The Other Tree

by D. K. Mok

  “I was thinking we could catch a commercial flight to Massari, then charter a plane to Bihr’el, then drive from there to the cross hair.”

  “Charter a plane?” asked Luke, his brain making a sound like copper coins clanking down a hole. “By ‘charter’ I’m guessing you mean ‘rent.’ And by ‘plane,’ I’m guessing you mean ‘car.’”

  “SinaCorp must be days ahead of us,” said Chris. “The only advantage we have is the missing page, so hopefully they’re stuck on the riddles.”

  Or maybe they were already long gone, heading back to headquarters in their private jet. Chris could imagine them, sitting amidst the hot bubbles of the on-board Jacuzzi, clinking cocktail glasses and laughing at the thought of her and Luke trekking through the parched dust to find a garden freshly stripped and salted.

  “We’re also stuck on the riddles,” said Luke.

  “Sleep on it,” said Chris. “Maybe it’ll come to you.”

  Luke shook his head as he continued towards his cabin, leaving Chris standing at the door to hers. She watched him disappear between the trees, following the grassy trail. Chris pushed open the flimsy door and stepped into her cabin, flipping on the light switch. It took a few moments for the bulb to glimmer on, powered by some archaic form of solar power. She pulled the thin, grey curtains across both windows before dropping her bag to the sticky floor.

  Chris suddenly stopped. In the dim light, she could see the distinct, round bulge of something lying under the bedcovers. It was about the size and shape of a soccer ball, neatly covered by the military-green bed spread. The sensible part of Chris said “Run. Just. Run.” The scientist in her said “Must look now…” Yet another part of Chris said “I hope it’s chocolate.”

  By the time the various conflicting voices in her head had made themselves heard, the scientist in her had already reached over and pulled off the bedcover.

  On the pilled cotton sheet lay a head.

  Still dripping slightly.

  Unmistakably iceberg lettuce.

  A bent, metal spoon was stabbed into its side.

  The sheet was damp with condensation, and the ink on the hand-scrawled note was just starting to bleed.

  YOU WERE WARNED.

  Before Chris had a chance to assess whether or not this prank was intended to be humorous or threatening, a burning package smashed through the rear window, flinging flaming debris and shards of plastic around the chipboard room.

  Not humorous, Chris decided.

  The grey curtains whooshed up in flames as though made of gas vapour, and the floor began to melt into bubbling goo. The flaming package burned with bright green fire, spitting gobs of flame onto the bed and walls. Acrid fumes filled the room and stung Chris’s eyes and throat. She ran for the door and yanked at the aluminium doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. She pushed and pulled at the door roughly, and the doorknob came off unexpectedly in her hand. Luke’s warning about cheap accommodation came whispering back to her, and she wondered briefly if he was teaching her some kind of lesson.

  Chris abandoned the door and started to prise at the front window, but it was somehow jammed shut from the outside. She pounded on the plastic pane to no avail, and through blurry eyes she thought she saw movement in the trees outside.

  A scream suddenly clawed through the air, coming from somewhere further down the trail.

  It was Luke.

  That was it. She was not going to die in a rustic lodge that smelled like decomposing pepperoni. Luke’s funeral notice would not read “Died in freakish circumstances too horrible to print.” It would damn well read “Died peacefully in his sleep, aged one hundred, surrounded by loved ones.”

  Chris staggered towards the bed and heaved her backpack from the floor. Through the oily smoke, she thought she saw movement from the incendiary package. Suddenly, a searing pain wrapped around her wrist, and as she tried to pull away she felt something restraining her. Groping in the front pocket of her pack, Chris grabbed her pocket knife and slashed blindly around her hand. There was a high-pitched noise, like fresh branches burning, and she felt the pressure around her wrist release.

  Choking on the fumes, her lungs on fire, Chris kicked repeatedly at the chipboard door. Finally, with a satisfying crack, the door broke in two like a board in a martial arts display. Chris briefly wished she could have caught that on video before she stumbled outside into the cool air.

  Gasping, she ran down the trail, heading toward the screaming.

  * * *

  Luke had actually been feeling quite good about Corrawong. So far, it had been peaceful, and the landscape starkly beautiful. Lots of broad red plains, wide blue skies, and knotted trees with scribbly bark, standing like relaxed sentinels across the desert. In a way, there was something reassuring about the landscape—it seemed to say “We’ve seen millennia come and go. You’ll be gone before you know it, but we’ll still be here. She’ll be right.”

  That was, until the rock came crashing through his cabin window.

  Things got even worse when he realised it wasn’t a rock. This realisation occurred when wasps started crawling out of it.

  Things were further compounded by the brick which then came hurtling through the window at him.

  Luke managed to duck the brick, but this brought him closer to the wasps, who looked very unhappy at being thrown through a plastic window. Crouched near the floor, Luke caught sight of the note wrapped around the brick.

  PARASITE.

  It was roughly at this point that Luke discovered with some urgency that the door to his cabin was locked from the outside. The doorknob clattered to the floor, which seemed to incense the wasps even more than it incensed Luke. Having done very little research on wasps aside from what they did to other insects, Luke decided to risk the further ire of the wasps by throwing his bedcover over the wasps’ nest. Although this put a reassuring barrier between him and lots of angry wasps, the buzzing noise from beneath the bedspread grew louder, and the thin sheet started to vibrate in a very disturbing manner.

  It occurred to Luke that this tactic resembled the most popular solution for rogue genies: although you might lock them away for a period of time, they were going to be really, really peeved when they finally got out.

  Luke was trying to open his jammed front window when he saw a trail of smoke weaving erratically across the clearing outside. The smoky form resolved itself into Chris as she crashed unsteadily into Luke’s cabin door.

  “Ow! Luke?” called Chris.

  “Wasps! Lots of wasps!” yelled Luke.

  “Stand back.” Chris’s voice was muffled through the door.

  “Um, maybe it would be better if—”

  There was a cracking thud, followed by a tearing noise, as the flimsy cabin door was ripped from its hinges. The door fell inwards, slamming onto the ground on top of the covered wasps’ nest. There was a very unpleasant crunch. Followed by several smaller, but even more unpleasant crunches. Luke tried hard not to listen.

  “Where are the wasps?” asked Chris, stepping onto the fallen door.

  Crackle. Crunch.

  “Why are you smouldering?” asked Luke faintly.

  He stared at Chris’s wrist.

  Don’t ask, he told himself.

  Chris followed Luke’s gaze to her wrist. A charred piece of vine was knotted around it, nubs of burnt leaves and thorns still attached. Chris gasped, whether in horror or delight, Luke couldn’t be sure. Chris reached into her pocket and pulled out a specimen bag and a set of tweezers, carefully unwrapping the blackened creeper.

  “Is that some botanical Kabbalah?” asked Luke.

  Chris held up the vine, inspecting it closely. Beneath the charred exterior, it was a tender length of creeper, highly flexible, with significant tensile strength. It exuded a sharp, pungent odour, like an old swimming pool.

  It twitched.

  Luke leapt backwards.

  Crunch.

  Chris’s eyes lit up. The green flames—high levels of boron. The tox
ic fumes—burning chloride.

  “Animata botanica…” whispered Chris. “Every botanist knows that plants can be incredibly violent. They tear down buildings and rip up roads. They can crack open pipes like peanuts. Plants just do it really, really slowly. If plants moved at the same speed as animals, they’d be damned near unstoppable.”

  Luke looked uneasily at the limp, sooty piece of plant. Chris continued to scrutinise the vine in unadulterated fascination.

  “One stream of thought in cryptobotany proposes that if plants contained higher concentrations of micronutrients, for example boron and chloride, and evolved a faster metabolism, they could actually move in competition with animals,” said Chris.

  Luke looked around at the wrecked cabin, at Chris caked with ash and in bad need of a handkerchief, at the brick with the handwritten note. Now plants that could strangle you even if you weren’t Sleeping Beauty. Where to begin?

  “But it’s not SinaCorp’s style,” mused Chris. “They’re more bullet to the head, or robbery gone wrong.”

  Things weren’t just getting dangerous. Things were getting weird. Chris glanced at Luke—a permanent tension seemed to run through his body, his face slightly flushed from agitation. He really didn’t do well with bugs.

  “I guess next stop Massari,” said Luke, his eyes shining with something resembling a fever.

  Crunch.

  * * *

  It was another panoramic morning in Dubai, where you could almost see the curvature of the earth along the glittering blue horizon. Docker’s boots marched down the hotel hallway, across the smoky marble, barely pausing at the room door before pushing it open with a soft click.

  Roman leapt to her feet as Docker stepped into the suite, her gaze flickering nervously around the room.

  “Report,” said Docker, dropping the heavy case to the floor.

  “The algorithms have found a correlation between the diagram on the Sumerian tablet and our satellite charts of the region to an accuracy of eighty-four percent,” said Roman smoothly. “Bale reports that the indications in the text suggest a location near the city of Massari.”

  “Bale? Are we ready?” asked Docker.

  Bale looked up from the calfskin text, which he had been reading without the aid of dictionaries or translation programs.

  “We’ll need further clues to decipher the instructions,” said Bale.

  Docker glanced at Emir, who stood grimly by the balcony, looking even more brooding than usual. Docker turned back to Roman, noticing the muscles on her neck were tense to the snapping point. Roman cleared her throat.

  “Stace had to go home, sir,” said Roman, staring directly ahead.

  “What is this? Kindergarten?” said Docker with a hint of disgust.

  “He forgot to shake out his boot this morning,” continued Roman uncomfortably. “He was stung by a jellyfish and had to be airlifted.”

  Docker’s expression was glacial.

  “A jellyfish,” said Docker. “In his boot.”

  “I’m just saying what happened, sir,” said Roman, still staring ahead.

  There was a sticky silence.

  “Jet heads for Massari in eighty,” said Docker. “Move out.”

  * * *

  Timing was a difficult thing. Much was forfeited by those who lacked the patience to wait for the right moment, while others lacked the ability to recognise when the right moment had presented itself.

  Marrick had achieved a great deal in her life by having both an excellent sense of timing and the kind of patience required by desert frogs who slept for years beneath the baked sands, waiting for the rains to come. She also recognised that when the rains didn’t come, you had to sow a little silver nitrate.

  “Yes, Hoyle,” said Marrick, not turning from the massive, eerily blue fish tank.

  “Eden Two are headed for Massari,” said Hoyle.

  Marrick watched the solitary fish swim slowly through the faintly bubbled water, artificial light sifting through the tank like dust. The fish was almost the size of a man, covered in dull grey scales, with bare patches here and there. Its large, fleshy fins were ragged at the ends, and both eyes were frosted over with white. Its mouth opened and closed in slow motion, as though every breath would last forever.

  “Load up SineOne with Scarab and Wasp,” said Marrick. “We’ll head to Massari for this one.”

  Hoyle hesitated only a moment, but for Hoyle it was a moment full of many rapid thoughts. One of the main ones being, “They’re not even at the gates yet.” The number of expeditions which never even made it to the final destination, let alone achieved the objective, was astronomical.

  However, Hoyle was very much aware of the consequences of repeating the obvious. He had had the misfortune of attending the farewell party of Ted in Accounts, and it was the only time he had ever seen someone attempt to commit hara-kiri with a bread roll. Being dismissed from SinaCorp was not like losing your job. Being dismissed from SinaCorp often had unforseen consequences which nobody spoke about. SinaCorp didn’t make you sign your contract in blood. They made you sign with the blood of your firstborn.

  Hoyle had not known his immediate predecessor, but he had been acutely aware of her reputation. She had been a former SinaCorp operative, and as Marrick’s right hand she had enjoyed a level of confidence that Hoyle knew he did not. She had been personally entrusted with classified assignments authorised directly by Marrick and had been feared throughout the corporation and beyond it. The day after her sudden “resignation,” her body was found at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Hoyle had been promoted the following day. But that had been a long time ago.

  Hoyle had also heard rumours about an even earlier predecessor who had been inappropriately jovial. He shivered and quickly rearranged his next sentence.

  “Will we depart once they arrive at the gates?” asked Hoyle.

  Marrick watched the fish swim its lethargic, endless circles of the tank.

  “I’m told this fish is two hundred and thirty-four years old,” said Marrick.

  Hoyle looked at the large fish and felt slightly unwell.

  “We’ll depart tomorrow,” said Marrick. “They’ll be there by the time we arrive.”

  “Sir,” nodded Hoyle, leaving Marrick silhouetted against the blue-green water.

  Hoyle was a typically loyal senior henchman—SinaCorp’s extensive psychological and genetic profiling had made sure of that. He had also undergone some rather dubious conditioning which had left him with an aversion to quacking noises.

  There was no disputing that SinaCorp had excellent employee benefits, and the pension plan, should you survive, was unrivalled. However, career prospects became rather limited the closer you got to the top. For Hoyle, there was no sense of “One day, all this will be yours,” because Marrick’s intention was that, one day, all this would still be hers. Forever, in perpetuity.

  While Hoyle was not an overly ambitious man, it did take away a little of the drive. It had forced him to focus less on climbing the ladder, and more on other things. Like staff turnover, or exploding brains, or very large, very old fish.

  Like how SinaCorp was being run.

  12

  The dry heat hit them as soon as they stepped off the plane. While Singapore was hot like a sauna, Massari was like the bright side of Venus. The sun felt massive in the sky, and you could almost feel the sand evaporating off the dunes.

  “Hot eno—” started Chris.

  “Don’t say it,” said Luke, his hair dripping with sweat before he even hit the tarmac.

  Chris grinned. It was hard to imagine that this had once been arable land, lush with ferns and conifers, dangling with fruit and thick with grass. She swept her gaze across the cracked yellow dirt and the stony plains. Ten thousand years of agriculture would do that to you.

  The baggage carousel didn’t turn, but it didn’t seem to matter, since only a handful of passengers wandered through the one-room terminal. Luke hauled his battered suitcase from the conveyor be
lt, the red tartan steeped in dust from countless foreign shores. Chris peered through a scratched terminal window, trying to make out the car rental stand.

  “You’ll be happy with this one,” said Chris. “I splurged, since we’re driving all the way to Bihr’el. They said it’s a real road warrior—ditches, rivers, caltrops, dead rhinos. This baby can drive over it.”

  Chris and Luke pushed through the doors into the blazing heat, the air hazing as though they were underwater. They turned towards the rental car lot and suddenly found their path blocked by two men in military uniform, one casually holding a shotgun at his side, the other with a pistol openly holstered at his belt. Their uniforms were battered khaki, and their faces were partly obscured by large reflective sunglasses.

  Chris and Luke became aware of three more soldiers now standing behind them—a woman with a rifle and two men with pistols.

  “Ms. Arlin, Father Estasse. I’m Major Tate; if you could please come with us,” said the man with the shotgun.

  “What seems to be the problem?” asked Chris, glancing nervously at the gleaming guns.

  “Just come quietly, and there won’t be a problem,” said Tate.

  Luke tensed as the three soldiers behind them subtly shifted.

  “Can we at least pick up our car? We’ve already paid the deposit,” said Chris.

  “You can pick it up later,” said Tate, his face half-shadowed beneath his khaki beret. “Come this way.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the soldiers firmly escorted Chris and Luke around the side of the terminal, towards a vehicle waiting by the road. Chris and Luke both froze at the sight of the truck. It was a hulking black off-roader, its oversized wheels caked in desert grit. The gleaming silver bullbar was freshly dented from where it had apparently rammed another vehicle.

  Chris and Luke both made a break for it at the same time and quickly found themselves being roughly manhandled towards the truck. Chris felt herself being lifted off her feet before she landed, hard, in the covered rear tray. Luke slammed into the back of the cabin before rebounding onto the hot metal floor. Three soldiers quickly joined them in the cage, guns drawn.