Mary Rosenblum - The Botanist

Illustration by Laurie Harden

“I don’t know if they’re ready to tap,” Keri said. She took his hand, and her touch drowned the tree song in Daniel’s head. “I’m way behind on my quota. Come help me, please?” She leaned toward him. “You always get through early. You’re never wrong.”

Daniel looked away, swallowing dry-mouthed as her breast brushed his arm. The mothwing touch of her flesh, coupled with the humming ripeness of the sap-trees, made him dizzy. Keri was sixteen to his just-fifteen, soft with new curves where last year she had been muscle-on-bone, like a yearling colt. In this same year, she had become almost a stranger, in a way that troubled his dreams at night. “Somebody’s using the old greenhouse,” he blurted out. “I was gonna go see.”

“Oh, it’s just some dope-grower starting plants.” Keri dismissed the mystery with a toss of her head. “Please help me, Daniel?”

He sighed, thinking about the thirty trees he had left to tap. Jensen, the super, would give him grief if he didn’t finish. He might fire Keri if she came up short on her quota again. “All right.” He retrieved his pack from where he had cached it against the swollen bole of a tree. The sample jars rattled as he dropped his bark knife into it and swung it over his shoulder.

“I cut a bunch of trees and they weren’t even close to ready.” Keri fell in beside him, arms swinging as they walked. “You never cut a tree that isn’t ripe. What do they do?” she asked lightly. “ Talk to you?”

And that hurt, because she had understood, last summer. But all of a sudden, it was like they had never talked, never lain side by side in the tall meadow grass while clouds walked across the summer sky and he told her about the world he knew.

He had thought she understood, anyway.

“Let’s get those trees done,” he growled.

Her section was above his, just below the Scrub, where the mountain got too rocky to grow the deep-rooted bio-trees. Jensen had given her a small plot that produced some kind of polymer for manufacturing. Not very important—because he knew she wasn’t talented with trees. But he had hired her anyway. Daniel had never been able to figure that out. He walked quickly through the evenly spaced trunks, letting his fingertips brush the rough bark of the big trunks, feeling the humming song of the trees in his bones. Mostly they were green—too low a concentration of the engineered substance to be worth tapping, yet. But a few were ready. “That one. This one. And this one.” He touched them lightly, walked on, and left her to scurry after with a marking chalk. He was being rude, and he derived a bitter satisfaction from her scrambles.

He reached the end of her section and emerged from the shadows into the fading light of evening. Through the stunted, twisted trees of the Scrub, he saw an opalescent glow, like a landbound moon trapped in the wild growth. Shedding his heavy pack filled with sample-vials, he slipped into the shadows, tinghng with the wild trees’ song. It felt hke bubbles in his blood, all light and tingling. The glow came from the old greenhouse. Someone had replaced the broken panes of glass with translucent plastic, Daniel noticed. He edged closer, slipping his tapping knife from his pocket.

“Daniel!” Keri hissed from behind him. “What are you doing?” She grabbed his shirt. “Don’t!”

“Why not?” He shook her off, annoyed because—filled with the wild tree song—he hadn’t heard her sneaking up on him. “I want to see who’s there.”

“What if it’s the ghost?” She shivered and pulled herself against him. “The crazy survivalist who killed his wife and kids with a machine gun. My cousin Patti saw him one night.”

“I’m not afraid of the ghost.” It was a sad thing, like the scent of rotting melons on the night wind.

“Then they’re dopers, and they’ll kill you.”

“Not this close to the bio-trees.” The heat of her flesh burned him and made him shiver. He pulled free of her grip and began to slip purposefully toward the glowing arch of glass. “If you’re scared, go home.” Behind him, Keri drew in a hissing breath.

“You want to get yourself killed, you go right ahead, Daniel Garver! When are you going to grow up?” And she fled, making enough racket to wake the dead.

“I’m…” He bit off the words, because she was gone. She was mad. He clenched his teeth and turned his back on her absence, creeping closer, damned if he’d leave before he’d looked inside, and so what if they were dopers?

But his heart was hammering as he slipped his tapping blade through the corner of a plastic pane, and sliced out a tiny triangle of a peephole. Warm air seeped out, damp, sulfurous, and earthy. He pressed his eye to the space and forgot about ghosts and untapped trees. Above leaking hot water pipes, a thousand glass dishes sparkled on aluminum benches beneath banks of halide lamps. Green leaves sprouted from the dishes, and flowers glowed like scattered jewels—white, and pink, and yellow.

A hand closed on the back of his neck and Daniel yelled. The hand lifted him like you’d lift a puppy and shook him, then set him roughly down.

The sheer, casual strength of that gesture—so unlike his father’s labored violence—banished fear. Daniel stared up at the man who towered over him. He was as big as a TV wrestler, only his muscles were rock-hard and real. A tail of very blond hair fell down his back, as if in defiance of a receding hairline. His stark profile and high cheekbones looked vaguely familiar.

Daniel gulped in a labored breath, acutely aware of the fingers denting the flesh of his neck. “What are they?” He moved his chin fractionally toward the greenhouse. “They’re not dope.”

“No, they are neither marijuana nor genened coca, nor whatever else gets cropped around here.” The man lowered his chin and gave Daniel another, almost gentle, shake. “Beat it.” He let go and dropped Daniel to his feet.

“Why?” He staggered and caught his balance. The giant went into the greenhouse without answering. He moved like a bear, massively graceful. “Why grow the stuff, if it’s not dope?” Daniel trotted after him. “Is it worth a lot?”

“Is that all that matters?” The man rounded on him so fast that Daniel almost fell over. “How much something is worth?”

“Yeah.” Daniel studied the stranger. His eyes were so pale that they were almost lavender, and you couldn’t even see his eyebrows. He was even fairer than Keri. “Far as I know, everything costs money.”

“Just the junk.” The man went into the greenhouse and slammed the door. Daniel tried it. It wasn’t locked.

“I didn’t say it was a good thing.” He slipped inside, sweltering instantly in the thick, sulfurous air. “That’s just how it is. It stinks in here.”

“Geothermal heat.” The giant grunted. “Sulfur in the water. Who invited you?”

Daniel wandered over to peer at the delicate white blossoms. The plants grew in dishes of amber-colored jelly. At this end of the bench, a few dishes held squat plants with small furry leaves. They weren’t pretty plants. Nondescript green flowers barely showed among the foliage. His throat suddenly tight, Daniel touched one of the leaves. “That’s an orchid,” he said softly. “They grow where it’s damp. I thought… they were on the List.”

The man’s sudden and utter stillness made him look up.

He was staring at Daniel with a strange expression on his face. “Who told you?” he asked roughly.