Family Tree

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Family Tree:

  A Short Story

  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Family Tree:

  A Short Story

  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Kiriki Press, P.O. Box 10858, Eugene, Oregon 97440 U.S.A.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters have been created for the sake of this story and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 1990-2012 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  "Family Tree" first appeared in Pulphouse Issue #8, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Pulphouse Publishing, 1990. ASIN: B000LO76LQ

  eBook Design, Kiriki Press

  This eBook edition was produced by Kiriki Press

  Originally Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Family Tree

  Connect with the Author

  Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles

  Family Tree

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Nine-year-old Lexi put the tip of her finger on the doorpad. The door opened. The scent of leaves and water and heavy, sweet bloom pushed out of the room. Lexi looked into sun-drenched jungle — a very small jungle, just big enough to contain a lush tangle of large-leafed plants, an ancient tree, and her several-times-great-grandfather, who lived here, in the central room of their honeycomb house, and never came out.

  She stepped onto the narrow flagstone path that led to the tree-chair. For a moment, she thought her great-great-grandfather, who had been here since long before she was born, had disappeared, but when she came closer, she discovered him still sitting in the embrace of the tree. He was mistier than usual. She felt a tightening in her throat. Great-Aunt Miranda had turned to mist when she died, after saying she heard voices calling her across a distance, speaking of a world where even outdoor plants had strength and vigor, not needing to battle the toxins in the atmosphere and water. Was Grampa Jason going at last?

  Lexi sat at the base of the tree-chair where she was shaded by leaves and waited for her grandfather to recognize her.

  "I can't remember which great you are," Grampa said.

  "I don't know, Grampa," said Lexi. She hugged her knees and looked up at him. He sat, a wisp of a man with silver hair and olive skin, on an oak-tree knurl shaped to support him, with armrests formed from polished, knobbed wood. The fastglass roof let in the healthy spectrum of sunlight, and it poured down on him. Most of the time when Lexi came to visit, Grampa wore a halo.

  "Who are your parents?" asked Grampa.

  "Knut and Arla Holgerssen," Lexi said.

  "Knut. I don't recall a Knut. Arla must be my descendant. Don't recall her either. Can't remember what generation we're on."

  "I don't know, Grampa," Lexi said, rocking a little. All her conversations with Grampa started this way.

  "Remember you're Lexi, though," he said, and smiled. "What's the problem now, little Lexi?"

  "Doctors, Grampa."

  "Doctors. Pesky creatures. Avoid 'em at all costs. None of 'em ever understood, except one guy, back when I was only a little older than you, but of course, he was one of us." He frowned. "He was one of us before I was. Most of 'em were born that way, but I wasn't. You were."

  "It's the autodoc at school, Grampa. When I start fourth grade tomorrow, I have to have a checkup. Everybody gets one every year until they're in high school. The machine takes blood and stuff to find out if we've changed."

  "What happened last year?"

  For a moment she didn't understand. She wondered if Grampa was wandering. Usually after the first set of questions, he was pretty sharp. She thought a moment, then realized he must be asking about the checkup for the third grade. "Great-Aunt Miranda gave me a special drink," she said, "and I felt sick, but the autodoc said I was fine."

  "Knew it. Knew there must be some way around. She can't do that again?"

  "She's gone now, Grampa. Mama says we're all in trouble now. Do you know the recipe for the special drink?"

  He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wood. His face smoothed out and he looked like Lexi's older brother, Jerry, only his hair was too pale; Jerry's was almost black. When Grampa opened his eyes again, the green glowed in them. Lexi hugged her knees tighter. She had heard of that happening, but had never seen it.

  "Child, I hear my loved one calling me from across the divide," said Grampa, and then he turned smoky, and the light fell through him like milk poured from a pitcher.

  Lexi jumped up. "No, Grampa! No!" she cried, reaching for him. There was nothing to hold onto. Her fingers went through him and stubbed on the oaken seat. "Grampa!" Lexi screamed. She put her hands flat on the oak, feeling the flow of life through its bark, and tried to remember the green things her mother had taught her.

  "The outreach of the root, the summoning of the shoot, the strengthening of the stalk, the lifting of the leaf," she murmured, feeling the sunlight on the backs of her hands, and the stirring under her skin in response. But these were all seedling things, not old-plant things. "We need, we need more fruit," she said, "you can't die yet, old tree."

  Something pushed her hands away, and then there was Grampa again, and she had her hands on his stomach. He looked small and wilted.

  "The outreach of the root," she whispered. She remembered Great-Aunt Miranda doing a chant for a power-line-struck apple tree that had quickened it with new life, each of its halves taking on a separate identity and healing themselves. She couldn't remember the right words. "The summoning of the shoot. The strengthening of the stalk. The lifting of the leaf." She couldn't remember the old-plant things.

  Grampa sighed, shifted, and opened his eyes. They were mostly brown now, with a faint green glow. Lexi had never stood this close to him before. There were little flecks of yellow in the brown of his eyes. "What is it?" he said irritably.

  "Grampa," said Lexi. Three leaves, broad, heart-shaped, grew out of his head and spread their blades to the sunlight. Lexi snatched her hands away from Grampa's stomach, appalled.

  He blinked; then, slowly, the wiltedness left him. Several more leaves thrust up from his head. One sprouted from each shoulder, first a tapered stalk that breached the weave of his shirt, then a flag unfurling, wide as a hand, to catch sunlight. "I feel strange," said Grampa.

  Lexi put her hands over her mouth, wondering what terrible thing she had done. The worst of it was she felt an uncontrollable urge to giggle.

  Grampa frowned. His cheeks were filling out, the wrinkles in his forehead smoothing away. He looked more than ever like Jerry with a wreath of leaves in his hair. "Lexi," said Grampa, "what were we talking about?"

  "Oh, Grampa."

  He reached up to finger the leaves on his head, tweaked one, jerked in response, glanced at his shoulder leaves, then leaned forward to stare at her. "Lexi," he said sternly.

  She jumped. "There are thirteen children who have to go to the first day of school tomorrow, and this year, without Great-Aunt Miranda, we don't know how to fool the autodocs," she said. "You were thinking about that, and then you said you heard Great-gramma calling you across — across a divide, and you started to disappear."

  "I felt very tired," he said.

  "We need you."

  "I don't feel tired anymore." He touched a shoulder leaf. He smiled and said, "It's been a long time since I leafed. What have
you done, you imp?"

  "Seed chants. I couldn't remember the old plant chants, Grampa. I'm sorry."

  "What are you studying toward?"

  "Plant engineering."

  "Good," he said, "you have the green fingers, obviously. How are we coming with that, out there in the real world?"

  "Oh, Grampa." Lexi had been the only one to really talk to Grampa in three years. She was elected to bring in the fertilizer for the little jungle and clean out the water and air feeds when they got clogged. The family couldn't bear to let Grampa know that everything was just getting worse, that all of life was underground now, much of it under fastglass engineered to keep out the harmful light and let through other colors, making it brighter in the gardens than it looked through the glass. The green in the family blood was just strong enough to get them in trouble with the government, which tended to delete anything it didn't understand. It wasn't strong enough for them to craft plants that could survive in the outside atmosphere and work at changing it back to breathable. Three of the best green surgeons in the family had died in the Bread Uprising of '38. It had inspired the rest of them to be quiet about what they could do. They kept low profiles, worked the farm, improved their own stock, sent out better seeds, but none of them worked in research facilities.

  "Tell me, Lexi, or let me go," said Grampa, looking tired.

  Lexi glanced up at the roof. Beyond the fastglass, the sky looked brown. Thin orange clouds drifted by.

  "Nothing," he said. "I felt it. The world spirit is dammed up; the life lives on in little pools, growing smaller. There is no flow. Why haven't you told me?"

  "We didn't want to worry you."

  "Foolish, foolish!" He shook his head, the leaves swaying with his motion. "And I'm as silly as the rest of you. I felt this too, but I was too tired to do anything about it. Thought I'd let you youngsters take care of it. I didn't work hard enough to help strengthen the world spirit. But of course — how many greats are you, Lexi?"

  "I don't know," said Lexi, afraid now that Grampa might be lost, falling back to the opening ceremonies instead of being present the way he was supposed to be after he woke up.

  "Which of my children was your direct ancestor? Topaz? Andrew? Sophia? Brian? Leo?"

  "I don't know."

  "I've been asking you this question for years, and you never know. What's the matter, don't you people keep track of the family tree?"

  Lexi touched the tree-chair with a trembling finger, then glanced at Grampa.

  He grinned. "Oh, no, not that. Maybe it's this modern schooling; maybe they don't teach you anything about record keeping. Anyway, I suppose it doesn't really matter. I expected you to know our stories, our strengths, and you're probably too many greats removed to understand. Or maybe I never really told anybody how we got the green genes."

  Lexi sat down again, hugging her knees.

  "I did it." He sat back and blinked. "Well, my wife Janie and I did it. That was before we got married, though. It wasn't a purposeful thing. She was playing a joke on me, and it got out of hand. We were on the other world."

  "What other world?"

  "The world across the way, where she waits for me now. A world with no industry; a plant world, with caretakers from a third world who know how to cherish life. The people who built it had other kinds of genes — purple ones, yellow ones, red ones, twister genes to touch things and change them without using tools or muscle strength. Twister genes that let them travel across the divide by ducking sideways into another dimension. These were all people from this world, see, but they didn't want to mess with this world since it had so many other people on it, so they found a dead one and started it for themselves, and they did a good job of it. My girlfriend Janie had the red genes. One day when I was asleep over there — I didn't have any special genes at all back then, and you were only supposed to go there if you did, but I had a relationship with the caretakers; they let me come anytime, if Janie didn't bring me — she threw some seeds at me and told them to sprout, and they did. The world consumed me. The grasses and weeds covered me, fed on me, destroyed my body, but there was so much magic there that I didn't die. Do you understand magic, Lexi?"

  "No."

  "It's like a nutrient. On the other world, it was all through the soil and in the air. So I didn't die. I woke to a different kind of life, world life; the whole world was a person, a very strange person, and it said, be one with me. Be grass and trees and bushes with me. Be algae and plankton, be kelp and diatoms across my seas, be flowers and waterweeds and tangled masses of roots. Be cactus. Be everywhere. I said great! I probably would have stayed there, being everything, until I settled into world mind, which is a lot slower than human mind, but a lot more contented too, except Janie got upset and wanted me back the way I was. So I came back, but I wasn't really human after that. I had the green in me. And all you kids, you have the green in you, so we have to worry about fooling autodocs. We ought to be worrying about more than that, Lexi. This sunlight tastes all right, but it isn't complete without a little wind and rain once in a while. You should be outside."

  "Oh, no, Grampa," said Lexi, her eyes wide. She'd seen a picture of people who went outside. There was a back-to-nature movement when she was in second grade, a bunch of teenagers who said people belonged on the planet's surface, not underneath it, and some of them tunneled out and had to be rescued by people in climate suits, and most of them died because the air burned the skin off them.

  "I should have done something a long time ago, but I've never spoken directly to Earth. Somehow it's much easier to talk to somebody else's mother. I think it's time I talked to mine."

  "Grampa," said Lexi.

  "We took most of the plants we had on the other world from this Earth. I know the plants here. I just don't know the core. Wish me luck, Lexi."

  She reached out and gripped his foot, which was bare and long-nailed, resting in a niche in the trunk that had been shaped for it. "Don't go, Grampa!"

  "It's the last gift I can give you, before I go home to join my love and the world mind."

  "The autodocs?"

  He shook his head, smiling just like Jerry, dimple and all. "Maybe it's time you let them know you're different."

  "They'll kill us."

  "Why would they do that?"

  "Everybody says when the autodocs detect gene deviants they kill them."

  "Without even figuring out whether they're useful?"

  "There aren't enough resources for everybody. Daddy says they make up these stupid ways to decide who should be eliminated. Everybody says — "

  He glanced beyond her, his eyes losing focus, his brows lowering. After a moment, he said, "Lexi, if you can give me leaves, you can solve this problem."

  "I don't know any chants for fooling a machine."

  "The chant is just a way of focusing the energy toward a desired end. Whichever of my children you descended from, you have the green genes, and you probably have some of the red genes from Janie, too. She was a fixer. Go out and talk to the others. If you work at it, I'm sure you can come up with a chant to convince some machine you're normal. If you wait around for me to solve this one, you won't learn how to take care of yourselves. If Miranda could come up with a recipe, you can too. Say good-bye to me, Lexi."

  She stood up and looked at him. She had never seen him out of his tree. She had never touched him before she put her hands on his stomach. He had always been the family oracle, something to care for and occasionally consult, not really a person. He held out his arms, and she went to him, climbing into his lap. He embraced her in strong, cool arms, and she cried against his chest. He smelled like red clover, light honey. He stroked her hair as she cried, and she felt the stirring under her skin caused by the sunfall. Presently she realized she had her cheek pressed to the back of the tree-chair. She curled up on the seat where Grampa had sat so long, rubbed her eyes, and wondered how she was going to tell everybody what had happened.

  Maybe she should just say Grampa w
as still here, but couldn't do anything about the autodocs. But no, that meant Aunt Irene would probably come in and check it out; she had taken care of Grampa before Lexi did, and she used to yell at him a lot. He had pretended to be asleep while she yelled. He always woke up when anybody brought him a new baby to be introduced to, or when one of the children was sent in with the ritual questions every child asked him on designated birthdays.

  When Lexi visited, she always found Grampa awake.

  No, she better tell everyone everything he had said. Maybe a chant would work, since they had no recipe. Lexi slid down out of Grampa's chair, wiping her tear-wet face on her sleeve, and wandered the flagstone path out of Grampa's jungle. "For today, I am the same as any other child you name," she muttered. Rhymes would help. The seed chants fed off of other things, but rhymes would help her focus. This was too new. "For today, you find in me nothing strange for you to see." She touched the fingerpad on the inside of the door and the door slid open. "For today, I check out as normal as a — a — what rhymes with out? Boy scout? Drought? Pout?" If she said she was normal as a boy scout, would she turn into a boy? Maybe a girl scout would be better.

  Preoccupied, she bumped into her father, who lifted her in his arms and said, "So what's the news from the old gentleman?"

  "He's gone, Daddy," she said.

  "What?" His arms tightened around her. "Come tell the family about it." He carried her to the meeting room, several hexagonal rooms with the walls knocked out where everybody could fit at once, with little skylights everywhere, and a rock floor. The smell of baking cornbread drifted through the air. Vines twisted up walls, twining around doorsills, spreading across the ceiling supported by strings tied to nails. Daddy walked up on the raised platform at one end, lifted a mallet, and beat the gong, and everyone not out in the fastglass-ceilinged fields came to listen.

  Lexi stood on the raised platform and looked at the faces of her family. She had never talked to so many people at once. She hunched her shoulders and shoved her fists into her pockets, wondering what to say. "Grampa's gone to talk to the world mind and tell it to get better," she said. "He said there's another world where you can stand outside in the wind and rain, and he's going there as soon as he finishes talking to the world mind. He said it was his last gift."