Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (34 page)

 
          
 
"You can tell that from listening
to—"

 
          
 
Seeker crouched, its snout narrowing, ears
flaring. It was absolutely still and then was instantly moving, even faster
this time. She ran to catch up. "What—"

 
          
 
"Ahead," it called.

 
          
 
Her breath rasped as they struggled up a
narrow draw. A deep bass note seemed to come from everywhere until she realized
that she felt it through her feet. A peak above them cracked open with a groan
and abruptly a geyser shot straight up. Tons of water spewed high in the air
and showered down. Fat raindrops pelted them.

 
          
 
Seeker called, "A fresh river. The rock
strain has grown for days and so I sought the outbreak. It will afford
momentary shelter."

 
          
 
The droplets hammered at Cley. Seeker made an
urgent sign. Through the spray of water overhead she saw rainbow shards of radiance
cascade across the sky.

 
          
 
"Searching," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"Who is?"

 
          
 
"What, not who.
That which destroyed the Library."

 
          
 
They watched as a filigree of incandescence
stretched and waxed. Through the geyser's mist the shifting webbed patterns
glowed like a design cast over all humanity. Cley had seen this beautiful
tapestry before—seen it descend and bring stinging death to all she loved. Its
elegant coldness struck into her heart with leaden solidity. She had managed to
put aside the horror but now here it was again. Those luminiscent tendrils had
tracked and burned and nearly killed her and she longed to find a way to strike
back. War. The ancient word sang in her thumping pulse, in flared nostrils, in
dry taut lips.

 
          
 
She stood with her clothes sticking to her in
the hammering rain, hoping that this momentary fountain had saved them. How
long could the mists shield them?

 
          
 
But now among the flexing lightning darted
amber dots—craft of the Supras, spreading out from the Library. She had long
expected to see them pursuing her, but they were not searching the ground.
Instead they moved in formations around the gaudy luminescent ripples.

 
          
 
Seeker looked bedraggled, its coat dark with
the wet. "Down," it said firmly.

 
          
 
They scrambled into a shallow cave. The
river-forming geyser spread a canopy of fog, but Cley adjusted her sight to
bring up the faint images she could make out through the wisps. She and Seeker
watched the intricate dodge and swerve of Supra ships as they sought to enclose
and smother the downward-lancing glows.

 
          
 
"Water will hide us for a while,"
Seeker said.

 
          
 
"Are they after the Library again?"

 
          
 
"No. They seem to—there."

 
          
 
A streamer broke through an amber pouch spun
by Supra ships. It plunged earthward and in a dazzling burst split into fingers
of prickly light. These raced over the mountains and down into valleys like
rivulets of a tormented river in the air. One orange filament raced nearby,
ripe with crackling ferocity. It dwelled a moment along the way they had come,
as if sniffing for a trail, and then darted away, leaving only a diminishing
flurry of furious pops.

 
          
 
The Supras seemed to have caged in the
remaining bright lacings. The thrusts broke into colors and roiled about the
sky like quick, caged fire turned back by flashes from the Supras.

 
          
 
Then the sky ebbed as if a presence had left
it. The amber Supra ships drifted back toward the Library.

 
          
 
"We are fortunate," Seeker said.

 
          
 
Cley said, "That was a cute trick with
the water."

 
          
 
"I doubted it would work."

 
          
 
"You gambled our lives on—?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"Good thing you don't make
mistakes."

 
          
 
"Oh, I do." Seeker sighed with
something like weariness. "To live is to err."

 
          
 
Cley frowned.
"C'mon,
Seeker!
You have some help, some connection."

 
          
 
"I am as mortal as you."

 
          
 
"What're you connected to?" she
persisted.

 
          
 
It lifted one amber shoulder in a gesture she
could not read.
"Everything.
And
the nothing.
It is difficult to talk about in this constricted language.
And pointless."

 
          
 
"Well, anyway, that'll keep the Supras
busy. They've already figured out how to fight the lightning."

 
          
 
"It searched for us, knowing we had
escaped."

 
          
 
"How could it?"

 
          
 
"It is intelligence free of matter and
has ways we cannot know."
Already Seeker moved on,
slipping on some gravel and sprawling, sending pebbles rattling downslope.
But it got back up, fatigue showing in its eyes, and moved on in a way that was
once called "dogged," but now had no such description, for there were
no longer any dogs.

 
          
 
Scrambling over the ridgerock, Seeker added,
"And should not know."

 
          
 
They made good time. The geyser sent feathery
clouds along the backbone of the mountain range. These thickened and burst with
rain. The air's ferment hid them and brought moist swarming scents.

 
          
 
The parched Earth needed more than the water
so long hidden in deep lakes. Through the roll of hundreds of millions of years
its skin of soil had disappeared, broken by sunlight and baked into vapor. The
Supras had loosed upon these dry expanses the lichen, which could eat stone and
fart
organic paste. Legions of intricately designed,
self-reproducing cells then burrowed into the noxious waste. Within moments
such a microbe corps could secrete a rich mire of bacteria, tiny fungi,
rotifers. Musty soil
grew,
the fruit of microscopic
victories and stalemates waged in every handful of sand around the globe. Soil
itself flourished like a ripe plant.

 
          
 
Seeker said they should skirt along these
working perimeters of the forest. The biting vapors made Cley cough, but she
understood that the shifting brown fogs also cloaked their movements against
discovery from above. The night sky had cleared of Supra ships.

 
          
 
They slipped into the shadows of the
enveloping woods, but Cley felt uneasy. Soon they looked down on the spreading
network of narrow valleys they had traversed. She could see the grasp of life
had grown even since she had observed it from
Alvin
's flyer.

 
          
 
Broad green patches lay ready to serve as
natural solar-energy stations. Already some followed the snaking lines of
newborn streams, growths cunningly spreading through the agency of animals.
Such plants used animals often, following ancient precept. Long ago the flowers
had recruited legions of six-legged insects and two-legged primates to serve
them. Tasty nectar and fruit seduced many into propagating seeds. The flowers'
radiant beauty charmed first humans and later other animals into careful
service, weeding out all but the lovely from gardens; a weed, after all, was
simply a plant without guile.

 
          
 
But it was the grasses that had held humanity
most firmly in thrall for so long, and now they returned as well. Already
great plains
of wheat, corn and rice stretched between the
forks of river-valleys, tended by animals long bred for the task. Humanity had
delegated the tasks of irrigation and soil care. As the Supras had revived
species, they re-created the clever, narrowly focused intelligences harbored in
large rodents. These had proved much more efficient groomers of the grasses
than the old, cumbersome technology of tractors and fertilizers.

 
          
 
Cley felt more at home now as they trekked
through dense woods. She kindled her hormones and food reserves to fend ofi^
sleep and kept up the steady pace needed to stay with Seeker, who showed no
signs of fatigue. 1 he forest resembled no terrain that had ever existed
before. Assembled from the legacy of a perpetually fecund biosphere, it boasted
forms separated by a billion years. The Supras had reactivated the vast index
of genotypes in the Library with some skill. Few predators found easy prey, and
seldom did a plant not find some welcoming ground after the
lichen had made their mulch
.

 
          
 
Still, all had to struggle and adjust. The
sun's luminosity had risen by more than ten percent since the dawn of humanity.
The rub of tides on shorelines had further slowed the planet's whirl,
lengthening the day by a fourth. Life had faced steadily longer, hotter days as
the crust itself drifted and broke. In the Era of Oceans the wreckage of
continental collisions had driven up fresh mountains and opened deep sutures in
the seabeds—all as patient backdrop to the frantic buzz of life's adjustments
to these immense constraints. Species rose and died because of minute tunings
of their genetic texts.

 
          
 
And all the hurried succession and passionate
ferment was a drama played out before the gaze of humanity—which had its own
agenda.

 
          
 
Over the past billion years the very cycles of
life on Earth had followed rhythms laid down by governing intelligences. For so
long had Nature been
a collaboration
between Humanity
and Evolution that the effects were inseparable. Yet Cley was startled when
they came upon a valley of silent, trudging figures.

 
          
 
"Caution," Seeker whispered.

 
          
 
They were crossing
a foggy
lowland ripe with the thick fragrance of soil-making lichen. Out of the mist
came shambling shadows. Cley and Seeker struck a defensive pose, back to back,
for the stubby forms were suddenly all around them. Cley switched to infrared
to isolate movements against the pale, cloudy background and found the figures
too cool to be visible. Ghostly, moving warily, they seemed to spring
everywhere from the ground.

 
          
 
"Robots?" she whispered, wishing for
a weapon.

 
          
 
"No." Seeker peered closely at the
slow, ponderous shapes.
"Plants."

 
          
 
"What?" Cley heard now the squish
squish as limbs labored to move.

 
          
 
"See—they unhinge from their
elders."

 
          
 
In the murky light Cley and Seeker watched the
slow, deliberate pods separate from the trunks of great trees. "Plants
led, once," Seeker said. "From sea to land, so animals could follow.
Flowers made a home for insects—invented them, in my view."