The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  Hagar dismounted and took off her gloves.

  “It’s miles to water, but only six inches to hell,” called out the girl. Her voice had a slight drawl that Hagar took an instant liking to.

  The girl in white pirouetted once. “I am Virginia,” she said and looked at the rider expectantly.

  “Hagar,” she said and removed the goggles and aviator helmet. She shook her luxuriant blonde hair and approached at a leisurely pace.

  “A broad riding a motorcycle,” admired Virginia, taking in the sight of the young-looking woman in skin-tight breeches and an aviator leather jacket. “I wish I had a motorbike,” the girl gushed, then stopped and gazed at Hagar again, as if seeing her for the first time. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “Just passing through. En route to Washington DC.”

  Virginia gave her a penetrating gaze. She found the rider remarkably beautiful, yet in a way that didn’t belong. With her aristocratic slightly-­pinched nose, yellow-flecked green eyes, and clear skin aglow under the sun, there was something unearthly about the rider—if not for the mouth. Her lips were somewhat asymmetrical and full. They were oddly suggestive when relaxed.

  The two gazed at each other.

  “What fools, huh?” said Virginia at last.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, what kind of harebrained people tear up the prairie grass?”

  The lips slightly parted as the other woman smiled. “The kind who want to spin straw into gold.”

  Virginia grinned back at her. “They told Pa the rain would follow the plow,” she let out, not even sure what made her say that.

  Hagar’s eyes roved across the plain. She said, “In the 1870s, they claimed that rain would follow the trees. They planted them all over. It didn’t work.” She stripped off her leather jacket, and Virginia stole a glance.

  The blonde woman in a form-fitting black tee shirt said, “It would have served them well if they’d remembered what many called this region in the early nineteenth century: Great American Desert.”

  Virginia was startled by the description. Then she laughed. “It sure looks the part.”

  Hagar folded her arms. “Doesn’t always. This is really an arid steppe. Or it was until a few years ago.”

  The girl peered at Hagar with intense, intelligent eyes that belied the dreamy feel of the freckles. “We moved here years ago from Cambridge, Massachusetts.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s been miserable. But I’m out of here. Said goodbye to Pa and Ma this morning.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Why?” asked Hagar.

  “Because it is all wrong!” There was a sudden heat in the eyes. “Do you know the book Return to Nature! by Adolf Just?” She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled it out from her satchel with a flourish. For a wild moment, Hagar thought the young woman was going to offer her a discount if she bought it right there and then.

  The girl waved the book in the general direction of Hagar. “He’s right. ‘Nature is forever unassailable in her justice; she punishes every transgression of her laws, but likewise rewards every return to obedience.’”

  Hagar was amused by the choice of word. “‘Obedience’?”

  “Indeed. Give me a moment.” Virginia thumbed through the pages. “‘Man must today endeavor in his mode of living to heed again the voice of nature.’” She gestured at the sandy, inert expanse.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” agreed Hagar, but her eyes twinkled.

  “Back to a simpler, more pure state. My pa helped me construct a charkha spinning wheel. Gandhi inspired me.” Virginia put the book away. “I spun and sewed this dress.” She gave another twirl.

  Hagar reached out and felt the white dress right under the round swell of the breasts. “You made it, huh?”

  Virginia took a shuddering breath and managed to give a slight nod.

  They started strolling on the crusted, hard ground.

  “A few miles back, the wife of an old friend of mine…perhaps you know her, Florence.”

  “Dust pneumonia,” said Virginia immediately. “Died a few years back.”

  “What’s dust pneumonia?”

  “Mud in the lungs.”

  Hagar appeared startled by this. She eyed the girl. “Tell me how it is here.”

  “The wind moans for days on end. There are bad days and there are worse days.” The young woman looked away and bit her lower lip as thick and sharp memories came rushing in. “On some days, Ma gave us small, wet towels to cover our faces, so we could breathe. At night, you try to lie still, not to feel the grit of the sand on your pillow. Merely the sound of the dirt blowing outside makes your stomach knot. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Yes.”

  Virginia lowered her head, overcome by emotions. “Dust to breathe and sand to eat and dirt to drink,” she said in a small voice.

  “And the storms?”

  “Last for hours or days on end, a tidal wave of sand and dust thousands of feet high that wipes out the sky, boiling up and roiling as it engulfs everything and turns the day into midnight in a cellar.” She looked pensive. “You can’t tell which way is up. Lightning flashes but in total silence—and suddenly, an earsplitting cacophony of clinking and rasping. The metal fence glows with static electricity. Knocks you flat on your ass if you touch it.

  “The dirt might be tan brown or smoke gray and with sharp smells that burn or with greasy smells that nauseate.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Once I walked home, and the blowing sand felt like steel wool on my skin. I nearly suffocated to death. It was touch and go.”

  Hagar heard herself sigh. She’d never witnessed nature unravel like this. It was a total ecological collapse.

  Virginia’s face fell. “We had some cattle heads when a big dust storm came. Blinded, they ran like crazy, taking in the dust until they dropped dead, their insides bound up with dirt. Anyway, a cow can only live for so long chewing tumbleweeds and drinking muddy water.”

  The two of them sat back-to-back on the ground. For a time, neither said anything. They were contented to just sit there. The sky was clear, the air surprisingly fresh.

  “I suppose someone has to grow wheat to feed people,” Virginia said in a resigned tone.

  Hagar made a dismissive gesture. “Farmers could have bred and cultivated a perennial.”

  “A perennial to eat? What do you mean?”

  “It is perfect, really. With their longer growing season and more extensive root systems, perennials can hold their own and are better at capturing nutrients and water. Moreover, you don’t have to replant them each year. Thus, soils are conserved.” Hagar turned her head and glanced at the young woman. “Take a few decades, and you can breed something like intermediate-wheatgrass and get yourself a perennial wheat-alike grain.”

  Virginia clapped once, delighted with the concept. “It’s brilliant!” She swung herself around until she faced the other woman.

  Hagar smiled inwardly. Through the years, she lost count how many times she had shared this concept. It always seemed to be a brilliant idea to those who heard it. But at the end of the day, it was back to the annual wheat. Seemed like a few decades of breeding could as well be ten thousand years for the Terraneans, for the Earth people. Her primary responsibility was to monitor the ecological state of affairs on the various parallel planets—and do something about it if things became too dire. Yet, she did mentor and advise people whenever she could, wherever she went.

  “Well, at a minimum, folks around here could practice no-till farming,” she offered.

  Virginia raised an eyebrow in question.

  “No plowing,” Hagar supplied.

  “You might as well suggest a church with no Bibles. Anyway, what’s zee matter with plowing, Herr Professor Doktor?”

/>   “The soil becomes gradually impermeable.”

  Virginia frowned with unease. “Plowing opens up the soil.”

  “At first. But the process tears up the inner structure of the earth so later it collapses on itself, and you end up with a more compact soil than you started off with.” Hagar gave her a brief smile. “Ever wondered what gives the intact grassland soil its cottage-cheese, clumpy texture? Miles of fungal filaments permeate the soil and release a sticky substance. This, in turn, binds together particles of sand, silt, and clay to form aggregates. The open spaces between these clumps allow in water and air and make possible subterranean life.” She gave a brief chuckle. “Well, the stupid-ass plow tears up the symbiotic fungi and wrecks this network of air, water, and nutrients.”

  “Golly!” Virginia was looking at her, wide-eyed. “How do you know all that?”

  Hagar reached out, accessing with her mind a vast database. It was continuously updated by her analysts and aided by a small army of smart digital scanning devices. A name popped up in response to her query. “Sir Albert Howard. I read some of his work.” She hoped that would cover it, making her expertise plausible. Luckily, Virginia appeared as unfamiliar with the name as she was.

  Hagar laid down, stretching on the exposed firm earth, hands behind her head. And Virginia’s gaze lowered and roamed over her figure, lingering. It was getting hot. Virginia could feel sweat trickling down her temples and between her breasts.

  Hagar seemed not to have noticed. “The ancient Romans used the plow, you know.” Her voice was pensive. “They ran large-scale monocultures, and the fields in central Italy became so degraded and eroded under repeated plowing that the government had to force people to stay on the land. This didn’t help much with the crop yields. Two thousand years later and people are still at it, with an astounding lack of imagination, I may add.”

  “So what’s zee cure, Doktor?”

  Hagar eyed her. Underneath the banter, she noted the intensity in Virginia’s voice. This was a serious topic. “You keep a plant cover year-round,” she said. “This fuels underground biology, maintains soil structure, stores water and nutrients. It also protects the soil from getting baked during the summer. Common sense, right?”

  It was. Virginia was just waiting for her to explain the rest of it, eyes fixed on Hagar.

  “You can sow winter grain crops into summer-active pastures. Around here, you sow winter cereals into the prairie grasses. The grain grows during the annual phase when the grasses are dormant—and this way the perennial grass stays on the land. You don’t fertilize. And you only use a seed drill, no plowing.”

  “Is this for real?” whispered Virginia.

  “Yeah.” Hagar pushed back a loose tendril of hair off Virginia’s face. “You take advantage of niches in the growth cycle when both perennial grass and annual cereal can coexist.” Hagar sat back up and playfully patted Virginia’s cheek. “It’s elementary, my dear Watson.” The moment she said it, she was struck by how absurdly simple was the solution and had to force herself to keep a straight face. “It is not as easy as it sounds; may take a decade or two to tweak the system,” she felt compelled to add. Hagar thought some more. “Actually, it’s better yet. You rotate large mobs of sheep and cattle, which is needed in order to reduce the biomass of the perennial grass—creating in the process litter and mulch and adding nutrients from manure. This means you get both pastureland and cropland on the same piece of real estate; breakfast cereal and steak provided by the same field.”

  Virginia raked her fingers through her hair, frowning. “It never occurred to me that cattle can promote plant growth. I doubt this has occurred to anyone. Sounds so…counterintuitive.”

  “Is it now? The big animals fuel plant productivity by eating the steppe grass and returning its nutrients through their manure.”

  It was all coming too fast for Virginia. She pushed on nonetheless. “Does the herd size matter?”

  Hagar eyed her. “Daughter, you demand answers to all the mysteries of the universe.”

  “Indubitably,” responded Virginia. She fell silent, pondering. For a moment, she was still, only the tousled, sandy-red hair stirred in the breeze. “Won’t the cattle nibble the grass to death?”

  Hagar shook her head. “Not if you emulate how the bison grazed the land for eons. Think. Due to predators, the bison are bunched together for safety. This bunching is what provides the beneficial high-impact trampling, dunging, and urinating—that is, fertilizing. Now, as animals don’t like to hang around their own shit, the herd keeps moving. Movement keeps the plants from being overgrazed.”

  Hagar saw this system in Qataria, a parallel, Earth-like planet. Nut­rients that in the arid grassland would otherwise be locked up for years in leaves and stems were liberated for use through animal consumption, digestion, defecation, and urination within a day or two. It worked beautifully. The herbivores’ guts were like warm, moist incubating vats that accelerated the slow nutrient cycling of the dry grassland ecosystem. This and more. Without occasional intensive-grazing, the land ended up with an ever-growing dead plant material, which among other things blocked new growth.

  Virginia was impressed. But, as always, the devil was in the details. “How soon can you hit the same grass area with your grazing army?”

  “In this arid region? Give it at least a three-month rest. Maybe as much as a year.”

  “How often do you relocate the herd to a new forage area, to a fresh paddock?”

  “Twice a day would be nice. As a bonus, the cattle will get to move ahead of the fly and parasite cycle: by the time these hatch in the manure, the cows will be long gone,” told her Hagar. “A few years of doing this, and there will be a marked increase in organic matter, diversity of grass species, and total amount of biomass on the land.”

  “Hagar, this is amazing stuff! I wish my pops had this conversation ten, fifteen years ago.”

  The other woman grunted.

  “You got to tell people!”

  Hagar turned her face away.

  Virginia studied her with astonishment. “What?”

  “Sooner or later, the rains will return, and the farmers will try to put as much distance as they can between themselves and the memory of what happened here.”

  “Are you serious? This is your argument why not share your ideas?”

  Hagar exhaled noisily in apparent frustration. “You’re probably aware that underneath our feet is one of the world’s largest aquifers.”

  Virginia had heard of it. But she shook her head. “The water pressure has been too low.”

  Hagar muttered something to herself then looked back at the young woman. “It’s because you’re using windmill pumps,” she said, her voice suddenly tired. “People will eventually conclude the obvious and replace these with pumps driven by automobile engines. Frankly, I am surprised they haven’t done so already. Once that happens, people around here will have more water gushing out of the ground than they’ll know what to do with—at least for one or two hundred years, until it is sucked dry. So, who exactly will concern himself with anything but where to point the torrent of water, Virginia?”

  The girl got up and stood rooted in place for a long time. A flush crept up her face as the implications hit her. Unlimited water year-round. For a century or two.

  “I don’t know if I should feel elated or depressed.” The methods Hagar had outlined sounded sustainable, perpetual. On the other hand, the prospect of a water spree and the destructive land practices would go on until the last drop of groundwater. Then it was back to desolation.

  Hagar stood up and joined her. “In that case you are one step ahead of most people. Others will not have any doubt about what they should feel.”

  Virginia nodded after a moment.

  Chapter 3

  Together, they strolled some. Then some more.

  After a while, they sa
t down. Hagar moved close behind Virginia, straddling her. She began to brush with her fingers the girl’s tousled hair, the faint scent of soap and of something warm and feminine reaching her.

  Before long, her thoughts drifted to her recent travels in the Great Plains on the baseline planet. “This region wasn’t always like this, you know.” Her eyes had a burning, faraway look in them.

  “Well, yeah. A few decades ago it was all different.”

  “No, I mean really different—when the natural world around here was flourishing.”

  Virginia’s eyes lit up. She turned her head for a moment. “Oh, you speak of the days of huge buffalo herds!”

  “And that seems balanced to you? Tens of millions of bison roaming across a vast steppe, practically alone?”

  “No?”

  Hagar shook her head wearily. “This is what you get when the big predators—the tigers and lions—are gone along with the camels and the horses and the elephants.”

  Virginia turned around, stared at the other woman, then burst out laughing. “Dorothy, you do realize you are in Kansas, yes?”

  Hagar searched for the reference, then identified the pertinent child­ren book. She smiled ruefully. “Why do you think the mesquite and hawthorn have thorns spaced too widely apart to do much good against the narrow deer muzzles? They were meant to deter the giant ground sloth from munching on them. What animal could crack open and swa­l­low the cupuaçu, with its large pit, travel far distances and defecate, leaving the seeds to grow in a new place—but for the elephant-like gom­phothere? Why is the pronghorn capable of mustering incredible speeds­—if not to evade the American cheetah? There are clues all around for what was, for what is ecologically absent.”

  Virginia was taken aback. She was silent for a long time, mulling. “You are talking about the Ice Age.” She fell quiet again. “You know well and good those animals went extinct when the ice sheets melted.”

  “Sagebrush.”

  “What?”

  “No glaciers here during the Ice Age, that was much farther north.” She gestured. “This area, teeming with camels, mammoths, bison, and other big mammals, was a sagebrush steppe—much as you find in north­ern Nevada at present.”