The Speaker for the Trees

by Sean DeLauder

  "Humanity has already reached this stage of development plants are now exhibiting. They suspect everyone. But that means, since they are further along through this baptismal stage, humans will soon transcend it. Our society has been in place for eons and only now does it show similar signs."

  "So?"

  "So, maybe it isn't the prospect of human interlopers that troubles them so much as the fear that there is a species that is progressing exponentially faster than them. And they know that some day, unless they act, they will be rendered obsolete and all their power will vanish."

  "But isn't humanity inherently dangerous? Isn't it possible that long before they overtake the universe they could destroy themselves?"

  "Bah! More garbage fed to you by the Council. Such blatant hypocrisy. Of course humans fight with one another for dominion. All species do in their early epochs. Even those plants who are so quick to preach about their utopian society. All empires are founded on conquest. Plants who stretched over others to choke out the light of rivals; strangled the roots of other plants with their own; cluttered entire planets with themselves, spreading to every nook and cranny. How is this any different from humanity? Yes, humanity is in great, great danger. But, unlike plants during their evolution, not just from themselves."

  "So, how do we help them?" asked Hedge, then added an afterthought. "Should we help them?"

  "Perhaps. They’re the reason I'm here, you know. Isolated. Replaced by a didactic clod. I suggested we watch them. Because their potential was so great, but often their compassion appeared lacking. They learn so quickly, and at the same time so slowly. We have been around for so long, and yet they are gaining on us in a comparatively short amount of time. They are a marvel whose advancement accelerates and compassion swells, while we, I fear, do the opposite. It is perhaps because we are frightened by them. We become more like they were in an effort to be what they are not, giving us the option to point back at them and say 'They are different, and their difference is their undoing.'"

  "They want me to lead the expedition to store them."

  "Yes, I know," said the Plant. "It's perfect. The daisies are very clever. I've always thought daisies were the smartest of plants. Always thinking. It's because they grow so fast. They get accustomed to doing things at a faster pace. So much quicker in mind than those old trees, so slow to change, so rooted in the old ways. No pun intended." The Plant mumbled in distracted amusement.

  "Perfect? They're doomed to eternal imprisonment."

  "No no no. Not if you are the one abducting them."

  "Oh! I hadn't thought of that."

  Now he understood. As head of the project Hedge would be responsible for keeping track of all the humans that were stored and where they were kept. It would be very easy to misplace a few here and there.

  "But how many should I take?" asked Hedge. "Five? Ten? And which ones? How do I choose who is most important?"

  "Ah. You don't."

  "I don't understand. You don’t know how many?"

  "How many? Ha! All of them!"

  "All of them?"

  "Yes. Not just the great and brilliant, but the fools and criminals as well. To segregate them now would create lopsided chaos. They must find their own equilibrium. Once you have them all, take them away to a new place where we have yet to expand. Refashion their world."

  "Find an undiscovered planet, then refashion the whole world as it was? That could take millennia!"

  "Certainly. Any job worth doing is worth the time. In exchange for this knowledge I have one demand."

  Hedge braced himself.

  "You must take me as well."

  "But... you're the Plant of Ultimate Knowing. Someone is sure to notice. To come looking."

  "Oh, I doubt that. I'm sure they'll be glad to be rid of me. Besides. This place is so dull."

  The nearest acolyte moved, its long tentacles twisting, and lowered an appendage toward Hedge. Wrapped in the green tentacle was an orange, ceramic pot, which it set in the dirt beside the Weed of Ultimate Knowing. Hedge stared for a second, then realized what he was supposed to do.

  "Thanks," he said.

  The acolyte bent fractionally at the top in acknowledgment.

  Despite its claims to the contrary, the Weed had proven its genius. It had expected this meeting but foreseen the outcome.

  Hedge dug carefully around the weed with his hand, then down a few inches into the ground, and hauled up a ball of dirt with the weed and set it all in the pot. He took a few handfuls of the dark sod and tamped it into the gaps until it was firm but not hard. Plants found it terribly uncomfortable to have their roots packed into hard dirt, just as Hedge found it uncomfortable walking around in pants that were too tight.

  It was warm and sleepy in the garden now, the pleasant afternoon light causing all it touched within the dome to fall into a drowsy swoon.

  ... hrm... never work... the giant sunflower mumbled in its sleep. find you... catch you...

  "Shut up, you mindless drone!" called the weed, then turned its attention back to Hedge. "We'll have to be relatively quick. The Council controls this Plant, so it will know you are up to something and will likely send an agent to investigate."

  A sense of foreboding fell over Hedge and he was assaulted by a flurry of thoughts. Take all of them? This would be a long task. How would he keep track of them? How would he know where they all went when he put them back? Where was he going to put them in the first place?

  Hedge picked up the Weed of Ultimate Knowing and cradled it under one arm, the toaster under the other. This was quite an intimidating mission. He was nervous and worried. None of the acolytes seemed to pay him any attention. What if something went wrong and they were caught? What if he botched the abduction and all humanity was lost? What about Anna and Scud and all the others? Hedge was almost shaking with all the worry wound up inside him.

  "Great!" said the Weed of Ultimate Knowing as they left the dome. Defiant and treasonous. They were a weed and a very frightened plant-man, armed with nothing but a toaster and a scarcely formulated plan assaulted on all sides by the possibility of calamity and disaster. "How exciting!"

  Abduction

  On a worn yellow couch patterned with flowers a round woman in a nightgown sat staring at the television, arms wrapped around drawn-in knees. It was just after noon and her face was flushed and wet, the lower lip caught behind her teeth to keep it from shaking. Hair normally pulled into a tight bun hung down in random medusan straggles, her eyes were puffed and tired. All the curtains were drawn, but the day had not brightened beyond a muted gray and the air was heavy with gloom. Two days had passed since Hedge left to visit his brother in New Jersey. She had heard nothing since.

  There was no brother in New Jersey. Anna knew that. Which could only mean one thing: another woman.

  The news program prattled on as she drifted from one miserable thought to another.

  ... detected the objects four hours ago, hovering just beyond the upper atmosphere... President has yet to make a statement... Doctor Charles Rogerford, an astronomer and observer operating the powerful radio telescope in Puerto Rico for SETI, will attempt to shed some light on the nature of this phenomenon...

  Doctor Rogerford was a middle-aged man with a silver-streaked beard and sharp eyes that exuded precision and intelligence. The eyes reminded her of Hedge, whom she often found staring at her as though he were taking her apart and putting her back together in his head. It was what intelligent people did. Figured out how things worked, why they worked, and so understood and appreciated them better. Rogerford stood outside a small building at the steel feet of a giant antenna, smiling with gentle enthusiasm. Below his head was an informational graphic which included his name, title and the acronym SETI, which expanded into Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

  This is a very exciting time for us, for all humanity, said Rogerford. Throughout our existence...

  His voice trailed off as Anna's vision glazed.

  It see
med as though something very important was happening, but she couldn't concentrate well enough to figure out what. If Hedge were here he would take the time to explain it to her very slowly even though he knew she wouldn't understand. It didn't matter. He enjoyed explaining and she loved listening. But the point was moot because Hedge was gone.

  Why did men grow tired of the women who loved them so tirelessly? How did they forget what made them so beautiful, reducing them to just another rose in the flowerbed?

  Anna's mind meandered in search of answers to her own questions. Because she was older now; because the pork chops were poor; because he needed something new and vibrant to hold his interest. This fear had always lurked at the rear of her mind, the fear that he would someday realize he was too good for her, but she had hoped and loved and quietly thanked, choosing to ignore the silent alarms in her head because there was nothing she could do to prevent him from going if he ever stopped loving her.

  Hedge had always been distant, it was his nature, what made him so mysterious and alluring, and what made the bits of love he gave her so wonderful, so she never suspected he would leave until he was already gone. Without him there was no one. She had a vague recollection of family, of parents, but trying to remember brought feelings of discomfort and a strange burning in her mind as though something forbidden was coming unzipped.

  Most days Anna felt energetic, rolling pleasantly from one chore to the next until the end of the day when she would lie beside Hedge and hold her book. She rarely read any of it, but it felt comfortable and familiar in her hands, and Hedge would sit next to her and stare. It was her favorite part of the day, when she had his whole attention, and all else was just a prelude.

  She sighed.

  Today she was just tired.

  The newscaster became steadily more frantic as he related the newest reports. His tie was loose and the top of his shirt unbuttoned far enough to reveal the white undershirt beneath. A flurry of information scurried along the bottom of the screen in a thin bar while maps popped up, highlighted by dark red blotches like a spreading sunburn, followed by a reporter standing in an urban area while sirens wailed in the background.

  ... have just learned the President and his cabinet are unaccounted for in what appears to be a mass abduction. There have been no ransoms issued, and no countries or terrorist groups have claimed responsibil...

  The picture flattened to a line and went silent in mid sentence, and Anna set the remote on the coffee table and lay back on the couch. Something dramatic was taking place, something global and extraordinary. It was possible this was the sort of world-changing event everyone would remember and later ask one another Where were you when...? Yet Anna found herself strangely indifferent. Maybe because she knew no matter what happened her answer would be Alone.

  * * *

  Hedge stared in silence at the giant, blue globe through the observation window at the bow of the craft, fascinated by the deceptive calm. Clouds wrapped slowly around it like soapy film while below, tiny and unseen, countless organisms doddered hither and thither across the surface, placid and unaware they were being watched.

  In one hand he held a potted plant, though not so much a plant as a weed, which remained silent and dumb so no one would suspect its true nature.

  Several other humanoid plants were on this ship, including John Elm, and the thousands of other ships encircling the planet, awaiting Hedge's word to start the process of extraction. To bring this entire civilization to an end. It was tragic to think humanity could never improve upon the works and accomplishments it had achieved thus far, and the thought filled Hedge with grief.

  "Hedge?" asked John.

  They had been here for several minutes, waiting for his order to commence. Not that other plants were unsettled by delay. Plants lived their entire lifespans without shifting positions, their existence gradually expended in idleness. But John was a motile plant such as Hedge, and waiting made him restless. There was no purpose in hesitation. Everything was in place, ready to begin. Everything but Hedge.

  As Hedge watched the planet he raised a hand between it and himself, obscuring the whole thing, which seemed profound since he knew the planet was many hundreds of millions times larger than his hand. It was a simple matter of perspective. For some reason he suddenly remembered his trips with Anna to the small white building she called church, where she, Hedge, and perhaps forty other locals sat in an open room on very uncomfortable benches that made his back ache and his butt sore while one person stood at the far end of the chamber and pontificated in a loud and dramatic voice about the life of still another person whose father had created everything. Why so much attention was paid to the son of this great man, Hedge had no idea, as the one who created everything seemed far more noteworthy, and Anna frequently had to prevent Hedge from raising his hand and asking what she deemed Impertinent Questions. They called the father of this man, who wasn't really a man at all, but a creature of limitless power, God.

  God reputedly knew everything, saw everything, was everywhere and was capable of everything within and without imagination because he had created everything and could thus shape it to his will—an elaborate human version of the Plant of Ultimate Knowing. Yet this God never displayed His powers in any conspicuous fashion as the great Plant had by advising the Council, and Hedge could not detect the presence of an omnipotent force watching over him and everything else. It was strange that he'd never heard of this God until he'd come to live amongst the humans. How was it they knew about Him and no one else did? Why did God choose to reveal Himself to these people? Why did so many refer to this God as a He, rather than She, It, or something else altogether, deigning to relate to this supreme being in their own terms? Like the Plant of Ultimate Knowing, everyone knew of God, but no one knew anything about him.

  God was puzzling, elusive, exhausting, and scarcely believable.

  Yet standing before the window looking down upon the planet where he knew none could see him, Hedge had a faint sense of familiarity with this God. For some reason being here, unseen, with plans for saving this race from what equated to annihilation, he understood how it might be possible for an entity with power over Hedge to be watching him from a similar position inside their own starship just outside the globe of the cosmos, obscuring the whole thing by passing a hand before his face, perhaps guiding Hedge away from disaster with deft and subtle alterations to his universe.

  The thought boggled him as he gazed down at the planet.

  Somewhere among the billions of these people, faintly aware or completely oblivious of the fate hanging over them, was a single human in a farmhouse. Hedge wondered what Anna was doing right now, wondered if she would notice when they came for her. Wondered if she even realized he'd left, or cared that he'd yet to return. Somewhere down there she busied herself with fewer chores, having just one person to trouble with, and perhaps found herself happier for it.

  Hedge suffered a sudden rush of ridiculousness.

  Maybe he could hurry to the planet and join her. The abduction would continue, but perhaps he could be taken with the humans and placed in storage as well. It didn't much matter to him that he would be in storage. Time would stop for him and all of humanity, and resume, if ever, when they were released. It wouldn't be so bad. He would be awake with Anna for a little while, and even should they never be revived, he would be in the place where he felt most comfortable, most useful, most... well, loved.

  John Elm stood nearby, a constant, disconcerting presence. He watched Hedge with a look of perplexity and extreme curiosity, as if he were trying to figure out the puzzle of Hedge's facial expressions, trying to guess what Hedge was thinking and why these thoughts appeared to trouble him so. He would stare at Hedge, then stare at the weed Hedge had been toting around with him since returning from the garden of the Plant of Ultimate Knowing.

  Was John an agent sent by the Council of Plants to watch Hedge? The more Hedge thought about it, the more likely it seemed.

  John
had asked him about visiting the Plant of Ultimate Knowing, why he had gone, and Hedge replied that he wanted to know how best to accomplish this task, which was more or less the truth.

  John could not possibly guess the weed's significance. It simply wasn't remarkable enough to meet the expectations historical propaganda had created, but certainly John was bright enough to suspect something because no one else bothered carrying around a potted weed. He must suspect something, though he didn't know what, because John continued staring relentlessly with pinched and puzzled eyes.

  Hedge turned to avoid his gaze.

  A red blip on the console beside Hedge indicated the humans had detected them. There was no more time to delay.

  Hedge let out a long breath of air and looked back to the plants awaiting his command.

  "Okay," said Hedge. "Let's begin."

  * * *

  A knock at the door jerked Anna out of a half daze. She stood groggily and moved through the kitchen, brushing past the table where smears of grease remained from the broken toaster, wondering Why should I bother? She asked herself this same question twice more before she reached the door, at which point she decided it would be rude not to answer.

  When she opened the door a tall, pale man stood in the opening. He was dressed in black and wore sunglasses so dark she couldn’t see the outline of his eyes behind them. He wore an extremely large, but crooked smile, as though he were both very excited and very uncertain about being on the porch. His hands were at his waist and in them was a toaster.

  “You have one, too,” Anna remarked.

  The visitor seemed momentarily alarmed, as though she’d discovered a secret he’d meant to keep to himself.

  “It’s just a toaster,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Anna. “I know. Can I help you?”

  “I think so,” said the visitor.

  He appeared distracted, looking over his shoulder toward one side of the porch then the other as if he expected someone to arrive.