I hoped it was a good one – I’d hate to disappoint them.
The main reason we had come back to Joanna’s place, apart from it being our unofficial headquarters, was that Mike the Plant had gone and done something silly. I’ll tell you about it shortly. It deserves a few paragraphs all to itself. But first I have to do a bit of flashbacking (i.e. recounting a flashback. Inventing words is fun, isn’t it?)
The world was troubled. Night had fallen, both astronomically and metaphorically. So soon, so quickly, the world had become ugly. It had taken us a couple of hours to drive home from the university: there was panic in the streets, I’m sorry to say. People were scared; some were out of control. Already, reports of suicides, robberies and other violent acts were coming in over the radio and on Facebook and Twitter. It was all the usual behaviour predicted for a society in crisis. Some people were no doubt convinced the end of the world had come. And maybe it had; I just saw no need to get emotional about it.
The split had come as the biggest thing to happen maybe in the history of anything, certainly as the word anything is defined on this planet. People were reacting in their many and varied ways, each according to character and ability. Here are a few images that burned themselves into my brain as I gazed out of Joanna’s car on the way home:
The police dealing with a guy who had taken his family hostage and was declaring he had brought the split down on the world by not going to church often enough. He was very sorry and all that, but now he was going to shoot himself, unless the police obliged by doing it first;
A smashed shop window, people helping themselves to the TVs and videos and DVDs, the pavement littered with shining glass shards. (Why not? When the world is about to end, the most important thing is to watch it all unfold on widescreen);
A huge traffic jam on the Victoria Bridge, with a bus in the middle of it, caught in the act of trying to do a U-turn; (I mean, really!)
A man directing traffic around a woman lying on the ground, her bag of shopping spilled out around her, three tomatoes forlorn in the gutter;
A dog yapping and barking and running in circles, stopping every few seconds to look up at the split;
A train pulled up at Toowong station, with the head of every passenger pressed against the windows, trying to look at the sky, as well as the driver and the guard. They looked like they had been doing this for some time.
These were, however, isolated scenes. For the most part, people behaved themselves, the emergency services were doing a fantastic job, and those not involved in the saga of humanity-in-crisis were giving saner, and more considered, attention to the situation.
I’ll get the science out of the way in as few words as I can. I don’t understand science and really most of the rest of this paragraph is over my head. I’m just repeating what was told to me by David, who summarised the reports and discussions he received from his various colleagues following the split. It was still there, the stars shining as usual outside it, with nothing but the deepest night inside. In fact, the split no longer looked like a split and was now being referred to as The Gap. It covered half the sky, from the south-eastern horizon almost to what Max called the zenith, which is apparently the point in the sky that causes the most neck injuries when being looked at, since it’s absolutely overhead. At that time (8:15pm) the north-western side of the Gap lay halfway through the constellation Pegasus almost into Pisces (I think that means it was pretty big. Don’t ask me to point to them). The south celestial pole was completely obscured. Observers in New Zealand and Fiji had confirmed that the eastern edge extended as far as the constellations of Scutum and Aquila. The bright star Altair (or α Aquilae as it was known to those who like to show off newly acquired knowledge, i.e. me) had just emerged from the other side.
(Scutum means the Shield and Aquila means the Eagle. I hadn’t even known these were constellations until now, much less where they were. It’s amazing what you learn when under stress. Most times I can spend all day looking at a book and learn nothing, but give me a catastrophe and my head is a sponge.)
The Gap had stopped expanding, but showed no signs of going away. The most interesting thing, according to the astronomers and the physicists, was that it was not moving across the sky with the constellations. It was stationary and the stars were turning behind it. They would disappear when they entered the Gap and reappear on the other side, apparently none the worse for wear. Astronomers concluded, therefore, that the Gap was situated between the Earth and the Moon in a geostationary orbit, which is a big word to say it didn’t move in the sky. It had proved unresponsive to all instruments, however, and its precise distance was not yet determined. Artificial satellites, however, were passing in front of it. The Moon had set before the Gap appeared, so the astronomers had to wait for it to return tomorrow and prove their theory by passing behind it. The Gap showed no infra-red or ultra-violet images and nothing in gamma or x-ray wavelengths. Spectroscopy showed perfectly blank results, with no lines whatsoever. Radar didn’t bounce off it. And no information was coming through it either; optical and radio telescopes could pick up nothing from any objects that were obscured by it. Some people were talking about black holes and such things, but were being dismissed: if this was a black hole, the physicists were saying, we could hardly be this close and still be alive to observe it. The scientists had no information, and therefore no theories, and were therefore fairly useless. But they were working on it.
By contrast, theories were rife on an unscientific level, and were being touted by anyone who had decided reality and common sense were best avoided as often as possible. The end of the world was popular, as were, of course, aliens in UFOs, the prophecies of Nostradamus, the second coming of Christ, Nibiru, the Mayan Calendar and even suggestions that the CIA was behind it: in other words, the usual nuts and conspiracy theorists that had been heard time and time again as human beings failed to cope with the stresses of modern life and took refuge in fantasy. What was notable here – if not exactly unexpected – was that there were no new theories being touted, just the same old crap. Come on, guys, surely you can do better than that?
Not even Joanna and her friends, on the psychic rather than the purely unscientific level, could find out anything about it, although that did not stop them having opinions either. Like the sausage that Madam Aura had had a look at yesterday, the Gap produced no effects whatsoever. No amount of psychic probing, scrying, card-reading or ESP could discover the slightest thing about the Gap. It was a scientific and psychic blank.
Surprise, surprise.
Oddly, however, telecommunications had cleared up. There was now none of the whining, howling, hissing static that had been around for the whole day. As soon as the Gap had stabilised into its present size and position, the airwaves had cleared. My mobile phone started working again. Oddly, too, sausages had stopped appearing. There had been none since the university. I almost missed them, although it was a relief not to have them underfoot, or making unexpected bulges in my pockets. But at least something useful had come out of the whole thing.
But the really scary aspect about all this was the total lack of anything actually happening. So there was a big black thing in the sky. So what? Other than looking ominous, it was doing nothing. But that was not to say it wasn’t going to. The world had its neck in the guillotine, waiting for the ghastly sound of the blade falling in the grooves.
So that was how things were after the coming of the Gap. Now comes the flashback I promised. Sorry about the delay.
***
We parked both cars – David’s and Joanna’s - in the driveway at the side of her house. Heather had rung and demanded our immediate return to Joanna’s place; something had happened to Mike, she said. The police were already there, doing official things and generally letting people know who was boss. They threw a few dark glances in my direction, but didn’t stop us. There was a big sergeant who looked like he wanted to arrest me on the spot, though. He carried a gun on his hip and kept his hand n
ear it as he escorted us to the front door. Whether he was protecting us from the crowd that almost blocked the road, or whether it was the other way around, was something I refuse to speculate on. Let’s just say we arrived at the door, under the planet mobile, and the mood was strained. The screen door stood open; the main door was locked, even though we knew Heather at least was inside. Joanna used her key.
Normally, walking through a door is considered an easy thing to do. That is the purpose of doors, to make entry and exit easy. But the basic principle requires that the door open with a minimum of fuss – far less fuss, one should expect, than trying to make a hole in the wall from scratch. This door, however, proved to be very fussy. Joanna inserted her key and turned it. So far so good. Then she pushed, and things suddenly became tricky. The door opened a few centimetres, then stopped. She pushed harder; it stopped harder.
"Heather!" called Joanna.
The police sergeant was standing at the edge of the porch. "Problem?" he said.
"Hang on a minute!" shouted Heather from inside. "I’m coming!" Her voice sounded strained, pre-occupied. A strange odour drifted through the gap in the doorway: thick, sickly. It didn’t match any perfume Heather liked to wear. It smelled like over-ripe fruit.
The sergeant stepped up. "Something blocking the door?" he asked, giving it an ineffectual shove. Queensland’s finest in full flight; I was impressed.
Joanna leaned against the door.
"Don’t push!" called Heather. "Close the door."
We heard some weird sounds: a scraping, a rustling, a rather filthy epithet from Heather, and then silence.
"Try it now," she called.
The door opened half-way, then stopped again. Something green was pressed up against it. The sickly-sweet perfume grew stronger. We could see now what the problem was.
"Thank you, sergeant," said Joanna flatly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "I think we’ll be right now." He just stood there, looking through the door like we all were. And, like all of us, he was a little surprised.
The half-open door allowed entry, but Mike didn’t. He had done his silly thing.
He had grown. And bloomed. Green leaves, yellow flowers, and nasty, twiggy, spiky branches filled the hallway. It was literally a jungle in there, and it was all Mike. A huge vine, about ten centimetres thick, lay against the door. Other vines and branches came off it. The broadest leaves were half a metre across, with the tops of the highest flowers near the ceiling. In the middle of it all stood Heather, glaring, red-faced and puffing hard, in a lolly-pink tracksuit, armed with a pruning saw. She resembled a gigantic scoop of strawberry ice-cream exploring the upper Amazon.
"Doing a little gardening?" I asked.
I think the smile she gave in return was supposed to sarcastic. At least, I hoped it was, because it was packed with venom.
She kicked at the vine against the door. "That’s as much as it’s going to open," she said. "Better squeeze through."
I went in first. Mike filled the hallway, trailing across Joanna’s Turkish rug and into the living room, which looked like the set for a B-grade jungle epic. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a troop of monkeys had swung past, chattering. For a unique example of a species with no known friends in the world, Mike had certainly done well for himself.
The others followed, forcing Heather and I to enter the living room. She hacked at intervening foliage with the pruning saw. Many examples of her previous work were visible: severed vines and branches lay everywhere. The scent from the bell-shaped yellow flowers was almost overpowering. Joanna started to cry when she surveyed the devastation.
"When did this happen?" I asked.
"As soon as the sky split," said Heather, turning around suddenly and almost taking my nose off with the saw. "I watched him grow, just boiled up and out of his pot. It took about ten minutes to fill this room."
"So where is the pot now?" asked David, looking round for it.
"It’s in the back yard," said Heather. "This is just one branch, you see. The rest of him is out there."
"The rest of him? How much is there?"
Joanna gave a little squeal and headed out the back, clambering through the tangled vegetation. I almost followed her, pleading apology. This was the second house I had destroyed in three days. But I held my ground. I was as much a victim as anyone else.
"Is it still growing?" asked David, surprisingly calm.
"It seems to have stopped," said Heather, a little doubtfully. She was sweating. "I’ve been trying to clear the house, but I need a bigger saw."
She started hacking at Mike again, a little too earnestly for comfort. After all, she had loved that plant like a brother. But now she slashed and hacked and cut with an intensity that would have made her a formidable serial killer. We all pitched in and lugged out fallen branches and snapped off some of the thinner vines.
David asked Heather for the details about what had happened.
"Well, I wanted to see Mr Sabatini after leaving Emily at the hospital," said Heather without pausing in her clearing work. "But I couldn’t find him. So I came back here. The Maestro let me in. I was sitting here watching TV. There was a special broadcast to cover the split, as you know. Mike was over there." She used a severed branch to indicate the corner table. "The split began, and I was watching it, as I said. Then I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, and looked and saw Mike was already about a metre tall, with three flowers that had appeared from nowhere. They were drooping over the side of his pot. As I watched I could see him growing. Only it wasn’t like he was growing, actually, more like - like he was being added to. It wasn’t as if he was getting bigger, you understand, like you see plants growing in time-lapse photography or anything. It was as if bits of him were just appearing on his ends. He wasn’t growing from his base, do you see? Flowers and leaves and vines were being added to his extremities. It was the weirdest thing I ever saw."
She finished sawing through a major vine and tugged hard.
"After about ten minutes, he had almost filled the room. I couldn’t see the TV any more. He had already knocked over some of Joanna’s vases and stuff, so I grabbed his pot and managed to get it out the back door. It was a bit of a struggle, of course, but I found this pruning saw in the kitchen drawer and was able to cut off some of the worst stuff and I threw him onto the back lawn. He just kept growing for a while. I’ve been at it ever since."
"When did he stop growing?" I asked. The split had taken about half an hour to reach full width.
"I really couldn’t say," she said mournfully.
"I wonder..." said David, and out came the cigarette to do its little dance. "I’d bet anything you like that Mike stopped growing at the same time as the Gap stopped expanding."
That seemed a reasonable guess to me.
Joanna reappeared in the living room, a tear poised on the top of one cheekbone. I did apologise, then. The sight of her crying was just too much.
"I’m ok," she replied as I gave her a hug. "It seems to be mostly this room and the kitchen. The back yard is full though. He’s leaning over the neighbour’s fence. And he’s taken over the Poinciana tree."
David nodded. "Ok, I suggest we cut the main branch leading into the house, and clear this out. If it starts growing again, it can do it outside."
So we did that. It took a while, and we were all exhausted by the end. We had bits of greenery everywhere, down the backs of our shirts and in our hair, in addition to which Mike had a gooey green sap inside him which was soon smeared not only on us but also the furniture and floor. I took a look out the back, and shuddered when I saw the awesome size he had attained. There was hardly any back yard visible. I couldn’t even locate his pot, hidden somewhere underneath. I went back inside to where the others were gathered once more in the newly salvaged living room.
Heather, no doubt as hungry as the rest of us, asked if anyone wanted pizza.
The Maestro appeared in the door to Joanna’s study. His white robes
were disheveled now, and the little cap on his head was almost falling off. He surveyed the room, blinking sleepily as he turned his gaze from us to the shreds of plant still left in odd corners.
"I must have fallen asleep," he said. "What has happened?"
And that’s where we came in. Flashback over.
***
David had what he called "a few pertinent questions" for me. After I had changed my clothes, we sat on the back veranda, contemplating the dark bulk of Mike, with Bruno on my knee. David had his iPad on his, and was taking notes as we talked. A policeman stood at the corner of the house, keeping an eye out for any intruders trying to climb the back fence. He would glance at the rainforest that was the back yard every so often, shaking his head. Joanna was not with us, and David made no attempt to hide his hope that she would not appear before he was through. It was time for more science and less conjecture.
"I sure could do with some sleep," he said by way of introduction. I had forgotten I was the only one of the group who had had any sleep the night before. He yawned prodigiously, which had the effect of setting Bruno off too. I clamped my jaw so I wouldn’t start doing it as well. "Sorry about that," he muttered. He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes gleaming in the dark. Silence for a moment. I thought he had fallen asleep.
"I think," he said eventually, so suddenly it startled me. "I think I’m starting to see a pattern."
Patterns, of course, are a basic component of human insight. Until we see a pattern, until we can link things with other things, we aren’t happy. Nothing is allowed to exist in isolation in the human frame of reference. No man is an island, wrote Mr Donne in one of his more cheerful moods. Every man’s death diminishes me. I am a peninsula at best, and no matter how small I choose to make the isthmus, the tide can never cover it. I think I’ve taken analogy for enough of a walk.
When you think about it, actually, it is a rather comforting thought to belong to a group. People like to congregate: gangs, teams, bands, cultures. Patterns are reassuring. The problem with patterns is they very often produce optical illusions. Or give you a headache.
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