The Garden - Melissa Scott [29]
by our definition-in fact, I don't think they're really animals at all."
"What do you mean?" Janeway asked.
"Well, every one of them that we've seen has been doing something that could be construed as taking care of the crops," Torres said. "I think they're-well, for lack of a better word, a kind of organic machine, designed to tend these fields."
"They could also have been gathering food," Kim protested. "That's more what it looked like to me."
"The two can overlap," Janeway said. "It's an interesting idea, B'Elanna. Let's see if we can prove it one way or the other. Keep scanning, as discreetly as you can, and pay particular attention to their behavior, but stay on the road." She glanced at the sky. "I'd like to reach the citadel well before local nightfall."
Kim glanced up as well, into a sky bluer than his homeworld's, streaked with thin trails of cloud. The sun, a hot white disk, seemed to be near the zenith, but whether it was rising or setting was unclear. Still, he thought, it shouldn't take us too long to get to the Kirse city-even as careful as we've been, we're nearly halfway there already. He adjusted his tricorder, letting it hang at his waist, the autorecord function fully engaged, and started after the others. The creatures seemed to be keeping their distance now, slipping away from the roadside fields before the Voyager team could get too close to them; they caught glimpses of various creatures in the distance-more of the anthropoid creatures, but also some that looked taller and thinner, without the heavy fur, once something that might be a quadruped-but no one was able to get a decent fix on any individual. The readings remained frustratingly consistent, not organic, not mechanical, and Kim shook his head, shading his eyes to get a better glimpse of one of the tall, smooth-
skinned creatures busy in the distance. It seemed to be pulling something-fruit? leaves or flowers? It was hard to tell without the tricorder's help-from the lower branches of a small tree, but even as he watched, it dropped to all fours and began scrabbling in the dirt beside the trunk. When it straightened again, its clumsy paws seemed to be e mpty.
"Maybe you're right, B'Elanna," he said, "that looks more like caretaking than looking for food."
The engineer looked over her shoulder at him, her serious face curving into a reluctant smile. "I was thinking exactly the opposite myself. You can't plant in the shade of the parent."
"But I wouldn't want to bury a food cache there, either," Paris said. "I mean, why bother? The tree's there, ripe for the picking."
"Storing it for another season, maybe?" Torres answered. She shook her head. "I wish I knew."
Kim opened his mouth to continue the discussion, but the fickle breeze strengthened then, bringing with it the sound of running water. "Listen," he said instead, and saw the others pause as they heard the same sound.
"Another river?" Paris said, and Torres reached for her tricorder.
"Probably. This reading's a little unclear, though. It could a lake of some kind. But it's beyond those- trees."
She pointed to the line of thickly interlaced plants that formed a natural fence at the edge of the cultivated area. Kim eyed them uncertainly, not liking the way the gnarled limbs twined around each other, springing from trunks that were twisted into a thick spiral, or the way that the limbs grew together to form a canopy above the road. He couldn't make out the shapes of any leaves, or indeed if there were any, just
the heavy, thick-scaled bark and the twisting limbs. Then something moved in the sky above the treeline, a scattering of white, bright in the sunlight, and gone as quickly as it had appeared.
"Look!" He pointed, but the light, whatever it had been, was already gone.
"What it is?" Janeway demanded, and Kim shook his head.
"I'm not sure, Captain. It- I saw