It was among these plants that the group witnessed much of the second night’s bioluminescent light show, which winked and flashed as creatures occulted the glowing foliage during their silent dashes through it. Caine started keeping count and timing the eclipses of three particularly bright plants. By dawn, he had concluded that either there was quite a bit of nocturnal fauna roving about, or that, if it was sparse, it was also quite hyperactive. He mentioned it to Hwang.
The biologist nodded slowly. “There is, of course, another explanation.”
“Several. We could be attracting curiosity because we’re different. Or some of the local wildlife is shadowing us before they decide to attack.”
Ben nodded. “I’ll pass that word, if you like.”
Caine considered. It might panic a few of the team, but the others were shaping up well enough that the possibility of an impending encounter might give them the extra edge of alertness they needed to detect and foil an ambush. It would also give everyone a bit of an adrenal boost and help them march a little faster and a little longer. “Thanks, Ben. By the way, how are you holding up?”
Hwang rubbed the right side of his torso, just a few centimeters lower than the pectoral. “Sore, but no more sharp pains. Xue and I agree that I’m healing from whatever internal dance my viscera did during the crash.”
“Has he looked at Mizuki yet this morning?”
Ben nodded. “So far, so good. That means we probably don’t need to worry about trauma-induced necrosis. But an infection could bring us back to the same point.”
“So we keep irrigating and using the disinfectant from the medkits.”
“Yes, but at this rate, we’re not going to have much left if anyone else needs treatment.”
“Necessary risk. We can’t afford to have Mizuki slow down, and I’m not going to leave her or anyone else behind. So we use the resources we have to keep going now.” Caine rose. “Ready to move?”
Ben smiled as he rose. “Not really, but let’s go.”
* * *
About an hour further into their march, the large stream split into two meandering courses, and the foliage became more dense, largely because of a profusion of trees that were more akin to immense bushes with high ground clearance. Their broad leaves, each a collage of green and orange, rose into a domed canopy that reached as high as fifteen meters, crowning the plant like the head of an immense mushroom sagging down to conceal its own stalk. The smaller, younger specimens did not have rounded canopies; their foliage was akin to a broad cone—
A cone.
Riordan dropped back to where Ben was helping Mizuki; her compromised depth perception made her susceptible to falls. “Ben, look: cone trees. The same species we saw on Adumbratus.”
Ben dashed Caine’s momentary hope that he had been the first to notice them. “Yes. It’s clear now that we are on a battle line. Walking right along it, in fact.”
“You mean, the battle line between the different biota.”
“Yes. The self-climbing kelp and related plants are clearly the native species. The others, including the cone trees, have been introduced by the Slaasriithi.”
Caine felt a quick pulse of hope. “Which they must watch over. To track the changes that they are trying to induce.”
“True, but they might not visit here more than once or twice a year. If that. As Yiithrii’ah’aash pointed out, they are not in a rush to effect change.”
They were drawing close to a copse of cone trees that had tall bumbershoots mixed among them. Mizuki looked up along their trunks, murmured, “Fascinating. And elegant.”
Caine looked, saw how the underside of the palmate fronds sent back whatever light was reflected upward by the leaves of the cone trees. “You mean the way the bumbershoots make sure that the cone trees get all the light they can, even bouncing back what they don’t capture on first exposure?”
Mizuki’s good eye rotated toward Riordan. “You are a quick study, Captain, but I was referring to the bumbershoot’s trunk.”
“The trunk?” Caine echoed. He had gone from feeling botanically perceptive to utterly stupid in the space of a single second.
“Look closely: do you see how it shines? That is water, from condensation, which trickles down and feeds the ground around the cone tree. Which, because of its own dense canopy, catches almost all the light that falls upon it, yet sheds almost all the water.”
Gaspard, who had drifted closer to them as they walked, shook his head. “And how is that elegant? It sounds quite the contrary. The cone trees would be strangling themselves out of existence if the bumbershoots didn’t supply them with water.”
“But that is not coincidence, Mr. Ambassador,” Mizuki retorted. She pointed at one of the largest cone trees, located near the center of the copse. Its impressive wide-spreading canopy sheltered low thickets of ferns, mosses and fluffy crabgrass nestled between the roots that radiated out from its gnarled trunk. Day-glo yellow lichens were growing up into the lower shoots of the tree, and apparently, beginning to strangle it. “What do you see?” Mizuki asked.
“Lichen choking a bush imitating a tree,” Gaspard replied.
Hwang smiled. “Yes, to our eyes. But the undergrowth that’s killing off the tree is all exogenous, is part of the new biota.”
“Yes. So now I see fratricide, as well.”
Caine understood. “The canopy of the cone trees kills off the indigenous ground cover by cutting off the light and water. While it’s doing so, it still gets the water that runs down the trunk of the bumbershoot overnight. The bigger the cone tree grows, the more free space it’s making for its related flora to start seeding under it.”
“Which those plants pay back by destroying the cone tree that gave them life,” Gaspard concluded ironically.
“No,” Caine contradicted, gathering confidence from Ben’s encouraging stare. “By dying, the cone tree becomes the compost for the next stage of Slaasriithi plant life. Its canopy has outlived its purpose once the soil under it will receive the new plants.”
Gaspard raised one eyebrow, lifted the other when Hwang nodded. “Exactly. What we are looking at is not permanent flora, but a collection of plants which are orchestrated to convert the indigenous biome into the new, exogenous biome. In larger copses, I have noticed a smaller subvariety of the cone tree; they are more widely spaced and not so thickly leafed. And although they are shorter, I suspect that they are actually the permanent form of the species. These large ones”—he gestured toward the mushroom-shaped tree which now had small bioluminescent seed-pods shining like lanterns high up in the underside of its canopy—“they are the advance guard of their species. They exist only so that they may die in the fight to expand their biome.”
Mizuki waved a hand which followed the borders of the two warring biota as they roved back and forth across the two streams. “They are locked in a slow-motion struggle for dominance.”
Just like we seem to be, ever since we discovered we’re not alone in the cosmos, Riordan reflected as he resumed his position behind the point-walkers, Macmillan and Betul.
Chapter Thirty-Five. SOUTHERN EXTENTS OF THE THIRD SILVER TOWER BD +02 4076 TWO (“DISPARITY”)
As the day wore on, Disparity’s flora continued to command Riordan’s attention — not because of what it displayed, but rather, because of what it might conceal.