Seeders: A Novel (11 page)

Jules nodded. “Yes, the tall skinny lad. It was my first year at Oxford when I met George. We did quite a few of these experiments.”

“You weren’t bad looking,” Monica said. “Like a million years ago.”

Luke tried the volume again. “Forget it. There’s no sound.”

“I can tell you what’s happening.” Jules explained that George had gathered five of his botany students together for an experiment. They were all young men with longish hair and sideburns. They wore turtlenecks and plaid trousers.

“You were going for groovy, huh?” Monica said.

They watched the five students take turns pulling slips of paper from a gray fedora.

“We chose from the hat which of us would play the role of murderer. You see, we’re about to enter a room with two plants. The first is to be the victim and the second, a witness.”

The room on-screen was featureless except for a long table that held two identical dwarf palms, about four feet tall, in heavy pots. Attached to one of the trees was a polygraph. The first student entered the room, staring at the plants. Then he started speaking to them. Awkwardly at first, and then more casually, as if they were old friends.

“We were supposed to be kind to the plants, except for the killer, of course.”

The next three students took turns chatting with the palms, watering them, blowing softly on their leaves, and the whole thing began to seem a bit silly.

Finally, Jules entered the room alone.

“
Bum bum bummm,
” Monica said ominously. “I knew it would be you.”

“Oh my,” Isabelle said, smiling. “Are you really going to hurt that plant, Jules?”

“It’s an experiment, for goodness sakes.”

Isabelle smiled behind her fingers. The young man on-screen seemed so shy, with an innocent expression and timid manner. She wondered if he’d pluck off a leaf or two.

They all watched as Jules reached out to the plant, tracing his finger gently down a broad leaf. His eyes closed and he breathed deeply through his nose. Isabelle stopped smiling as the expression on young Jules’s face changed dramatically. It twisted into a gruesome snarl and his eyes sprang open and alert. With lightning speed he ambushed his prey, seizing the plant and straining to rip it from the pot.

Isabelle stepped back in alarm.

The roots clung on tightly, but it was no even match. Jules shook the trunk and the tree broke loose. The ceramic bowl smashed onto the floor. He threw the tree over his head like a javelin and it shot against the wall, sending dirt flying in every direction. Jules pounced on the injured tree, ripping the leaves to shreds and pulling apart the roots with powerful claws that came down again and again.

It was all happening so fast and Isabelle stared with wide eyes. As much as she tried, she couldn’t look away.

Dirt sprayed everywhere—across Jules’s shirt, his face and arms as if it were a bloody massacre. There was barely a leaf left on the tree, but Jules wasn’t finished. A silent scream came from his mouth, a deplorable rage on his face as he stomped the trunk with all his might, using hands and feet to pry its lifeless body apart.

Her heart pounded in her ears and Isabelle thought Jules must be possessed. She watched in horror as he struck the tattered remains of the plant against the floor, blow after blow—

The tape stopped.

Jules stood by the VCR with his finger on a button, helplessly looking at the shocked faces around him. Then the dreadful moment was broken by Monica.

“What an
actor
! Jesus, you deserve a freaking Emmy for that!”

The others were silent as Jules struggled to explain. “Well, yes, you have to be … convincing … or, well, the experiment won’t work.”

Luke slipped from a dazed expression. “So, that was just an act?”

“Let’s see the rest of it,” Monica said, excited.

“No,” Jules said quickly. “It’s a bit disturbing to watch all these years later.”

“Well, how’s it end?” Monica whined.

Jules looked at her, pale and silent. There was sweat on his brow but he tried to act calm. He swallowed hard. “Um … let’s see. We left the plants alone for a while. There was the dead one on the floor.” He tried to sound scholarly, as if casually explaining the findings, but he was shaken by the video. He winced, as if trying to remember and forget at the same time. “We all had to go back into the room. You see, there was the other plant.”

“The witness,” Luke said.

“Yes, the one hooked up to the polygraph. We had to measure its reaction.”

“And? What happened when you went into the room?”

Jules spoke low, almost to himself. “The recorder was in a frenzy. A state of distress like I’ve never seen.”

Isabelle realized her hand was covering her mouth and lowered it.

“Excuse me,” he whispered, and stood up to leave. The others watched him walk to the door.

“Jules.” Isabelle went to him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, but seemed drained. “Seeing George and all that.”

“I understand,” she said, and turned so she didn’t have to watch him walk out.

Monica and Luke were charged up from the video. They chatted noisily about the experiment, and their relationship seemed to take a turn.

Isabelle put the TV and VCR away, noting that Monica laughed at Luke’s jokes and hung on his words, as if George had somehow elevated his grandson’s status.

“I don’t get it,” Luke said to his mother. “If Backster was wrong about plants recognizing people, how come the polygraph reacted to Jules?”

“My father came up with his own theory about how plants identify people, why they react the way they do. It was much more scientific and easier to believe.”

“What was his theory?”

“It’s complicated. I’ll tell you about it another time.”

“So these experiments made him famous, right?” Luke asked.

“For a botanist, I suppose.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. This is huge.”

“I guess it was, at the time.”

Luke looked annoyed. “I think this is really cool and you act like it’s nothing. I can’t believe all these years I had this famous scientist in my family and you didn’t say anything. I mean
, he’s your father.
”

“It’s not that simple,” she said tersely. “If you want to know about your grandfather, I’ll tell you. But I think you should know the whole story.”

Isabelle explained that George had been a well-respected scientist for many years, until he began experimenting with illegal drugs, mind-altering substances that eventually affected his work and reputation. He was fired from his job at Oxford, but the low point came when he was arrested for drug trafficking and spent two years in a Canadian prison. His wife left him, taking Isabelle. The scientific community labeled him a fraud and turned their backs on him. George, in turn, became a recluse on the island.

Luke looked at his mother. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. In my eyes, George was a sweet and generous man who loved every facet of nature. He was intelligent and curious about everything. Just like you.”

“I wish I’d known him.”

Isabelle smiled weakly. “I wish you had too.”

“Someone get a violin,” Monica said.

“All right. It’s nearly two o’ clock.” Isabelle chuckled. “How about lunch?”

“How about finding my diamond!” Ginny was standing in the doorway, on the verge of tears, her skin bright pink from the sun. “You’re all standing around chatting away when time is running out.” Then she raised the reward to $10,000.

CHAPTER 10

JULES WAS IN THE STUDY
pouring a glass of sherry. He paced the room and drank it down in one shot. He was still upset by the video and poured another drink.

Seeing himself attack a plant made him feel physically ill, but he resisted the implications. After all, he wasn’t a violent man. There might have been a couple of tiny incidents during his first weeks at Oxford. Karen Astor, which he didn’t want to think about. The barbaric rugby fellow who bullied him in a tavern. That officious little wanker who towed his car. Those were anomalies. It wasn’t like he did any serious damage, nothing permanent. Every man has a few moments of losing control. Being pushed too far.
Cornered
.

“Dr. Beecher?” Luke knocked on the doorframe.

“Oh, hullo,” Jules said wearily.

“Could we talk a minute?”

“I’m rather busy.”

Luke looked at Jules standing alone in the room with a glass of sherry in hand. Jules stared back in silence and finally gestured defeat.

“Fine. Come in.” He carried his glass to the chair behind the desk, used a blank envelope as a coaster.

Luke sat across from him. “I’m wondering if you could tell me about my grandfather.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything, I guess.”

Jules leaned back in his chair and exhaled, pinched the bridge of his nose. Did he really want to get into this now? No, but the boy had a right to know what a distinguished scientist his grandfather had been. It was doubtful that Isabelle had done the job.

“Well, let’s see. I don’t know much about his early years, except that he was a bright boy who had an affinity for nature, specifically mushrooms. He was a student at Cambridge, headed for a career in mycology, and by the time he was eighteen he’d discovered a dozen new species of fungi all over England. It seems he wrote a breakthrough scientific paper on mycorrhiza, the relationship between plants and fungi.”

“Mycorrhiza?”

“That’s not important. What is notable is that it garnered a lot of attention in the plant biology department and he was asked to join an experimental team to study how the roots of plants grow toward nutrients. During these studies he made the observation that the root network of a plant has similarities to the neural network of the brain.” Jules poured another glass of sherry and held it up brightly. “George focused all his research on the parallels between the signaling systems of plant and animal cells. How plants process information is remarkably similar to the electrical impulses of an animal’s nervous system.” He took a sip and put the glass down. “He went on to become a distinguished professor of plant biology at Oxford, and the work he did on long-distance signaling became the foundation for how plant biology is studied today.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “Wow. So he was an important man.”

“Yes, and never given his proper due.”

“You mean like with the polygraph experiment? Mom said he figured out why the plant reacted to you as the killer.”

“The discovery George made was one of the most significant in plant science.”

Luke leaned in.

“He believed the plant reacted to me for two reasons. Number one, plants have memory. Number two, they can distinguish between the scents of individual people. Of course, he had to prove this through an experiment, so what he did was introduce a rhododendron to the purified scent of his own body, while at the same time tearing off one of its leaves. In response to the wound, the plant immediately sent alarm signals from leaf to root, accelerating its production of ethylene and protease inhibitors against herbivores. After weeks of trials, George introduced only the scent, without hurting the leaves. Yet the plant still reacted as if it were injured. Therefore, George concluded, the plant was able to smell the scent and remember that it was accompanied by the tearing of a leaf.”

“Whoa.” Luke blinked hard.

“This was big news in the plant world, and would have given George prominence if it hadn’t been for that blasted publicity tour. We all warned him against it, but I guess the idea of fame got the better of him. There was a media sensation in the American press and for a single summer it was big news. But back in England, the scientific community was rather appalled. You see, some of the reporters interviewing George twisted his words around, trying to sensationalize his data. One man asked George if he had proven plants have a consciousness, and your grandfather said, ‘Of course. It proves they have a soul.’ I guess he got caught up in all the hype. And it didn’t help that George’s experiments were repeated by others with very mixed results. You see, in the world of science, ‘sometimes’ doesn’t count and reputations can sink quickly. Things were very bad when he returned to Oxford.”

“They fired him.”

“Yes, they did.”

“He started taking drugs.”

“That’s a long story.”

“It’s why his wife left him, and my mom.”

“Your grandmother was hardly…,” Jules grumbled, but stopped himself.

“What?”

“She was all right in the beginning, although terribly needy of attention. Grace was an American music student at Oxford and I think George was enchanted by her beauty and charm. She was a hippie sort, with lots of friends. Musicians and artists. George liked that, but there were always drugs around. Back then things were different, and George had a weakness for that kind of thing. Anyway, it doesn’t take away from the fact that your grandfather was a great scientist. While his groundbreaking results were eventually rejected and forgotten, I can tell you that recent experiments exposing plants to various colored lights have proven George was right—plants do have memory, and we’ve also learned that they can distinguish between odors.”

Luke nodded and the two were silent for a while. Jules sipped his drink.

“Dr. Beecher, do you think it’s possible that plants can think?”

“Most people would say no.”

“But you wrote a book on plant intelligence. I saw it in the lab.”

“An important measurement of intelligence is the ability to adapt to one’s environment, which implies thought. It’s all semantics.”

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “Intelligence requires a complex nervous system that’s only found in animals. I mean, without neurons, axons, and neurotransmitters for signaling and a brain to process everything, plants can’t think.”

Jules raised a brow. “You’ve a good understanding of the subject for your age.”

“Usually only seniors take neurobiology but I’m taking it next year.”

“You’re making the same mistake as most scientists, measuring intelligence as it relates to our own abilities. It’s a kind of meat chauvinism against any creature without a brain.”