On the inhospitable surface of that terrible world, the plants had to be far more ingenious than the flora of Wiltshire to secure their own fortunes. The only vectors they could employ were creatures that walked or wriggled, and the essential unreliability of the native animal life was reflected in the fact that many native plants produced pollen and seeds that were capable of doing their own wriggling and walking. The entities themselves were mostly too small to be seen with the naked eye—let alone eyes that were trapped inside a space-suit’s helmet, peering through a thick visor—but the feelings associated with those entities were different. Once I was empathically tuned in, I could sense that whole aspect of their experience.
The empathy in question wasn’t my talent, of course—try as I might, now that I’m back on home ground, I can’t get more than the faintest emanation of plant sensibility—but the alien plants must have been powerful empathic transmitters. Obviously, they needed that ability for some existential reason of their own that our plants haven’t yet discovered. Maybe some day, in the distant future, when Earthly plants become sentient and intelligent, they’ll be powerful empaths too—but as yet, they aren’t.
I really needed that empathy, while I was so far away from home, working as a slave, even though the extent to which I had it was so pathetically limited. I suppose that I was no more than an eavesdropper on the plants’ emotional intercourse, but I needed that murmur of emotional gossip. It wouldn’t be correct to call it music, but what it did to me inside was something akin to what music can do. Music, you see, is the nearest thing to a method of empathic broadcasting that humans have yet devised, and there’s a sense in which the sum of all the empathic broadcasts on the surface of that weird world added up to a kind of orchestral harmony. Maybe that’s what people are trying to signify when they talk about the harmony of the spheres, although I don’t know how they’d know about it, because there isn’t any harmony in any sphere near here, at present.
I don’t actually need that kind of empathy now, of course—not here—but I miss it anyway. Maybe, if I had it still, I’d be a slightly better and happier person than I actually am. I listen to music all the time, but it’s not the same—just an echo, too blurred even to be thought of as distant. I guess the empathic broadcasts of alien worlds don’t reach as far as Earth—or haven’t yet. If they only travel at the speed of light, maybe they will, eventually.
If I could only sense the feelings of Earthly plants...but if Earthly plants have feelings, they don’t have the same ability to transmit those feelings that the plants of that other world have...or had....
Sorry, I’m getting confused again. I must try to keep things in better order. What you want to know next, I suppose, is what the empathic sensations eventually added up to. What was it that I learned to feel as I went about my work on the surface and made occasional trips into the depths? What translation did I make of the plants’ sensibility and sensuality?
For a start, they were sad. Sadness was the backcloth, or the subsoil, of the plants’ emotional experience; it touched everything else they felt, including their joy and their ecstasy—and they did, occasionally, have moments of joy and ecstasy, although my presence as a not-so-grim reaper inevitably inhibited them in that respect.
I thought at first that it might be my reaping work that was generating the sadness—that what was making them feel sad was the fact that some huge clodhopping alien in a rubber suit was coming to chop them off at the stem and carry them off into the bowels of the planet—but I realized soon enough that I was wrong. Once the fear of anticipation and the pain of the actual severance had come and gone, they weren’t unduly disturbed to be stuck in the hamper or dispatched into the core of the planet. They didn’t seem to dislike the beds to which they were transplanted, set down so that they could generate new roots. Indeed, once they began lo put down their new roots, they began to feel what I translated as gratitude as well as contentment...but all permanently tinged with sadness.
My second thought was that maybe they were sad on my behalf—that they were receiving and reflecting, perhaps in amplified fashion, my own feelings as a slave laborer light-years away from home—but that was just narcissism on my part. They probably could sense my feelings, more easily and more accurately that I could sense theirs, but they were no mere echo-chambers. The sadness was theirs, and theirs alone, even though I could sense it too. It was a regretful and fatalistic kind of sadness—the kind of sadness that relates to a long life-history rather than ephemeral events.
They weren’t short-lived, those plants—I think they probably lived for tens of thousands of years—but there was something in their sadness that went beyond mere individualism, even on that sort of time-scale. Theirs was the mournfulness of something vast and enduring; their equivalent of Earth’s Gaia was much more coherent than Earth’s, and much more stable. Theirs was the sadness of something close to eternity, something that felt with a depth that I could hardly begin to contemplate.
Eventually, I figured out that they were sad because their world was dying. I don’t just mean that their Gaia-equivalent was fading away, because the mass of everything living was gradually and inexorably diminishing following the drastic thinning of its atmosphere and the drastic cooling of its surface. I mean that it was approaching some kind of apocalyptic event—something that would finish off what remained of life on the surface at a single brutal stroke, once and for all.
That was the purpose of the whole operation, you see. We slaves had been pressed into service because time was of the essence. What we were doing was transplanting living things from the surface into deep artificial caverns, in the hope that they might be able to survive the coming catastrophe. What we were doing was assisting in the construction of some kind of ultimate storm-shelter or nuclear bunker. The alien slave-masters weren’t native to the world, of course, any more than we were: they were on an errand of mercy, trying to save that world’s Gaia-equivalent from extinction, to win it a few thousand million further years of existence, and of feeling, if not of thought.
That’s why the sadness on which I eavesdropped was such a special kind of sadness, alleviated but never wholly displaced by so many other strains of emotional music. I don’t know why the aliens didn’t explain that to us, rather than just working us as slaves; maybe they’d tried asking for volunteers and got nowhere, and had decided in desperation that the end justified the means. At least they didn’t work us to death. They must have driven a lot of us crazy, but they sent us home again when we’d done our bit, not much older or worn-out than when they’d first picked us up.
I don’t know for sure, because I could only sense feelings, not thoughts, but I think the planet’s sun was due to explode, or at least undergo some dramatic metamorphosis, into a white dwarf or a red giant. What the plants were sad about was the impending end of life on the surface—life that had been around for billions of years. Set against that background of sadness, though, they had an awareness that there was still a good chance that life would go on, deep inside the world, insulated from all outer effects by miles and miles of solid rock, for hundreds of millions of years more. It wouldn’t be the same—how could it be?—and it would only postpone the inevitable ultimate end, but it was something.
The plants couldn’t have survived on their own. There were no native life-forms capable of hollowing out caverns miles beneath the surface, and lighting them with the aid of thermal energy radiating from the molten core. Maybe there never had been, or maybe they’d died out, or maybe they’d simply gone away. Maybe—just maybe— it was the remote descendants of earlier natives that had come back on their errand of mercy, bringing their legions of slaves to do the drudge-work that they weren’t prepared to do themselves.
I knew full well that I’d never have gone if they’d asked me. I knew full well that I’d have been terrified of the prospect, and that I’d have hated the work, even though I’m just a plumber here. I can’t even say, with my hand on my heart, that I’m g
lad that I went. I certainly didn’t enjoy it while I was there. It was hard, thankless, and unutterably boring...and yet, I don’t think the time was wasted. I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m not sorry that I did it once. I learned a new kind of sadness, with all manner of subtle qualifications, and I think I’m a little richer for that, and maybe a little less sad myself than I otherwise might have been.
I haven’t made a great success of my life, I suppose, but that’s not because of anything the aliens did to me, and I’m certainly no worse off than I would have been if I’d never been taken. I know now, though, that any sadness I might have felt—might still feel— about not having made a great success of my life, isn’t a big deal, compared with the kind of sadness that the consciousness of a whole world might feel, confronted by a sun about to explode, even while knowing that it’s not alone, and that it might have a little time yet, thanks to the kindness and courtesy of strangers.
It wasn’t just the sadness, though, and I don’t want to leave you with the impression that it was. I don’t know what to call the other thing, or how to give an impression of it, but there was something else that was almost ever-present in the emotions of the plants: a kind of desire. I don’t mean the kind of desire that’s associated with everyday propagation and reproduction—the longing to pollinate and be pollinated, the yearning that every adult organism has to produce fruitful seed, and the yearning that every fruitful seed has to grow into an adult. They had all that, of course, with all its petty delights and disappointments, all its petty jealousies and triumphs, all its petty fantasies and releases...but they had something else, something more.
They had, I think, a sense of their own becoming, not in the individual sense that we have, but in a grander sense that applied to their whole community, if not to their whole Gaia-equivalent. I suppose that some such hyperconsciousness must be a natural corollary of empathic communication. At any rate, they had some sense of where they were bound...or, at least, where they were aiming for. It would be wrong to say that it was what they wanted, or even that it was a condition they would settle for, if only it were practicable, but it was something of which they dreamed, something that attracted them.
They dreamed of being stone. They dreamed of being a kind of matter that they were not—a kind of matter invulnerable to the fate that awaited them. They dreamed of being free from the threat of death.
They knew, if they knew anything at all, that it was impossible. They knew, if they knew anything at all, that they couldn’t undergo that kind of metamorphosis, even to escape the destruction or transmogrification of their sun. They were more metallic by far than the kinds of plants we know, but they were still organic in their innermost being, and couldn’t turn to stone by means of any other process than petrifaction, which is itself a kind of death.
Even if they weren’t the kinds of creatures who could think and know, they felt the impossibility of their dream—that I know, because I felt it too, and I am the kind of creature who can think and feel, even though I’m only a plumber and haven’t made a great success of my life. I felt the impossibility of their dream, but I also felt its attraction, its seduction, its tantalization. Maybe, at the end of the day, it was just another shade or facet of their sadness, or maybe a shade or facet of their anxiety, but I don’t think so, I think it was something different, something better.
I couldn’t bring it back, of course, any more than I could bring back their particular kind of sadness. I do remember it, though, as more than just the knowledge that something once happened to me, more than just a mere matter of fact. I don’t think about it much while I’m at work—which, God knows, isn’t slave labor, no matter how tedious it sometimes seems—but when I’m at home, on my own, thinking and feeling that it really might be nice to have someone to talk to, I put some music on, and I listen...and, in the nicest possible way, I dream about turning to stone.
You might think that if you were to dream that, it would seem like a nightmare, and maybe you’re right. I can’t speak for you—but I can speak for those alien plants, on that alien world, somewhere in the lonely depths of space. I can assure you, on their behalf and on mine, that it isn’t a nightmare at all the way we dream it. Maybe it’s more than a little sad, but it’s a good kind of sadness. It’s comforting—more comfortable in their way of feeling, and mine, than any idea of heavenly bliss could ever be.
When the lights finally go out in their underworld, because the core of their planet has cooled, and the outer surface has been sterilized by the explosion of their sun, they’ll still be dreaming, impracticably and impossibly, of somehow turning into stone without ceasing to be themselves in the process, or losing the ability to feel their own inwardly-generated and uncannily communicated emotions.
For that reason, if for no other, they still have something to live and die for, and always will.
<
* * * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Having Second Thoughts
When the meeting broke up, Steve thought that it was only polite to offer Janine a lift home, but she turned him down. That didn’t surprise him overmuch, but the reason she gave left him flabbergasted.
“I don’t need to trouble you,” she said, “Walter’s giving me a lift.”
Steve hadn’t been under any illusion that Walter Wainwright actually lived with Amelia Rockham, even though he still suspected that they must have had some kind of a fling some time in the dim and distant past—doubtless before he had been born, and probably before there’d ever been a Mr. Rockham or a Mrs. Wainwright—but that knowledge had somehow never translated into the idea of Waller Wainwright getting into a car and driving home, let alone the idea that he might offer Janine a lift.
Steve wondered, momentarily, whether he ought to revert to his first impression and reclassify Walter as an old lech, but he couldn’t do it. He had seen and heard enough of the old man by now to be certain that Walter’s charm was genuine, in spite of its quaintness, and his caring attitude sincere. If Walter was giving Janine lifts to and from AlAbAn meetings, his motives had to be as pure as the driven snow.
Milly wasn’t too pleased about Steve making the offer to Janine. “You mustn’t rub salt in the wound, Steve,” she said, carefully not specifying whose wound she was talking about.
“I just thought she might tell us what she was doing here,” Sieve said, lamely. If the truth didn’t always seem so lame, he thought, he wouldn’t be forced to tell so many lies.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Milly said, knowing full well that it obviously wasn’t.
“Go on, then,” Steve said, as he unlocked his own car and opened the driver’s door. “Explain it to me.”
Milly waited until she’d got into the front passenger seat— Janine’s seat, as it had previously been—and buckled her seat-belt before saying: “She wants to hear our stories. She probably intends to keep on coming until she hears them, but she’ll get bored eventually if we decide to wait it out. She wants to know why fate brought you and me together, instead of you and her. She wants to know why there’s such a powerful bond between us, and why neither of us could ever be happy with anyone else—but she’ll never really understand it.”
“Oh,” Steve said. “Is that why?” It hadn’t been what he’d expected to hear. He didn’t believe for a minute that it was true, or that Milly thought that it was true. He switched the car stereo on as he pulled away from the kerb, but the music didn’t start him dreaming of turning to stone. In a way, he thought, it might have been better if it had. He had a sneaking suspicion that there might be a powerful dose of sadness waiting around the corner, which would affect his coming night of passion almost as much as the bleak weeks to come. He tried to put on a brave face, though, for Milly’s sake.
“Danny’s wrong, of course,” he said, “to take it for granted that he was on another planet. He didn’t need all that improvisation about suspended animation. He was time-traveling, just like all the others. He just went further dow
nstream than anyone else who’s told their story in recent weeks, to a time when the Earth’s ecosphere is in decay. He was—will be—moving the essential components of the ecosphere into a safe haven in anticipation of some dramatic cosmic event. The sun won’t be a G-type star forever, you see. When it runs short of its basic fuel—hydrogen, that is—its fusion reaction will become more complex, producing heavier elements. There’s a critical point at which the whole process will undergo a qualitative change, and the sun will swell up explosively to become a red giant for a while. I think the time-travelers who borrowed Danny were— will be—preparing the Earth’s ecosphere to survive that event, in preparation for a new flourish thereafter: a kind of evolutionary Indian summer.”
“I thought you were convinced that all our experiences are being produced by the collective unconscious,” Milly said. “Just dreams, manufactured in response to contemporary crises.”
Alien Abduction - The Wiltshire Revelations Page 21
