The Garden - Melissa Scott [23]
"Something interesting, Mr. Kim?"
"Maybe, Captain," he answered, and suspected he was blushing. "One of the flower types back there, the ones that look like saucers, they have an edible root."
"Good," Janeway answered. "Keep scanning."
Kim murmured an answer, looking ahead toward the line of trees. Torres had almost reached them, her head down over her tricorder, following the trace of the pipeline beneath the surface of the lawn, and he lengthened his stride to catch up. As he got closer to the trees, he could smell the rich fragrance that rose from their leaves-very faintly like roses, he thought, and a little bit like lemons or pears. The pale yellow fruit, nestled among the thickly curling leaves, seemed by contrast to have no scent at all. He swung the tricorder at one anyway, and was not surprised to see that it was edible as well.
"Two out of two," Paris said, looking over his shoulder, and Kim suppressed a start.
"So far," he answered, and looked at the trees again. They stood in neat parallel rows, no one tree taller than his shoulder, and he stooped to examine the ground under them. It was as tidily empty as the lawn, and he hurried after Janeway. "Captain, about the trees . . ." Janeway paused, a look of inquiry on her face, and Kim hurried on. "Captain, I noticed that there aren't any drops under the trees-there
doesn't even seem to be any blemished fruit on the branches."
Janeway looked at him. "I think we knew that these weren't wild plants, Mr. Kim."
"That's not my point." For an instant, Kim couldn't believe he'd said that, but Janeway nodded, and he went on, "It's not just that they're cultivated, but they've been tended recently. These fruits are really ripe, but there aren't any on the ground-and I do find insects in the branches, so there should be some. Unless something's cleaning them up."
Even as he spoke, a thumb-sized creature launched itself from the curled edge of a leaf with a loud clacking sound. Kim ducked in spite of himself, and the thing bumbled past, to settle on a higher branch. The green of its carapace blended with the leaf, so that it was all but invisible. Only the way the leaf sagged under its weight betrayed its presence.
"So I see," Janeway said, with a slight smile. She sobered quickly. "And you're right, Mr. Kim, that's a good point. So wherever the Kirse are now, they were here recently enough that the trees are still tended."
Kim nodded, and in the same instant, Torres called from beyond the row.
"Captain, I think I've found a road to the citadel."
Kim turned, and saw the engineer waving from a band of stone set into the perfectly manicured grasses. The ground sloped gently away behind her, the grass hidden by what he would have thought were low-growing weeds except for the way they met the grass in a perfect, tidy edge. It looked almost as though there were more fruits tucked under the heart-shaped leaves, and he ducked through the last row of trees to join Torres. Janeway followed more slowly, and Torres looked down at her tricorder.
"As best I can tell, this road goes to the citadel by the most direct route. At least I guess it's a road."
Kim scuffed his boot against the pale gold surface. From a distance, it had looked almost like an igneous inclusion in a bed of sedimentary rock, but up close, the edges looked too neat for it to be anything except an artifact. But if it was, he thought, how had it been laid? It looked like natural stone, like granite or flecked tergonite, but he couldn't see any seams where blocks could have been butted together to create the almost polished surface. "It looks like a road," he said aloud, and knew he sounded far less certain than his words.
"It certainly does," Janeway agreed. "And you say it runs to the citadel?"
Torres nodded. "The pipeline I mentioned, it runs under it, a little more than half a meter down."
"Well," Janeway said, and smiled. "We might as well follow it." She glanced at her own tricorder. "And we'd better get