The Speaker for the Trees Read online

  “I’m Burt,” said Burt. “This one’s Clem. Can we help you?”

  “Yes,” said the visitor. “Yes you can. My name is…” The visitor paused in thought for a moment. “Mr. Visitor. I’m looking for someone. Maybe more than someone. Do you know anyone around here who behaves… strangely?”

  Burt jerked a thumb back toward Clem.

  “Certifiable,” he said.

  Clem smacked Burt’s hand away.

  “This might be serious, jackass.”

  “There’s another fellow in Greenville always saying weird stuff,” added Burt. “Like how he’s a plant or somethin’.”

  Mr. Visitor tensed.

  “A plant?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” said Burt. “Hedge Johnston. Farmer. Bee keeper. Pretty ordinary guy. Other than the crazy stuff, I guess.”

  “Always talkin’ to that moonbat, Scud,” Clem added.

  “What manner of creature is a moonbat?” asked Mr. Visitor.

  “Vegetable, maybe,” said Burt, considering.

  “I see,” said Mr. Visitor. “Greenville. This is the name of the civilian center where Hedge dwells, correct? Can you tell me where I can find it?”

  “That way,” said Burt, pointing. “Ten miles.”

  “Twelve,” Clem corrected.

  Burt turned around, annoyed.

  “The hell difference do two miles make?”

  “Reckon it makes a two-mile difference, don’t it?”

  Burt huffed and turned again to face Mr. Visitor, but as abruptly as he’d arrived, he was gone again. A faint scent of burnt toast hung on the air for an instant before a sudden gust took it away.

  “I betcha he’ns one of ‘em,” said Clem quietly.

  “One a who?”

  “Mole people.”

  Burt scowled and hunched toward the fire.

  “Shut up, Clem.”

  Background First, Then a Toaster

  Scud Peabody was a genius. Of that Hedge was certain.

  He'd come to the conclusion earlier in the day while seated beside Scud at Milo’s Corner Diner, before it became obvious he was going to need a toaster.

  Milo's Corner Diner was an unimaginative self description with broad windows on two sides that faced the streets. A perpetual greasy haze hung about the ceiling and the place smelled of hot sausage and syrup. The walls were a sickly, off yellow like the watered-down orange juice and a ceiling fan with a broken blade jerked lazily all year round.

  “You don’t l… look like a plant,” Scud stuttered. He did this sometimes, and his whole face squinted in an effort to get a word past his lips.

  Scud Peabody was a scruffy, skinny, troll of a man whose eyes bulged from his head like mushroom bulbs at the end of their stalks, jerking from one object to the next, his mind a constantly spinning carousel of jangling, obnoxious thought. He had a baggy, hound-dog face with a stubbly mouth always hanging open.

  “Exactly,” said Hedge. “I’m in disguise.”

  Scud Peabody was the only person who believed Hedge was a plant alien because Scud Peabody was the only person wide minded enough to do so. Because he was so wide minded it only made sense that everyone thought Scud was an idiot.

  "Scud, yer an idjit," sneered Garry Thorne from a table by the window. "He's jerkin' yer chain."

  Garry Thorne was an unemployed truck driver who spent most of his time at the diner, sneering at Scud or anyone else who caught his attention. He sneered at the waitress who took his order, sneered at the fellows who sat at the table with him, sneered at his children who would inherit his sneer and be hated by everyone around them. And people did hate Garry Thorne. But they also knew that to not be an ally of Garry Thorne was to be his victim. Most people tacitly agreed to permit cruelty rather than risk being subject to it.

  Which was why Scud Peabody, who did not join them, who cultivated his own opinions and did not fear the regular chastisement of Garry Thorne, was a genius. And because Scud was a genius Hedge knew there was no point trying to deceive him.

  "Ye ain't l... lyin' to m... m... me, is ya?"

  Scud's distended eyeballs bulged imploringly.

  "Plants don’t lie,” said Hedge.

  Scud considered this.

  "Ain't posin' as a p... person a lie?" he asked.

  Hedge wondered how no one else could tell that Scud was a genius.

  "It is deception," Hedge explained. "But for the purpose of self preservation. Some birds pantomime a broken wing to lure predators away from their young. Some moths disguise themselves with the pattern of poisonous insects. Some insects take on the appearance of sticks in an effort to blend into their surroundings. But they, like myself, behave so in order to survive. Should we come out of obscurity there is no shortage of scientists who would be interested in studying us instead of the other way round, which would be a great hindrance to the mission."

  “Ain’t tellin’ me about it d… dangerous?”

  "Idjit!" came another cry, not Garry Thorne this time, followed by a few broken cackles.

  “No one believes me,” said Hedge. “It’s doubtful anyone would believe you.”

  Scud smiled.

  "You s... sure is smart, Hedge. I wonders why you ain't a fancy s... scientist off in a labbertory inventin' gadgets to make life easy fer rich folk. Think that's what I would d... d... do if I were so smart as you and not so s... soft in the p... pate."

  Hedge liked Scud a great deal. He was blunt and unassuming, and his character was louder than his mouth. He took an interest in those who required aid, from steadying the waitress who struggled to carry her order, to bringing grubs to the hatchlings nesting in the crook of the main window.

  "You fecktard," crowed Garry Thorne. "Course he's lying. Birds ain't smart. They brains ain't no more powerful 'n yours. An' you're about as smart as a sock full o' nickels."

  A chorus of laughter ensued. Scud's eyes never left Hedge while they laughed, as though so long as he held a gaze with someone else he was invincible because they didn’t exist. Hedge returned the gaze until the laughter and jibes ebbed and Scud asked another question.

  It was a long time.

  In addition to being stupid, Scud was also a boy-teasing faggot, albino shithead, mutant retard and as many other combinations as Garry and the others could imagine because, as it seemed to Hedge, they were all so terribly jealous of his brilliance, and infuriated by his curiosity and the idea that he didn't give one whit about their opinion.

  That was how Hedge knew Scud was not an idiot. Most distinguishable about the idiot, Hedge noted, was their fear of that which was different. Those who feared difference always made a point of finding difference in others in order to feel more secure in their sameness. They referred to other people as fags, retards, et cetera. They also had names for those of different social class, those who dwelled in different regions of their country and the world, names for people depending on their job, depending on their hair color, skin color, religion, intelligence, and any other characteristic that made a person distinct. It seemed to Hedge that by process of elimination the only people they didn't categorically despise was themselves. Of course, there was a name for this as well.

  "So why are y... you here?" Scud had asked. "What's your m… m… mission?"

  Hedge relished the opportunity to tell someone besides Anna, but knew he couldn't possibly explain everything and be home in time to eat pork chops. So Hedge summarized.

  * * *

  Hedge was born (as it were) in a government nursery on the bright side of the unspinning greenhouse planet Krog-B alongside ten thousand of his kin, all neatly arranged in hundreds of parallel rows like strips of soybeans. The metaphor was appropriate, since Hedge was himself a plant, albeit far more complex than a soybean. Hedge was the acme of a species that had existed longer than the simplest forms of life on the human planet, developing over time into a hardy species of considerable cognitive might and universal significance.

  Humanity had undergone a similar transformati
on 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.

  A Very Handy Device

  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.