Ted Kosmatka - Bitterseed.pdf

(26 KB) Pobierz
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
BITTERSEED by Ted Kosmatka
Ted Kosmatka hails from the cornfields and steel mills of Indiana. He's been a
field hand, a college tutor, a zoo-keeper, a chemical analyst, an eco-researcher,
and a laborer in the red-black guts of a blast furnace. He now works for a
research laboratory. Ted's knowledge of those cornfields comes in handy in his
second story for Asimov's.
The world was rivets.
Marc groaned as he lifted his face from the cold, steel deck and tried to focus his eyes. Pain thundered in
his skull, driving away articulate thought. He knew he had to hurry but couldn't remember why. So much
blood, red on grayæa wet smear across the smooth metallic surface.
He rolled onto his back and brought a hand to the side of his face where he found the familiar topography
transformed into something loose and lumpyæsomething with two sharp angles where none had been
before. He tried to move his mouth and the bones grated; his jaw was broken.
The field-skim thrummed beneath him, waking new pain along his left leg as the ship adjusted its flight
course. He tried to sit but his ribs flared white-hot, and he collapsed, breathing hard up at the blue sky.
Movement caught his eye and he concentrated the blurry figure into focus. Eli's sun-creased face glared
down over the railing of the sight deck twenty feet above. There was no mistaking his expression. Marc
blinked and the face was gone.
He remembered then why he had to hurry. And he remembered why he'd jumped.
Ignoring the pain, he hauled himself to his knees and then to his feet. The deck heaved beneath him as the
skim banked hard to port on its preprogrammed flight pattern across the crop glade. He clutched weakly
at the railing for balance, trying not to faint while sparks played across his vision. The field-skim was one
of the corporation's smaller ships--just under thirty meters--and was designed to fly close to the crop
surface. Beyond the railing, the spindly green tops of maiza whisked by a few meters below.
On this planet, maiza was the equatorial crop, and from Marc's perspective, it spread in a swaying carpet
from the eastern horizon to the low mountains sixty kilometers to the west. It wasn't just a sea of green; it
was a vast, sweeping ocean. The individual plants were tall and thin, and the backwash of air from the
skim made the stalks dance as they flashed by below.
Marc glanced around for a weapon, but the nose deck was empty. There was only the hard steel floor,
the railing, wind, and a sea of green all around. Oh, and the ladder. Mustn't forget the ladder.
Eli descended toward him a rung at a time.
Marc felt the vibration when the man's boots slapped heavily to the ship's lowest deck. Though Eli stood
three inches shorter than Marc, he outweighed him by fifty hard-won pounds of muscle. There were no
guns on Tristan-3, but Man's indomitable spirit never lacked for improvisation: Eli still carried the iron
tamping rod that had broken Marc's jaw.
Marc backed against the rail. Eli followed with his dark eyes but did not move. The wind lifted his short,
black hair off his forehead in buffeting spikes.
"There's still time to take it back," Marc said.
"I don't want to take it back," Eli said.
 
"Are you sure?" That was as close to begging as Marc would go.
"Very."
Marc ducked the first swing and rolled across the deck. His head swam with the sudden movement, and
colors blotted his vision again as he reached up for the railing. The swing had been just high enough to let
him slip beneath. Eli was toying with him. Marc pulled himself to his feet, backing toward the far front of
the skim.
Eli followed, changing his grip on the long iron cylinder and widening his stance. The second swing was
calculated to be more damaging, and Marc sacrificed an arm to save his skull. The bar careened off his
forearm with a crunch of bone, missing the top of his head by an inch.
Marc staggered back against the railing, clutching his arm. He turned and Eli was two steps away,
poised, a smile on his face. Marc saw it in his eyes then. He saw it in the smile. This wouldn't be a
beating. Eli was going to kill him.
Marc considered rushing him, but then what? He wouldn't have a chance. Instead Marc looked him in
the eye. "Don't get caught for this," he said. "It would kill Mom to lose both of us."
"I've already thought of that."
Eli raised the iron rod. Marc slid backward over the handrail just ahead of his brother's final blow. His
feet followed him into the spinning sky, and then the wind tore at his clothes and the stalks were
crunching like bones breaking. Silence.
* * * *
Marc opened his eyes to darkness. Pain and the sweet smell of growing things told him he was not dead.
For a long time he just breathed, and that was miracle enoughæto ask for more seemed presumptuous.
The fall should have killed him and he knew it.
Wind blew high up through the stalks, making rasping whispers of the shadows that moved there. It was
a sound he'd grown familiar with in his four years on Tristan-3, and it brought him a strange species of
comfort.
When he tried to sit, pain quaked through him, too diffuse and all encompassing to isolate in any single
body part. Everywhere hurt. Slowly, by degrees, he managed to roll out of the crater he'd made in the
soft black dirt. The fall had embedded him well into the moist soil, and he left a perfect imprint of himself
behind. He rolled against the row of maiza and let himself feel the hard vertical shafts against his back and
legs. He raised himself up on an elbow.
One of the moons was rising, and Marc caught glimpses of it through the swaying leaves. It looked like
Bromb, the larger moon, but he couldn't be sure. He thought of his brother and knew he couldn't be sure
of anything anymore.
His good arm climbed the stalk, and he pulled himself to his feet. He leaned against the plant, feeling the
slow sway. Even with all that had happened, he couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at the touch. This
year's maiza crop was the healthiest yet. As a geneticist for Pioneer Seed Co. he'd worked long and hard
toward that goal. It was likely now to be his only legacy.
Down the row to his left, he saw the leaning, shattered shafts that had slowed his descent and saved his
life. The plants lay skewed across the narrow gap between the rows, their leaves crumpled beneath the
weight of the stalks. To the right, the row disappeared into the distance. What direction had the skim
 
been going when he jumped? East? North? He couldn't remember.
He put his shoulder against one of the plants and pushed with all his weight, but it was already too late in
the season. He wasn't strong enough to bring one down. He counted the broken stalks: four. Would that
be enough for them to find himæfour broken stalks among a continent of maiza? Perhaps, but Eli would
direct the search parties away from any evidence. He would say that Marc fell near the river thirty
kilometers to the East, or at the edge of the mountains. The satellites might be able to pick out four
broken stalks in the vast sea of green, but Eli wouldn't have them looking for that.
Marc felt the energy drain out of his legs as he considered his situation. There would be no rescue. His
knees folded, and he collapsed to the dirt, sending a fresh jolt of pain through his jaw. Mother would
take this hard. By now Eli would have told her. A fresh rush of anger welled up in him. She was too old
to deal with this; she'd lost so much already.
When he laid his face on the warm ground, the soil was as soft as any pillow. He breathed in the smells of
life and slipped into the darkness.
* * * *
He woke to roaring sunshine. An early morning wind drove the leaves into a kind of applause as he sat
and wiped the crusted dirt from the side of his face. Something in his broken jaw shifted, and he
screamed. His mouth was cotton dry, his tongue coated in grit.
As he sat, he considered his options. He could sit here and die, or he could walk and probably still die.
He looked down at the little crater he'd made and decided it looked too much like a grave.
Marc stood. Looking up at the sun through the long, narrow leaves, he decided which way was north
and set off down the row to the right, pushing aside the leaves as he walked.
Maiza was an amazing plant. The roots of its cultivation could be traced back a thousand years on Earth
to aboriginal Central American populations. Later, in the twentieth century, it became a staple throughout
the world for both animal feed and human consumption. But the leafy green field he walked through now
hardly resembled what twentieth century farmers would call corn. Agricultural geneticists had stopped
using that term more than a hundred years ago.
Maiza now clung to the equatorial continent of Tristan-3 in an ecological monoculture, dominating the
landscape to the complete exclusion of endemic flora. The local plants simply couldn't compete with a
thousand years of selective breeding. It was midseason now, and the plants were already fifteen feet tall.
Upon harvesting, each would produce a variety of usable products for export to fringe colonies. The
stalks were mulched into a biodegradable lubricating oil; the cobs provided food for people and
livestock; and the leathery leaf fiber was used to make heavy, durable rope.
The enormous continental basin was divided into a corrugated pattern of male and female plants: two
female rows for every male. The sexes were of different strains, designed to be of slightly differing heights
so that the male reproductive tassels were close to the female cobs. This helped diminish the instances of
self-fertilization, and subsequent inbreeding depression in seed product.
Marc trudged on, and when the sun was middle high, he stopped and turned. The world behind him was
indistinguishable from the one before him. The air moved not at all, and the light lent a soft green cast to
everything beneath the leafy canopy. He took his shirt off and continued walking.
In the early evening, the rain began. It fell as a gentle haze that clung to everything, soaking his clothes
and turning the soil to glop. It rained most days on the central continent, but the rain was always like this:
weak and misty. Marc tried to lick the droplets of moisture off the leaves and stalks, and although his
 
tongue got wet, there was little he could actually swallow. He continued walking and after another hour
the rain stopped. The sun set behind a bank of clouds, and darkness fell quickly beneath the leaves.
He lost energy as the moons rose, and when he could walk no more, he slept where he fell.
In the morning the leaves were dry again, and his legs were stiff and sore as he climbed to his feet. During
the night his thirst had grown into something burning in the middle of him. How long could a man live
without water? Three days? Four?
He started walking again, and now he felt each leaf as pain on his exposed skin. Both arms were swollen
and red from the microscopic nettles on the surface of the leaves. After all these years of working with
the plant, he'd thought himself intimate with it, but this was something he'd never dealt with before. You
don't feel the nettles if you're only in the fields for a few hours.
When the rains came again, Marc threw himself into the task of hydration. He licked the surface of the
plants again, running his tongue up and down the leaves, trying to get enough moisture to swallow. He
opened his mouth to the sky and kicked at the base of the stalks to shake droplets loose. He worked
vigorously for more than an hour, losing his shoe to the muck. He went from plant to plant until his tongue
swelled, and his lips split.
When the rain stopped, his thirst seemed stronger than before.
Because there was nothing else to do, he continued walking. When night fell, he slept.
* * * *
The field applauded him again. He looked up into the green-tinted light and licked his chapped lips.
Golden patterns of sun played across the dark soilæsuch good soil, the geologists had said. Perfect for
growing things. It had taken the company a long time to find a place like Tristan-3.
There were discrepancies, of course. There would always be discrepancies. After all, you couldn't just
transplant life from one planet to another and expect it to thrive immediately. There were little problems
that had to be dealt with first, little things that had to be fixed.
That first year, the crop had been stunted and pathetic. Too little nitrogen in the soil, too much sodium
chloride. Even the sunlight was slightly wrongæbright enough, but skewed into a slightly higher spectrum
than earthly chloroplasts were evolved for. They could photosynthesize, but at a diminished efficiency.
That's why Pioneer needed Marc. It was always so much simpler to change the plant than to change the
planet.
A year later, Marc pulled some strings and had his brother brought to the outpost colony as his assistant.
Marc, Eli, and their motheræone big happy family again.
The second year's crop showed a 40 percent yield increase. Not great, but definitely a step in the right
direction.
It was during the winter before the third growing season that Marc made the breakthrough. That third
year, the company finally turned a profit on its investment.
* * * *
Marc pulled himself from the dirt. Hunger swept through him. Was Eli eating a big hearty breakfast? Was
he taking a shower and letting all that precious, precious water cascade over his skin and down a drain?
Was he looking into a mirror and thinking of what he'd done? Marc knew his brother well. He knew Eli
told himself that his motives had been purely financial. Maybe Eli even believed itæthere was a lot of
 
money in agra patents. But Marc knew better. Money had nothing to do with it.
Marc looked up at the husks just out of reach overhead. He grabbed a plant and shook it in frustration,
but the husks were hugged tightly into their leafy blankets against the stalks, and he knew he'd never
shake them down.
After a moment's thought, he un-cinched his belt and flipped it into a loop. He bent his knees, eyed the
spot carefully, and jumped into the air, hooking the belt around the top of the husk. He pulled. It came
down with a crackle and landed at his feet.
At first he almost couldn't believe it had worked so easily. Then he bent and snatched the leafy coverings
aside and pulled away the yellow, straw-like filaments. The cob beneath was white and pebbly, and his
stomach growled in anticipation as he ran a finger slowly across the hard kernels.
He raised it to his mouth and bitæand something unhinged in his jaw. Marc screamed in pain, and then
the pain turned to rage, and he threw the cob as far as he could. Tears sprang to his eyes, and though he
tried, he could not hold them back. He collapsed into the mud, holding a hand to the side of his broken
face, and he wept bitterly up at the swaying plants that would feed millions.
* * * *
Though Marc and Eli were born four months apart, they were identical twins. At least in theory.
Circumstance had stepped in and changed all that. The same accident that killed their father began the
process that would so starkly divide them.
The Pagas mine colony was in shambles, and it took nearly an hour for help to burrow through. By that
time, their mother's pre-term labor had progressed too far, and Eli was born unfinished onto a bloody
miner's jacket amongst the rubble. The doctors managed to halt the labor, and Marc was saved from his
brother's fate. The doctors didn't expect Eli to live, but after the pneumonias and the seizures, after the
surgeries and the transfusions, he did.
Months later, when Marc, the second twin, was finally laid next to the first, he was twice the size of Eli.
But the differences went deeper than that.
Although Eli had come first into the world, it was Marc who crawled first, Marc who said the first word,
Marc who first learned to pee into the toilet standing up.
As the babies grew into children, Eli developed severe asthma and couldn't play rough with the other
boys from the work zones. There was always a sense of difference about himæmade only more starkly
visible by the presence of a brother to whom he bore such a striking resemblance. To anyone with eyes,
Eli was Marc, only less.
And Marc never let him forget it.
Perhaps it was guilt that drove the taunting. Marc looked at Eli as what he easily could have been had
chance only positioned his body nearer to the mouth of his mother's womb. Eli was a constant reminder
of the gift he'd been given, the debt he owed fate. Marc grew to resent his brother almost as much as Eli
grew silently to hate him.
Once, when their mother caught Marc bullying, she jerked him into another room by his arm, leaving
great red welts on his bicep.
"Do you know what you're doing?" she asked him. He only looked up at her mutely, shaken by her
sudden, unexpected rage.
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin