and she could only form a vague impression of their nature, things crab-like, sea-green, many-legged, and what they did to the sunflower was—
They ate it.
They nipped at its stalk until the writhing thing toppled; then they were on it like piranhas on a carcass, and when the manic flurry of their devouring was finished they disappeared, or became inert once more, camouflaged in the fallen ash.
Nothing was left behind. No evidence whatsoever.
'This,' Dr. Dvali said, 'is why we're reluctant to leave the room.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Turk spent the rest of the morning at the window, cataloging the varieties of peculiar life that sprang out of the dust. Know your enemy, he thought. Lise stood next to him much of the time, asking brief but pertinent questions about what he had seen before she woke up. Dr. Dvali had switched on their little wireless telecom receiver and was drawing down sporadic reports from Port Magellan, a useful activity in Turk's opinion, but the other Fourths did nothing but talk: endlessly and to little purpose. It was one of the failings of Fourths, Turk decided. They might occasionally be wise. But they were incurably talky.
Right now they were picking on the Martian woman, Sulean Moi, who seemed to know more than the rest of them about the ashfall but who was reluctant to share her knowledge. Mrs. Rebka was particularly insistent. 'Your taboos aren't relevant here,' she said. 'We need all the information we can get. You owe it to us… to the boy, at least.'
Temperate as it sounded, this was, by Fourth standards, nearly a fist-fight.
The Martian woman, dressed in oversized denim pants that made her look like some implausibly skinny oil- rig jock, sat on the floor hugging her knees. 'If you have a question,' she said sullenly, 'ask it.'
'You said the ashfall on Mars generated peculiar forms of, of—'
'Of life, Mrs. Rebka. Call it by its name. Why not?'
'Lifeforms like what we're seeing outside?'
'I don't recognize the flowers or the predators that consume them. In that sense, there's no similarity. But that's to be expected. A forest in Ecuador doesn't look like a forest in Finland. But both are forests.'
'The purpose of it, though,' Mrs. Rebka said.
'I've studied the Hypotheticals since childhood and I've listened to a lot of highly-informed speculation and I still can't guess the 'purpose' of it. The Martian ashfalls are isolated events. The life they generate is vegetative, always short-lived, and unstable in the long term. What conclusions can be drawn from such isolated examples? Very few.' She hesitated, frowning. 'The Hypotheticals—whatever else they are—are almost certainly not discreet entities but a collation of vastly many interconnected processes. They are an ecology, in other words. These manifestations either play some explicit role in that process or are an unintended consequence of it. I don't believe they represent any kind of deliberate strategy on the part of a higher consciousness.'
'Yes,' Mrs. Rebka said impatiently, 'but if your people understood enough to engineer Hypothetical technology into human beings—'
'You possess that ability too.' Sulean Moi looked pointedly at Isaac.
'Because it was given to us by Wun Ngo Wen.'
'Our work on Mars has always been purely pragmatic. We were able to culture samples from the ashfall and observe their ability to interact with human protein at the cellular level. Centuries of that kind of observation produced some insight into the ways human biology might be manipulated.'
'But you engineered what you admit is Hypothetical technology.'
'Technology or biology—in this case I'm not sure the distinction is meaningful. Yes, we cultured alien life, or technology if you prefer that word, at the microscopic level. Because it grows, reproduces, and dies, we were able to select and manipulate certain strains for certain traits. Over the course of a great many years we generated the modified cultures that enhance human longevity. And other germ lines as well. One of the most radical of which is the treatment you applied to Isaac while he was still in the womb. In
Mrs. Rebka reddened.
Turk understood the significance of what they were discussing, and he guessed it was important, but it seemed ridiculously remote at a time when real problems were percolating so close to hand. Right outside the door, in fact. Was it safe to go outside? That was the question they ought to be asking. Because sooner or later they would have to leave this room. Because they had very little in the way of food.
He begged the loan of Dr. Dvali's little radio and pushed the nodes into his ears, blocking out the querulous Fourths and inducing other voices.
The available broadcast was a narrowband thing from Port Magellan, two guys from one of the local media collectives reading UN advisories and updated reports. This ashfall had been only a little worse than the first, at least in terms of weight and duration. A few roofs had collapsed to the south of the city. Most roads were currently impassable. People with respiratory problems had been sickened by ash inhalation, and even healthy people were spitting gray residue, but that wasn't what had everybody scared. What had everybody scared were the peculiar things growing out of the ash. The announcers called these things 'growths' and reported that they had appeared randomly across the city, but especially where the ash was deep or had drifted. They sprang from the dust, in other words, like seedlings from mulch. Although they lived only briefly and were quickly 'reabsorbed' into the local environment, a few of them—'objects resembling trees or enormous mushrooms'—had erupted to impressive heights.
There was a dreamlike (or nightmare-like) aspect to these reports. A 'pink cylinder' fifty feet in length was blocking traffic at a downtown intersection. 'Something witnesses describe as an immense spiky bubble, like a piece of coral,' had sprouted from the roof of the Chinese consulate. Reports of small motile forms were yet to be officially confirmed.
Terrifying as this was, the manifestations were dangerous only if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—if one of them fell on you, for example. Still, residents were advised to stay indoors and keep windows closed. The ash had stopped falling, an offshore breeze was dispersing the lightest of the particles, and work crews were prepped to hose down the streets again ('growths' and all, Turk supposed) as soon as that was practical.
Unless this began to happen repeatedly, the city would recover. But the city was on the far side of a chain of mountains pierced by a few currently useless passes, and Bustee, like every other tin-and-tarpaper road town between the foothills and the Rub al-Khali, depended on the coast for supplies. How long till the passes were cleared? Weeks, minimum, Turk guessed. The last ashfall had been hard on these towns but this one had been worse, locally much denser, and the weird-ass plant life (or whatever it was) would surely impede the work necessary to get commerce up and running. So food would run short: what about water? He wasn't sure how these desert settlements were supplied. You turned on the tap, but where was the reservoir? Up in the foothills? Was the water still potable, and would it stay that way?
At least there was food and bottled water in the car, enough to last them a while. What Turk didn't like was that the vehicle was sitting out in the parking lot of this motel where someone might be tempted to break in and share the wealth. Here, at least, was a problem he could confront. He stood up and said, 'I'm going outside.'
The others turned to look goggle-eyed at him. Dvali said, 'What are you talking about?'
He explained about the food. 'Even if no one else is hungry, I am.'
'It might not be safe,' Dvali said.
Turk had seen a couple of other people out in the street with handkerchiefs tied over their mouths. One of them had been within fifteen feet of a 'lifeform' when it sprouted from the dust, but the flower hadn't interfered with the man and the man had shown absolutely no inclination to fuck with the flower. Which jibed with what the news was saying about Port Magellan. 'Just to the car and back. But I'd like somebody in the doorway watching out for me, and I need something to use for a mask.'
There was no debate, to Turk's relief. Dr. Dvali used a pocketknife to cut off a corner of the bedsheet,
