the five largest items by weight, and the five most expensive.”

Two of the figures dithered their fans of long digits over some rounded panels. “By weight, Carbox, farm-fluid cleanser; Genetrion-45, fruiting accelerant; Genetrion-alpha, fruiting accelerant; Salipocyt, paranatal bath Types J and M. By costliness, Trace Complexes 145-A neurogenic, 23-G enterogenic, 4599-F myogenic; Metagerin, cell growth moderator; Lysostatil, cell repair moderator.”

Arlen winced. He had paid one point seven million for the Metagerin and the Lysostatil, and his treatment was overdue. He could already feel the stiffening in his body. Who would guess he had lived in it for four hundred and fifty years? Each time, the treatments came a little closer together. He had to protect this load; the next shipment would not come until next season.

But it was all far cheaper through the aliens than it had once been through his human competitors.

Arlen, we will require return of the anth before the next departure. You have supplied us with far more ship propellant than we will need, and you have been paid in full, for all of it.”

“You never stipulated a specific ceiling on the supply.”

“Consider the contract fulfilled. The only remaining unfulfilled part is the return of the stone to us.”

Arlen masked his discomfort. Due to his investigations, the stone had been cracked, although it still worked acceptably; the aliens would not like the damage, and would blame it on the tampering that they had expressly forbidden.

Arlen took the offensive, diverting the topic. “When you arrive, keep the ship sealed. We have… some law enforcement problems here.”

“Sealed? But this is a bad time. We have obligations to meet others of our own on your planet as soon as we arrive. The meeting is absolutely essential.” The voice buzzed and rattled with a pitch that conveyed great anxiety to Arlen.

“Try to understand, at least for a day or two. Can you postpone your meeting two days?”

“No. The timing of the meeting is critical, and this delay is unfortunate.”

Did they want more money? Arlen thought for a moment, then said, “May I compensate you in some other way?” He waited, wondering whether they would try to gouge him as they had done with the drugs.

“No. There is no way to redress the loss.”

Why was the timing so important? A horrible thought hit Arlen: maybe the aliens and the insurgents worked together. All the more reason, then. “I’m sorry. The port will be sealed. You must remain aboard, for your own safety, until I contact you again. If you disembark, you will risk destruction of your ship.” Much buzzing, and the flickering image showed much waving of tentacle fingerlimbs around buglike faces. This bluff seemed to be working.

“We will abide by this restriction for now,” the voice, full of uneasy static, said at last. “But we expect quick passage to our meeting in the City, within one half day.”

“Done,” Arlen said. They would find no passage anywhere, he decided, as soon as he found out where they planned to gather. And the anth stone: that precious object would stay in his hands as long as he could stall. “I will keep in close touch with you.” He tapped his fingernails on the keys, and the antique image dissolved to a tiny nova of light.

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