Last Shadow (9781250252135) Read online

Peter detected a note of consternation in Wang-Mu’s voice. “What do you disapprove of, Wang-Mu?” he asked.

  She did not bother denying—when he read her mood correctly, she never wasted time on pretenses. “Why are you so determined to get to the surface before Thulium? Are you in a contest with an eight-year-old? Or is it a contest with the leguminids? Or mere defiance of Jane and the Queen and Miro and what, everyone else?”

  Peter paused to think. “Your question is a fair one, and I suspect that in my heart I am caught up in all three contests, though on a rational level I would deny it. However, my deepest reason is not vanity or ego. Thulium and Sprout are child-sized and have few skills and little strength. For them to drop onto the surface of an unknown planet is insanely dangerous and potentially unproductive. We know the planet is populated but we don’t know where. With a completely breathable atmosphere, do the people all live underground? Why? Is there danger on the surface that we must be prepared for? You and I are older and more experienced. I have inherited some skills from Ender’s aiúa, and you are the most adaptable human being alive. I think our chances are much better.”

  “We could travel together with Thulium, then,” said Wang-Mu.

  “If you and I go first, our visit will be to explore, observe, report. If we have the children with us, our primary motive will be to protect them. Plus, we’ll have to contend with Thulium’s habit of doing whatever she pleases. So for Thulium’s and Sprout’s sake, we will bring back reports that will enable them to understand the aerial and satellite photos much better, along with anything else we discover.”

  “Don’t you consider, Peter, that the inhabitants of the planet may not need habitations at all? That they may be living on the surface in the open air, or in the woodlands?”

  “Then let’s find out,” said Peter. “Before we send children.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they passed through the gate, carrying a few satchels with clothing, minimal bedding, and wearing a few other supplies like small flashlights, knives for sample taking, and radio beacon locators. Since their box would have their home-base beacon, if they got separated they’d know which way to go to reunite.

  Thulium was not waiting for them in their box. They went inside and Peter said, “I’m glad I won’t have to fight her for control of the box and supplies.”

  “Would that be a problem?”

  “I don’t know,” said Peter. “Plus, I don’t know where on the surface we’re going. What if we drop the box into the middle of a public square?”

  “They haven’t seen any public areas from the sky,” said Wang-Mu.

  “Let’s put on our jackets and make our first trip without taking the Box. We go, and come right back.”

  “What about always returning to Quarantine Bay?” asked Wang-Mu.

  Peter thought. “The rules make sense. We don’t know what microbes we might pick up in just a one-minute reconnoitering trip.”

  “Do you know how to get to Q-Bay?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “Let’s go there now, while it’s still close, and leave from there, so coming back will be an easy trip.”

  She held his hands. “We don’t actually need to be touching,” she said.

  “I like us to be touching, start to finish,” said Peter.

  “Well, so do I,” said Wang-Mu.

  If Peter had any idea of what might happen on Descoladora, he wouldn’t feel such trepidation about setting out. But he had no real idea of their destination, beyond satellite photos.

  That wasn’t so different, though, from every voyage. It always felt to him as if he were throwing himself and Wang-Mu into a place kilometers deep inside of himself—an impossibility, but that’s how it felt. As if he were swallowing himself and her. And then, instantly, he would think of where he wanted to go—not any detailed map or instruction on how to get there, just a thought of however much or little he knew of the place. All of it so quickly that it felt to him as if he were being caught up by a strong wind and blown, with nothing really under his control.

  It was his own choice now that selected the moment of plunging Outside, which felt like a movement inward, and then the moment, an instant later, of coming back Inside to the place he chose.

  After the slight double-wrenching of an Out-and-In voyage, Q-Bay surrounded them.

  The labs were dark at night with no one working there, but the seals were all in place and the negative pressure was running, so nothing would escape. “This is home base,” said Peter.

  “So far so good, my love,” said Wang-Mu.

  What Peter heard was, I’m proud of you, you daft git.

  Wang-Mu unpocketed and laid out on an examining table her map of the whole land surface of Descoladora.

  “We have no idea of the tectonic history of the landforms,” said Peter, “but these isolated smallish continents are likely to have untypical flora and fauna. We have to assume that the largest land mass will have the best chance of sentient inhabitants.”

  “Near the coast, in a grassy area, not too far from woodlands,” said Wang-Mu.

  “Sensible,” said Peter. He put a finger on the map.

  “The scale is smaller than you think,” said Wang-Mu. “That isn’t close to the coast or the river.”

  Peter moved his finger a bit.

  “Allowing for the fact that the tip of your finger covers hundreds of hectares,” said Wang-Mu, “that looks about right.” She refolded the map and put it in her pocket.

  And they were gone.

  12

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Miro, may I enter your dream?

  Miro: Yes.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: You are now capable of instantaneous travel.

  Miro: I am.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Likewise we have seen Peter Wiggin and Thulium Delphiki demonstrating and practicing the same powers.

  Miro: I know.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Some of the brothers ask me, when will Jane or the Hive Queen teach one of us to do this?

  Miro: I wish I knew the answer.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: I know the answer already.

  Miro: Will you tell me?

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Never.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: You misunderstand me in the confusion of the dream. The answer to the question the brothers asked me is, never. They cannot learn it.

  Miro: Why not, old friend?

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Because it takes a greater capacity and strength than most aiúas have. All Hive Queens have such capacity, or they would not have been called in from the darkness. But only a tiny number of pequeninos have it, and among the pequeninos, that capacity can only be used in the third life, the life as I am living it.

  Miro: The life as a tree.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: The life in wood. We have no use for movement then. As long as our human friends will transport our little ones, we have little to fear from our inability to transport them ourselves.

  Miro: What about humans? Surely we are not all of such great capacity.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: The Queen tells me that she has met only five such aiúas among the humans she has known face-to-face. The first was Ender and the man Peter who is now his vessel. Then you. Then Wang-Mu. Then Thulium.

  Miro: Four so far.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: Jane, of course, but the human body came later. The Queens brought her out of darkness themselves, and they chose her as if they were choosing the greatest of Queens.

  Miro: That was well done.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: There will be no others. She wanted me to warn you, preferably in a dream, that when or if the five of you cease to live, that kind of starflight will end.

  Miro: Unless some engineers devise a way to do it by machine.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: The Queens believe that is not possible.

  Miro: They also believed that humans could not develop faster-than-light communication, yet in the few years between the Second and Third Formic Wars, they equipped every one of their ships with ansibles.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: I’ll remind her of this.


  Miro: She’ll be angry.

  FATHERTREE HUMAN: What will she do, send her children to scorch me with torches?

  —Memorandum of conversation: Fathertree Human and Miro Ribeira as cited in Olhado Ribeira, The Aiúa in Theory and Practice

  Si Wang-Mu was already aware that every analysis told them the atmosphere of Descoladora was breathable by humans without any filtration or augmentation. So when the darkness of Q-Bay was succeeded by the light of the sun rising behind a tall woodland, she only squinted and blinked for a few moments before her eyes adjusted.

  The smell of the air was somewhat unfamiliar, but not completely so. Wang-Mu thought there was familiar pollen in the air. And the tall trees looked like familiar shapes. In the other direction, though, the grassland was interrupted by patches of robust ferns, some twice the height of a tall human.

  Convergent evolution would probably create woody trees on any world with life, and competition would drive them to evolve greater and greater height. Yet on this world, ferns had not yet retreated to the lower reaches of deep jungles, where they had to learn to thrive in shade. These ferns were drunken on sunlight, huge and exuberant in their growth.

  Wang-Mu had learned from Han Fei-Tzu that there was no reason to suppose that evolution on other worlds would proceed in lockstep with the fossil record of the evolution of life on Earth. There was no reason to look for dinosaurs or the equivalent, or even for giraffes. High-level vegetation might not yet have any predators. If there were no insects yet, there would have been no reason to evolve flowers to produce seeds, and without birds or other swift-gutted animals, fruit would have no point.

  She listened. She looked.

  She looked down because she thought she heard a faint buzz.

  There was a bee on a tiny blossom rising out of the grass at her feet.

  She merely pointed at it. Peter nodded, pointed to a swarm of tiny insects—gnats?—a few meters away.

  Wang-Mu knew that if there were no larger animals to feed on, the insects would not have evolved means of extracting blood or flesh. If she walked into that swarm and they bit her, what would that tell her? That there were enough rats to be worth biting? Or that at any moment a rhinoceros might charge at them out of the bush?

  Stop thinking in terrestrial terms, she told herself. No rhinos, no rats. But ecological niches were not fanciful; they existed. She looked down for signs that small animals did live here, and perhaps graze here.

  She could not be sure if she was seeing rat poop or a random splash of mud from the last rainstorm.

  She scanned toward the breeze and felt its warmth, faint though it was. In that direction, there were clouds forming far, far away. But they would be moving toward them soon.

  “Rain tonight?” she murmured.

  Peter shrugged. “We won’t be here.”

  “We should already be back in Q-Bay,” said Wang-Mu.

  Peter reached down and pulled up a tuft of grass by the roots.

  Then Wang-Mu reached down and took the bee in one hand. She closed her fist loosely enough that the bee would stay alive.

  “Let’s go before it stings me and dies,” said Wang-Mu.

  And they were back in Q-Bay.

  Wang-Mu immediately moved to a plastic sample box and discharged the bee into it. She closed the lid, which had a few holes in it for air exchange—she had chosen the right kind of box. The bee buzzed around inside furiously.

  Wang-Mu examined her hand.

  “Did it sting you?” asked Peter.

  “No,” said Wang-Mu. “And it had plenty of time.”

  “Why would convergent evolution give it the same stripes and colors as a terrestrial honeybee?” asked Peter.

  “Why does the grass grow in blades, like grasses from Earth?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “The temptation is to imagine that it’s because they came from Earth.”

  “The way coconuts crossed the Pacific to seed their palm trees on every island?” asked Wang-Mu. “I try to imagine a tiny bee-sized space suit.”

  “Cute, but of course I’m only saying that humans might have visited there at some point.”

  With Q-Bay still dark, Peter and Wang-Mu saw no reason to summon any of the lab workers before the start of their normal work day. So they made themselves comfortable either on or off the furniture—Peter first chose the floor, but after a couple of hours Wang-Mu came down from the examining table and cuddled beside him. That was how the lab workers found them in the morning, blinking themselves awake because the lights had all come on.

  Wang-Mu explained, succinctly, that they had come from the surface of Descoladora and the first order of business was to examine them, skin and blood, lungs and nostrils and every crevice of their bodies, for microbes and tiny animalcules. Meanwhile, others could be working on isolating the genetic structures of the native grass and the bee that they had brought back. Peter and Wang-Mu both detached their audiovisual recording devices so the things they saw and heard could be uploaded and examined minutely.

  It took the better part of a day for them to be thoroughly swabbed, probed, pierced, scraped, and angrily questioned by the high-level Lusitanian scientists who resented not having advance notice of their coming, especially because this meant their underlings, the common lab workers, had already had the first look at pretty much everything.

  Wang-Mu, detecting this, found ways to mildly say to each of the disgruntled bosses something along the lines of, “You must be so proud that your lab workers were so well trained they were able to show initiative and begin collecting data for you to analyze.” She saw that her words had the soothing effect she intended. She noticed when several of the top-level scientists repeated something like her message to the underlings.

  In midafternoon, Thulium and Sprout arrived. Q-Bay suits had already been made to fit their small bodies, and they were soon dressed and took their places inside the quarantine bay.

  Wang-Mu could feel Peter gearing up to defend himself for going ahead before them, but Wang-Mu laid a hand on his forearm to still him. Thulium did not look angry or hostile, feelings that the girl had never shown much ability to conceal.

  And in a few moments, Wang-Mu’s judgment was proved right, when Thulium said, “I think you were right. What if there had been a large predator right where we landed? What if it confused me so much I couldn’t get away?”

  “We were only there for perhaps three minutes,” said Peter. “The avlog will have the exact time. We saw no animal larger than a bee. There are forests of tall woody trees, or so they appear, and groves of two-meter ferns. The rest is grass, and we brought a sample of that.”

  “The analysis of the scrapings and samples from your bodies show no alien intrusion,” said Thulium. “All the microbes are familiar ones that you almost certainly brought with you.”

  “Is my microbiome so robust,” asked Wang-Mu, “that no alien fungus or bacterium could penetrate it?”

  “We’re still trying to think about it,” said Thulium.

  “Which means you have been thinking about it for hours,” said Peter. “And you have hypotheses that you’re reluctant to share. But we’re not editorial panels at scientific journals. It costs you nothing to share your speculation with us.”

  Thulium thought for a moment, then nodded. “You are clean enough that we could release you into the Lusitanian population without a qualm, though we aren’t going to—quarantine is about giving alien life-forms, which we might not recognize, time enough to develop inside your bodies.”

  “That’s right,” said Peter. “But that would not prevent us from going to Descoladora again, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Thulium. “Now that you’ve actually gone, Sprout and I won’t go ourselves until you’ve had enough time to die or not die from anything you caught on the surface.”

  “Wise choice,” said Peter.

  “But we have a quandary. You might resent this question, but it has to be asked. Is there any chance that you might have carr
ied that bee with you? Could it have got into your clothing before you came to Q-Bay?”

  “The only bees that have been introduced to Lusitania are in the Formic orchards,” said Peter.

  “Bees fly where they want,” said Wang-Mu. “If it came to Descoladora with us, we neither heard it nor felt it nor saw it,” said Wang-Mu. “The one we collected was on the grass, or rather on a flower growing up amid the grass. But I can’t rule out its having been tucked into my clothing somewhere.”

  “The reason I ask,” said Thulium, “is that its genome matches almost perfectly with the honeybee genome recorded back in the twenty-second century.”

  “Before the Formic Wars,” said Peter.

  “There are differences,” said Thulium. “It was born without a sting.”

  “How does it defend the hive?” asked Wang-Mu.

  “We’ll learn the answer when we find and observe a hive, but the most obvious speculation is that it has no invasive predators,” said Sprout. “Honeybees with no natural enemies.”

  “So you speculate about the possibility that humans deliberately released the bee into the environment of Descoladora as a pollinator. Did it evolve its stingless condition, or was the gene altered?”

  “Evolution also alters genes,” said Sprout. “The grass is another problem.”

  “Terrestrial grass?” asked Peter.

  “Some genes have a distinct resemblance to terrestrial grass genes,” said Sprout, “but they seem to be an insertion, a deliberate alteration. Grass evolved late on Earth—the dinosaurs may never have seen any—but it may have evolved earlier on Descoladora. The earth-seeming genes are all involved with protein production. Without them, this grass would be worthless to grazing animals from Earth—goats, sheep, and cattle could all starve to death while eating their fill. Earth birds would starve eating the grass seeds. But with those changes, this grass will be supernutritious to grazers, and even more useful to the bodies of birds.”

  “It’s an avian paradise,” said Thulium. “Whether birds waited for the seeds or swallowed leaf or stem bits, they could live on it.”

  “We didn’t see any birds,” said Wang-Mu.