Paul Levinson - The Orchard

“Difficult universe,” Susannah said.

“Care to pass some more of that over, for confirmation?” Jake asked Pavel, and laughed. “The one you just gave me was pretty small.”

Everyone hugged.

And Susannah folded to the ground, brown eyes glassy. “Misjudged she mumbled. And then she went completely unconscious.

“Not good,” Pavel said, looking at Susannah’s dilated pupil large upon the screen, and the streams of numerical data that flowed like eyewash around it. “She’s getting worse.”

“She’s going the same way as Deborah, I can feel it,” Martin said. He savagely kicked a fruit that had fallen on the floor—it smashed against a far wall, juices dripping. “Too much of a price to pay!”

“No, it can’t be the same,” Pavel said. “Deborah died right away. I mean, Susannah was very clear about that—”

Jake entered the sickbay, grim. “I know what’s causing this.”

Martin and Pavel looked at him, both exhaling with relief. “So talk to us,” Martin urged.

Jake took a deep breath. “I, ahm, I was able to break some of her personal security codes—I guess I knew where to look—and was able to get to some of her personal files.”

“And?” Martin prompted again.

“And it’s the same thing that killed Deborah, goddamnit,” Jake said.

“What?” “How could that be?” “Impossible!” Martin and Pavel were shouting at the same time.

Jake continued, talking more to himself than to them. “So I read most of her files. I couldn’t believe it. Susannah’s not only a doctor but a botanist. Something in the way Deborah died made her think plant poison—some trees on Earth exude a resin that kills anything that crawls on them—”

“She said curare,” Pavel recalled. “That comes from some trees in the Amazon—was used by the people there in poison arrows, right?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “And the poison here is in the bark of the fruit trees. That was Susannah’s theory. She tested it on herself—in very tiny doses at first. She identified the poisonous compound and had a way of diluting it. She wanted to see if there was a way to build up resistance, maybe come up with an antidote, in case any one else got exposed like Deborah. But then, she figured that if the trees were the result of intelligent planting, then the poisonous bark wasn’t accidental—and there might be an antidote already out there. And she realized that if she could discover that antidote, it would provide really tangible evidence of intelligence behind the trees. She reasoned out what it could be, and her notes say she found it—”

“So what the hell is it—let’s give it to her!” Martin bellowed.

Jake sat down, head in his hands. “I don’t know what it is—I don’t know. I couldn’t read that part of her files—she hadn’t saved them for even her own permanent record as yet. The last part of this all happened very recently, very quickly. She was sure she had the antidote. She was afraid that our taste test would prove inconclusive. So she took a higher dose of the poison than usual, enough to make her ill, with the intention of offsetting it with the antidote. That would be the palpable evidence. That would give the people back home the proof positive to put this place on the map of intelligence. But something went wrong. I don’t know…”

“We have to face the fact that maybe she was wrong about the antidote,” Pavel said softly.

“It could just as likely be that she didn’t give herself enough of it,” Jake replied.

“We can figure this out,” Martin said. “The first order of business is identifying the antidote. Let’s assume Susannah got that right. There’s got to be a way we can retrace her thinking. We start with what we know about the trees—socially as well as biologically. They’re part of an orchard—”

“Right,” Jake said. “And the planters apparently installed some sort of defense system—a poison in the trees—to ward off predators. Like poison ivy back home.”

“Yeah,” Pavel said, “but we’ve all gorged on the fruit of these trees, and none of us except Susannah is sick. Maybe she has some allergy to it.”

“Jake says that Susannah already established that it’s the bark, not the fruit, that’s causing the problem,” Martin said. “And I remember Deborah did do some work out there in those trees, after we first arrived, before they started fruiting. She was taking DNA samples—slicing off a few pieces of bark.”

“So did I,” Pavel objected. “We both wore gloves. And I’m not sick.”

“So maybe Deborah wasn’t as careful as you. We all make mistakes, get sloppy sometimes. Or maybe she sliced into a part of the bark that contained a central tap of the poison,” Martin said. His voice choked.

“Look, the planters—whoever created the orchard—wanted the fruit to be enjoyed and eaten,” Jake said. “So of course it wouldn’t be deadly. But taking off a piece of bark is an act of aggression against the tree—the planters would want any animal that did that to suffer, to get negative reinforcement.”

“I’m with you,” Martin said. “But how could the planters differentiate, say, between an animal, or even an intelligent vandal, and someone who might have been planting another tree, and accidentally broke off some bark? Surely the planters wouldn’t want to poison one of their own?”

“No, they wouldn’t…” Jake closed his eyes in thought. “Pavel, do you have any image readings on the age of the trees?”

“Age?” Pavel asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Can you tell if there are any saplings in our grove?”

“Well, sure, of course,” Pavel said, and pulled a sequence of displays on to the screen. “These are very young. And here.”

“What are you getting at?” Martin said.

“I’m not sure,” Jake said. “But saplings, very young trees, obviously have slightly different chemistries in their bark than older specimens. I’m thinking that one way the planters might have distinguished between other planters and vandals is that the planters would have obviously come into contact with younger trees.”

“And?”

“And maybe exposure to the bark of the younger trees confers an immunity, is an antidote, to the poison of the older bark,” Jake said.

“So what are you proposing?” Martin asked. “Go out and get some bark from the saplings, and rub that all over Susannah’s skin? We already know the adult bark’s some kind of poison. What you’re suggesting could kill her outright! Like giving a diabetic in insulin shock more insulin!”

“I know,” Jake said. “I know.”

“She’ll be dead in an hour anyway, if we do nothing,” Pavel said.

Martin’s face was almost as pasty as Susannah’s. “Your call,” he said at last to Jake. “She’s—you and she—are more than professional. It’s right that you should make the decision. But I guess I’m with Pavel in that we don’t seem to have many—any—other options.”

Jake returned from the orchard with bark from a dozen of the youngest saplings he could find.

“Should I inject her?” Pavel asked, after the extract had been analyzed. It indeed had a composition very different in several respects from the extract of adult trees.

Jake nodded yes, and Pavel injected her.

Martin squeezed Jake’s shoulder. “Courage,” he said softly. “Courage.”

Susannah moaned. Her body twitched.

The seconds clicked off on a red display. Jake’s face bore the brunt of each click.

“Any change?” Martin finally demanded.

Pavel studied the readings, said nothing.

“Pavel?” Martin asked again.

Susannah’s body shuddered.

“She’s fading,” Pavel said. “We’re losing her.”