A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [122]
He could sense the warmth from her. “I feel much better knowing that, Beneto.”
He listened through telink. Around him, the trees whispered. A thousand channels of gossip swept past him, but he chose not to access any of it. The worldforest contained far too much information for any one person to access.
Finally, they said their farewells. Rossia and Beneto separated their telink bond, though the worldforest fronds continued to whisper on many worlds, telling far more secrets than any green priest realized.
Beneto walked through the outer fields with Sam Hendy. The potbellied mayor wore a stained but comfortable jumpsuit. His pockets contained tools for anything he needed to fix in the outlying acreage.
Beneto wore only shorts. His bare feet and legs rustled through the grain stalks. He sensed no special connection to the genetically enhanced grains that bent in the gusty Corvan breezes, but he loved just to feel the life growing up from the soil.
“We are far from the heart of this war, Mayor, but I follow the hydrogue conflict with great interest.” He had already told the colonists about the hydrogue incursions at Boone’s Crossing, as well as the attacks on Hyrillka and other seemingly random planets. “The struggle may have repercussions that affect even out-of-the-way places such as Corvus Landing.”
“At least the EDF hasn’t tried to recruit our young workers as soldiers.” The mayor plucked a plump stalk and chewed on it. “Of course, if the military came here for conscripts, maybe they’d bring the supplies and equipment we need.”
Leaving a track through the thick grain, the mayor strode across the field to a malfunctioning weather transmitter on the fenceline. He tweaked the controls, setting up a detector so the station could better analyze wind flow. “A long time ago, humans were willing to climb aboard generation ships and fly through space for centuries without a map. We expected to colonize the Spiral Arm that way, establishing footholds and pretty much living by ourselves. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to do that—not a good thing, in my opinion. Back to basics.”
He closed the weather station’s power box and plucked another stalk of grain as he looked back toward ColonyTown. The settlement was surrounded by a checkerboard of crops, pastures, and orchards, as well as the healthy grove of worldtrees.
Beneto said, “Even if it’s whole grain and goat meat for the foreseeable future, Mayor, we will survive.”
That evening Beneto slept outside under the whispering worldtrees. He was troubled, his wandering thoughts in turmoil, in part because of Estarra’s surprising news, but also because of what he continued to learn about the hydrogue conflict. There seemed to be no chance for a resolution. The enemy was too alien. No one could understand them.
He lay staring up at the fronds that moved independently of the breezes. Old Talbun, who had planted these trees, had forsaken his lucrative career as a communications specialist for the Hansa and chosen to spend the rest of his life on Corvus Landing.
Beneto wished Talbun could be here so they could discuss the crisis. He needed advice from someone, somewhere.
He stretched out a hand to touch the nearest trunk. Beneto closed his eyes and, instead of dreaming, let his mind fall through telink where he could tap into the collected knowledge of the worldforest.
The sentient trees had lived for untold millennia. They had pondered on their own for most of that time until, in the last two centuries, they had vastly increased their understanding with the help of green priests. The available knowledge within the worldforest was beyond the use or comprehension of any human being, even one engulfed in telink. In such an unmapped ocean of information, it would be impossible to track exactly how much the trees knew.
The worldforest had been tangibly uneasy since the appearance of the hydrogues, but they had offered no explanations