The Speaker for the Trees (3 page)

Humanity had
undergone a similar transformation over the course of their existence, but with
less impressive results. Being that each human born could be considered the
result of thousands upon thousands of years of evolution and natural selection,
there must be a universal sense of disappointment due to their striking lack of
achievement.

Plants had
discovered this planet long before the existence of humanity. Because mammals
had never played more than a minor role on other planets no one suspected they
would ever be more than a few warm-blooded rats and badgers scurrying through
the scrub and living underground. When plants first visited, dinosaurs appeared
to be the dominant species, though it was clear it would only be a matter of
time before plants evolved and became their masters. There was no corner of the
globe to which plants had not spread. Algae and photosynthetic protozoa in the
oceans stood to be the first steps in mobile plantlife; long grasses spread
across the plains and trees bunched themselves into continent-wide forests;
even deserts had been infiltrated by cacti and scruffy shrubbery, showing the
plantlife of this planet was highly adaptable and would not be impeded in their
march toward complete domination. Plants were so prolific there were even
plants growing on plants—mosses and fungi and crawling vines that wrapped
themselves around trunks like badly knotted laces.

At the time of
this survey the explorers raised the question of whether life forms on this
planet should be eliminated in case they developed greater sentience, but these
notions were disregarded. Certainly dinosaurs were not intelligent enough to
rule the planet, but they were too dumb to do it much damage either.

Thus the
explorers departed, scheduling a return after a sufficient number of eons
passed. This would allow the plants time to develop into a species better able
to communicate with their off-world brethren and join the Federation of Floral
Planets.

Imagine the
shock of these explorers when they returned, hundreds of millions of years
later, to find the docile dinosaurs gone and a heretofore unheard of primate
race thriving. Plants remained utterly immobile, largely insentient, and for
the most part indifferent about their low status on the planet. They were pets
in many cases, kept indoors which stunted their growth and kept them hidden
from nurturing sunlight. In other cases they were grown in abundance, only to
be harvested by the millions to satisfy the primates’ ballooning population.

There was a cry
of outrage amongst the council members urging mobilization of an army to
destroy humanity and restore the planet to plants. The outrage increased after
evidence surfaced that the Visitors had arrived on the planet not long before
the dinosaurs had been destroyed. Plants knew little of the Visitors other than
they were a dwindling spacefaring civilization whose appearance always meant
trouble.

After a long
debate between the council and the Plant of Ultimate Knowing, it was decided
destroying humanity would be hasty, impatient, and impolite. More to the point,
the Plant argued, it would be unwise to hand control of a planet to plants
which had not seized it for themselves in the first place. Instead, on the
advice of the Plant of Ultimate Knowing, humanity was put under constant
surveillance to determine whether or not this slowly blooming species was truly
dangerous. Perhaps their emergence was a fortunate fluke. Maybe humanity could
show plants something they had overlooked in their many millennia of dominance.

So it had been
many more hundreds of years. Gradually, as human technology improved, plants
had to alter their strategies. At first plants settled into the community as
stationary trees, observing from forests. Others were potted plants, watching
through the windows. Then, as their understanding of humanity improved, plants
were able to infiltrate human society itself, as Hedge had done, appearing no
different from humans on the outside, though their physiology remained largely
plantlike.

At this point
in the explanation Scud interrupted, asking Hedge a question with little
pertinence, but filled with meaning. Which was just the sort of unexpectedness
he had come to expect from Scud Peabody. Genius, in all its fascinating
manifestations, never ceased to take others by surprise.

"So. D...
do you l... like it here?"

The question
puzzled Hedge for a moment. Why wouldn't Scud want to hear about the
physiological differences between humans and plants? It was a fascinating
subject, especially when one considered the numerous modifications invented so
plants and humans could interact on an intimate level. Hedge's peculiar tentacle
came to mind.

Scud's
expression was imploring, just as Anna tended to be when she watched him eat
pork chops. Then Hedge understood. More than anything, more than they cared
about knowledge, humanity wanted to be liked. Those who had a deeper understanding
of their purpose, of their existence, wanted to know if they were doing well
because they really weren't sure of themselves. Unlike Garry Thorne, whose
stubbornness would doom him to a lifetime of making others miserable and
causing them to dislike him, some people were willing to change if they felt
they were going astray.

So Hedge
pondered. And, to Hedge's amazement, found that he did like this place. He
hadn’t much thought about it before. He enjoyed his piddling chores and the
feathery warmth of the yellow star touching him between the places where bees
crawled across his body. Liked dealing with the silly trivialities of
existence: folding towels, oiling squeaky hinges, repainting the rusty
weathervane. Liked all these things because they were tedious, and he knew it
could all be much, much worse.

Existence on
the human planet was quite different from existence with other plants. Humanity
was social and intimate. Where he originated there was no wife who doted upon
him nor cared about his happiness. Only a female with megagametophytes a
thousand miles away to which his pollen drifted. If nothing else, Hedge admired
the human fondness for meaningful, close relationships. It created passionate
stirrings in them, which unfortunately also led to confrontation, arguments,
and conflict—a double-edged sword which manifested in his relationship with
Anna.

She grew stern
when other femme humans turned their attention on him, and sterner still when
he returned it. When Penny Grobshire asked how his rose bushes grew so thick
with blossoms in the ShopMart Anna glared from the end of the aisle while he
explained. Fertilizer and sun and water are all well and good, but they mean
little when the flowers know you aren't genuinely concerned about their
welfare. One cannot just want them to be beautiful, one has to know they are
already beautiful and they need only show it. Why no one understood plants had
emotions and nursed feelings of neglect Hedge could not understand.

Anna stiffened
when Penny touched his shoulder in thanks, an oddly affecting human means of
appreciation, and was quiet the rest of the day.

Eventually
Hedge realized it made Anna sad not to have him to herself. This was not
immediately clear, but took a great deal of probing and extrapolation since humanity
had the bewildering tendency to be conspicuous when they were emoting, weeping,
huffing, or scowling, but subtle and evasive about why. He found it touching
that one human could care so much about another that they were physically and
emotionally distraught by the possibility of losing that person’s affection. At
the same time Hedge found increasingly that he enjoyed pleasing Anna. He
wondered, even without the upwelling of strong emotions, if this constituted
something like love.

So Hedge began
growing more of himself around the waist—something most folk found
unattractive. At the physical age of thirty-five he stopped growing hair but
for a semi-circle around his head. Women stopped asking about the flowers and
Anna was happy.

Yes, he
answered. Yes, he did like it here and would be sad should he have to leave.

Scud seemed
very pleased by this admission and beamed mightily, his eyes glassy, faltering
for only a moment when Garry Thorne poured salt on his flapjacks. It didn't
matter. Because as a genius, Scud knew humanity was doing well in the eyes of
the Universe, and that was far more important than a stack of salty flapjacks.

And such was
Hedge's existence. Watching people. Waiting for instructions. Eating pork
chops.

Until recently.
Now he had orders to report as soon as possible.

It was for this
reason Hedge needed a toaster.

The scattered
guts of a disassembled toaster lay before Hedge on the kitchen table. Springs
and heating coils, levers and clamps and clasps, bread holsters and the
reflective chrome shell. Now that he had it apart he could begin putting it
back together—with a few crucial changes.

Curious how one
arrangement of such simple components yielded a starkly different device. It
was as though the toaster were an anagram for something else, just as the word
Horse could be rearranged into Shore, though, he noted, one could not make a
Shore by rearranging the parts of a Horse. Were people to see what Hedge was
doing, the few places where parts were exchanged, they would undoubtedly shake
their heads, flabbergasted by their inability to see the obvious: that such a
trivial device could unlock the cosmos.

They would be
full of bluster and arrogance and mutter things like
Well it's quite clear
to me...
and
It was right there all the time
and...

"Oh
my."

Well, probably
not so much that phrase, but something similarly meaningless.

"Oh
my," Anna repeated from the living room.

It was the noon
hour when the local news aired on the television. Anna never failed to inform
herself of the latest calamities. Humanity, for all its high ideals, for all
its despair at the notion of suffering, was addicted to disaster. There was
nothing more delightful, more utterly soul stirring than to learn of another
person's tragic miseries. The more miserable, the more cathartic. If other
people were miserable, their own existence was by comparison much better.
Theirs was a perpetual quest for someone to pity, be it children orphaned by
floodwaters, victims of a helicopter crash, soldiers and insurgents clashing in
some faraway country, or, as was most often the case, themselves.

"Hedgelford?"

Hedge huffed.
Interruptions, by their nature, always came when he was in the middle of
something important.

"Yes?"
Hedge responded gruffly.

"Didn't
you buy a toaster this morning?"

Hedge cast a
grim look across the strewn pieces of metal and plastic before him.

"Yes,"
he said still more gruffly, knowing there was another question to come, hoping
his tone would stop her pestering.

It didn't.

"Were
there a lot of people getting toasters?"

"Because I
need it in order to report back to the Council of..." He stopped.
"What?"

It wasn't the
question he expected. He'd anticipated Why? Why buy a toaster? That seemed the
obvious question.

Now Hedge could
hear the high-pitched, urgent prattling typical of the news program, designed
to create anxiety and suggest that no matter where one was, no matter how
secure, they were always within reach of disaster.

... recent
run on the most pedestrian of appliances: the Toaster.

Hedge shoved
himself away from the table and lumbered into the living room where Anna sat on
the sofa, bent forward and tight-mouthed, concentrating. Hedge stood beside the
coffee table in front of the couch, arms crossed, and stared intently at the
television.

On screen was a
sunny reporter in a yellow rain slicker with a microphone in one hand and an
umbrella in the other. Hedge expected to see car wreckage or a burning building
in the background. Instead he saw the familiar parking lot and façade of the
supermarket, untouched by tragedy or destruction. Another shape wavered off
camera, occasionally appearing in larger chunks as it shifted anxiously from
one foot to the other.

We visited a
local Greenville ShopMart to ask: Why the sudden need for toast? With us on
this gloomy day is bright-eyed shopper, John Elm. So, John. Why the need for
toasters?

The view turned
from the reporter to a tall, thick-chested man with wild brown hair and fat
caterpillars for eyebrows. He was somewhat stooped and gnarled within the
confines of muscle and a plaid flannel shirt. Looking tiny in his hands was a
box with a dramatized photo of a toaster blasting toasted bread from its slots
which exploded into fireworks to the delight of two excited children.

Hedge's eyes
widened. John Elm was almost certainly a plant agent. How many had been sent
the message? How many had been summoned back?

John blinked,
gazing blankly into the camera, then realized it was his cue to speak.

It's a very
handy device
, he explained, forcing an uncertain smile. The camera
continued to hang on him for an uncomfortable moment before realizing he wasn't
going to continue. John, thinking his obligation fulfilled, made as if to be on
his way, but the reporter corralled him with her umbrella.

How so?
the reported persisted.

Simple
,
John answered, perhaps thinking if he were to answer quickly he could escape.
They
make possible the very complex process of
... John stopped abruptly in mid
sentence, knowing he was on the verge of making a colossal admission but not
knowing how to back out of it. His eyes were large and unfocused, darting here
and there for something that might save him.
Uh
, he stammered, looking
uneasy. Again he tried to step from beneath the umbrella to the comfort of rain
but found himself blocked. Hedge tensed. He was going to say it, to admit to
all humanity how close they were to instantaneous interstellar transportation.
All the universe would be open to people. For good or evil, Hedge wasn't sure.