’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Two ― By the Light of the Silvery Moons

¿Hasta cuándo, oh simples, amarán la simpleza, Y los burladores se deleitarán en hacer burla, Y los necios aborrecerán el conocimiento?

— Proverbios 1:22

How long, O simpletons, will you love being simple-minded, and you tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

—Proverbs 1:22

And so I give our toast.
From that young man upstairs
who has the impudence to make me a great-uncle,
to Mother and Father on their Golden Wedding;
through four generations of us,
and to those who have gone and those who are to come.
To the family—that dear octopus
from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor,
in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.

—Dodie Smith
”Dear Octopus”

“Hey, Juanito,” Margarita paused her kneading just long enough to wipe the sweat off her brow and to call out to her husband, “Vamos. Finish your chores or you’ll be late for work.”

“Sí, Margarita, querida mia. I’m going,” he called back over the din of the children as they ate breakfast and played happily with each other. Margarita smiled as Juanito strode laughing out the door and returned to her kneading. She was baking bread for the meeting tonight. In a few more minutes, it would be time to chase the children out of the cramped kitchen and into the quarto grande, the living room, to start studying.

At the barn, Juanito grabbed his flamethrower and protective gear and headed out to the fields to burn back the native flora of Quicksilver. It was his morning chore to burn a twenty-meter plant-free zone, or PFZ, around the entire farm to keep away the native flora and protect the Earth plants transplanted with the colonists, and it gave him the creeps sometimes.

The plant life of Quicksilver was quite different from that of Earth; it grew at a phenomenal rate, from seedling to mature plant in as little as two days, and none of it was edible by human beings. In fact, the plants were outright toxic to humans, so Juanito was very careful to seal the openings of his environmental suit. In the early days, people had died from a single touch, but the hazard suits had pretty much put a stop to that, and the flame-throwers allowed them to destroy the plants without getting too close. The vines, or creepers, whatever they were, could sneak up on you if you didn’t stay on your toes, although you could barely see them move if you stared at them. Turn around for a bit, though, and they’d be a little bit closer every time you looked, edging closer, ever so slowly, but with a horrible singleness of malign purpose.

Actually, plant was not an altogether correct description. While they did have the local equivalent of chlorophyll and cellulose, the flora of Quicksilver also had a rudimentary nervous system and some powers of locomotion, albeit in slow motion, or the daily flaming would not have been sufficient. They also had a meaty bulbous organ, possibly a brain and definitely a sense organ, about the size of a baseball protruding upward above the single core stem. Unlike most of the plant species known on Earth, or any of the other eight colony planets, they also ate each other using their root cilia to battle each other to the death and then to absorb the remains of the losers. Looking down from above, their actions were often reminiscent of warring armies. There were variations in the size of the plants, the color of the sensory organ and the shape of the leaves, but otherwise all the flora of Quicksilver seemed remarkably similar.

Juanito’s friend, Dr. Dan Nevrith, was the senior botanist at the Research Center located about a mile down the road to town. He insisted that they were all variations of the same plant, completely overturning the early work of other, earlier, scientists, who had constructed an elaborate taxonomy based on superficial differences. As its ‘discoverer,’ he had named it Triffidus verus after some long-forgotten vid story. He hypothesized that somehow natural selection had created a single life form so perfectly suited to the environment of Quicksilver that it had overrun and eliminated all opponents, at least until mankind arrived. Dr. Nevrith was working on some sort of biological or chemical control, since burning was very expensive, but so far hadn’t come up with anything that worked for more than a few days.

About two thirds of the way through the burn, Juanito saw a Triffid with a magenta bulb that had made it to less than three feet from the crop. This was more than ten feet farther than any of the others had ever come. Juanito carefully picked up the plant in his gloved hands — careful to take the entire root and watching to either side and behind himself nervously because he was working so close to the low mass of plants — and lowered it into the bio-hazard sack he always carried. Dan was offering a reward of twenty-five E-creds — a full day’s wage — for each new variation of Quicksilver’s flora and a thousand E-creds for any new species native to Quicksilver.

Juanito didn’t really expect anything for the plant he had bagged; it had been quite a while since anyone had found a new variation, let alone a new species, but money was money and it didn’t hurt to try. Besides that, he was paid by the hour, so a visit to the “Doc” didn’t cost him anything, and meant at least a few containers of freight he didn’t have to load. Burning away the last of the previous night’s overgrowth, Juanito put away the flamethrower and jogged the short distance past the colony school to the Research Center. He was the crew-chief, and didn’t get his job, and raise in pay, by pushing the limits too far.

“¿Hey Juanito! cómo está?” Dan was out in the field in front of the center, suited up and working at something, so Juanito detoured off the main road onto the wide and carefully marked aisles between rows of the experimental field to show Dan his new find.

“Muy bien, excellent, my friend. See what I have for you? A new variety, I think.”

Dan’s examination was brief. “Yup, it’s definitely a new variation of Trffidus verus. This magenta variation is a rather striking coloration, don’t you think? But that, in and of itself, does not make it uncommon,” he paused to examine it further, “but this additional bulge below the sensory organ is truly exceptional. I’m going to have to dissect one as soon as I propagate a couple more.”

“So I get the twenty-five E-creds?”

“Absolutely, Juanito. Let’s go get that taken care of and then we can each get back to work.” Together, they headed off into the Research Center. Just as they crossed the threshold of the front doors, there was a brief quake. As a second-generation colonist on a planet with several small earthquakes each day, Juanito thought nothing of it, but Dan instinctively ducked back into the doorframe and stood there, wide-eyed in fear, until the tremor was over.

“Thirty years living on Earth with nothing but solid ground under my feet and now I’m on Quicksilver with earthquakes almost daily. I hate them! I may never acclimate.” His laugh seemed a bit forced as he stepped away from the doorframe and checked for damage. “Come on and I’ll get you the E-creds. You’ve earned it.” They began walking towards Dan’s lab.

“¿Dónde vivías de nino, Señor Doctor? I mean, where’d you live? On Earth I mean.”

“Metro East.”

“¿Discúlpeme? I mean ‘Excuse me?’ I don’t recognize that place. Is it near Téjas? Texas? My mother was from there.”

“Sorry. I forgot you were born here, Juanito. What are you? Third generation?”

“Second.”

“Earth geography doesn’t have as much meaning when it’s so far away, does it?”

Another nod. They reached the lab and Juanito waited patiently while Dan carefully placed the sample in a terrarium, sealed the top and seated himself at his desk with an atlas he pulled out of a pile of books on a nearby shelf lying open between them.

He pointed to a colorful page. “Metro East is a community of about half a billion on the east coast of the North American continent. It was formed about a hundred and forty years ago — shortly after the first colonists left — when the various cities, states and provinces were dissolved in favor of a more efficient mega-municipality like what had already happened on the west coast. I remember because I took my doctoral exams on the centennial of its creation.

“The center of the country, between the two major mountain ranges, was dedicated as a park. By law it has only a small number of permanent residents, mostly farmers, rangers, and people in the hospitality industry, less than ten million as I recall, so hardly anyone lives in Texas any more.”

“But Quicksilver has less than a hundred thousand souls.” Juanito was in awe. He had ignored the first numbers as meaningless, but the smaller number was still so large as to be difficult to imagine.

“Very true. Colonization is excruciatingly slow, but it is essential to the survival of the human race. Earth would never be able to support these colonies without the raw materials they send back to make up for what is lost transporting people and equipment to these distant colonies, and there are too many people for Earth to grow enough food to feed itself these days, even with the Antarctic greenhouses and robotic farming making things more efficient on Earth itself, and the Skinner Drive to speed up the colonial supply system.” Dan’s eyes glazed over as he stared at the book before him. His thoughts traveled the light years back from his adopted homeland to the planet of his birth, a difficult journey, because even with the Skinner Drive, his Earth was thirty-five years in the past. His childhood friends would be old by now, thinking about retirement, and by the time he got back, they’d all be dead.

Juanito nodded politely. His brother Miguel had a different explanation for the relationship between Earth and Quicksilver, not that Juanito cared about such things.

When Dan failed to continue speaking Juanito waited patiently for a while but eventually spoke, “I guess I better get to work.”

Dan was in his own world and did not even hear.

Juanito waited a few moments and when Dan failed to respond he turned to leave, dejected over not getting the twenty-five E-credits. Before he could reach the door, Dan seemed to refocus, blinked several times and saw Juanito leaving. “Wait. I almost forgot. Here’s your bounty and, if it turns out to be a new species, I’ll bring you the rest of the finder’s fee. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. We’ve been looking for a long time and haven’t found one yet. These damned Triffs are so competitive that they seem to have wiped out every competing organism on the surface of the planet.”

Dan dug in a desk drawer and pulled out a small cashbox and took out some bills. Juanito gladly returned to take them. When he turned to leave the second time, it was with a smile and a friendly wave goodbye. Leaving the Research Center, he continued down the road the short distance to the spaceport and his main job as a freight jockey. In daylight, the perimeter robots were clever enough to keep the Triffs away from the fields.

With a brief flurry of activity, dinner was set out on the family’s kitchen table as the dog’s barking gave early notice of Juanito’s return home. “Conchita, get the salad. Pablo, bring the pitcher of water. Papa’s home and it’s time to eat.” Entering the house, he gave Margarita a quick hug and a peck on the cheek and placed a small bag on top of the refrigerator before taking a seat at the kitchen table with the rest of his family.

“Pablo, Conchita, tell Papa what you did today,” Margarita prompted their oldest child. At ten, he was just old enough to realize it was a compliment.

“Sí, Mama.” Pablo beamed with joy as he spoke. “Conchita and I helped Mama harvest the north field.”

“Sí, and I helped Mama make dinner,” six-year-old Conchita proudly added.

“And they each made it through today’s lessons without a single mistake.” Margarita laughed as she chimed in.

“Sí Papa.” Pablo almost jumped out of his seat in his excitement to answer first. “I finished my entire spelling module and tomorrow I get to start on eighth grade.”

“Bueno. Bueno, Pablo. ¿Y tú, Conchita?”

“I drew you a picture, papa. Can I show you, papa? Can I?” she asked looking first at her father and then at her mother for permission.

“Yes dear,” Juanito answered and Conchita jumped out of her seat, “but how about after dinner? It will get it all dirty if I try to look at it at the dinner table.”

Conchita pouted, but returned to her seat.

“How about you, Juanito?” Margarita asked. “How was your day?”

“Not bad. We’re going to need to extend the PFZ another five or ten feet. One of the Triffs almost made it to the corn. Oh, and I got us twenty-five E-credits. Dr. Dan says it may be a new Triff variation. It was by the north field PFZ where you were harvesting.”

“¡Madre de díos! The children could have been hurt. Were there any others? Are you sure none of those accursed Triffs made it to the field?

“No. No. Don’t worry. Only one Triff got close and I got it before it reached the field.”

There was another temblor and the children laughed as they simultaneously yelled out, “Felt it first. Felt it first.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pablo retorted. “I felt it first.”

“Papa,” Conchita whined. “Pablo says I didn’t feel it first, but I did.”

“No, she didn’t. I felt it first Papa. Tell her, Papa. Tell her who felt it first.”

“Children,” Margarita interrupted as she held up her hand for silence. “Papa and Mama are talking.”

“And I felt it first anyway,” Juanito said as he laughed and stuck out his tongue playfully at the two children before turning back to Margarita.

“So how was work today?”

“Not bad. Two full loads of processed durasteel and one container of computer chips.”

“Please tell me they’re the ones for the autoforge or the weather satellite?”

“Lo siento, mi amór, nothing like that. I did get an updated motherchip for our farm management controller, with all the latest improvements.” Juanito smiled as he pulled a chip case from his pocket and offered it to his wife.

“What’s that, Papa?”

“Something for the farm, Pablo.” Seeing the look of disappointment on his children’s faces, he smiled and pointed to a bag on top of the refrigerator. “Don’t worry, muchachos. I haven’t forgotten you. I have some rock candy sticks I picked up from the spaceport commissary in there.”

“Can we have some now? Can we? Por favór, Papa. Please?”

In response to Margarita’s frown, he shook his head no. “Finish eating first, muchachitos.”

“But we’re done, Papa.”

“I don’t think so,” Margarita chimed in and pointed. “There’s still quite a bit of food on your plates.”

“But we’re full, Mama.”

“Then you won’t have room for rock candy, will you? Finish eating, muchachitos.” With huge watery doe eyes, they both stared down at their plates. Pablo moved some food from one side of the plate to the other while Conchita tapped her fork against her lips without actually ingesting anything.

“Oh all right,” Margarita relented, but not until after a mock glare at Juanito, who just shrugged and smiled. The children jumped out of their chairs and ran for the candy.

“But first, clean up after yourselves,” Juanito reminded as he grabbed them both before they could reach the refrigerator and moved them back to their seats so that they could toss their food on the compost heap and put their dishes in the sink. “And that means washing your hands also.”

“Did you manage to get one for your brother Miguel too? We’ll be seeing him tonight and you know he’ll ask.”

“Huh?” Juanito turned back to Margarita as the children scampered off to wash. “Oh, the controller chips. Sí. There are ten in that pack, I got one for all the other plantations, plus two spares, but do we have to go? Can’t I just send one to him? His constant talk of independence bores me; he’s such a ‘gran patriota’.”

Margarita just nodded in agreement and smiled as she rose to clean off Juanito’s and her dishes. Then, she started working on the children’s, lying haphazardly in the sink.

Copyright © 1993, 2010, 2011 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.