Eon 03 Legacy by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-05-16T11:45:12.183000+00:00

against red and sky blue. "The air smelled like the sweetest, finest wine in the spring," Nimzhian said, her

fingers caressing the paintings, lifting them from their folders and replacing them with religious care.

Some of the paintings were of specimens of the largest arborids, named yggdrasils: hollow-cored

nets of stiff creepers rising in fat cylinders up to a hundred meters high, throwing out tiers of purple-black

sun-absorbing leaves. Yeshova had climbed into the hollow trunk of an yggdrasil and depicted it from the

inside, like an intricate weavework narrowing to an open circle of sky.

"We used the few pieces of laboratory equipment, over and over again, until all was broken or

ruined and we could only look and see and taste ... And sometimes what we tasted made us sick, and

we noted the symptoms." She shook her head ruefully. "Our own bodies became our laboratories. And

then..." She flipped through sketches of barren lava, slumped and tangled yggdrasils, until the style

became much simpler, cruder: the work she had done by herself, after the death of Yeshova.

The captain's eyes filled with tears and he dabbed at them with his knuckles, glancing around in

some embarrassment. When all of us had seen the sketches, Nimzhian stood by the unglazed window,

staring at the small grove circling the spring, her voice hoarse and cracking with weariness. "I need to rest

before we do the next part of the tour."

"Of course," said the captain, and he ordered food brought out of our backpacks. We set up a

picnic lunch around the house and on the porch, and Ser Nimzhian presided like a true matriarch, resting

on her chair assembled from fallen yggdrasil leaf stems. She wore a broad, battered woven fiber hat to

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shade her eyes against the infrequent glare of sun peeping between the clouds.

"Captain," she said, "I give all our work to you. I see it all in my head, and it can only be useful taken

away from this island. I won't be alive much longer, and the weather would only break in again and ruin

everything."

The captain waved his hand as if dismissing her confession of mortality, and was about to speak, but

she continued, "Four years ago, we lost fifty-nine sketches when the roof leaked. Months and months of

work. Lamarckia is indifferent. And so was Martha, I suspect, but we loved her even so. They were

comforting delusions, ghosts of benevolence and care when we were so alone."

We rested in the flowing patches of sun and cloud shadow, alternately warmed and cooled,

surrounded by the rustling furred leaves of the grove. Salap and the captain and Randall sat on the porch

with Nimzhian, who had closed her eyes and slumped in her chair, her breast rising and falling evenly

beneath the folds of her robe and jacket.

Shirla and Shimchisko lay on either side of me, Shirla on her back, eyes tracking the clouds above,

Shimchisko dozing lightly.

"I'd like to sneak off and explore," Shirla said. "I've been bunking on the ship too long, with the mate

watching every tickle." She rolled on her side facing me. "Shall we run off to the hills?"

I smiled.

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