“No, of course not.”
“What then?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Would you please allow me to try to understand?” He noted her negative reaction and resorted to blackmail. “You don’t have a choice, you know. I saw your actions with those two young boys.”
She was serene. “That was necessary.”
“Would George agree that it was necessary?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was afraid it would come to that.” She had, in fact, been hoping desperately that he would not push it that far. She sighed. “All right. We’ll talk. You will stay for dinner.” It was not a question.
“If you like,” King said.
“Depending on which sources you read,” Gwen said, “the Germans killed three to seven million Jews during World War II. Imagine, if you can, being there, being able to see it all, and, more importantly, being able to feel it all. Multiply hopeless death, terror, agony by seven million.”
“I’ll admit openly that I can’t imagine it,” King said. “The mind is peculiar that way. We just cannot accept mass death. The death of one man, closely observed, is more moving than the extermination of millions.”
“But if you could feel a million deaths.”
“Can you?”
“We share all,” she said.
“We?”
“Yes, we. We plants. All of us.”
“All trees? All weeds?” He removed a cigar from his pocket and began to unwrap it. He chewed the end of it thoughtfully. When she remained silent he asked, “Why are you the only one to communicate with them?”
“I told you there have been others.”
“Evelyn? Who else?”
“A girl. She’s here, too.”
“Where?”
“There,” Gwen said, looking toward the center of the clear, green waters of the pond. “She drowned there.”
“And she’s there now?”
“Yes, with Evelyn. With them.”
“As I remember it, now that you’ve mentioned it, she drowned with her boyfriend. Is he there?”
“We are female,” she said.
“Males can’t feel or communicate?”
“We are female.”
“All plants?” King asked.
“No, of course not. Us.”
“I see,” he said, not seeing at all. “When you say, we are female, you are talking about some special sort of plant. You are not referring to you, Evelyn, and the other girl, or to plants in general, only something special.”
She rose. “Will you walk with me?”
He followed her into the boggy area at the lower end of the pond. As they crossed toward high ground she said, “Don’t step on them. Watch out for them.” He saw the flytraps. They were almost hidden under taller weeds and grasses. He stepped carefully.
“Are the flytraps the special ones?” he asked.
She smiled. “That’s almost funny.” She led the way to the high ground on the far side of the pond. There mushrooms grew. She selected, bent, and plucked them.
“Mushrooms don’t feel, then,” King said, pleased to catch her in an inconsistency.
“Fungi are poor, dumb things, not truly alive.”
“I see. But back to the flytraps.”
“Yes. There is a certain ironic humor in what they are called.” She was selecting more mushrooms. “You call them Venus-flytraps, as if they were not of this earth.”
“They’re not?”
“It was a miracle that they survived,” she said. She had picked a half-dozen mushrooms. Her hands full, she passed the mushrooms on to King. He held them gingerly. They were clammy and slick in his hand. “The crash burned everything, everything except for a few small root portions which were thrown clear.”
“Ah,” King said. “I think I have it. There was a crash. A spaceship? And the flytraps, an alien species, survived.”
“Yes.”
“Then they’re the special ones. When you refer to us, or we, you’re talking about you and the flytraps.” Actually, it made a special sort of sense. Disordered minds often built quite credible fantasies.
“They’re only plants,” she said.
“Then I’m confused again,” King admitted. He accepted another handful of mushrooms. “I take it we’re eating these?”
“Yes.”
“I usually get them from a can.”
“They’re quite safe.” She smiled at him. “Believe me, I know.”
“Yes, I suppose you would know.” He followed her back across the bog, stepping gingerly. “May I ask who are the special ones?”
“I’m going to ask you to use your imagination again,” she said. “Imagine a world where death is unknown.”
“And, again, you’re asking for something very difficult, especially for a man of eighty-two who faces death daily.”
“I’m talking about immortality for every living thing.”
“But isn’t that impossible? Don’t big fishes eat little fishes on your world?”
“On our world everything we need is here.” She stooped and lifted a handful of dirt.
“Then they’re all plants on that world.”
“In a way. Oh, they can move. They are intelligent. They are, in fact, far ahead of us. They came here in a great ship, across vast distances. They carried their own earth with them. They returned to it for rest and sustenance, remembering all the while the beauty of the home world, longing to return, but curious about the universe. Think of the shock to them to discover death. In their world there was only life. No living thing ate any other living thing. It was the earth which provided, earth, the eternal earth which fed and sustained and kept. And, in return, they nourished the earth with their bodies.”
“Ah,” King said. “Without dying?”
“Think of a wheat field. You may believe that a wheat field dies on maturity. It does not. The life force is stored in the seeds. On the home world it is much the same. There were new beginnings for the body, but the life force was a constant. Life, itself, went on, learning, loving beauty, and living in eternal peace. Then they came here.”
“To crash and die,” King said. They were at the steps to the balcony. He panted slightly as he climbed.
“Their bodies died,” she explained. “And most of their specimens. Only one of the plants aboard survived and adapted. At home, the plants did not have to eat insects.” She led the way into the kitchen, took the mushrooms from his hands, and put them into the sink for washing. He sat down at the dining table as she began to prepare the meal. “The life force managed to transfer. At first, it lived in sort of a limbo, rootless. Then water collected in the crater caused by the crash. Native waterplants took root. One was adaptable. It was a poor substitute for what we had known, but it provided a body, a stationary body, a prison. There was no escape. It was so lonely, and there was death all around. There was wildfire and animals nibbling leaves. Our plants are not as highly developed as theirs, but they still are living beings and can feel pain and know death. Death was a new and terrible experience. We—they concentrated together in the crater. The flytraps, lower on the life scale and more adaptable, spread over a small area, the area they now inhabit. It was good to have the flytraps. They represented something known in a strange and terrible world. Through the flytraps they can leave the pond, widen their horizon, experience something other than sameness. But they don’t like it out here. Mostly they stay in the pond, where they’ve forced out all of the native life forms. This, we feel, is selfish, but necessary. A turtle eating a water plant is sheer torture.”