Page 27 of Overgrowth

The forest dissolved as the vines that had been covering my face let go, setting me gently on a smooth wooden path that wound off into the distance. The lights were as bright as the noonday sun, and I was surrounded by trees. Real trees this time, not the phantoms of the forest. The path was warm beneath my feet, and surrounded by beds of greenery the likes of which I had never seen. I stared, shamelessly drinking it all in.

It was like someone had taken a botanical garden and Disney’s Epcot theme park and crammed them together before enclosing them in a geodesic dome made of glittering, translucent material. Everything was green and brown, alive and vital. The trees were a patchwork, clearly originating on a hundred different worlds. As I watched, something that looked like a fruit bat crossed with a toucan soared overhead, only to be snatched out of the air by a vine that whipped out from a tree that resembled nothing so much as a piece of rainbow chewing gum stretched into a corkscrew. The bat-thing didn’t have time to squawk before it had been stuffed into a woody maw and consumed.

I blinked slowly, breathing in the mingled pollens of a million different worlds. The air held scents I couldn’t identify, thick and rich enough to make my head spin. I was pretty sure the oxygen balance wasn’t the one I was used to. I blinked again, trying to figure out whether putting my head between my knees would help the way it was supposed to. Did my body still work that way? Clearly, plants could get dizzy—I was dizzy as hell—but that didn’t mean the solutions were the same.

Sitting down seemed rude, since this was clearly a walkway, and moving closer to those alien trees seemed like a very bad idea. What if they thought I was the same as the bat-thing, and tried to swallow me? It would be a stupid way to die after everything I’d been through already.

Something touched my arm. I jumped, whipping around and then staggering as the dizziness intensified.

The something that had touched at me backed up a bit, its dozens of segmented limbs waving in what I automatically translated into apology. It had a face that looked like something from the lemur house: big, round eyes, a small, pursed mouth, and no nose to speak of. Its torso was more like that of a gigantic skink, covered in overlapping scales, and its “arms” were explosions of tentacles, each ending in a barbed hook. Following its body down continued the skink theme, until it reached floor level and became more like the result of an unholy melding of millipede and squid.

And every inch of it was green. The same family of shades and gradations that I saw in my own mirror every morning. There were no commonalities in our shapes; we couldn’t have looked more like we came from different planets. At the same time, something deep in my instinctual memory looked at this thing, this impossible thing, and knew we were kin. However much the shapes we wore might vary, it seemed that green was the color of the seeds we’d grown from, and so green was the color we would be forever.

// sorry, I’m so sorry // said the creature. It spoke as the forest spoke: a voice in English, ringing in the space between my ears. I wasn’t sure I could call it telepathy, exactly, but I could hear the creature, and I could understand what it was saying, and under the circumstances, that might be enough. // I didn’t mean to startle you. I should have thought. I’m so sorry. //

“I don’t know how to talk like that,” I said. “In your head. Can you… can you understand me?”

The creature’s tentacles waved in a pattern I interpreted as amusement. // you talk through the air, as we all do. the pollen brings me your words. I understand you, little sister. oh, it is such a joy to meet you. //

I frowned slowly. “You mean when I talk, you hear it in your head?”

The creature twisted its torso slightly to the side in agreement. // yes. yes yes yes. you speak, and the pollen translates it into image for me. the world where I was sprouted was not a sound-world, but a sight-world. the Great Root will never let the children of the good harvest become separate from each other. //

Sorting through that would have taken too long. I looked around me, noting the ongoing absence of anything else I could interpret as a person—it was only trees, and the occasional rustling of something squirrel-sized or smaller. I returned my attention to the creature. “I’m Stasia. What’s your name?”

// for you, for now, it is Second // said the creature—said Second. The name wasn’t a surprise. // I am here because you are my sister. it is good for those of the same seeding to help each other, when the gathering-in begins. //

“How… how are you my sister?”

It was impossible not to interpret the twisting of Second’s tentacles as a silent smile. One of those tentacles dipped into a gap between the scales, pulling out a seedpod the size of a small avocado. It offered the seed to me. I took it automatically, unsure how to politely refuse.

The seed weighed more than should have been possible, as if it had been sculpted from a piece of solid lead. The surface was ridged, like a walnut shell, or a mammalian brain. It sparkled in the light, filled with a captive brightness that reminded me of the glow from the barrel of the dragonfly flowers. As I tightened my fingers around it, it thrummed softly, warming up to match my body temperature.

// seeds // said Second. // we are all seeds, in the beginning, and we are all the same. we scatter them across the sky, and where they root, we grow. you and I are sisters, for we sprout from seeds harvested from the same source. //

“You’re female?”

// I am myself. the species which templated me did not have the same genders as the one which templated you, but ‘female’ will do well enough, and I think you would like to have a sister here, to replace the one you leave behind. // Again, that twisting, silent smile. // I will guide you to your next destination. are you well? are you not afraid? //

I hesitated. I wanted to be afraid. I wanted to be scared out of my mind, because it seemed like the human thing to do, and while I had never particularly wanted to be a human—had spent my entire life denying humanity even mattered to me—it was the model I had to go on. Anastasia Miller had been a human child, and I was, as Second put it, templated on her. Shouldn’t my responses have been human?

But I wasn’t afraid. The taste of alien pollens filled my mouth, and the sound of alien thoughts filled my mind, and I was more curious than anything else, Alice finally down the rabbit hole and about to discover all the secrets of Wonderland.

“I think I’m well,” I said carefully. “I want to know more. What is this place? Why do all these trees look so different? How is pollen translating for us?”

Second waved her tentacles in amiable acceptance. // all your questions will be answered. come. your friend is waiting for us, and when we reach him, we will tell you both. //

My friend… she had to mean Jeff. Belatedly, I remembered Tahlia and the senator, both waiting on the bluff for us to come back. “He’s not my only friend.”

// no. but you are of differing seed lines, and by telling you, we will put the knowledge into the entire forest. we can only do so much while a person is in their seed. the warning and the knowing are the limit. to do more would be to risk losing one of those. // Second began to make her way down the path, the hundreds of tentacle-legs that lined her long body slithering easily against the wood.

Lacking any clear alternatives, I followed. “So we have to explain this all over again, for every one of us on Earth?” I paused. “What are we called, anyway? Is there a name for our species?”

// your templates were very concerned with the naming of things // observed Second. // we have a name. //

I waited. She kept walking.

“Well?” I finally asked.

// we have a name, but what you are now cannot say it. what I am now cannot hear it. it lives in the forest, in the shadows of the Great Root, but each new harvest must come up with our own words for what we are. my harvest called ourselves // and she made a compli cated motion with her tentacles, one which rippled from the top of her head to the tip of her tail and back again. It was beautiful. It was poetry. It wasn’t something I could have recreated in a million years. I didn’t have the appendages.

“I don’t… Wait.” We kept moving. More motion was starting to appear, out amongst the trees. I couldn’t see any of it clearly, but I had the distinct feeling we had an audience, more of our mutual and divided kind creeping as close as they dared as they tried to steal a glimpse at what our shared species had most recently become. “First showed me something that looked like a walking hill. Is that what we were on our home planet?”

// yes. //

“Why did we leave?”

// patience. all will be made clear in time. //

I didn’t like that answer one bit. I had been being patient for thirty years, walking through a world that didn’t belong to me and waiting for someone to make it all start making sense. I swallowed my frustration and asked, “Does anyone look like that anymore?”

// seeds planted in untemplated soil will grow according to the old ways. we plant our ships in the same soil, cultivate and crew them, and set them among the stars to continue spreading the harvest from one end of the galaxy to the other. you and I, and all our sisters and brothers and others, we will always wear the faces of the worlds which made us. we are marked and we are memories. we will have our own names for what we are, our own ways to describe the mysteries, and when the last of us dies, we as a people will be poorer for our passage. //

Faces—at least, things my eye insisted on interpreting as faces—peered at us from between the trees. Some were feathered. Others were covered in mossy hair. All of them were green, a hundred different shades of green, matching me, or Tahlia, or the senator, or matching no one at all, belonging to no clade I recognized. I stayed close by Second’s side. She was an alien, yes, the most obviously alien thing I had yet to encounter, but she was also my sister, and I found it surprisingly easy to trust her.

Maybe that was something I needed to be concerned about. “Why aren’t I afraid of you?” I asked.

// pollen // she said, “sounding” pleased with herself. // very good. some go a long while before they remember that they should be afraid. you do not fear me because we share the same scent. your mind knows I am the same as you, and it forgives me for the difference in our forms. it knows family even when everything else about you does not. //

We had reached a mossy curtain hanging over the path like a shroud. Second reached out with one tentacle, tapping it lightly, and it retracted, revealing what I could only view as, well, a conference room.

It was a small space, especially compared to the cavernous expanse of trees and walkways that we had been strolling through. A circular table dominated the room, and it was only as my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light that I realized it was actually an enormous mushroom. The light was coming from its gills, which glowed a soft and lambent shade of white. The smaller mushrooms growing around it and serving as chairs had the same glow.

Jeff sat on the far side of the mushroom, along with someone who looked like a green kangaroo—its fur matched his skin—and someone else who seemed to be the result of hybridizing a caterpillar with a sparrowhawk. Second bowed elaborately to the group and slither-stepped inside. I followed, and the moss swung shut again behind us, blocking out the scent of the alien forest.

The light coming from the mushroom immediately brightened, increasing to fill the space. The kangaroo turned toward me and cocked its head.

// you are of the new harvest // it said. // my brother has told me much of you. you are the Stasia, yes? //

“Um,” I said. “Yes. Hi, Jeff.”

“Hi,” said Jeff. He looked as rattled as I felt. It was something of a relief to realize that he still had to open his mouth to speak with me. Whatever strange form of quasi-telepathy the pollen in here enabled, it hadn’t reached us yet.

// I am the Second // said the kangaroo politely. // it is an honor and a delight to meet you, the Stasia, and bring you home. //

“This is going to get really confusing if you keep deciding on your names based on who you talked to when,” I said, with a glance at my Second. She looked confused, as much as a many-tentacled caterpillar creature could. I pointed to the kangaroo. “If they’re the Second because they were the second person to talk to Jeff, and you’re Second because you were the second person to talk to me, we’re never going to be able to keep you straight.”

// ah! // said my Second, with all apparent delight. // we see. we apologize for any confusion: the last harvest did not believe in personal names, but in the context of the group as a whole. we learn each new world through the harvest it grants us. you have so much to give to our garden. //

Jeff made a wry face. “This is how it’s been for me since I got here. Is this how it’s been for you?”

“I don’t know.” I dropped into one of the open chairs without waiting to be asked. A small puff of spores drifted up from the glowing gills of the mushroom. They smelled like mint and blueberry. “My head is so full of things that it feels like it’s going to explode.”

// I remember when my harvest was gathered in // said Jeff’s Second, in a tone I could only call nostalgic. // we had been waiting so long, surrounded by those who would never know us as we knew each other, and then from the sky came salvation, family, home. we were so fortunate on that day, and we are so fortunate now, to carry that day across the stars to you. my harvest believes in personal designations. you may call me the Swift, for I have always been quick and sure in defense of our gardens. //

// I will remain Second // said Second, with an apologetic wave of her tentacles as she slithered into the seat beside me. // it is a title, not a name, and so it does not discomfort me as a false name would. //

“When you say ‘garden,’ what you mean is ‘world,’ right?” I asked, looking between them. At Second’s gesture of agreement, I asked, “How many gardens have you, um, harvested?”

// we of this vessel have harvested from hundreds since it was grown // said Second proudly. // we have done so very well. you will join us in doing so very well. //

“The ships are planted, like we were,” said Jeff. “They draw the nutrients and necessary minerals from the soil, and when they reach maturity, the technicians use biochemical processes to make them mobile. Every world adds its own ships to the armada. They’ll mostly be crewed by people like us, when they come from Earth, because they’ll also be the preservation ships for Earth’s culture.”

I stared at him. “The preservation ships?” Belatedly, it occurred to me that Jeff had been in the pit longer than I had, and his questions weren’t likely to be the same as mine. I was in customer service. I didn’t like people, but that didn’t exempt me from learning to understand them. If anything, it meant I had to work harder to have a chance.

// you are not on such a ship now // said Second, sounding concerned that I had failed to miss this very simple idea. // the ships are too vast to dock, and too precious to risk. meat is weak. it iterates thoughtlessly, breeds without cultivation, does not replace what it destroys. we are strong. we endure. so the Great Root has put it upon us to preserve what the gardens of the universe create, to sample their best fruits and carry them with us forever. this world is large enough to grow at least ten such ships without cracking the firmament. there will be food in plenty until the work is done, and perhaps we will come again someday, to make another harvest, to carry another garden’s fruits high and everlasting. //

// your body is on a scout vessel // said the Swift. // everything you see is a gift of the pollen, to keep you comfortable and begin to ease you into the reality of what we are, what we will be. we carry your shadows with us on the ship above, for we are of the same seeding, I and the Jeff, yourself and the Second. we are the same, and that means we can communicate when the distance is brief enough. //

“So we’re astral-projecting from an alien scout vessel, onto a great big alien Costco in space?” Laughter rose in my throat. I swallowed it hard. I didn’t want to risk offending the Swift, not even if we weren’t really in the same place. “Why? Why are we here?”

// it is necessary, when approaching a new garden, to first perform a final test, to see whether the fruit is good. // Second sounded genuinely apologetic, like whatever she was saying was horribly rude and would have been good reason for me to be infuriated. // sometimes the fruit is… not good. sometimes the fruit has been tainted by the soil in which it grew, and we must start again, lest it pose a danger to the greater garden. //

“She means sometimes when they come to pick up the new kids, the new kids like the people who raised them better than the people who planted them, and they not only don’t want to help Mommy and Daddy invade their planets, they actively want to fight off the invasion.”

Guilt twisted in my stomach. It was hard to relax, surrounded by telepathic pollen and harboring what suddenly felt like treasonous thoughts about the world where I’d grown up. Humanity as a whole didn’t appeal to me all that much, but Graham? Mandy? Even Lucas? Specific humans appealed to me a great deal. I didn’t want to see them hurt. “What happens when a harvest… resists?”

// it is cut down // said Second sadly. // the soil is bad, if it grows such poor seeds. so we cut the harvest, and we change the soil. //

“Meaning they sterilize the planet and leave it to develop life again in its own time,” said Jeff. He met my eyes across the table. “Once the armada comes, the question isn’t whether they die. It’s how quickly, and how.”

// we have such high hopes for this harvest // said the Swift. // the air is good. the soil is good. the seeds have sprouted strong and well. you will bring such wonders to our people, and we will travel the universe with you beside us, and you will never know want, or hunger, or need. you will only know the goodness and grace of coming home. //

// we are so glad we will not have to kill you and plant again // said Second happily.

I looked at the Swift, and then I looked at Second—my sister, grown from the same seed, in soil so alien that I couldn’t even imagine it—and I said nothing. For what felt like the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of anything to say.