Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel)

by Audrey Faye

  Her idea, then, which was interesting. I strode over to the bench and got in the way of Nikki’s orbit—it was hurting my eyes to watch. “It’s an excellent thing to rule out. What else have you been working on?”

  She brightened a little, but glanced Jerome’s way before she answered. “I ran some leaf and bark extracts through spectroscopy to see if we had any differences in chemical expression from the last baseline.”

  Looking for signaling changes. Along with the peripheral mutations, those would have been the first two things I would have taken a look at had I stayed awake. “Find anything?”

  This time, her gaze stayed down. “Dr. Salmera is checking my work now.”

  I managed not to growl his direction—barely. “As I imagine he hasn’t located any errors, why don’t you tell me what you found, Nikki?”

  He looked up at my snotty tone, and I let my eyes say what my words hadn’t.

  To my surprise, he colored a little. “Dr. Jeffert’s work is excellent, as always. There are no changes from what we would expect in gene sequencing, expression, or chemical phenotype.”

  In other words, the tree wasn’t evolving by any of the usual mechanisms.

  “We’d know more—” Nikki halted as we all turned to look at her, and then kept talking, a lot more diffidently. “We need to know how it’s communicating.”

  “We tried that.” The lab manager’s voice was brusque, but not condescending. “It didn’t register, not on anything our equipment knows how to measure, anyhow.”

  Jerome’s single lifted eyebrow communicated his thoughts, loudly.

  Toli stared him down. “Don’t you doubt my skills, boyo. I’ve been running lab gear longer than you’ve been consuming oxygen.”

  These guys needed remedial lessons on being a team, and I didn’t have time to dole them out slowly. The words weren’t the problem—things like that got said in friendly labs every day of the week. It was the missing respect that was sandpapering my already-raw nerves. “Let’s start with the assumption that everyone in this lab is very good at their jobs, okay?”

  I waited for everyone present to register the tone in my voice. “We have the possibility that something very scientifically exciting has happened here, but we also have a tree that poses significant peril to the humans on Xirtaxis Minor, and a very narrow window to sort that out before the humans here pose a very significant peril to that tree.”

  I could feel them all practically snapping to attention. A common denominator was the lifeblood of every good team.

  I kept talking, saying what I hadn’t said in the fray in Glenn’s office. “This willow is unique in my experience. I don’t know yet exactly what happened, but you’ve already ruled out that it was something we might expect to see on the evolutionary spectrum.” First team success, even if they hadn’t been paying attention. “She’s worthy of our protection, but to do that, we need to gain knowledge, and we need to do it fast.”

  Toli raised an eyebrow. “She?”

  This willow had clearly been female. I nodded. Some scientists tried not to personalize the plants they worked with—I wasn’t one of them.

  The lab manager shrugged in acquiescence. “Fine. She may be unique, but she also tried to kill you. And she’s hurt a lot of other people here.”

  “We don’t know if that was her intent.” And until we did, I wasn’t going to call a tree homicidal. “There are a whole bunch of questions I should have been asked back in the medical pod. I suggest you start asking them.”

  I took a deep breath and looked very pointedly at Nikki.

  She blushed profusely. “I’m just the tech. Dr. Salmera should be asking you.”

  “He’ll get his turn.” I glared at Jerome to make sure he didn’t try to take it now, and then looked back at Nikki. “This team needs every member to be on their best game, and I think pretty highly of techs, so we’re starting with you. If you were in charge of solving this problem, what would you need to know?”

  Her cheeks were still shiny and pink, but I could see her brain latching on to the challenge. “Um, well, I’d want to know the trigger. What you did to cause her to freak out.” Her eyes shot to the floor again. “I’m not blaming you.”

  She shouldn’t be ruling it out—I hadn’t yet. “Scientists study cause and effect, and it’s pretty clear I was the cause here. Saying so isn’t blame, it’s good investigative research.”

  “Um, okay.” Nikki was blinking hard, but she was also visibly gathering her courage. “Then can you tell us what happened in the timeframe leading up to the response from the tree?”

  I hid a smile at the suddenly formal language. Now we were getting somewhere. I closed my eyes, calling back the minute or two before arboreal warfare had landed—and chided myself for thinking of it as such. My inner scientist should be holding on to reasonable doubt, even if my Talent wasn’t.

  I opened my eyes and spoke to my now-rapt audience. “I’d been sending short pings of Talent into the soil. You can think of them as vibrational messages, traveling through good transmission channels like water molecules or soil minerals.”

  Eyes were getting wider. Clearly, they didn’t know much about Growers beyond the usual mythology. Not a surprise—sexy vibes were always a better story than talking to water and dirt. “I sent out a couple of generic messages, and then I shaped a more specific probe.”

  Toli’s eyebrows winged up. “Trying to rile it, were you?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t know yet that there was anything to rile. I believed, based on the data, that if there was a plant organism causing the psychological disturbances, I would find it in the experimental domes. I was only seeking preliminary evidence of that.” And hadn’t expected to find it.

  Nikki raised her hand diffidently. “When you say you shaped a more specific probe, what exactly did you do?”

  She was going to be a very good scientist when she lost the fear and awe. “The previous night, I had experienced a dream very similar to the ones reported by several of the staff here on Xirtaxis Minor. I asked the soil who had sent me the dream.”

  Four faces gaped at me.

  Glenn recovered first. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  Nikki was hot on his heels. “Plants know what dreams are?”

  Hers was the far more interesting question, so I went with that one. “I had to reshape it a couple of times.” I smiled at her. “I’ve had a fair amount of practice translating human-speak to green, growing things.”

  She was quiet—and very thoughtful.

  Time for a Grower to ask a question or two. I carefully worded it, scientist to scientist—and leaned on the trust that was growing, human being to human being. “Do you have data to add to this, Dr. Jeffert?”

  “Maybe.” Her face screwed up in a grimace. “I didn’t say anything because all the dreams people were going on about seemed pretty dark and scary. I figured mine was something different.”

  I nodded slowly. “Your dream wasn’t frightening.”

  She smiled. “No, not at all. It was more…” She trailed off, glancing at Jerome and then at me. “I don’t know any way to describe this that doesn’t make me sound like a total flake.”

  I laughed. “Try being a Grower who talks to plants and occasionally wakes up the next morning in a garden with no idea why she’s there.” That hadn’t happened for a good ten years, but it would make my point.

  Nikki relaxed, which was good, because she missed the jerking tautness of the man beside her. I filed that away to consider later—I had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

  Or rather, a really helpful little one.

  “So I was in this forest, a peaceful one with a high canopy so I could see really well where I wanted to go and everything.”

  I could see emotion flitting across the tech’s face as she started to tell the story of her dream. I put my hand down on the bench a short distance from hers. “Nikki, is it okay if I touch your hand lightly while you talk?” It would help me read
the underlayers—and I could steady her if she needed it.

  She looked a little surprised, but nodded.

  I smiled as I laid my fingers gently over hers. “Go ahead. Say more about this forest.”

  “It felt eternal, kind of like time had stopped. It was really, really old.”

  The forest primeval. “It sounds beautiful.”

  “It laughed when I said that.” Nikki’s hand jerked under mine. “That’s where this doesn’t sound very scientific, but I swear it understood me, and it laughed.”

  I sent soothing without words. Plants laughing at me was a very regular occurrence.

  “That’s all.” Her cheeks looked a little pink. “I felt like a little girl, cuddled by this old, wise grove of trees. It was a really happy dream.”

  It was—and it solidified my theories about teenager angst. Or in this case, one taking refuge in a DNA memory of little-girl comfort. “I believe you were picking up on something the willow tree was feeling. Perhaps its ancestors grew in a forest similar to the one you’re describing.”

  Nikki gaped at me. “Trees dream?”

  Close enough. “Thoughts, memories, dreams—something in that neighborhood, anyhow.”

  She was still astonished, but fascination was rapidly taking over. “And I heard her dream?”

  Now we were in the land of Grower wild guesses. “I’m hypothesizing that we may be reading the internal experiences of the willow in some way, or she is inadvertently broadcasting them. Something along the lines of a person with psychic sensitivities.” I said the last bit carefully—science had come a long way in the last five hundred years, but those of us who played with the energetic resonances of the universe in ways that were harder to measure often still met with profound levels of skepticism.

  Toli snorted. “Those are awfully polite words for saying that she’s reaching out and twisting people’s brains.”

  I tried to stay scientific, although I totally agreed. “We don’t know that’s what the willow is trying to do.”

  She snorted again—and judging by the quick glance she exchanged with Glenn, he didn’t believe in the tree’s innocence either.

  I would get to that, but first I had another Grower question, this time for the man who hadn’t done any talking yet. I looked at Jerome Salmera and reached for the man behind the scientist. “When did you first know the willow tree was the source of the problems here?”

  He jumped like I’d stuck him with a hot poker. And then schooled his face back into the bland mask he’d been wearing since I’d arrived. “I am still not at all convinced the data leads to those conclusions.”

  I just stared him down. One gardener, calling bullshit on another.

  He grimaced. “I had hoped it would grow out of these behaviors.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s a young tree. A teenager, in human terms.”

  We agreed on that, but the willow would be a teenager for another dozen rotations yet—and teenagers of any species were not known for their emotional stability or sound decision-making. “So you decided not to tell anyone and just out-wait the problem?” That was incredible dereliction of duty, especially for a scientist. And whatever I might believe of this man, that wasn’t on the list.

  I closed my eyes, ignoring what I could see and trusting what I knew. And felt the answer, deep in my cells. “No. You’re trying to help. You’re trying to teach her.”

  “I’m trying to modify its phenotypic expression,” he said stiffly.

  “With what, juiced-up water and soil nutrients?” Toli looked ready to punch him in the nose. “This has been screwing people up, Jerome. Good people.”

  People she felt responsible for. I could see the same sentiments flaring in Glenn’s eyes.

  And I knew they didn’t understand. Their callings weren’t to the green, growing things.

  Mine was, however, and I knew exactly why one scientist had behaved as he had—even if he didn’t yet. I turned to face him, and began with the part of the truth he would likely accept. “You helped create this tree. You feel responsible.” A man protecting the unique and beautiful life form he’d helped to birth.

  He nodded shortly. “It’s the chief ethical imperative of all scientists. Everyone here agrees with that.”

  I wasn’t at all sure they did, but that was a problem for a different day. “How much success have you had?”

  I could see the swift, sad answer in his eyes. “I thought I had achieved more success than the attack on you would indicate. I deeply regret that it happened.”

  Awkward, stiff words—and under them, so much fear. That of a father for his child.

  Or in this case, a father for the child who has suddenly turned into an unfathomable, explosive teenager. I remembered my dream, and it totally fit the volcanic emotions of my own teenage years. Even as a Lightbody, those rotations had been filled with so many stirrings. Drama, alienation, temper tantrums, a wild need for freedom, and some really detailed revenge fantasies. The tree version of those pretty much described what had been lurking in the dreams and antisocial urges of the biome’s inhabitants lately.

  Unlike Jerome, I knew better than to try to stop it with beautiful, tranquil surroundings and time.

  “We need to talk to her.” Carefully, after lots of planning—I wasn’t about to lose all my water again.

  Nikki stepped forward, stance diffident, but eyes firm. “Your Talent seemed to set her off, so maybe it needs to be someone else.”

  Jerome eyed her with disdain. “And you think that should be you? Just how do you imagine you might communicate with a willow tree, Dr. Jeffert?”

  I was really tired of him dismissing people in general, and her in particular. On general principles, and because if I was right, he’d likely communicated that antisocial bias to his willow offspring. “Nikki has the best skills in the biome with temperamental plants. She would be a very good choice.”

  I eyed the tech, who had nearly swallowed her own tongue. “However, I’m not prepared to put you at that kind of risk—not just yet, at least. I’ll talk to her.” I held up a hand as Toli and Glenn jumped in at the same time. “After setting up some very thorough scientific and medical protocols.”

  I looked at Jerome and spoke quietly, gardener to gardener. “Someone needs to talk to her. I’m the best chance you’ve got to keep her alive. You know her best—help us figure out how to do it right.”

  The lab was dead silent for a moment as four people checked in with their guts and made their own hard choices.

  And then all four of them started moving at once. For tablets, for equipment, for a brainstorming board—and for each other.

  I watched, just a moment, as my team began the first awkward steps of figuring out how to gel. There was still discontent and disconnection and uncertainty evident in every movement. Toli and Glenn still harbored significant doubts, Nikki was having trouble aside setting her fear of Jerome and her awe of me, and the complicated Dr. Salmera was still hiding something.

  But despite all that, I could feel them coalescing into that strange organism that was a team—fiercely independent cells working out how to hook themselves together for the good of the whole.

  That was what I’d needed. And that, I knew how to water.

  15

  I wrinkled my nose as I walked into the main caf. After three hours of painfully hashing out protocols for chatting with a temperamental tree, I was starving. Something smelled really good—and that wasn’t the only thing tickling my senses.

  The caf was loud. Not Stardust Prime loud, but the place was a whole lot noisier than it had been a day or two ago. I sighed as the most obvious explanation came to me. Hot gossip raised the temperature of most rooms.

  Nikki waved from a table to the left of the buffet line. I waved back, and did a double take. Most of the others at her table were techs, but there was at least one member of the garden staff, and a certain medical who looked very pleased with himself.

  Not a not
able thing on most worlds, but on this one, that kind of mingling was an act of rebellion—and I was pretty sure the people sitting at that table knew it.

  Not hot gossip after all. Someone had decided to mess with the soil around here.

  I smiled down at my plate and shuffled into the buffet line.

  “Grower?”

  I looked up, startled—and met a mountain of broccoli spears balanced gingerly on a large spoon. The woman holding the spoon squared her shoulders and smiled tentatively. “Want some? I heard they were picked fresh this morning.”

  I’d have taken them if they were soy-shaped poison. I held out my plate and studied a face that I knew I recognized from somewhere. And then blinked as another spoon, this one holding steamed greens, came into view. The quiet man offering that one worked in Nikki’s lab—and turned on the light switch in my head.

  More faces from Glenn’s files. These were two of the people who had been on the receiving end of the willow tree’s tantrums, or whatever they were. The ones who had dreamed, and stomped out of their labs, and thrown things, and generally behaved in ways that were deeply embarrassing to their scientific souls.

  I stared at the third person offering me a spoonful of food, and the three waiting in line behind him. They were filling each other’s plates too, but their intention was clear. I reached out and gently brushed a hand as the next spoon was offered, carefully making contact when the woman nodded shyly, and confirmed what I needed to know.

  They weren’t offering me sympathy. Just like Shelley on the night I arrived, they were offering support. Quiet, defiant allegiance.

  Which was lovely—and almost certainly meant that I was about to need some.

  I finished moving through the line, soaking in the subtle demonstrations of support, ignoring the equally numerous signs of quiet distancing. Something was clearly on the move, and even those who weren’t supportive were telling me plenty. I let the ripples travel as they would—good communities needed to know how to handle disturbances. The more the baby muscles in this tribe started flexing, the better.