The Speaker for the Trees (11 page)

"Can I see
it?" he asked at last.

"I'm
afraid not," said Hedge quickly. "I can't afford to let anything
happen."

"Yes, oh,
yes," said John. He stopped. "I understand. Well, here we are. I
suppose this is where we part ways."

"Yes,
John," said Hedge, trying hard not to gasp. "I'm sorry we couldn't
continue our discussion. Perhaps another time."

"Another
time," John repeated.

Hedge turned
away, face burning.

He approached
the towering spire of the records vault, feeling John's eyes upon him until he
passed into the wide chamber and strode to the solitary pneumatic tube that
would whisk the vial a storage location.

He stood inside
the building, out of view of John, his breath rasping, then continued on when
he recovered.

A vaguely human
plant sat in the center of several thousand labeled buttons. For as much as
humans were despised, it was generally acknowledged that their basic
arrangement of appendages was oftentimes quite handy.

The plant
looked at him with a single eye situated at the intersection of its many limbs.
Its empty gaze bespoke long exposure to a deep and numbing boredom so that it
was scarcely aware of anything at all. There was no joy or sadness, it lacked
all concept of such feelings. Existence was no more than just that, the plant
simply Was and nothing else. Purely functional, like a snow shovel or a
shoelace. Hedge felt a great swell of pity for the plant.

"Withdrawal,"
it asked in a slow, robotic tone. More statement than question.

Hedge shook his
head in negation.

"Deposit."

The plant
accepted this answer in silence. Withdrawals never happened.

There was no
banter. No flimsy words to fill the silence. The other plant simply logged the
information dispassionately, then continued the pre-programmed inquiry.

"Genus
species."

"
Homo
sapiens sapiens
," Hedge answered.

“Photoautotroph?”

“Omnivore.”

“Terrestrial?”

“Yes.”

“Quadrapedal?”

“Bipedal.”

The plant
tugged on a few pulleys, pressed a button here and there, then handed him a
label and a cushioned, cylindrical vessel.

"Place the
vial in the vessel. Place the label on the vessel. Place the vessel in the
tube."

Hedge took the
vial from his pocket, pressed it into the vessel, pressed the label onto the
vessel with his thumb, and set the vessel in the pneumatic tube in the center
of the room. There was a momentary hesitation, then a sucking whoosh, and the
vial was gone, spinning somewhere overhead through the spiderweb of connecting
tubework on its course to permanent storage. He tried to watch it as long as he
could, but could only track the vessel through the first two turns before he
lost sight of it.

"Thank
you," said the plant in disinterested monotone.

Rather than
answer, Hedge simply turned and left. When he emerged, John Elm was nowhere to
be seen.

Hedge meandered
for a while through the hedges and shrubbery, aimlessly wandering. He looked
about every once in a while, afraid he would see John Elm poke his head around
the corner or find him peering over the bushes, watching. At last he stopped
beside an outcropping of ferns with wide umbrella canopies hovering just above
the ground and sat. Heaved a long breath.

"Okay,"
he said. "Now what?"

Situated just
behind the first layer of foliage was a small, potted weed with two red leaves
at its top. The stoppered mouth of a small vial protruded from the dark dirt
beside the stem.

"Now,"
said the Plant of Ultimate Knowing, "we figure out where to put them."

I am an
excellent guard, thought Trunk the guard. I am very excellent, he reasoned,
because no one ever goes through the council entrance without first being
announced.

Trunk stood
outside the entrance to the Council of Plants. He was the only guard outside
the council entrance because, he assumed, he was very good at what he did. What
made one good at Trunk’s job, he decided, was to be very large, because that is
what he was. Trunk had a stocky shape with thick brown bark and two long
branches he would use to hold out in front of anyone who tried to enter the
council without being announced. Nothing of the sort ever happened, but he
imagined it would go something like that if it ever did.

Trunk must have
nodded off, because abruptly there was a being standing in front of him. The
creature had the look of several plant agents who recently returned to provide
testimony that some far-off planet needed to be destroyed. Hyoo-munns or some
such. Like those agents, he too carried a toaster. All his features appeared
symmetrical except his mouth, which was slightly askew and maybe too large.

The character’s
appearance was so peculiar Trunk realized with embarrassment that he’d
forgotten his duty.

“Who are you?”
asked Trunk. “Why are you here?”

“I am Mr.
Visitor.” Mr. Visitor pointed to his feet. “I am here due to a slight
miscalculation. I meant to be there.”

Mr. Visitor
stared at the doors leading into the chamber.

“Have you been
announced?” asked Trunk. When Mr. Visitor did not respond immediately, Trunk
continued. “You cannot enter without being announced. It would be very bad if
you entered before being announced.”

The two stood
in silence for a moment, awaiting an announcement.

“How bad?” Mr.
Visitor asked at last.

Trunk wanted
very much to have a strong and compelling answer to this question, but since it
had never happened before, he didn’t.

“I don’t know.”

“I see,” said
Mr. Visitor. He looked down at his toaster and turned his thumb against the
side. After a moment he pressed a lever on the side of the toaster and looked
back up at Trunk. “My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

Mr. Visitor
took a step forward.

At this point
Trunk’s training took over and he slid his massive body between Mr. Visitor and
the door. He held out a great, gnarled hand, against which he expected the
visitor would run into, and, finding no way around him, admit defeat and wait
until he’d been announced.

To Trunk’s
surprise, there was nothing to strike his open hand but a warm wave of air. The
visitor had gone. Trunk looked behind him, yet found nothing but the doors,
still shut. The two footprints in the dirt remained, but no tracks led to, nor
away from them. He waved a hand through the air above the footprints,
suspecting the fellow might somehow have turned himself invisible, but only
stirred up a faint odor of something burning that went away quickly.

“Hum,” said
Trunk, perplexed.

He considered
wandering from his post to search for Mr. Visitor, then considered the
possibility that wandering from his post was exactly the result Mr. Visitor
wanted. Trunk was too smart to be lured away, however, and he felt pleased that
he had not been so gullible.

This sense of
pleasure gave way to curiosity as a sound of uproar grew behind the doors.
Knowing this was against protocol, but feeling clever and heroic at the moment,
Trunk threw open the doors and lunged inside, confident he could resolve any
issue.

A great deal of
shouting was going on from the plants arranged throughout the council, full of
bile and outrage, all of which seemed to be focused on a single point at the
base of the room. At the epicenter Trunk found Mr. Visitor, looking back at him
with his great crooked grin on his face.

Trunk’s mind
boggled.

“Hello,” said
Mr. Visitor pleasantly, as if his presence here was completely within the
boundaries of protocol.

Trunk stood
motionless, too flabbergasted to reply. As he stood, the incoherent howling of
the council thundering down upon him became understandable when he began to
pick out small chunks.

“Stop him!”
they cried. “Catch him!”

“What are you
doing in here?” Trunk asked at last.

“Warning them,”
said Mr. Visitor. “That’s what I do. It never works, though. Are you familiar
with a Mr. Hedge?”

Trunk thought.

“No.”

Mr. Visitor
seemed disappointed but unsurprised.

“He is a very
elusive character,” he confessed.

“I have to
catch you,” said Trunk. “It’s my job.”

“I understand,”
said Mr. Visitor.

Mr. Visitor was
extremely polite, Trunk decided, despite the fact that the council seemed to
think he meant to destroy them. It didn’t seem the case to Trunk, though. He
expected a destroyer, such as the Fire-tailed Xiz, would appear more menacing.
As a result, Trunk was only mildly disappointed when Mr. Visitor vanished when
Trunk clapped his arms around the intruder, leaving behind another set of empty
footprints and a smell of burning.

The clamor grew
louder at Mr. Visitor’s disappearance, but Trunk knew he couldn’t do any more.
So he left the council, closed the doors behind him, and resumed his duties. It
didn’t make sense to get all worked up when they could always just ask the
Plant of Ultimate Knowing what to do.

Hedge stared
dully at the display as stars and systems and galaxies buzzed past, orange and
blue nebula bursts of exploded suns still expanding after millions of years.
His back and arms and butt were sore from sitting at the terminal, where it
seemed he'd spent the past several days. It made him wonder how trees remained
locked in a single position for their entire lifespan, sometimes hundreds of
years, without becoming crabby and plagued by countless, lingering aches. The
Plant of Ultimate Knowing was on the desk at his elbow, maybe watching, maybe
asleep. Hedge couldn't tell.

It was quiet
and dark in this gothic and grim complex where all of the data plant society
had gathered was kept and made available to any who wished to peruse it.

Right now Hedge
was browsing three-dimensional displays of star charts, searching. As the Plant
of Ultimate Knowing had explained, stealing humanity was simple. Saving them
would prove most difficult, and would require a great deal of legwork. Stealing
humanity wasn't enough to save them. Now they needed to find a place to hide
them. But despite the tremendous area that plants governed and explored there
were very few systems capable of supporting more than the simplest forms of
life, and of the few that could support them there were none that weren't
already occupied or being watched.

Now, as he
stared blankly at the star systems that flickered on the screen, Hedge
understood why the plants governing the universe had time for little else.
Universe had always been understood as a vast, all-encompassing term, but he'd
never quite grasped the sheer enormity until he tried to rifle through the
whole thing without knowing where to look, and thus having to look everywhere.
There was just so much. Little wonder the plants where humans lived never
bothered to evolve and left the rule of the planet to others. There was no time
for relaxation, no time for joy. Maybe these plants were wisest, rather than
those who sat in the Council chamber. And Hedge realized yet again why it was
he so enjoyed his time with Anna. There were no disasters of galactic
proportion to fret about, and never more than the slightest interruptio....

"There!"

The Plant of
Ultimate Knowing's quiet but biting voice jerked him from his reverie.

Hedge blinked
rapidly and his surroundings retook focus.

The scene had
fixed on a small star system with a single solar body and several planets of varying
sizes. Some ringed with moons, others surrounded by rings of debris which might
have been moons. They orbited a rather small, middle-aged star, which grew
larger as the weed manipulated the view through means Hedge could not detect.
When it stopped moving forward there was a planet in the center of the display,
the third in the system and one of the smaller of them.

"That's
it!" said the Plant.

"It's kind
of small," Hedge observed.

"It's
perfect."

Hedge shrugged
and leaned in for a closer look. There were bands of white running across the
blue planet, just as there had been on the old world, and continents were
crusty plates of brown and green. Maybe there were animals there already,
thought Hedge. Maybe some other sentient creature, perhaps, that could teach
humanity to behave themselves. Maybe, with time, the Council of plants would
forget their initial decision and allow humanity to join their administration.
Or maybe humans would prove to be the doom of the universe after all and ruin
it for everyone.

As he leaned
closer, to see if he could detect any signs of civilization, the whole display
went suddenly white, then shut off.

"What
happened!?" cried Hedge.

Had the star
gone suddenly nova as they were watching? The odds of such a coincidence were staggering.
It was amazing and tragic. But the star was so small, and relatively young as
well. It was neither old enough nor large enough to explode. Unless someone had
blown it up.

"I erased
it," said the Plant. "No one else should know. That should give us a
head start."

Hedge let out a
puff of air. That made sense. If there was no record of the system, the other
plants couldn't very well go looking for humans there. Then again, if there
were no record of the system, there was also no way of knowing where it was
located.

"But how
will
we
find it?"

"I can
find it," the Plant assured him.

"What
about when they discover this area of unexplored space? Won't they come to
investigate to complete their records? What will we do then?"

"That's
assuming anyone bothers to check. For all they know, it's just a very tiny,
mostly vacant smudge of universe, just like the majority of the rest. The
likelihood of being discovered and caught is very, very slim at best. The
Universe, as I’m sure you know by now, is a very big place."