Page 34 of Overgrowth

Chapter 18

Somewhere above North America: time unknown

Invasion ongoing

1.

“Stasia? Honey, can you hear me?”

I blinked, and the haze cleared, leaving me looking at Graham. I blinked again, and just looked, drinking him in as much as I could. The russet of his hair, the pale gray-blue of his eyes, even the freckles on the bridge of his nose, which he fussed over every summer. He was glorious. He was gorgeous. I couldn’t imagine him cast in green.

I couldn’t imagine him dead, either, drained of blood and cast aside. It was an impossible thought, and I refused to have it.

Ahead of us, Second was looking back, tentacles twisting and twining in silent sympathy. She knew why I’d passed out so abruptly. She might have received the same little show, in her time, when it was her host garden being placed on the chopping block.

Mercy was no longer an option. Mercy had never been an option. As soon as the first seeds sprouted in fertile soil, it had become inevitable that the conflict would bring us here, two species as unalike as it was possible to be fighting over the resources of a single world and the future of a single people—because my people’s future wasn’t on the table, not really. Humanity could destroy the aliens among them, could blow our ships out of the sky and arm themselves against the heavens, could watch the stars in wariness and eternal terror, and it would change nothing. We would still be the owners of the greater cosmos, one species made from hundreds, stitched together in a tapestry of roots and leaves and shared sap.

We would still have more ships out there—so many more ships, as many ships as there were stars visible in Earth’s sky—and they would come to avenge us, because my species had learned, the hard way, that violence should be answered with violence, each and every time, forever. Maybe it wasn’t fair and maybe it wasn’t right, but it was a lesson they’d been taught a dozen times over, and they were excellent students.

“Yeah,” I rasped, my throat dry and papery. I could smell the sweat on his skin and the blood moving through his veins. He was so close. I could just reach out and take it for my own, and no one would be able to stop me, not even him.

I could stop me. I could picture the look on his face, the shock and betrayal, as my teeth sank into his throat. I could see him staring at me as he bled out in the moss, feeding an ecosystem that wasn’t his. I swallowed again, saliva washing that delicious, monstrous thought away.

“What happened?”

“I…” I shook my head, trying to clear it. It wasn’t working as well as I wanted it to. Still, it was better than nothing. “First—she seems to be in charge here, I don’t know what she actually looks like, because she mostly communicates through the pollen.”

“The telepathy pollen,” said Toni, looking over at us. “That’s what you mean. You’re talking to the queen of the aliens through the magic telepathy pollen.”

“Yes,” I said uncomfortably.

She nodded, looking satisfied. “Just making sure we’re all on the same terrible page. There’s a plant that looks like a giant sundew over here, digesting what looks like a squirrel with scales. In case you were wondering whether we were actually walking through the botanical garden of the damned.”

Second hooted softly. // we need to hurry // she said, where only I could hear. // time is short. //

I winced. “The invasion is ongoing.”

Graham responded to this apparent non sequitur with a faint widening of his eyes. Then he took my hand, lacing his fingers into mine, and nodded.

“I know,” he said.

We started walking again, faster now, Second hurrying us along. I considered pointing out that our delay had been triggered by First deciding to give me a psychic history lesson, but decided it wouldn’t do any good. We were on a schedule here. Things were going to happen when they happened.

The path bent, the trees around it lacing themselves together more and more tightly, until we were walking into a tunnel. It was lit with luminous fungus in shapes I had never seen before, dead men’s hands reaching out of the loam and strange, abstract blobs draping themselves over the branches. Graham stayed by my side, looking everywhere, eyes very wide, while Mandy stayed close behind us. Toni and David slowed down a bit, letting us catch up to them, so that we were walking as an almost-united front. Four humans and an alien, heading steadily toward the unknown.

Second stopped at a curtain of mossy green, spangled with tiny dots of bioluminescence.

// warn them not to scream // she said, and pulled the moss aside.

The largest spider I’d ever seen hung suspended in the middle of a waxen web, its many-faceted eyes glittering in the light cast by the fungus around it. It was the size of a fully grown bull, its abdomen huge and swollen with unimaginable ichor, its limbs ending in spikes that looked powerful enough to shear through a human being’s ribcage. There were little elements of its outline and carapace that didn’t quite match with what I would have expected from an Earth arachnid, but the overall form was so close to what I knew as “spider” that I couldn’t look past it.

“That,” said Mandy, in a hushed voice that spoke of swal lowed screams and nightmares yet to come, “is a little bigger than my shoe.”

The spider spread its mandibles wide, venom oozing from their tips. They, like everything else about it, were green, the same green as my skin. It darkened and paled according to the delicate patterns on the spider’s carapace, covering the whole creature in a filigree of impossible elegance.

She was still so beautiful.

I stepped forward, passing Second, who did nothing to stop me, pulling my hand free of Graham’s without fully realizing that I was intending to do so. He let me go. He didn’t know why I was moving, but he was willing to trust me. That meant more than I could ever have explained, and reinforced, absolutely, my decision not to eat him.

“You’re still so beautiful,” I whispered, and touched my palm to the gleaming surface of First’s exoskeleton. She clacked her mandibles contentedly before beginning to comb her two front legs through my hair, delicately brushing out the tangles. It was a mother’s touch.

Of course it was. She was my mother.

“Is everyone else seeing this, or am I asleep?” asked Mandy. “Please say I’m asleep. It would be amazing if I were asleep. Can I be asleep?”

“Not asleep,” said Toni. “There’s a giant fucking spider right there, and it’s green, so it’s probably one of the asshole invaders, and not something we’re allowed to set on fire.”

First clacked her mandibles. She seemed amused. It was harder to interpret her than it was Second, maybe because she was even less human, but our similarities were strong enough for me to “see” her.

// hello, my daughter // she said. // hello, hello. it is so good to finally meet you in flesh, and not only in shadow. //

“Why didn’t you show me what you really looked like before this?” I asked.

// you were not ready. you asked if the pollen changed you. your sister would not answer you, as none answered her. I will answer you. yes. yes, it changes you; it opens channels in your thoughts, removes the barriers that would see us as alien and unknowable, that would keep us, your family, out. it shows you the similarities, when you would otherwise be stymied by the differences. //

“I don’t like… The way I’m thinking about the Earth, about my friends, I don’t like it.” They could hear me, I knew they could hear me, but that seemed less important than making First understand my confusion. “Why is this happening?”

// the pollen prepares you for what must happen. you have seen what came before. you understand why this must be. for us to remain as we are, to remain aware of the world, we must feed. we do not do it from malice, or out of cruelty. we wish only to endure. but our existence is repulsive to so many. we do what we do to survive. //

“What is the—oh my God I don’t believe I’m saying this—what is the giant spider saying to you?” asked Graham.

“She’s telling me the pollen they use to communicate has been rewiring my brain to make this all seem less alien to me,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at him. He was still Graham, still beloved and perfect, but he no longer looked like a member of the same species. I could love him. I could fight to the death to keep him exactly as he was, neither bled nor converted. We would never be the same again. “She’s my mother.”

“Of course,” said Toni, throwing up her hands. “Of course the giant spider is your mother, of course. This is some Stephen King bullshit. If a creepy clown shows up, I’m out.”

“Out what? The nearest airlock?” Mandy shook her head. “I don’t like any of this, but I like breathing.”

“How is she… Oh.” Graham straightened. “The seeds. She’s the one who made your seed.”

// I like your boy // said First. // you have chosen well, among the options given to you. he will fight for you. //

“He has been fighting for me,” I said, turning back to her. “Is there really no other way?”

// there was one. none of them chose it. //

“What?”

First stroked my hair with her hooked claws, and waved her mandibles, and told me how humanity could have saved themselves.

I took a step back. I stared at her.

“What?” demanded Toni. “What did the giant spider say?”

“She said…” I turned, staring at the others, at my friends, at the people who had, however, unwittingly, participated in humanity’s lack of salvation. My mouth was dry as a bone. I swallowed to moisten it, and said, “The seeds come first, to find out whether the world is suitable. They look for good soil, and they spread. They start generating the pollen as soon as enough of them reach adulthood, and that’s what opens the forest, and that’s what summons the ships. They do everything they can to make sure things are good. Some planets don’t have sapient life, so the armada stops, refuels, and moves on. Others… others are like this one. They have inhabitants who can communicate, reason, understand what’s coming. Those ones, the armada has to approach a little differently.”

I paused, trying to collect my thoughts. Suddenly, the compulsion that I’d thought might be intended to isolate us from our neighbors made a terrible, logical sense.

“When the seeds sprout and find templates to base themselves off of, they copy their targets completely,” I said slowly. “They have the memories and minds of the people they become. Only a little more standoffish, because it’s hard to really love a species you don’t belong to. They learn—we learn—with time. The people around us are all we have. We seek them out. We try to understand them. And the whole time, we’re telling everyone what we are. We’re telling them the invasion is coming.”

My voice dropped to a whisper, until I wasn’t sure any of them would be able to hear me. I couldn’t force myself to speak any louder.

“And if anyone asks us not to invade their planet, that goes out through the forest, and when the armada gets close enough, they know we’ve been asked nicely, and they go away.”

Everyone stared at me. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on the feeling of First’s talons running through my hair, and not the sucking dread in the pit of my stomach.

Mandy broke the silence first. “People are dying, ” she said. “Lucas is dead. Tucson is on fire. I don’t even know… If those ships came down all over the world, thousands of people could be dead already. Thousands of cities could be burning. And you think because we never asked you not to, that means we’ve given you permission ?”

// calm your pet. // First’s tone was suddenly cold. // we have tolerated much. we will not tolerate disrespect from meat. //

“Mandy, calm down,” I said. “They did give us fair warning.”

“You mean you gave us fair warning,” snapped Mandy. “ You said, over and over again, that the invasion was coming, and we laughed, you knew we were laughing, you knew we didn’t understand how real it was, and you didn’t do anything to make us understand. You didn’t do anything to prove it.”

“I didn’t know how,” I protested.

“You should have figured it out.”

“Some things can’t be proven. I was your friend. I didn’t have any reason to lie to you. Why would I lie to you?” I paused before adding, “You said you believed me.”

Mandy shook her head. “It didn’t hurt anything to believe you. To indulge you.”

The way she spat the word “indulge” made it clear she meant for it to hurt me. And it did—it really did. Of all my friends, Mandy had been the one whose unquestioning acceptance I’d depended upon the most. Graham loved me. That changed things. Mandy, though, Mandy liked me, and I had always assumed that meant as much to her as it did to me.

Maybe not. Or maybe arranging for the invasion of her planet had changed things. I tried to step back and really look at the situation from her perspective. She didn’t have the pollen rubbing away the alien edges of the world. She was on a starship, surrounded by things that wanted to drink her dry, with vampire plants from outer space everywhere she turned. I, her friend, had turned green, like the Wicked Witch of the West gone vegan, and was starting to side more and more with people whose stated goal was the destruction of humanity as she knew it.

She was allowed to be pissed. She was allowed to be angry. She just couldn’t see how likely that was, in the here and now, to end with her getting herself killed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t try to prove something that was literally unprovable until the signal from space triggered my body to start sloughing off its mammalian attributes,” I said. “I’m sorry I assumed that when you said you believed me, you meant it, and didn’t mean you were tolerating me. I’m sorry about a lot of things. But this is where we are. This is what we have to work with. The invasion is happening.”

“Yeah, it is,” said Toni. She stepped forward, eyes on First. “Hey, spider-lady. Looking good. What happens to us? To the humans you’ve already snatched? Are we ever going to go home?”

// we could return your pets to the planet’s surface, but they will be defenseless // said First. // without one of us to protect them, nothing will come to their aid. //

“I would go with them,” I said, twisting to face her. “I can’t let them be harmed. They’re all I have left.” Them, and my stupid, innocent cat back home in Washington, where hopefully, Roxanna was still doing her job and keeping his food dish full.

The invasion wasn’t just going to hurt people. House pets and livestock were going to suffer. How many dogs and cats had burned to death in Tucson? How many horses and cows were going to starve when their people, who had gone out with shotguns to fight the supposed alien menace, didn’t come home to fill their mangers? It was a little horrifying, realizing how interconnected everything really was.

First’s claws were still combing through my hair, grooming me, soothing me. She was doing everything in her power to lessen this blow, and I could feel myself trying to love her for that. I wanted to love her, to adore her, to trust her absolutely, because she was my mother—and more, because she was my only remaining choice. The invasion was happening. Humans were already dying. If I wanted to preserve the people I cared about, I needed to throw my lot in completely with the people who had borne me. Only then would I be able to hold on to any influence.

And if I tried for it, I would lose the people I already had. I could see it in Mandy’s eyes, in the way David was angling his body to keep Toni away from me, away from First. I could even see the start of it in Graham. He was still looking at me, but there was a shadow there that had never existed in him before, something dark and quiet and thoughtful. Something unforgiving.

I turned back to First. “Are you going to talk to them at all?” I asked. “The humans, the ones on Earth? Are you going to tell them what’s happening? Or is this just a slash-and-burn, and no one gets a chance to understand?”

// we will talk // said First. // you would return to the garden? you would tell them we are coming? //

I owed the world that had raised me that much. “Yes,” I said. “We would.”

2.

Second escorted us back to the grove of heavy-fruited trees. Jeff was there, already clothed, and—

“Tahlia!” The sight of her filled me with a fierce, unexpected joy. The Canadian woman was sitting on the root of one of the great trees, still naked, massaging her uninjured shoulder with one hand. All signs of the bullet wound were gone, replaced by smooth green skin. The restorative capabilities of those fruits must have been amazing.

A brief, guilty flash of Lucas’s face darted across my mind’s eye, there and gone in a second. There was no way our biotech could have been modified to help him: it would have been like asking a human surgeon to perform a grafting operation on a damaged fruit tree. Even if they could be convinced it was worth trying, they simply wouldn’t have the knowledge, or the skills. Still, it ached a little to see her sitting there, intact and still with us, when I knew Lucas was never coming home.

It should have hurt more. I knew that, and I knew the pollen was still at work on my mind, changing me, preparing me for the world that was to come. The world after Earth, when the garden of my childhood would seem like little more than a dream that I had been fortunate enough to wake from when I moved on to the ever-changing stars.

Mandy looked at Tahlia with real hatred in her eyes, and I realized I wasn’t the only one thinking about the difference between how Lucas had been treated and how Tahlia had been healed. My human friends were prisoners of war, useful only because I cared for them, and I wondered how many versions of this scene were playing out on ships hovering high above the world, how many alien seeds had sprouted into people just like me who had humans they cared about and were trying to defend from the invasion they had spent their lives predicting.

We stood in a green and growing world, surrounded by the absolute vacuum of space, and I don’t think I had ever felt more alone, or more isolated.

“You’re looking well,” said Toni. She walked carelessly over to plop down on the root next to Tahlia, poking the other woman in the shoulder with one finger. “No more holes. Got any of that magic goo for us monkeys?”

“Show some respect,” snapped Jeff.

“Or not,” said Toni. “Me and Tahlia have an understanding, don’t we?”

“Hard not to, after you performed emergency medical care on me in a motel,” said Tahlia mildly. “Leave her alone, Jeff. She’s not hurting anything.”

“This is our place,” said Jeff. “Not hers.”

“Well, it’s our planet, not yours, but that’s not stopping you from being assholes,” said Mandy.

“Peace. Everyone, peace.” Tahlia looked to me. “What’s happening?”

“The invasion is happening,” I said. “They’re going to send us back to Earth. They have a scout ship ready to take us there. Do you want to come?”

“Yes,” said Jeff.

“No,” said Tahlia. When I blinked, she smiled and said, “There’s nothing there for me anymore. No friends, no family, and they’ll need someone to help them begin establishing the seed forests here. I understand trees. I know what they need to survive. I’ll stay, and I’ll make sure they gather the correct things to make a thriving ecosystem, and when they start bringing in the botanists and forestry experts from other parts of the world, I’ll already have established myself as the person to listen to. That’s all I want. Earth has made it very clear that it’s done with me, so I choose to be done with Earth, and stay where I’m needed.”

“Are you sure?” asked Jeff, his usual shell of anger and defiance cracking enough to let the scared, lonely person he was shine through. We wanted to connect so badly. We were so afraid of letting go. “We could protect you.”

“No,” said Tahlia. “You couldn’t.”

“I’ll stay too,” blurted David.

We all turned to stare at him, even Tahlia—even Second. Only Toni looked unsurprised by this sudden revelation… although she looked a little sad. It was one of the most predictable expressions I had seen on her mercurial face.

David’s cheeks darkened in embarrassment under the weight of our combined gaze. He allowed his head to lower, looking at the ground as he said, “I don’t want to go back into a war. I haven’t got any family, and it’s pretty clear that I wouldn’t be allowed to go back to work, assuming there’s any reason for my work anymore. All I ever wanted was to go to space. To see the cosmos. Here, I have a chance at doing that.”

“They’re going to kill you, you know,” said Toni. Her voice was not unkind: she was merely pointing out a fact, not trying to start an argument. “The plant people. They’re going to show you a very nice pod, and they’re going to put you inside it, and they’re going to drain your blood, and they’re going to kill you. Are you okay with that? Are you comfortable with that?”

“It’s the teleporter problem,” said David. “On Star Trek. Every time someone uses a teleporter, their original body is destroyed, converted into energy and reconstructed on the other end. So is it suicide to step onto a teleporter relay? Or is it just… this is how we move forward, and as long as there’s continuity of thought, we endure? I’ll still be me. I’ll think like me and feel like me and know everything I’ve ever known, and if the cost of getting everything I ever wanted is giving up the flesh, that’s fine. They’ll give me something just as valuable in return.”

“This is obscene,” said Mandy.

“This is very wise of you,” said Tahlia.

“This isn’t how it works,” said Jeff. “You can’t just decide that we’re going to change you. Most humans will be meat, not citizens.”

“But he’s mine, and I say if he wants to stay, if he wants to switch sides, we let him.” I looked over my shoulder to where Second was waiting. “First told me I could protect my friends. If this is part of how I protect them, that’s all right. Let’s protect them.”

// we will keep it // said Second. I knew Jeff could hear her too, from the way his face scrunched up, like he’d just bitten into something sour. // we will not consume it, unless it wishes to be consumed. unless it wishes to be reborn. //

“You can stay,” I said, to David. “They’ll take care of you, and my sister”—I indicated Second—“promises you won’t be hurt unless you ask them to hurt you. The conversion process is… it’s not pleasant.” I didn’t remember much about my own—Anastasia’s own—encounter with the flower, but I remembered enough to know that it had hurt like hell. I couldn’t imagine it would be any more pleasant for an adult.

Then again, maybe that was a good thing. Everything should cost. Birthing should never be entirely free of pain. If it were, how would we know when it was over?

David smiled slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “After I… After, will I be able to understand them too?”

“I think so,” I said.

“If you can’t, I’ll teach you,” said Tahlia. She rose, walking over to rest a hand gently on David’s arm. She looked at me. How had I wound up in charge? Why should my opinion matter more than anyone else’s? I didn’t know, but I had, and it did, and I was stuck. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll make sure he comes to no harm he doesn’t ask for.”

Meaning she would lead him to the flower, but she wouldn’t press his hand against its heart. Under the circumstances, that was the best I could have hoped for.

David, meanwhile, was looking at Toni, his big hands empty and spread wide, like he was showing her he had nothing left. “Are we going to be cool?” he asked. “Are you okay with this?”

“You think I didn’t know my father paid you to take a job at the observatory he funded to keep me out from underfoot?” Her answer seemed to have nothing to do with his question. She shook her head. “You were supposed to be my keeper. You weren’t supposed to be my friend. You asshole. You weren’t supposed to be somebody I would actually care about. How dare you do this now.”

“We’re all going to do it sooner or later,” he said. “I guess I’m tired of waiting. I want to get on with the business of seeing space. I’m going to touch the stars. Not just look at them. We’re going to be part of them.”

“Assuming you take the coward’s view of the transporter problem, sure,” she said. “The one where you don’t have to examine anything, don’t have to question anything. The one where it’s still you on the other end.”

“The one where we have a chance.” David shook his head. “All I want is for us to have a chance. For something of what humanity is supposed to be to survive. Is that so wrong?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m not wrong either. It’s not wrong to want to have a heartbeat for a little while longer.”

Graham blinked, turning to look at me. “You don’t have a heartbeat anymore?” he asked.

“Not quite,” I said, unwilling to explain further. My blood—my sap—still moved in my veins. If it hadn’t, I would have been as frozen as any pine, unable to do anything other than stand perfectly still and pray for a thaw. But it wasn’t driven by a drumbeat, not shoved through my body by something fierce and thudding and unforgiving. It moved more slowly, eased along by the thudding pulse of a dozen small internal structures, while my heart sat like a sculpture at the center of my chest, preserved as a memorial to my humanity, otherwise unneeded and forgotten.

“Right,” said Graham, after a long and silent pause. He didn’t meet my eyes. I hadn’t honestly expected him to.

Our circle was closing, narrowing in one by one. Soon enough, we would dwindle into nothing, and where would we be then? I looked at my friends, the people who had been with me since this unasked-for journey began, and silently wondered who’d be standing when the end arrived. Because the end… oh, the end was so damn near.