The Trouble With Heroes.... by Jo Beverley Read Free Book Online Page B

moved a metal pot from onto a trivet over the
flames. Steam began to curl out of the spout.
    “ Talking sometimes helps.”
    “ Yes.” He poured the tea into two cups.
He’d always planned to draw her here.
    "Talk," she said. "How do you suspend
something in the air, and what use it is?"
    "I don't know." He picked up a stone and
released it in mid air. It hung there, but then fell. "We don't
understand what fixers do anymore than we understand the blighters,
but I think our... energy... comes from the same place.”
    "Negative and positive?"
    “ Perhaps, but perhaps not.” He put his
cup aside. “Look, assume that the blighters are not just energy but
a species -- undetectable to us, but following the same patterns as
other species. They are born, they reproduce, they die, and they
need to take in nutrients."
    "Do they?"
    "I have no idea. This is a working
hypothesis. It would mean that they ash animals because that's
their way of feeding. They transform animals into the same kind of
undetectable energy that they are."
    "Like water transformed into steam, then air,
by heat."
    "Or like green plants transformed into our
ungreen bodies. That's a kind of magic if you don't know how it
happens."
    "Any sufficiently advanced technology appears
to be magic," she said, remembering his words.
    He pulled a face. "I can't see anything about
the blighters we could remotely call technology. Perhaps that
comment should say that everything we humans don't understand we
classify as magic."
    “ And thus unreal.”
    "Until the unreal starts to eat us."
    Jenny swirled the last of the stewed tea in
her cup, swirling what he'd said in her mind. "If the blighters are
eating us they'll have to stop, won't they? Otherwise...."
    "Otherwise, they'll be like people on Earth
eating all the cod.”
    "Good point,” she said. “But they recreated
the cod stocks from DNA."
    "And the blighters almost certainly can’t do
that.”
    “ So what are you saying? That they’ll
eat us all then die of starvation? That’s not much
comfort?”
    “ I’ve been reading up on it. There are
Earth species that eat almost all their food source and then go
dormant until the supply recovers."
    It was like pieces of a baffling puzzle
suddenly clicking into place. "That's why Gaia was so perfect for
us! Fertile, lush plant life, but no large or sentient animals. The
blighters had eaten it down to a nub. How long would they be
dormant?"
    "As long as it takes."
    "But instead,” she said, almost breathless,
“we arrived..."
    "Like a delivery dinner."
    "But it's been centuries."
    "Perhaps they're not programmed to stir until
now. Perhaps their life cycle is naturally measured in centuries.
Perhaps it's something to do with base energy stores...."
    "Or perhaps," she said, "they were waiting
for the dinner gong."
    He nodded, "My guess is that the occasional
blighters have been checking things out."
    "Like the drones combing the universe for
usable planets. Fair's fair, I suppose."
    "And survival is survival." He broke a twig
off a nearby bush and began to strip the leaves off it. Something
he'd done as a boy when fretting. "Interesting, isn't it? Gaia was
the perfect planet, settled with extreme care to ensure infinite
harmony and balance. But it all comes back to the jungle in the
end.”
    “ Perhaps we had a good run because we
developed fixers and learned to zap them.”
    He tossed the bare twig into the fire where
flames licked at it. "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. This is all crazy
speculation, you know."
    "But it makes sense." Jenny looked from the
spluttering twig to the statue of the little girl. "Ashes to
ashes.... Something’s told them dinner's ready, and they’re rushing
to the table. What do we do?”
    "That’s the question. When we humans find a
planet we like, minor life forms can’t stop us from cleaning them
out to make things right for settlers. Perhaps we can't stop the
blighters from cleaning us out for food. Some small animals will
survive, and