Seeders: A Novel

by A. J. Colucci

  Isabelle quickened her stride, feeling defensive and ashamed. She scooped up a handful of ryegrass with a ripping motion, held the blades up to the sun, and exclaimed, “Lolium perenne.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Lolium perenne. And over there, crawling along that rock is Euonymus fortunei, but it’s being overtaken by Hedera helix.”

  “Oh yes,” said Jules, catching on to the game. “Tell me—what is the genus-species of that squat evergreen over there?”

  She tilted her head, thinking. “Thuja occidentalis, commonly known as arborvitae, or ‘tree of life.’”

  “Incorrect. Thujopsis dolabrata, but you were very close.”

  “Ah, well. I was only ten when I left.”

  “But still kept up with botany.”

  “A bit.”

  “I see your son has the same affinity. Does he always carry around pots of shrubbery?”

  “No, Sean wants to replant the holly in my father’s memory.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  She slowed while Sean caught up, examining a leaf as he walked past them.

  “He’s the quiet sort.”

  “Yes. He had an accident years ago.”

  Jules said nothing, but the expression in his eyes was comforting.

  They stopped at a fork in the path. To the right was the woods and to the left, the cliffs.

  Isabelle looked at the trees and shivered. “Doll Head Woods.”

  “Ridiculous name,” Jules replied. They stood for a moment, staring.

  “To High Peak,” she said.

  Together with Sean they trudged uphill, where the grass became sparse, the soil turned to rock, and the smell of heather filled the air. It was a steep climb to the top of the bluff. The wind howled loudly, as if trying to drown out the roar of the ocean.

  They walked to the edge of the cliff, where a piece of yellow police tape was still tied to a thorny bush, flapping in the breeze.

  Isabelle stared at the marker and spoke above the wind. “I guess this must be it.”

  Jules nodded.

  “Sean, you can plant the holly right here. But be careful, it’s steep.”

  The boy knelt at the cliff’s edge, took his spoon from his pocket, and began stabbing the earth. The wind gusted and Jules pulled up the collar of his jacket, which had been warm enough for New York City but not a Canadian island.

  Isabelle shivered too and bundled the scarf around her neck, rubbed her woolen sleeves. “It’s much colder up here.”

  He unzipped his jacket. “I should have offered you my coat.”

  “No, thank you. My sweater is quite warm.”

  They watched Sean pull the plant from its pot and lay it on the ground with tender care. The wind died down, awakening the sound of crashing waves.

  “Is this hard for you?” Jules asked. “Coming to the island.”

  “No, not at all. I loved it here.”

  “But all these memories.”

  She shrugged. “Mine are mostly good. I spent quite a bit of time with my father in the laboratory, watching him work and fussing over my terrarium. He filled it with motion plants, do you remember? Venus flytraps, bladderwort, telegraph. Every day I’d stroke my Mimosa pudica like a beloved pet and watch the leaves close up like fingers.” She looked out to sea. “Back then, I thought plants had feelings. George had a way of making you believe that.”

  Jules smiled.

  “Here I am going on about my childhood. I’m sure you miss him too.”

  “Oh yes. We spent many years together.”

  She looked at him, searching for the right words. “Why did you … leave him?”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know, really.”

  “Was it the age difference?”

  He smiled, quizzically. “Age? What do you mean?”

  “Well, my father was twice your age when you met. Not that it matters.”

  “I don’t follow.” Suddenly his cheeks flushed and he stammered, “Oh, you mean … we were never … he was my mentor, for heaven sakes.”

  Isabelle touched a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. My mother told me you two—”

  “I’m not gay,” he practically shouted.

  “Well, all right. No need to get upset.”

  “I’m not upset. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being homosexual. If you are. But I’m not.”

  “All right,” she said, looking tense. “I don’t know why my mother—”

  “Your mother detested me. She loathed anyone who took away your father’s attention.” He got very quiet. “Now I sound like an idiot.”

  “Not at all.”

  “It’s just that seeing you all grown up.” His stare was intense. “… And so very lovely.” He blushed and averted his eyes. “Do you remember the bonfires behind the house on cold nights?”

  “My father would make us sing ‘Kumbaya.’”

  “And you would curl up next to me. Only back then, you were just a funny little girl.”

  When she looked at his face, she knew he felt something too. The pangs of infatuation came rushing back to her and more than anything, she wanted to kiss him. No, she thought. This was ridiculous. She was a married woman with children, and here she was swooning over a man she hadn’t seen for thirty years.

  She looked out to sea and said, “I had a silly crush on you, but it was a long time ago.”

  He managed a smile, but couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  They stood together watching Sean pack soil around the roots of the holly. Then the boy reached out a finger and stroked a vine of English ivy creeping along the cliff. He plucked off a leaf, examining its underbelly.

  “If you want to know,” Jules said, “it was his habit.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You asked why I left George. He was—”

  “Yes, I know what you meant.”

  Sean stood, his pants covered in dirt. He walked to Jules with the ivy pinched in his fingers and showed him the underside of the leaf.

  Jules took it in his hand. The leaf was coated with dark velvety bumps that left a stain of purple on his thumb. “That’s odd,” he said. “Such a strange texture. Not sure, but I’d say it’s a fungus of some kind.”

  Sean was already walking down the path to the house.

  Jules stuck the leaf in his pocket.

  CHAPTER 8

  MONICA LAY ON THE BEACH in tight jeans and a leather jacket, waiting for the sun to get warm. The temperature had reached a springlike sixty-five, but the ocean breeze made it feel much cooler. The wind abruptly died and she sat up, looking at an almost invisible horizon where both sea and sky were the same hazy color of blue.

  Luke was gathering rocks along the shore, dropping the flattest stones into a pile and skimming them across the water.

  “Did you see that?” he shouted. “Seven jumps. Seven. That’s like, my record.”

  Monica rolled her eyes and got to her feet, smacking black sand off her clothes. “Tar Beach,” she said. “Perfect.” With that, she declared the trip officially sucked and she was going back to the house. “I can use that radio to call the police and tell them I’d like to spend the rest of my vacation in jail.”

  “Why do you hate everything?” he asked.

  “I don’t, but this is boring. You’re boring.”

  “Least I’m trying to make the best of it.”

  “I need a cigarette,” she said quickly. “It’s so cold and dead around here.”

  He scowled and said, “What would you be doing if your boyfriend was here?”

  “That’s a dumb question. And you’ll never know.”

  He looked at her sideways. “So what’s his name?”

  She turned away for a moment, thinking, and then stared into his eyes. “Snake. He’s twenty and drives a Harley. He’s taking me to Paris.”

  “So why didn’t you go live with him?”

  Her brow furrowed. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  Ginny was jogging down th
e sand, wrapped in a flowery bathrobe and waving a piece of paper over her head.

  “Yoo-hoo. Come here, both of you.”

  “Oh, look,” Monica said. “We’re being summoned by the queen.”

  Ginny reached them, out of breath and clutching her chest. “You all disappeared without a word. We have to figure out the riddle, don’t you see? This is extremely important.”

  Monica snorted. “I’m on vacation.”

  Ginny scrutinized their faces one at a time. Her chest rose and fell heavily beneath the robe. “I’ll give you five thousand American dollars,” she said. “Each.”

  It took a moment to register, and then Monica sputtered, “Are you shittin’ me?”

  Ginny winced. “No, I am not shitting you.”

  “Well, then, at your goddamn service, your majesty.”

  Ginny held up the riddle. “I think this beach is west of the woods, so it must be here.” She turned to one side of the black sand and then the other, from the weathered dock to a scattering of driftwood along the foamy shore.

  “You’re wrong,” Luke said. “This beach faces southeast. West is on the other side of the island, facing Canada.”

  She struck the paper with the back of her hand. “This is absolute bollocks. I can’t be bothered with it now.” She thrust the riddle at Monica. “You two figure it out. I’m going to have a short nap.”

  Ginny dropped her robe. She wore a skimpy turquoise bathing suit, full of bright sequins and hanging teardrop beads. It showed far more skin than either teen wanted to see.

  “Damn,” Monica said, wincing at her long cleavage.

  Luke shifted his gaze to the ocean, as if it were fascinating.

  The elderly woman squatted, spreading her robe in the sand. Her body was toned for her age, but heavily wrinkled and a few parts sagged. She didn’t seem to mind the cool air.

  “I thought you said more is less.”

  “Not on an island. Now you’re blocking my sun, kindly move.”

  “What about the five thousand dollars?”

  Ginny wiggled her bottom into the sand and faced the sunlight. “It’s yours if you can find the Crimson Star. That boyfriend of yours seems pretty clever. My money is on him.”

  Monica grabbed Luke by the wrist and led him to the old wooden dock.

  The warmth of her hand made his legs wobbly and he nearly fell onto the rotting platform next to her.

  She smoothed the paper flat on her knee against the breeze. “We’re going to find that diamond.”

  Luke looked at the riddle. “My grandfather had to be crazy when he wrote that. He jumped off those cliffs to his death.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t think these words mean squat. He was just a madman writing a bunch of nonsense. We’re not going to find it.”

  “And I’m not passing up five thousand dollars.” Monica squinted hard at the words. “The goddess Hanus … han … ham … ham-ass.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. What does Hanus mean?”

  He shrugged. “If I had a computer, we could Google it.”

  “Let’s look for one in the house.”

  “There’s no Internet connection. We’ll have to wait until we get home and do a proper investigation.”

  “By then the old lady could hire a team of geniuses to crack the code.”

  He nodded, staring at his wrist and trying to remember the feel of her warm fingers.

  Monica sprang to her feet. “So we’re stuck on this crappy island for two weeks and we don’t get the money.”

  “We should go back to the house,” Luke said. “My mom was right; let’s forget about the riddle and check all the rooms. I’ll bet George just hid it somewhere and forgot.”

  * * *

  Jules spent the morning in the lab, searching through file cabinets. George kept meticulous notes on his research dating back to the 1960s. But Jules was looking for only one thing. George had told the lawyer he’d made a discovery that would change the world. It was something he’d worked on for the last few years, and he was very excited about it.

  George never got excited about anything that wasn’t truly remarkable, and as far as Jules knew there was only one discovery that could change the world. It was the most taboo subject in the field of plant biology, but to open-minded scientists like himself, it was the Holy Grail of botany: the detection of a central information system in plants that was akin to the human nervous system. But Jules believed such a finding was decades away. There were too many questions. Where would such a system be found? Which tissues would it involve? What would be the cell-to-cell connections? What would be the firing system? Would there be a network with specialized cells and tissues to direct processing?

  Perhaps in the last few years of his life, George had found the Holy Grail.

  Unfortunately, there were no files dated after 2004. It was possible George had burned his most recent data in a bonfire on the patio. Jules had picked through the immense pile of ash and found remnants of spiral notebooks and binders, stacks of paper burnt into thick blocks of charcoal, along with the charred remains of plants. But why George would destroy the last ten years of his work, the most significant finding of his life, was as mysterious as his death.

  He looked around the room. There was nothing left to search but a set of bookshelves over the desk. Some of the books were old and worn with dull fabric covers and titles concerning plant physiology and phytohormonal regulations, early subjects George had studied. Others had more contemporary titles on plant genomics, molecular neurophysiology, and electrophysiology. Jules felt a certain pride to see his own books on the shelf, all three he’d written in the last decade. He scanned the bottom shelf and spotted a bright yellow book with blue letters down the spine: Binaural Beats: Principles and Explorations.

  He pulled it from the shelf and flipped it open.

  Sean walked into the lab, quietly and unseen. He perched himself on a stool and watched the scientist read, smiling at the way Jules rubbed the side of his face with large bony fingers, slender and big-knuckled like tree branches. Finally, he let out a grunt.

  “Oh. Hullo.” Jules peered up from his reading. “Wouldn’t you like to help your mother look for the diamond?”

  Sean shook his head.

  Jules continued reading about binaural beats, along with notes scribbled along the margins.

  “Ung,” Sean grunted again.

  Jules tried to ignore him, but his protests continued.

  “I’m trying to concentrate, Sean.”

  “Ung!” The boy stabbed a finger at the bookshelf.

  “You want a book? Well, fine, then, take one.”

  Sean poked the air harder.

  “All right, all right. Which one?” Jules ran his hand over the row of titles until Sean grunted with enthusiasm.

  It was the largest book on the shelf, a fat almanac simply titled Botany. Jules wiggled it out of its long-standing spot on the shelf and felt its substantial weight. The engraved leather seemed more fitting for a collection of Shakespeare than a catalog of plants. The paper looked old and slightly yellowed, but other than that it was in pristine condition. Jules handed it to Sean, who was anxiously snapping his fingers like crab claws.

  Once the almanac was removed, Jules spotted a notebook pushed to the back of the shelf, green as a grasshopper. He pulled it out and laid it on the desk. It was a simple composition notebook like students use in secondary school.

  Across the cover The Eden Project was prominently written in black marker. Jules fanned through the pages. Some were dated within the last five years and that instantly brightened his mood. Yet the entries were fragmented and sketchy: daily logs of plant growth; a list of 128 species of vegetation found on the island with their geographic locations; long descriptions of molecular genetic mutations performed on plants and fungi through a process called protoplast fusion; a series of detailed maps indicating cities and countries all over the world.

  N
one of it held the slightest interest to Jules. It would take hours to read through George’s miniscule handwriting, so he skimmed the pages, stopping randomly and growing more frustrated. Then suddenly Jules stared, and kept staring, as if something on the page was astounding. He felt his heart thump against his chest and wiped the sweat from his lip, reading the words quickly.

  George was claiming that he’d found a way to entangle the thought waves of plants and humans. He described the plants actually speaking to him, communicating through images and even words. It seemed ridiculous, but the data was laid out carefully, scientifically. It went on to describe something called V-waves, oscillations made by trees to communicate with each other. There were several pages of data on experiments George conducted in the woods. Jules found the information quite remarkable and took notes by speaking into his cell phone recorder. There were strip charts from an oscilloscope pasted onto the pages. Jules snapped photos of the charts with his phone.

  The next two pages were filled with the hand-drawn diagram of some kind of device. It was labeled “Isochronic Tone Generator” and showed various switches and printed circuit boards, along with filters, amplifiers, and modulators. Jules guessed it was engineering plans for a type of synthesizer.

  He turned the pages and found that the text became increasingly difficult to understand; less scientific and more philosophical. The word Seeders sprang out at him in bold red marker. He flipped around the middle pages and found Seeders several more times, sometimes in block letters or scribbled like a child.

  The last few pages of the journal were shocking and Jules nearly dropped the book. They were filled with meticulous drawings of people dying. The bodies lay sprawled and mangled as if they’d been tortured, stabbed, or gutted. George’s talent as an artist was frightfully good, as he showed every gruesome detail. Jules cringed at the pleading eyes staring up at him, mouths in a scream, hands reaching out of the pictures for salvation. He held his breath, turning the pages in disgust. Among the carnage was a lot of scribbling, sentences that didn’t make sense or were illegible, along with rambling comments about life and death.

  Jules closed the book. He looked at Sean, still reading the almanac, and then lifted his gaze to the window.