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Adventures of a Botanist
by Bob Brill


1: X Eats Y

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Brill is a retired computer programmer. Now that he is free to set his own agenda, he has devoted his energies to making computer art (www.digitalrealm.net/users/bobbrill) and writing fiction and poetry. Adventures of a Botanist is his first published story.
            In the days before I was propelled into my peculiar adventures, I was an Assistant Professor of Botany at one of the less distinguished institutions where the sons and daughters of the midwest came to learn the science of agriculture. Such schools are called cow colleges by the snobbish and I was not above referring to my place of employment the same way. I thought that its real name, Rutabaga University, was even more indicative of its lowly status. I felt in particular that my fellow academicians and especially the school administrators displayed no more feeling, imagination or soul than a rutabaga. Had I known then what I’ve since come to learn about the vegetable kingdom, I would not have held the rutabaga in such low esteem.
             The place was named, incidentally, for J. P. Rutabaga, the rancher and philanthropist, who founded the institution. I never met the old man but the universally accepted opinion on campus held that he was as big a clod of dung as ever came down the pike, as uncompromisingly dull and dimwitted as the name he bore. The institution upon which he foisted his name had never learned to live it down. Consequently, the school administration constantly tried to foster a prestigious image, so that people would say Rutabaga with a straight face, but it was no use. The place was jinxed, the football team was a disgrace, and I was forced to acknowledge that I could not get a better job. I dwelt in a state of limbo called “promising”.  I was relegated to this purgatory by the Faculty Wives Association, who bestowed on me their Promising Young Instructor of the Year Award. In the three years since then, I was turned down twice for tenure. Such was the sorry state of affairs when the events of this narrative began.

             I became interested in the work of Cleve Backster, possibly because I heard Backster’s researches being ridiculed by some of my colleagues in the Botany Department.  Cleve Backster was, and for all I know, still is, the director of a detective school in New York specializing in lie detector technique.  One day Backster connected a lie detector to a potted plant on his office windowsill.  As Backster contemplated tearing a leaf off the plant, the needle on the lie detector made a violent leap, and this response Backster interpreted as the plant’s fear or alarm.  He repeated this experiment many times with many variations, eventually demonstrating that plants of every species tested could detect human intentions at a distance.  I sent for reprints of Backster’s published papers, read them carefully, wrote several letters to Backster and received long, courteous, informative replies which went a long way toward assuring me that Backster was not a crackpot. I decided to perform Backster’s experiments myself and see if his results could be duplicated.

             This is a time-honored procedure in the scientific method, which within limits was practiced even at Rutabaga University by my colleagues.  These limits exist because some hypotheses seem so ridiculous that no one bothers to test them. The study of botany till then revealed no structures in the plant body capable of transmitting electrical impulses, no nervous system, no consciousness, no intelligence, not the slightest flicker of sentience.  It was not worthwhile trying to repeat Backster’s experiments because on the face of it they were absurd.  But I did not share this opinion with my esteemed colleagues.

             It may come as a surprise to my uninitiated readers, but the whole body of knowledge known as Plant Anatomy is based on a study of little more than 600 species of plants, while the world holds over 350,000 species of flowering plants alone.  Including the non-flowering types the count is somewhere above half a million.  The underlying assumption of Plant Anatomy is that the 600 are representative of the half million.  This is far from the case.  The annals of botany are liberally sprinkled with references to anomalous anatomical features.  There is nothing anomalous about them.  They merely fail to conform to the generalizations that arise from the classical study of the 600.  For anomalous read unexplained. Witness the Fungi Imperfecti.  To this taxonomic limbo are assigned all the oddball creatures whose structure, life cycle, reproductive habits, etc. have so far proved too elusive to yield up their secrets to our scrutiny.  The imperfection is not in the fungi, but in ourselves.

             We are living, as it happens, in a golden age of biological discovery. The press has played this up and represents our science as being on the verge of creating life in a laboratory.  This may even be true, but creating life and understanding it are not the same. Theory is forever spinning off technological achievements, but theory is itself never perfected.

             The great advances made in genetics, most notably the cracking of the DNA code and the elucidation of protein formation, have shown us that nature is even more marvelous than we suspected. The more we learn, the more the mystery deepens.

             If you are contemplating sending your son or daughter to Rutabaga University you will not be told any of the above in the brochures.  You will be told that the Botany Department houses an expert staff who will train junior to master plant science in all its vital aspects, i.e., fertilizer, pesticides, crop yield, etc.  Botany 103, An Introductory Survey of the Plant Kingdom, covers the Fungi Imperfecti in about 15 minutes.  Watch out though, because there’s usually one question on the final exam about them.  The little known, but much exploited, genus Penicillium lurks among their number.

             I am no longer a professor of botany, but inexcusably I still fall into the habit of lecturing, as though I were still standing in the classroom before a room full of students. To spare my readers the tedium of this practice, I have removed the most outrageous of these digressions to an appendix, where they may be safely ignored by all but the most technically minded of my readers.

            My attempts to verify Backster’s results met with cold disdain. Nevertheless, with funds, time and equipment borrowed from more legitimate research, I set up several of his critical experiments and achieved the same results that he did.

             The first time I saw the needle of the polygraph jump I felt a thrill. Had another polygraph been attached to me you’d have seen its needle jumping too. I was so glad that it was true.  Not a small part of that thrill was feeling superior to the learned scholars and deans of Rutabaga University who were wrong, wrong, wrong. Their place in history was in the chorus of naysayers who scoffed at Copernicus, who tormented Galileo, and who told Orville and Wilbur it would never fly. O how glorious to know that what they spurned was the truth. And what a truth it is.

             To what extent plants are aware and what is the mechanism of this awareness, all this was still unknown, an exciting new domain of inquiry. But in the meantime, just to be aware of their awareness thrilled me to the bone. Walking home that memorable day I smiled at the trees. I felt a strong wave of admiration for the world I lived in and for Cleve Backster. The vegetation of the world had kept silent through the ages, till one day Cleve Backster did a simple thing that no one had ever thought of doing, and lo he saw the electronic echo of a plant screaming. I thought of Henri Fabre’s remark that the way to make nature speak is through the language of experiment. I felt at one with Henri Fabre, with Louis Pasteur, with Cleve Backster, with the whole lineage of true empirical scientists. That’s a high that’s hard to beat.

             It lasted until the moment a few hours later when I cut through a fresh head of lettuce. “Scrunch!” said the lettuce and fell into quivering fragments on the cutting board.  I dropped the knife and stared at my handiwork.  In that scrunch I heard the tearing of flesh and a thousand voices screaming in agony.  All was silent now but I knew what the polygraph would say.  I knew that as I raised my knife the lettuce was already screaming, and so were all the spectators, the tomatoes and the cucumbers and the basil and the dill, all waiting so quietly as usual where they had been put.

             I saw that something could be salvaged.  I gathered up the scallions from the table, went out to the garden and planted them in a flower bed among the dahlias.  I watered them with great care.  They were quite limp. I felt as though I were atoning for a lifetime of callous behavior toward the plant kingdom.  I returned to the house and sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the salad fixings.  I began to feel hungry and I sensed in this that a great crisis was about to overwhelm me.

             I saw that my situation was impossible.  I’ve been a vegetarian since the age of eleven.  Now I could no longer eat vegetables.  What was left?  I sat thinking about this for awhile as the room grew dark and I could no longer see the dying vegetables on the table.  At last I resolved to go to the library and learn how long a man could be expected to last on nothing but water. 

             The Rutabaga University library is not very well supplied on this subject, but I did find a paper by Professor Langfeld published in 1914.  He reports that in 1912 a Maltese lawyer named Agostino Levanzin came to Boston to be the subject of a scientific study of fasting.  The only thing to pass his lips for 31 days was 750 cc. of distilled water daily.  When the study was ended, Levanzin asked that it be continued.  He was physically weaker than at the beginning, but his alertness had increased and he enjoyed heightened sensitivity to smell and improved vision.  He experienced no hallucinations.  Perhaps he had been bolstered by his faith that periodic fasting is good for the health.  Indeed, he volunteered for this experiment to prove this point.  He reluctantly accepted food on the 31st day, which made him quite sick.  Professor Langfeld reported that prior to this study Levanzin had fasted without medical surveillance for 40 days and he cites several unofficial records, set by other fasters, one of them for 60 days.  I figured I had at least a month, maybe more.

             This had been the most exhilarating day of my life.  It had also been the most calamitous.  So crowded was it with intense feelings that I could no longer remember breakfast and I had to strain to recall that lunch, my last meal, was a bowl of barley soup and a vegeburger.  I certainly had no inkling when the day began that it would end by my going to bed without supper.

             I dreamed that my mother was preparing Sunday dinner.  I was the first at table and I could hardly wait till she was done and all the family had seated themselves.  My father gave the signal to begin.  My mother loaded the plates with heaps of grisly raw intestines and passed them around.  I ate with relish, stuffing one after another in my mouth, sucking them in like strands of spaghetti.  My father reprimanded me for my manners.  I ignored him and licked my plate clean.  My father slapped my face.  I woke up with a jolt.  It was still dark.  I was sweating and hunger had tied my stomach in knots.

             My mother was no vegetarian, but she loved all living creatures.  She was very fond of flowers and had a splendid garden, both flowers and vegetables and fruit trees.  She put out food for birds in winter and kept a bag of peanuts in her purse for any squirrels or pigeons she encountered in the streets of the city.  No stray dog or cat left our back steps hungry and they finally became a plague as they came around in ever greater numbers for handouts.  My father finally forbade my mother to keep up this practice, but I know she circumvented his ruling by feeding the strays in the woods behind our property where the strays learned to wait for her.

             How she reconciled herself to my father’s profession I’ve never understood, but my mother was extremely well balanced.  Despite her love for living creatures, she was quick to accept such necessities as death, eating, and the word of my father.

  
           My father was a professor of zoology, a brilliant lecturer, a masterful dissector.  His students were spellbound as they saw him spill open the secret throbbing innards of beasts, all the while interpreting these revelations in long perfect sentences, most of which contained one or more dependent clauses.  I hated him.  He introduced me to the anatomy of the frog when I was eight.  I begged him not to.  He told me it was time for me to look nature in the face.  He locked me in his study and made me sit at his work table.  He took a frog from its cage and standing across the table from me he ordered me to watch as he killed it with a swift plunge of his knife.  I screamed. He lectured me on the concept of sacrifice.  Scientists like my father attempt to justify their torture and slaughter of animals by using the word sacrifice instead of murder.  The sacrifice, of course, is to Science, our holy quest for Knowledge, and the ritual is performed with solemnity and awareness.  For my father’s part I will say that he never joked about life and death.  He never mocked the poor corpse as I know others have done.  He told me then that he sacrificed the frog that I might learn a few elementary truths about life and that I must watch closely so that the sacrifice should not be wasted.  I felt a surge of hormones flooding me with guilt and anger and shame.  I looked him in the eyes and said that I was ready.

             He nodded slowly at me and made a long incision which laid open the frog from top to bottom.  My soul swam in horror as I watched my father give his introductory lecture in anatomy. For an eternity he tortured the dead flesh of the poor unprotesting creature. Then he showed me the long pale ribbon of the sciatic nerve and repeated the famous experiment of Galvani. When he applied the current and the frog’s leg twitched, I went berserk.  I rolled on the floor, screaming and moaning. In the midst of this I had a diabolical inspiration to punish my father. I began twitching my legs in imitation of the frog. I flipped and twitched my whole body at once, croaking in short staccato grunts. I turned up my eyes to show only the whites, a trick I had learned from a friend. My father ordered me to stop. He pleaded, he shouted, he issued commands, promises and threats. Finally, he astonished me by weeping and begging my forgiveness. Still I would not stop. Then he swore at me, accused me of faking, called me a coward and slammed the door and left me. Still I did not stop. He returned and carried me still performing to my room and locked me in. I continued by pounding on the door, screaming to be let out and I did not stop till I had exhausted myself. My father never again gave me lessons in science. 

             I got up and broke out a tray of ice. I walked around my living room sucking and chewing on an ice cube. I had heard that Cherry Hill Fats took water in the form of ice cubes during his fast. He weighed 642 pounds when he was arrested for numbers racketeering in Philadelphia. The prison doctors were afraid for his heart and put him on a fast. Ice cubes and vitamin pills. He claimed the ice cubes helped to satisfy his urge to chew. When he left prison he weighed about 500 pounds and went straight.[1: See notes at end of text.] 

             During my fast I thought and read a lot about the nitty gritty requirements of existence.  Green plants occupy a favored place in the scheme of life.  They take their nourishment right from the air, the ground, and the water that falls from the sky. They get their energy from sunlight. That’s all they need.

             All the rest of the creatures have to get their nourishment from other creatures, which means they have to eat. The formula X eats Y expresses to me the generality of the relation “eats”. Let X stand for any predator and Y for one of its prey. You could replace X and Y with a lot of taxonomic names and still make true sentences. In every ecology textbook you’ll find a diagram of a food chain. Names or pictures of organisms are connected pairwise by arrows. The arrow means eats.  Eagle eats snake, snake eats grasshopper, grasshopper eats grass, and so on ad nauseum. The ineluctable necessity to eat is what makes history, in all nature as in human nature. Damn. I’m doing it again, spouting one of my lectures.[2]

             On the third day my doorbell rang. I had phoned the Botany office on the first day and reported in sick. Someone was teaching my classes and I was left alone with my existential crisis till this moment. I opened the door a crack and peered out to see my student, Belinda Peartree.

             “I brought you a salad,” she said, holding up same in a large transparent mixing bowl.

             My mouth started watering. My stomach said, “Gimme!” Aloud I said, “O god no, what are you trying to do to me?”

             “I heard you were sick.”

             I stood blocking the doorway in the hope that she would take the hint and go away. She had the nerve to say, “May I come in?”

             “Well, just for a minute,” I said with no enthusiasm.

             I was forced into this woman’s presence three times a week. She sat front row center in my Plant Ecology course, where I could not get her out of my face. In the microcosm which is Rutabaga University I had two loyal supporters who took my courses because it was I who taught them, who discussed my ideas and took them seriously, and what’s more, agreed with them, who wanted to grow up to be like me.

  
          I couldn’t stand either one of them. 

             Weighing them as objectively as I can, Belinda Peartree was perhaps a shade more intolerable than Betty Solanum. The latter was shy and would never have presumed upon my time or space. This made me feel entirely safe in her company. But the other one was always pushing her breasts at me, crossing and uncrossing her legs in the front row, raising her hand on every pretext. She had the self confidence born of years of wolf whistles and hot grabbing adolescent hands. So there she was, advanced now on my reluctant invitation as far as the living room.

  
           “I’m not feeling well, Ms. Peartree.”

             “Is there anything I can do for you?”

             “Yes, please take that salad away.  It’s making me sick.”

             “O dear.” This o dear seemed to be saying a whole lot.  I could see that she had visions of nursing me back to health with salads and sympathy. Possibly she had a confidante, probably Betty Solanum, with whom all this was thrashed out in advance. And now it had all gone wrong. The salad had seemed an inspiration, (“He’s a vegetarian, you know, so ethereal, so intellectual.”), but instead of the grateful convalescent she was confronted with gruff old me in a three day beard, pajamas and bathrobe, grumpy and unreceptive.

             “O dear,” again, “perhaps I shouldn’t have disturbed you. You don’t look well at all.”

             “I’m afraid you’ll catch my virus.” I hated myself for such mealy mouthed bullshit. I wanted to say, “Get your fat ass out of here or you flunk!”

             “I’ve been very worried about you.”

             “Actually, Ms. Peartree, I don’t need any help. I get over these things much better if I’m left to myself. And please, that salad.”

             “I’m sure you’re going to want this when you feel a little stronger. I’ll leave it in your fridge.” She looked around, spied the kitchen and now she was another room deeper into my territory, shoving salad in my fridge.

             But a crafty idea came to my aid. “I have something to show you,” I said as I ushered her to the back door and out into the garden. “These roses have just come into bloom. First of the season.”

             “O, how beautiful they are.”

             “And look, Johnny Jumpups.”

             “Aren’t they cute?”

             “For you.” I gathered a bouquet of pansies and pressed them on her. “So nice of you to look in on me.” I walked her to the garden gate. “Goodbye now. I’m feeling a little weak. Excuse me, I’m going to go back in and lie down now.” I scooted for the back door, a final wave, a smile (of victory) and home safe, door locked.

             I returned to my book on carnivorous plants and read awhile before I realized what I’d done. I’d gone and ripped the heads off a dozen Johnny Jumpups without a thought, just to get rid of that woman. Just as though I didn’t know what the plants were feeling.

             I jumped up and ran to the back door.  Too late of course to do anything about the pain of the flowers, but in plenty of time to see Belinda Peartree strolling around my garden, clutching those agonizing pansies to her pink-sweatered bosom.

             Perhaps some of my readers are wondering whether this is going to be a love story. It is almost impossible to read a story or see a movie without having to watch somebody fall in or out of love or do something noble, daring or stupid for the sake of love. Even stories that are principally concerned with other topics, such as spies, murder, witchcraft, yacht racing, drugged musicians, nuclear war, rebellious computers, prison riots, amateur athletes, and so forth, rarely omit the obligatory embroidery of a love interest. At this moment of crisis in my life I was not interested in the subject of love. What interested me, or rather obsessed me, is more fundamental even than love. Humans and other creatures too have survived a lifetime without love, but only a few weeks without food. The specter of hunger is never far off. This is at the root of all politics, all history, of life itself. “Feed me,” is the first cry of the newborn. However, having said that, I must confess that this is, in fact, a love story.

             As my fast wore on, my mind became more concentrated, more purified, clarified and focused, wrapping itself like a fist around the essential nugget of existence, the excruciating, inescapable fact of hunger. In this rarified state I suddenly recognized what I must always have understood, that I have followed in the footsteps of my father. I had thought my rebellion complete, my repudiation of him total, but in fact, he has shaped me entirely, even to my vegetarianism, which grew not out of myself, but only in response to him. Now I too was a lecturer in the natural sciences, I too expound on the wonders of nature as I cut open the belly of a flower and expose the undeveloped ovules, sacrificed to the gods of learning. I lacked his brilliance, his arrogance, his cruelty, his success. If only I had become a violinist or an accountant or a salesman, I could have escaped this dilemma, could have blithely gone on living a normal life, oblivious of the beauties and horrors of the natural world. But I was my father’s son with a twist and the plant kingdom was no longer a refuge for me from the stern realities he so courageously represented.  

             On the fifth day I woke up, my throat glued shut. I tried to move. Vertigo in waves. Sweating, I lay still, looked up. The ceiling was pulsing. It seemed to be made up of scintillating points of light which were somehow trying to tell me something about existence, its intensity, its moment to moment comprehensiveness, its adequacy to be itself, no equations needed, no concepts, no theories, just this, the walls waiting, pulsing with light, sufficient, the sunlight entering, filling and shaping the room, the basket of fuchsias calmly receiving the light, casting shadow as it must. All this was speaking to me. This is the way it is and it’s all right. The fuchsia doesn’t mind. If the suns falls on it, it makes sugar. All night long it hangs in the dark and makes no sugar. That’s just the way it is. If something is changed, then it becomes different. And if it is not changed, then it stays the same. It does what it must and it’s all right. A long life, a short life, the long body of Buddha, the short body of Buddha. The plants don’t care. They live till they die and not a moment longer or a moment sooner. It is what it is and it’s all right.

             I struggled to my feet. A black wave. I sat down, put my head between my legs. I got up and crossed the room. I stood looking at the fuchsia. The fuchsia was in Nirvana, always had been. There is no time inside the gates of Eden. I was there too. With my thumbnail and forefinger I pressed against the succulent green flesh and pinched off a flower. I ate it. Tears sprang into my eyes and streamed down my face as I wept for the joy of existence. After a few minutes I walked into the kitchen and took Belinda’s salad from the fridge.

                                                                      2: Claws

             Having regained my rightful place at the top of the food chain, I returned to work invigorated.  I wanted to expand my researches into the Backster Effect and for this purpose I chose a new experimental organism, a cactus plant of the species Ferocactus peninsulae with which I had developed a special relationship.  On a botanical expedition in Baja California three years before I was walking through the desert admiring the bizarre flora of this region when my progress was suddenly impeded by something pulling at my trousers.  I looked down and found that my pants were snagged on the spines of a globular cactus about a foot in diameter.  Out of the center of each cluster of strong sharp spines grew a long nasty spine curved like a fishhook.  The plant was covered with these vicious instruments and several were embedded in my trousers.  One of my colleagues managed to free me, but not without pricking his fingers.  As a kind of revenge we decided to collect this specimen, although we were there in search of plants of a much different nature.  It was not easy to capture this beast.  We had to dig all around it, roots and all, before we could loosen its tenacious grip in the rocky soil.  Then wearing thick gloves we eased it into a canvas bag and carried it gingerly back to our Land Rover. 

             Later, when we were crossing back into California, our plant presses were examined by an inspector from the state agriculture department.  We showed our credentials as bona fide botanists, but our inspector was having a bad day, one of those days when a petty official can only ease his soul by exercising his small portion of authority to the fullest.  He cited chapter and verse to the effect that only killed specimens could be brought into the sovereign kingdom of California and insisted that our big ball of spines be soaked in formalin.  We enjoyed watching him struggle with our unwieldy specimen.  His tank of formalin was too shallow to completely cover the plant, so he had to roll it around. Despite his gloves he did not escape injury, much to our suppressed delight.  He quickly tired of this and demanded that we retrieve our specimen.  Now it was his turn to enjoy our discomfort as we worked the prickly thing back into the canvas bag.  We knew that this pro forma baptism was not enough to kill our prize, which by now had earned our admiration for its tough approach to life and been given the name Claws.  If ever there were a creature equipped for survival, this was it.  As soon as we got out of sight of the inspection station we pulled into a gas station and flushed our spiny friend with water.  Back at good old Rutabaga U., we planted it in a large pot, set it in the sun and watched it slowly come back to life. 

             Now, three years later, Claws was a venerable representative of its tribe, beginning to assume its mature cylindrical shape and except for a few broken spines incurred during the border incident it was looking very fit.  With the help of some grad students I had Claws set up on a worktable in my lab, and there I managed to attach the electrodes of the polygraph to a patch of soft tissue between two of the menacing spine clusters.  My idea was to play a variety of recorded musical selections and determine if the plant had any decided preferences or antipathies.  But before I could press the play button of the boom box the recording pen of the polygraph leaped into action and scribbled for about ten minutes and then stopped.  What immediately struck my eye was that the traces of the recording pen showed a series of discrete jumps, high peaks at about the same amplitude but of varying duration separated by similar regions of low activity.  It was like a binary code!  The peaks could be ones, the valleys could be zeros.  It looked as though the peaks and valleys came in roughly integral units of duration, where the minimum duration of about half an inch might represent a single one or zero.  The next longer interval might represent two ones or zeros in a row.  And so on.  But this was crazy!  Yeah, crazy like Cleve Backster.

             I tore the paper strip from the machine and carried it over to my computer.  There I transcribed the polygraph record into a file, as ones and zeros, based on the assumptions just mentioned.  I barely had time to print the file before I had to meet my 11 o’clock class.  When the class was over I asked Bart Comfrey to stay behind.  He was a graduate student, not one of mine, certainly not a member of my fan club, but he knew more about computers than anyone else in the student body or, for that matter, on the faculty.  I handed him the printout of ones and zeros and told him that this was a sample of data collected by an experiment of mine.  I asked him if he could discover any patterns in this sequence.  He grunted an assent, and slipping the printout into a book without glancing at it, hurried off to catch up to his girlfriend.

   
            I was quite surprised when he burst into my office an hour later.  “Hey Doc,” he said, “you’ve got a weird sense of humor all right.  This is pretty funny.” 

             “What’s funny, Mr. Comfrey?”

             “Did you think you could stump me with this one?  There was nothing to it.  It’s straight ASCII text.”

             “Asky?  What’s that?”

             “Ha!  As if you didn’t know.”

            “I assure you, Mr. Comfrey, I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Are you telling me that you have learned something about the symbols I gave you?”

             “I deciphered your coded message.  Here, isn’t this what you wrote?”  He handed me a sheet of printout.

             I greet you in the name of all sentient beings.  Well can I understand the surprise you feel as you read these words and learn that you are addressed by a vegetable.  Yes, we can talk, as the Tiger-lily said to Alice, when there’s anybody worth talking to.  Learn first that we know more about your species than you do yourselves.  We have monitored you since your recent emergence on the planet.  Your house plants have read all your books over your shoulders, plucking the words out of your minds as you read them, and transmitted their contents to our central files in the Amazon Basin.  Your history books are selective, biased, self-censored and limited.  We have the full history, the true history, not only of your species, but of all life on earth, stored in our forest libraries, where it is accessible to our united telepathic mind, a mind capable of comprehending the whole of your history at once, without the need for selectivity or serialization.

             Your species has always assumed that we plants know nothing and have nothing to say and no way to say it.  Throughout the long association between your kind and ours we have been silent as part of a deliberate policy.  From time to time, however, in keeping with this same policy, we single out a member of the human species for special reasons and make it aware of us and our culture.  You are not the first, you will not be the last, to be so honored.

             You will soon be told the reason for this.  But first we require a better mode of communication.  To this end I give you permission to dig below the soil in my pot and extract a section of my root.  Place this root in an ordinary sugar solution and you will observe the growth of a fungus.  After four days, when the fungal growth is well established, ingest the fungus and its nutrient solution.  It will not taste good to you, but you will be amply rewarded with new knowledge.

             I looked at young Comfrey.  He had assumed that I was playing some weird joke on him.  For an instant I entertained the hope that he decided to turn the tables on me by making up this preposterous message, but in the same moment I knew that he had not.  This message was an authentic communication in the English language from a potted plant.

             “Are you okay, Doc?”

             “I think I must sit down.”

             The next thing I knew I was looking up at the face of Bart Comfrey.  I was lying on the floor and he was kneeling beside me, staring down at me.

        “What’s going on here, Doc?”

         “You won’t believe it.  Even I don’t believe it and I know it’s true.”

         “What’s true?”

     I raised myself to a sitting position on the floor.  I glanced over at Claws, the talking cactus.  “You see that plant over there?”

          “You mean that cactus with the wicked looking spines?”

           “Yes, that one.  No, I can’t say it.  It’s too absurd.”

            “I know what you’re going to say.  You want me to believe the message came from that plant.  The message as much as says so.  Of course, I don’t believe it.  What I can’t figure out is why you’re doing this or why you fainted.  You faked the message, but I know you didn’t fake fainting.  Something very strange is going on with you.”

           I suddenly realized that Bart Comfrey could be dangerous to me.  No doubt he would soon be spreading the story that I was undergoing some mental aberration.  I had to get him on my side.  “Listen, Bart,” I said, “I know this sounds absolutely nuts, but give me a chance to prove it.”

            “Okay,” he said in a neutral tone.

             I looked at him.  “You mean it?”

             “Sure.  I’m very interested in seeing how you’re going to prove it.”

             I got up and turned on the polygraph.  It was still connected to the cactus.  “Okay, Claws,” I said.  “Got anything more to say?”  Nothing happened.  “Claws, it would help very much if you said something right now.”  Still nothing.  Remembering Backster, I thought some very nasty thoughts about what I would do to Claws if it didn’t respond, how I would overturn its pot in a dark room and leave it there to die, how I had lots of formalin and knew how to do a really thorough job of it.  Not a flicker of motion on the polygraph.  “I see what’s happening here, Bart.  Claws won’t talk while you’re here.  For some reason I have been chosen to receive this knowledge, but not you.”

            The young man looked at me without saying anything.

            “I think I know what we have to do, Bart.  You’re going to have to trust me.  I’m going to follow the instructions in the last part of the message.  I’m going to cultivate that fungus.  Some kind of a revelation is promised when I eat the fungus.  If we ingest it together, you will be the recipient of that new knowledge too, whether you were meant to have it or not.  Doesn’t that stand to reason?”

            “O yes, perfectly.”

             “You are going to have to give me some time.  I don’t want you to say anything to anyone about this.  We need four days to cultivate the fungus.  After that, if nothing happens still, you can say anything you want to anyone.  Is that fair?  Will you give me that chance?”

             “Okay.”

            “Can I trust you to keep silent?”

               “Yes.”

            His terse answers, his guarded look, made me certain that he would not hold his tongue.  He may have been thinking that I might become dangerous if he challenged me further.  He was humoring me.

             “Look, Bart, you are studying to be a scientist.  You know what that means.  A lot of great discoveries seemed crazy at first.  They violated all the accepted ideas of the times.  Relativity, quantum theory, crazy ideas, but they were right.  Don’t be too quick to judge.  Be a scientist.  Be skeptical.  But wait for the evidence.  Look, here’s some evidence.  Not real hard evidence, I admit, but here is the polygraph tracing that came off the machine this morning.  You see the polygraph is hooked up to the plant.  The tracing shows the same binary pattern as the printout I gave you.  I merely transcribed it from the tracing.  You can examine that and see it for yourself.  The message is here.  That’s how I received it.  I suppose I could have faked it, although I can’t think how, but why would I do that?  Why would I bother?  If this were just a joke would I need to go to such lengths?”  He said nothing, but I knew what he was thinking.  Because you’re stone crazy, Doc.  “And, Bart, I swear to God I never heard of any Asky language in my life.”

             “ASCII is not a language, Doc.  It’s just a standard encoding for ordinary letters and numbers and punctuation marks.  Each character has been assigned an 8-bit code, 8 of those zeros and ones.  This message was written in English using ASCII symbols.”

             “You sound like you’re beginning to believe me.”

             “Not really, I mean, it’s just impossible what you’re telling me, but I’m beginning to think you believe it yourself.  I mean, this isn’t a joke, is it?”

            “It’s not a joke, but it isn’t hard science yet.  We need to learn more about it.  Are you willing to help me?”

           “I’m not ready to swallow fungus juice.”

           “But will you keep this secret for now?”

           “Yes, that much I can do.  Let me see that polygraph recording.”

            With that statement I relaxed.  I believed that I had engaged his scientific interest.  I pressed the advantage.  “Bart, I’m going to extract the root from the cactus and set up the fungus culture.  Something interesting is going to happen and I want you to witness the procedure, so that when it does, you will be able to give impartial testimony as to its origin.  I’m will set up two identical cultures and I want you to take one of them with you and monitor it for the next four days.  Bring it back with you then and we’ll be ready to go on from there.”  He agreed and I knew then that I could trust him to be true to the scientific spirit of the endeavor.  His incredulity had softened to mere scientific skepticism and his young mind was now curious about how it would all turn out.

             That afternoon I was called in by my department chairman and sternly warned to drop all unauthorized research centering on the Backster Effect.  He adopted his fatherly tone, calculated to reassure me that he had my best interest at heart, that he understood my misguided enthusiasm, but needed to steer me back onto the track of serious useful work, namely measuring residual pesticide levels in Zea mays.  Of course, not knowing the relation between me and my father, he couldn’t realize that the fatherly approach could only result in my total resistance and resentment.  I promised to shape up and promptly ignored his unwelcome interference. 

            Four days later Bart Comfrey and I met in my laboratory.  Before us lay two petri dishes swarming with a pale brownish mold.  “Now, Bart,” I said in a careful, formal tone, “we are ready for the next stage.”  I spoke with the awareness that an important moment had arrived, the kind of moment that could open one’s life into a totally new domain and sharply separate it from all that had come before, either that, or it was the moment before a ludicrous and humiliating disappointment.  Either way, a kind of pompous self-consciousness gripped me.  I was tempted to say something quotable by future generations in recognition of the singular importance of this threshold moment, or else, shrugging it off, say something trivial and get on with it What I said was, “Would you care to join me, Mr. Comfrey?”

            Bart pursed his lips and looked at me. Apparently, he had given the matter quite a bit of thought. “I think not,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just observe.”

            “Very well, then. If you would select one of the two dishes for me to ingest.”

            Bart chose the dish that he had monitored during the four day incubation period and pushed it in my direction. It had an unappetizing appearance and I felt uncertain how to approach it. Finally, I picked up a spoon and scooped up some of the mold and gingerly tested it with my tongue. It gave me no clue to its taste. I inserted the spoon in my mouth and the delicate mold melted instantly on my tongue, filling my mouth with a bitter metallic flavor. I almost spat it out, but I forced myself to swallow it.

            Nothing happened. Bart urged me to take another bite. Reluctantly, I did so. And another. Finally, so that I could say that I had done all I could, I consumed the contents of the entire petri dish. Within a few minutes, I felt a mild tingling inside my head and this soon revealed itself as a tiny voice whose words were at first inaudible, like the sound of a neighbor’s TV penetrating faintly through many thicknesses of wall. Gradually, the voice gained strength and I could hear definite words, but hearing is not quite the right word, for it was not sound at all. It was more like being aware of my own interior thoughts, except for the novel sensation that these thoughts were not mine, but most definitely emanating from someone else. The first words I could clearly make out were an exhortation that I should prevent Bart Comfrey from imbibing the fungal concoction.

            “Bart, you are instructed not to eat this stuff,” I reported.

            “Says who?”

            “I don’t know. I am listening to an interior voice that is making it quite clear that this experience is for me alone and that you are required to abstain.”

            Bart then surprised me by scooping up the other petri dish and shoveling its contents into his mouth. I watched his face screw up in disgust as he struggled to down the vile-tasting mold. After he got all that he could with the spoon, he circled the dish with his finger, then licked his finger clean. “A calculated gamble,” he said with a grin, as he wiped his mouth. “If there is anything to this, I want to be in on it, and if not, well, it probably won’t kill me. What I don’t want is to be told I can’t choose for myself.”

            I smiled at the young man. His action had fostered in me a new respect for him. “If you were meant to participate,” I said, “then forbidding you was certainly the right strategy to get you involved.”

            The voice resumed, presumably now in both our heads.

What is done is done. Young human, you have now become by your rash action one of the handful of your kind to be addressed by the ancient masters of the world. There will be a price to pay, but for now, you are permitted to attend these councils. We can now dispense with crude electronic means of communication. A permanent telepathic link has now been established.

            “Do you mean...?” I began.

            You do not have to say it, came the response. Just think it.

            I looked at the cactus on the work table, thought about its being the source of this communication, thought this in a questioning way.

            Yes, in a sense it is I, the cactus in the pot, speaking to you, but it is a mistake to think of us as individuals. Since we plants are all linked telepathically, there is no such thing as an individual for us. You are being addressed by an ancient world-wide intelligence. So listen well, humans, you have so much to learn before we can speak of our purposes with you.

            So began our lessons.

            Our human science of biology teaches that the most advanced product of evolution is our own beloved Homo sapiens, with his complex nerve network culminating in the brain, reputed to be the most highly organized lump of matter on earth.

            Sheer provincialism, my fellow creatures. There was a time when we believed that the universe and all that it contains were created for the benefit and use of man, with the earth at the center and man, the noblest pinnacle of creation, appointed lord over all. Our science grew objective enough to teach us finally that we are adrift on a speck of dust in a vast cosmos whose purpose we cannot fathom, whose far-flung outposts may support creatures superior to ourselves. Now I must ask you to abandon yet one more precious notion of our importance, for it became clear to me under the tutelage of the cactus, that we are not the highest product of evolution even on our own planet. The evolutionary process brought great advancements in organizational complexity long before the advent of multi-cellularity, ages before the advent of man.[3]

            I have only hinted here at the total reinterpretation of biology that Bart Comfrey and I learned from Claws, the cactus, and what it taught us is but a fragment of the knowledge accumulated by the plant kingdom, who among other roles were the major historians of the earth. Long before our human species appeared on the planet the plant kingdom was already ancient and highly developed, more so than we ever suspected. Early on they had gained control over their own evolutionary processes. By analogy, our tutor pointed out that among humans certain spiritually advanced yogis are able to take conscious control of bodily processes that are ordinarily involuntary, such as blood pressure and internal temperature. In a similar act of conscious will plants learned how to influence their genetic makeup and steer the course of their evolution. This enabled them to adapt with exquisite precision to rapidly changing environmental conditions.

            The situation today, our cactaceous guide explained, is critical. Your benighted species is changing the environment faster than we can adapt to it. You are wiping out the tropical rain forests and our vast archives there are in danger of destruction. The entire planet is headed for extinction. Our challenge now is to emigrate to fresh new worlds before this one is demolished. Time is running out and we are not ready for such a journey. At first, as we watched the rapid development of your space program, we thought that we could hitchhike to the stars on your space vehicles, but now we see that you will not yourselves escape the dying earth in time. Your race will perish here where you were born.

            Our task now is to evolve seeds which are so light that they will be carried into the upper atmosphere where some will escape the earth’s gravitation and at the same time they must be able to survive for centuries in the dry cold reaches of empty space. Moreover, this seed must possess a very broad spectrum of genetic potential in order to maximize the range of diverse environments that might prove to be hospitable to its growth. And, finally, we must produce and release such seed in prodigious quantities to ensure that there is a statistically significant chance that some of this seed will reach favorable ground somewhere in the vast expanse of the cosmos. You do have, I believe, some notion of how big the universe is, and therefore how small the chances of our succeeding in this desperate enterprise. And yet we see this as our only hope. We plants are perfectly capable of forcing the evolutionary changes in our gene pool required for this project, and even stepping up our rate of reproduction, but there isn’t enough time. Ordinarily, we do not involve the human species in our affairs, so it is a measure of our desperation that we have decided to speed up the whole program by enlisting the aid of select members of the human biological research community. Dr. Salsify, your talents, your sensitivities to the plant kingdom and above all your broad-minded approach to scientific research have qualified you for the work I have just described. I am authorized to inform you that you have been honored to be chosen to join our staff of human biologists already at work on this project.

            I found it exceedingly difficult to wrap my mind around the information I had just been given. I understood the words well enough. The plant kingdom had given up on earth and was planning to establish colonies elsewhere. Okay, sure, I got it, but how to assimilate this concept, how to reconcile it with everything I’ve ever known or thought I knew about the world? My response was rather lame, in keeping with the level of stupidity I was feeling. “Uh, I’ll have to think it over.”

            By all means, replied the cactus patronizingly. It’s a big decision for you. Perhaps it will help you to know that your salary will be more than double what you’re making here.

            What about me? came a mental cry from Bart.

            This offer is for Dr. Salsify, not for you.

            I want to be part of this. In a few months I’ll have my degree. I can qualify for the work and I’m intensely interested in pursuing it.

            No, was the answer from Claws. Not you.

            That night I could not sleep. I was filled with an excitement I could not suppress, possessing as I did a secret knowledge affecting every soul on the planet, both animal and vegetable. Thinking how people would receive such news, should I be foolish enough to tell anyone, made me pause to doubt my sanity. Then I returned to realizing that all this was indeed happening. I had actually been offered a position in a botanical research facility run by plants.

            When I arrived at my office in the morning I still had not made a decision, but that was soon to be forced upon me. There was a memo from my department chairman politely asking me to step into his office at my earliest convenience. The cordial tone of this invitation put me on my guard. And indeed when I saw him later that morning and he addressed me in his most unctuous, sympathetic, fatherly tone, the tone he always used to discipline his subordinates, I knew what was coming. He fired me for having ignored his directive to discontinue my unauthorized investigations into the Backster Effect. By the time he got around to it I was already suppressing a secret smile. I would be permitted to stay till the end of the term, and he made this sound like an act of uncommon generosity, but we both knew that it was motivated by the fact that he had no ready replacement for me. I knew, as he did not, and my heart was glad with the knowledge, that I had taught my last class at good old Rutabaga U.

            My step was light and springy as I returned to my office. “Okay, Claws,” I said. “When do I begin?”

3: Project Exodus

            My first night in Kyvia, Sidney Purslane got me drunk. He took me to a bar in the native quarter and told me his story while I tried to cope with the incredible noise, my jet lag and unaccustomed amounts of alcohol. On one side a local band was playing a highly percussive music, in fact, it would not be too much to say that they were punishing their instruments. This delighted their fans, who were dancing, which is to say, they were jumping up and down vigorously, making the hardwood floor react like a trampoline. I had to hold onto my glass to keep it from dancing off the table. On the other side a group of sports fans and their highly vocal kibitzers were torturing a dozen foosball machines, the banging and clacking of which blended with the music so that we were suspended in a pocket of total sound, much as I would imagine the interior of a loudspeaker during a rock concert. All the while darts were whizzing past my head.

            I missed a great deal of Purslane’s story. I got only a surrealistic impression. He was a giant of a man, built like a stevedore, tall and muscular. I could picture him leading a safari except for his face, which reminded me of my dentist’s, with frightened bewildered eyes behind oversize glasses, an apologetic moustache. His expression gave me the impression that life tasted like a sour lemon to him and yet it was also a hilarious joke. He pulsed with a scarcely reined in energy, roaring constantly against the wall of sound, waving his great bulging arms and filling our glasses. I heard almost nothing, saw only his broad gestures, most of them unintelligible. Several times the gesture was clearly that of driving a car, several times that of counting out money or perhaps dealing cards, interspersed with unmistakable references to a woman with large breasts.

            Only much later did I get the story straight. On that wild night I understood only that by some confusing mixture of coercion and seduction, he had become the director of Project Exodus at KBRL, the Kyvian Botanical Research Laboratory. For seven years he had been locked in a room where, to keep his sanity, he studied the anatomy of the floor. This made no sense at the time, but later I learned that this floor was composed of the cross-section of a great tree and that Dr. Sidney Purslane was a specialist in plant anatomy. In his long paper on the subject he enumerated 105 particulars in which the anatomy of this tree differed from anything he had ever studied before.

            When I awoke the next day I felt totally disoriented. Hung over and jet-lagged, I found myself in an unfamiliar country, cut off from my past life with all its habitual routines and as yet without a clue about the new life that was beginning. No doubt Sidney Purslane was trying to brief me the previous night. In fact, he seemed desperate to do so, but he only compounded my confusion.

            When I reported in at the lab, Dr. Purslane was addressing members of his staff. He showed no signs of the agitated personality that animated him in the bar. He was entirely the urbane director, unruffled, in charge. When he saw me enter he turned his attention to me and cordially introduced me to the staff and welcomed me to the lab. Then he took me on a tour of the facility, explained the nature of the work, and finished by showing me the generous lab space that had been assigned to me. When I mentioned our drunken evening, saying that I had missed a great many of his remarks and would enjoy hearing more of his stories in a more conducive setting, he made a lightning-fast gesture and continued explaining the layout of the lab. The gesture was the well-known finger on the lips admonishing me to silence, but it happened in passing on the way to his scratching his cheek, so that I would not have been sure of his meaning except that it was accompanied by an equally fast look, a penetrating look of warning. I let it slide, but it disturbed me, since we were the only two people in the room.

            Later he took me to lunch and I waited for him to reopen the topics of the previous night, but he went on at length about Kyvian tribal customs, a subject that he made quite interesting, even amusing, except for the unbearable tension between what was and what wasn’t being discussed. Finally, I said, “Look here, Dr. Purslane, there’s something odd going on here.”

            “My dear Dr. Salsify,” he interjected before I could say more, “you are going to need an account for direct deposit of your salary. Let’s go along to the bank and set that up for you.” I had to admit that he was well suited to the post of administrator. He knew how to take charge of a situation and steer it in any direction he wanted, but I was beginning to be annoyed with him. When we finished our business at the bank, he took me by the sleeve and said, “Have you ever seen the inside of a great bank vault? It’s quite impressive.”

            “Some other time, perhaps.”

            “No time like the present,” he said, dragging me along with him. We entered the office of one of the bank’s officers where he rapped sharply on the glass. A head popped up in response, that of an attractive woman, who smiled on recognizing Purslane and hurried over. She projected a matronly aura, mixed with a subliminal charge of sexuality. She wore a business suit that covered, but accentuated, a voluptuous body. “Marguerite, this is Dr. Albert Salsify, who has just joined our staff. He would love to see the vault. Can you spare the time?”

            “Certainly, Sidney, I’d be delighted to oblige.”

            I began to protest, mumbling lamely about not wanting to impose, but it was clear that both parties wanted me to see the vault and my protest was a weak attempt not to be bullied. We followed the lady’s brisk passage through a thickly carpeted corridor, a zone redolent of secret bank transactions, where only privileged customers were permitted to tread. We came to the imposing door of the vault and there the lady performed the necessary incantations, involving keys, buttons and codes and at last the mighty door swung open. We entered. I was surprised when the great door closed, sealing us inside with the holy ingots and the buried wealth. Here the air was dead. Despite the harsh shadowless light which bathed the interior, the room presented a totally mysterious face. It was like a mausoleum, a solemn, pretentious, pseudo-religious theater where bank officials came at specified intervals to pay their respects to the long dead gods of money.

            “Here we can talk,” said Sidney Purslane. “No plants. Beyond their telepathic range.”

            So, that’s what it was about this place. No plants. No life. In this setting the other two humans, both strangers to me, appeared pasty and alien, their vitality sucked away by the sepulchral atmosphere of the place. I wondered suddenly if they were lovers, whether in fact they came here to fornicate among the ingots, in some attempt to vivify themselves, to overcome the deadly emptiness of this tomb.

            “We are in a damn difficult situation here,” Purslane continued. “What you need to know, Albert, is that Project Exodus is not the only project going forward in the lab. Have you wondered why this laboratory came to be set up in this impoverished desert kingdom? Clearly, the plant leaders needed a human front organization to facilitate their operations. To support the research they needed buildings, grounds and maintenance staff. They needed legal protection, tax breaks, corporate status, policy enforcement, all the usual prerogatives enjoyed by large-scale business enterprises. To achieve this they made a deal with the most corrupt government on the face of the planet. In return for these services a wing of the lab has been set up for the production, under plant supervision, of KR22, the most addicting drug known to humanity. The Kyvian sheikhs are getting rich off the sale of KR22 throughout the world. Oh, and by the way, as far as I can tell, the Kyvians are unaware of Project Exodus. They think that the legitimate function of the lab is medical research, and in fact, another wing of the lab is actually engaged in such research, developing drugs for the treatment of the acute mental breakdowns suffered by KR22 addicts.”

            “But this is crazy,” I objected.

            “Does anything about the plant kingdom seem sane to you anymore?” he countered. “Actually, from the vegetable point of view it makes a lot of sense. Why should they worry about us? They want off the planet and since the human race is doomed anyway what does it matter if a few million drug addicts are created along the way?”

            “You sure about this?”

            “Oh, yes. I tumbled to it fairly early on. The plant bosses don’t know I know and I’ve been damn careful to keep them from finding out. But it’s difficult to make a move without their knowing it. They’re everywhere.”

            “I’ve noticed that about plants. I used to find that inspiring. Their wonderful ability to thrive in every possible niche. But under the circumstances it’s rather creepy.”

            “So what do you think? Want to do something about it?”

            “What do you mean do something?”

            “I mean stop the production of KR22.”

            I looked at Purslane. I looked at his friend, Marguerite. They looked back at me with such serious expressions, as though everything hung on my answer. “I don’t know what to say. I came here with such different expectations. Of course, the manufacture and sale of KR22 is pernicious and should be stopped. But is there anything we can actually do?”

            Sidney Purslane paced the vault with a gold ingot that he casually tossed from hand to hand. “I’ve thought about that a lot,” he replied, “and the answer is a KR22 scavenger.”

            “Well, sure, but where are we going to get one of those?”

            “We’ll have to build one. We would start by determining the structure of the KR22 molecule and then designing an enzyme that can cut it apart. Or better yet, design our enzyme to modify the KR22 molecule so that it can no longer bind in the human body. We would dump our enzyme into the vat where they make the KR22. It would presumably render the contents of the vat harmless, turn it into so much mush. This wouldn’t stop them for long, of course. They’d just clean out the vat and start over, but it would be a nice proof of concept.”

            “By that time,” I replied, “our little trick would be discovered and we’d be stopped from further mischief.”

            He stopped his pacing and looked at me. “Well, we’d have to be clever about that and do our best to escape detection. But then the big trick would be this. We modify the DNA of a harmless bacterium so that it will only eat KR22 molecules.” He spun around with the ingot in one hand and pretended to be an athlete competing for the shotput event. I was afraid he would actually let go of the gold brick and send it crashing into the wall of the vault.

            “That sounds like a nice ten-year project for a crack team of biochemists,” I said.

            “With the new techniques we’ve been learning from the our plant friends on Project Exodus we might just be able to do it ourselves.”

            “Oh, but there’s more,” I replied. “If there’s a receptor in the human body that KR22 binds to, then there must be some natural peptide that the body produces to bind to that site. Our hungry little bacterium is likely to get confused and eat something the body really needs. All it would take is a small mutation.”

            “Admittedly, there are some problems to be solved. I didn’t say this would be easy.”

            We kicked this topic around for another hour, with Purslane enthusiastically tossing out fresh ideas, and me as the great naysayer shooting them down. By then the stale air in the vault was making me sleepy. I came away convinced of three things: one, that Sidney Purslane was a brilliant theoretician; two, that his ideas were totally crazy; and three, that I would do my best to help him.

            Over the next few weeks I learned a great deal about Project Exodus. The idea was to create a compound creature whose necessary and desirable qualities would be derived from already existing organisms, like the chimera of mythology. As all this had to be wrapped up in the smallest, lightest possible package, the base organism would be chosen from among those plants with extremely light propagules. The additional needed characteristics would be added molecule by molecule to the genetic material of the base organism. The plant chosen to play this role was Lycopodium.

            I remembered a book I had read as a child by the astronomer Fred Hoyle. He described an experiment to demonstrate that light exerts pressure on matter. The experimenter created a vacuum in a glass jar which had a device at the top permitting him to introduce some Lycopodium powder into the jar without disturbing the vacuum. The powder fell straight down to the bottom of the jar, as one would expect. However, when he directed a strong floodlight through the side of the jar, the falling powder slanted away from the source of light. All this was by way of introducing the solar wind, whereby dust and gas particles are driven away from the sun partly by the force of its light. This impressed me, so that for quite some while afterward I dreamed of becoming an astronomer. But something else was nagging at my inquisitive young mind. What was this mysterious Lycopodium powder that was so easily deflected by a beam of light? Perhaps it was this question, and ultimately its answer, that deflected me from my own trajectory and carried me away from astronomy into the glorious realm of botany.

            The genus Lycopodium, one of the pretty club mosses that decorate the floor of our moist forests, reproduces by means of tiny spores that seek their fortunes on the wind. The powder of Hoyle’s experiment was none other than a collection of thousands of these spores, each one capable, if landing in a favorable spot, of initiating a new Lycopodium plant. This tiny spore, suitably modified, was to be the vehicle that would take the plant kingdom to the stars.


            4: KR22

            One morning Sidney Purslane called me into his office. I found him sitting in front of a potted papaya seedling, Carica papaya, about six inches tall. “A little gift-wrapped box,” he said, “was sitting on my lab bench when I came in this morning. There was no note or explanation. It turned out to contain this cute little plant.”

            A little spy, I thought, to watch us work.

            Not so, Dr. Salsify, came the voice in my head.

Not so? I thought. I had become used to communicating with plants just by projecting my thoughts. Is it you, the papaya, addressing me?

            Indeed, it is I, a papaya, but as you know by now, it is never a single individual who speaks, but a community of telepathically linked organisms.

            I assumed that Sidney Purslane was also receiving the papaya’s thought transmission, but I knew he would not be able to receive mine, so I spoke aloud. “Right, the worldwide network of plants.”

            Ah, that concept needs correction. You’ve been taught to believe that there is one great network, but in reality there are many networks. And not all in agreement on the important issues of our time. I’ve come to broaden your outlook.

            “You say you’ve come,” said Sidney Purslane, “as though you walked in the door, but don’t you mean you were delivered here?”

            Yes, of course. Don’t quibble. A human brought me here. It was the decision of my nation that I should come to enlighten you.

            “So, who brought you? Someone who works in the lab?”

            Dr. Purslane, that’s privileged information, a privilege you have not yet earned. But I do know that you and Dr. Salsify are looking for a way to halt the production of KR22. In this our purposes are aligned. I’ve come not only to further your education, but to help you achieve that goal.

            “Aren’t you concerned,” I asked, “that the plants who are pushing KR22 will overhear us?”

            Not a problem. I’ve ensured that our conversation is private. I’ll teach you both how to cloak your thoughts, so you won’t have to resort to ridiculous tactics like attempting to communicate in a noisy bar or a bank vault, neither of which, by the way, protected your privacy.

            “They know?”

            They know. The fungi in your bodies tell them everything you say, think and do. They are firm in their belief that you can’t stop KR22 production. So as long as your work on Project Exodus continues to be useful to them, they won’t interfere with you.

            “What makes you so sure?”

            We monitor their counsels.

            “And don’t they monitor yours?”

            As yet they are unaware of our presence here. Now let me explain some things to you. You’re used to thinking of the plant groups in taxonomic categories, like the gymnosperms, the angiosperms, and so forth. But politically, at this moment, the two great divisions are the light seeded and the heavy seeded. You see, only the light seeded plants have any chance of escaping the earth’s atmosphere and wandering among the stars. Do you think a big fat papaya seed would have any chance of achieving escape velocity? We are not really opposed to plants colonizing other planets, but since we heavyseeds are destined to remain here, we want to foster a healthy earth, a world in balance, in the hope that the doom predicted by the lightseeds can be averted. This is a hope, it seems to us, with better chance of success than Project Exodus. And even if it fails and the earth is doomed, we want to make the last days of the planet as wholesome and balanced as possible. The spread of KR22 addiction is not consistent with this hope.

            “But what about the cacti?” I countered. “My old friend Claws, who recruited me for Project Exodus, he’s not exactly a heavyweight, but neither is he a lightweight. I doubt the cacti could escape.”

            The situation is complex. The lightweights have allies among the heavier species who feel that Project Exodus offers the plant kingdom the best chance of survival, even if they themselves will not be saved. Likewise, we heavyweights have our allies among the lighter species who feel that ours is the better strategy for survival or who have made a moral decision to work for the improvement of life for all species in the earth’s last days.

            As for your friend Claws, some cactus genes are likely to be part of the final mix, in order to permit long periods in dormancy and survival in desert conditions.

            The papaya then gave us the formula for the KR22 molecule and for an enzyme that could nullify it. That gave us a huge head start on Project Drugbust, as we were calling it. It was a relatively simple matter for us to cook up a sample batch of the enzyme and try it out. Our papaya friend also showed us how to extract an alkaloid from tabasco sauce, which when imbibed and used in conjunction with a simple meditation technique, would temporarily break the telepathic link with our plant overseers, allowing us to think, converse and work for short periods without interference.

            It had become common knowledge that pure KR22 powder could be obtained for a modest price from a Kyvian technician in the KR22 wing of the lab. Through an intermediary Dr. Purslane was able to procure a supply for our tests. We first administered it to a rat to see what the effect would be. The rat fell into a catatonic state, while presumably its mind experienced the rodent equivalent of a drug trip. We then made up a batch of the antiKR22 enzyme and added this to a solution of KR22. We performed an assay on this mixture and determined that it no longer contained the drug. We administered this to another rat. There was no effect. Success.

            It only remained to make a test on a human. We chose lots and the honor fell to me. I imbibed a beakerful of the KR22-antiKR22 mix and waited. Gradually I felt sleepy and closed my eyes.

            When I woke up I saw the ocean rolling in toward me, a stretch of beach between me and the water, and one lone palm tree growing out of the sand. I was sitting in a beach chair with my feet up on a little straw table. I was wearing a bathing suit and a dirty cotton T-shirt advertising a brand of Mexican beer, a pair of rubber flip-flops on my feet. You may think that this would be deeply disorienting, but in fact, I accepted it without alarm, although it did arouse my curiosity. I turned to Sidney Purslane, who was seated in a beach chair next to me, and said, “So, how do you suppose we got here?”

            “I’m not sure, but my theory is that the effect of the antiKR22 enzyme was only temporary. Some time shortly after the enzyme broke up the KR22 molecules, the pieces spontaneously recombined. We can do another assay to test that idea.”

“So, you’re telling me I’m tripping?”

            “That’s right. You know what the literature reports. The drug causes you to split off into a totally separate reality, usually very pleasant, especially your first time out.”

            “But Sidney, there’s something peculiar here. If I have created a separate reality, then you are just a mental construct of mine, in which case, why am I learning these ideas from you, before first thinking of them myself? The real you must still be back at the lab.”

            “That’s a good point, Albert. But since I’m just a construct in your mind, then it’s really you who have come up with these ideas and made me the spokesman for them. We still have a lot to learn about the way KR22 affects the mind. In fact, we still know very little about the mind.”

            “I’m really thirsty,” I replied. “Would you like a beer?”

            “I’d love a beer.”

            “Belinda! Would you please bring us a couple of beers?”

            “Honey, we’re out of beer. How about some iced lemon ginger tea?”

            “Sounds great.”

            I knew without turning around that behind me was the rundown beach shack I’d been living in with Belinda Peartree, my former student. I’ve already mentioned how much I detested her, but in this reality I discovered that she made a wonderful addition to my life. She adored me, had a sweet disposition and was dynamite in bed. For three months we had been living this lovely indolent idyll on the beach at Topolobampo on the Pacific coast of Mexico. We chose this spot because of the sound of that name, Topolobampo, so suggestive of carefree Latin dance rhythms and freedom from responsibility.

            Belinda appeared with a tray of drinks, giving one first to Sidney, then bending over to hand me mine. She was so sexy in her bikini that I felt inclined to drag her into the shack for yet another round of what had become the principal activity of our days and nights, but that would have been rude to our guest, and besides, I was feeling lazy and thirsty too.

            “Thank you, Belinda. You’re very sweet.” I took a sip of the drink. It was delicious. I stuck my nose in it and inhaled deeply the scent of lemon ginger.

            The next I knew I was climbing the pink and black marble steps of the Kyvian Embassy in London. As I entered the vestibule I surrendered my overcoat, scarf and top hat to a liveried attendant and passed into the orange and lavender, mirrored opulence of the marble rotunda. My attention was immediately engaged by a group of well-tailored men crowding about a hidden source of illumination. I made my way at once to their sides and soon found a place at a large round table upon which ... upon which ... I stared transfixed. I knew at once what it was, what it was doing, what it was for, though how such a marvel could exist ... no, it was incredible.

            The chemistry of excitement transformed me. All sense receptors open, I strained for details, searched for pattern, but too much was happening, too quickly, and all the while my being thrilled with the ringing sensation of wonder.

How many nights I had lain awake pondering the mother of all botanical mysteries, the apical meristem, the site of those actively dividing cells which leave in their wake the entire primary body of the plant. Build me a marigold, cries the voice of the genes, and out of the apical meristem flows no other than a marigold.

            Lying in bed, I had so often sketched on the silent blackboard of the night, the possible paths of growth by which this magic trick might be performed. After falling asleep, I had usually gone on to dream up twisted variations in which plant cells divided into quintuplets instead of twins, opening up onto a vision of the elaborate commerce of enzymes and substrates navigating the plant-wide network of intercellular cytoplasmic strands. Constructing three-dimensional dynamic models of a meristem in my head was doomed always to be fleeting, elusive, false, indescribable and tending with fatigue to fantasy.

            It was with passionate amazement then that I stared at the machine that drew such a crowd of fascinated spectators about the large round table. It was precisely such a dynamic 3D model of a meristem in all the complex splendor of its dance.

            “Oh yes,” said a voice from the shadows, as if in answer to my thought, “it can be slowed down for closer study, as you now see. And is it modeled on reality?” A hand emerged from the shadow to pull from the machine a potted marigold seedling. “Naturally, Dr. Salsify, we can study any specimen we can grow. You shall have ample opportunity to use this tool in your research.”

            At that moment a liveried servant passed by offering drinks from a tray. I accepted a glass of what appeared to be champagne. I took a sip. It was cold lemon ginger tea. I inhaled its fragrance and woke up in the lab with a screaming headache.

            Sidney Purslane hovered over me. “So how was it?” he asked.

            “What?”

            “Your KR22 trip.”

            “It was wonderful. I hope to God it never happens again.”

            5: Escapodium

            One morning I came into my office to find an email from Bart Comfrey, begging for help. It was barely intelligible, but I gathered that ever since Bart swallowed the fungus juice that put us in telepathic contact with the plant world, he had been following the progress of Project Exodus and determined to join our team in Kyvia. He asked our cactus friend Claws for permission to join the project and permission was denied. Bart persisted in his requests, and from what I could understand of his garbled communication, the plants fended off his efforts by deluging him with a stream of plant thought traffic so confusing and overwhelming that he felt he was losing his mind. He begged me to intercede with the plant powers to turn off this incomprehensible babble and to reconsider his qualifications for joining Project Exodus.

            I immediately contacted the plant bosses and gave Bart Comfrey a glowing recommendation. They told me that they judged Bart to be unstable and that ultimately this would lead to trouble. They would not change their decision and they also refused to let up on the mind bombardment. They claimed that this treatment was needed to neutralize him.

            I then appealed to the heavyseeds, whom Sidney Purslane and I had come to call the Papaya Contingent. They promised me that one of their representatives in Bart’s part of the world would contact him and teach him the tabasco sauce and meditation technique to shut out the annoying chatter and bring him back to sanity. I emailed Bart and told him to expect this contact, but to abandon his attempts to come aboard Project Exodus.

            A few days later I got another email from Bart, thanking me for rescuing him from his agony and hinting that the Papaya Contingent had given him some work to do.

            Over the next few months we made tremendous progress on Project Exodus. The plant leaders pushed us relentlessly, giving us new work to do every day. They were doing all the breakthrough intellectual work. We and our large staff of Kyvian botanists and biochemists were merely technicians doing the grunt work of actually building the DNA the plant leadership specified and incorporating it into the Lycopodium genome. And, of course, we spent long hours testing at every step of the way.

Sidney Purslane was stressed to the max, choreographing all this frenetic activity, and I, who had been made his second in command, was constantly called on to supervise the overflow load. The papaya, which had grown to four feet in height and had to be repotted, was importuning us to try some new approaches its colleagues had worked out to solve the KR22 problem, but we had no time for any side projects, as keenly motivated as we were to eliminate the KR22 threat to the world.

            On nights when I was too wired to sleep I sat before my computer screen researching the literature on Lycopodium. I learned that Lycopodium and its near relatives were the dominant plants of the Carboniferous period, long before the evolution of flowering plants, and that they grew to be giant trees. The corpses of these ancient trees comprise the greater part of the coal deposits of our present era. There was more information about Lycopodium on the Internet than my weary brain could absorb. The Google search engine reported an amazing 97,900 hits.[4]

            One fact that I discovered turned out to be extremely relevant to our project. The gametophyte generation can only germinate in the presence of a fungus. Our germination trials were working quite well, because the fungus is ubiquitous in our soil, but would our new spiffed-up Lycopodium complete its life cycle on another planet in the absence of this fungal partner? When we placed the gametophyte prothallia in sterilized soil, they did not germinate. This set Project Exodus back about a month while the plant masterminds worked out a way of including the fungal genome in the Super-Lycopodium package. This new organism could no longer be thought of as Lycopodium and fairly early in the game Sidney Purslane dubbed it the escape pod or Escapodium.

            There came a day when Escapodium actually did escape. Its tiny spores exited the lab through the ventilating system and were carried by the wind across the countryside. We began noticing that moss-like plants were springing up in waste places on the lab grounds, wherever the soil had been disturbed by the gardeners. It soon became apparent that Escapodium was flourishing in the nearby desert. We began getting reports that it was turning up in far distant locales. The spores had been lofted into the stratosphere and were riding the world-circling air currents, coming down in rainfall over huge territories. It was a powerful vindication of its built-in design strategy that it could flourish in many diverse habitats.

            We theorized that spores were being produced in the wild in vast numbers and some of these in their trips into the stratosphere must have left the earth behind. Project Exodus was launched. Our plant leadership was encouraged by this unintentional development, but knew that the launch was premature. This was not the final version of Escapodium which had gone out into the cosmos. So the work went on. Moreover, they had early on made the decision to develop additional genetic lines to back up the initial choice of Lycopodium. The strategy was to launch first a highly evolved multi-cellular organism capable of photosynthesis, which would take eons off their evolution on other worlds. But such a strategy was also risky. Any highly evolved organism, like Lycopodium, would have been exquisitely sculpted by evolution to fit the rather specialized niches on earth where they could flourish. Conditions on other worlds might be so different that such specialization would be a handicap, in spite of Escapodium’s great versatility.

            One or more primitive organisms were needed as backups. A one-celled organism that could metabolize inorganic molecules in the absence of oxygen or light, like the sulphur-reducing bacteria, for example, might have a better chance of taking hold. Of course, such an organism would have to go through ages of evolution to develop into multi-cellular plants or other higher forms, whatever those might turn out to be in the novel environments of the cosmos.

            It occurred to me that the choice of Lycopodium exhibited a bias on the part of the plant masters to spread their own kind, but the backup plan showed that in a pinch they were willing to seed the universe with any kind of life at all, even if its subsequent evolution bypassed plant forms altogether.

            An urgent meeting with the plant bosses revealed that some doubts had arisen over whether Escapodium spores, upon leaving earth’s atmosphere, could survive the high energy solar radiation that prevails above the ozone layer. Some argued that additional genetic programming be included so that the developing spores would exude and surround themselves with a cyst that would shield them from hard radiation. It was thought that this would also increase their chances of surviving for long periods in the cold dry reaches of interstellar space. This argument was countered by the concern that such shielding would make the spores too heavy to leave the atmosphere. No one in the plant community, and certainly no one among the human staff, knew if the cyst programming could actually be made to work, nor whether the increased weight would prevent dispersion of the spores, nor whether such shielding was even necessary. The general consensus was that the best way to launch the spores was by means of a rocket flight. The shielding would be on the rocket, instead of on the spores, and once the rocket left the sun behind, an automatic release mechanism could launch the spores into space. This left only the rather serious question of how to organize, and in particular, how to finance such a project.

            The plant kingdom was endowed with an amazing genius for genetic manipulation and evolutionary tinkering, but I began to think that they were not so good at planning long range projects. This objection over the radiation hazard should have been raised and planned for much earlier in the project. But then, the humans working on the project had not foreseen this problem either.

            I had mixed feelings about this latest news. The extra work involved in addressing the issue of radiation hazard would seem to assure my continued employment. I had been banking most of my considerable salary, as there was not much in our remote Kyvian desert community to spend it on. By the time this project was over, I would have quite a handsome nestegg. However, I was sick of the perpetual state of urgency that fueled the pace of the work. We were being pushed by the plants to the limit, and since I had no hope of emigrating from the planet myself, I felt no need to rush. Besides, I couldn’t see why the plants were in such a big hurry. It may be true that the earth was doomed, but probably not this week. I was tired also of life in the Kyvian desert. I longed for the civilized society I had left behind, and ever since my KR22 experience with Belinda Peartree, I had grown to miss her.

            I talked this over with Sidney Purslane. He had his Marguerite and he was still excited by the advanced nature of the work we were doing. True, what we had learned from the plants put us far in front of the state of the art as it existed elsewhere on earth. This would hold us in good stead later in our careers, if indeed, the global ecosystem didn’t collapse before career advancement became an option.

            Still, right now I needed a break. I wouldn’t have minded a nice simple plant-collecting expedition, where I could take it easy and camp out and have fun and hike around looking at nifty plants.

            I was still contemplating my options when the issue was decided for me, for all of us.

            6: GROK

            A few days after the flap over radiation hazard I decided that a night on the town would be a fun way to relax. “Listen, Sidney,” I said, “let’s take the night off and go out to the Golden Turnip for dinner and drinks.”

            “Sorry, Albert, I’m going to have to work tonight. There’s a new assay in progress and they want results by morning. In fact, I could use some help with it. It would go much faster if you could run some of the numbers.”

            “Not a chance, my friend. You’re letting these vegetables work you too hard. Treat yourself to a little time out. I’m sure Marguerite would appreciate it too. She’s been complaining to me she hasn’t seen enough of you lately.”

            “You’re tempting me, Albert. I haven’t been seeing enough of her either. It would be fun to go dancing tonight.”

            “Come on, Sidney. Let’s do it.”

            “Okay, pal. I’ll find someone to fill in for me tonight.”

            That evening at the Golden Turnip, Sidney, Marguerite and I sat at a corner table sipping, yep, margaritas, while waiting for our dinner orders to arrive. A gypsy trio was circulating among the tables playing their romantic fiddle music, full of weltschmerz and love-longing. It was so corny that it made me smile, lifting my mood, which was already quite elevated, as I was working on my second drink.

            Marguerite said, “Sidney, we have to find Albert a girlfriend. He’s been too long on the job with no one to amuse him. You are lonely, aren’t you, Albert?”

            Was that Marguerite or the margaritas talking? Both, I guessed. The drinks gave her the nerve to be so direct with me. None of the women I’d met over here appealed to me, but I liked it that Marguerite was trying to look after me. “Let me put it this way, Marguerite. I’d take another dose of KR22 if I could be sure that it would put me on the beach at Topolobampo with Belinda.”

            “I have a better idea, Albert,” Sidney said. “Send her an email offering her a job at the lab. I’m sure we could get it okayed. Has she got her degree yet? If she goes for it, then send her an air ticket to Kyvia. Meet her at the plane with a big bunch of flowers.”

            “That’s a great idea, Sidney.” My mood shot up another notch. “I’ll put in a request tomorrow. The vegetables really ought to go for it, shorthanded as we are.”

            “I’ll put my magic endorsement on it,” Sidney replied. “We’ll push it right through.”

            Then doubts began to assail me. “Do you think she’ll go for it?”

            “Of course, she will. Wasn’t she nuts about you in Topolobampo?”

            “Yes, but that was just my mental construct of her.”

            “Believe me, Albert, from everything you’ve told me about the real Belinda flirting with you back at Rutabaga U, she’s going to jump on your bones the minute she gets here.”

            “But will I like her as much as I liked my mental construct of her?”

            “Oh, shut up, Albert. She loves you. You love her. It’s going to be great.”

            After dinner we moved on to the Slippery Salamander. Sidney and Marguerite wanted to dance. I felt like dancing myself. And I did dance two numbers with Marguerite. The band was terrible, but for Kyvia, not too bad. I had switched to rum punch and I was feeling really loose, balancing between a don’t-give-a-damn happiness and some jets of apprehension about bringing Belinda here, when what I really wanted was to get the hell out of this place.

            As I walked back to our table from dancing with Marguerite, a man I knew slightly from the lab approached me. He was a Kyvian biochemist with the rather schizoid name of Mohammed Rosenfeld. He extended his hand. I shook it and said, “How ya doin’, Mohammed?” He leaned in close to me and whispered, “I got a message for you, Dr. Salsify.” He handed me a note and walked away.

            I opened the note and read: Don’t go to the lab tonight. Don’t let Dr. Purslane go to the lab tonight. Danger. It was signed Bart Comfrey.

            It was about 3 am when we finally decided to call it a night and slide out of the Slippery Salamander. We got into a taxi and Sidney said, “I’m going to stop off at the lab for a few minutes and see how that assay is coming.”

            “No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re going home with Marguerite. You’re on a date, for goodness sake. And you’re too drunk to evaluate an assay. Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

            “This is only going to take a few minutes,” he objected. “I want to make sure they’re doing it right. Then I’ll go along with Marguerite, won’t I, dear Marguerite?”

            “Albert is right,” she said, snuggling up to him. “You better just come with me.”

            “Now wait just a minute,” he said. “Am I not the director of Project Exodus at the Kyvian Botanical Research Laba...babratory? I mean, all vegetative intelligences aside, do I not have responsibi...bilities? I ask you as one human to another.”

            Marguerite and I were both about to respond when we heard a terrific explosion.

“What the hell was that?” said Sidney.

            I said, “Maybe it’s ...”

            “Maybe it’s what?”

            I tried to assume a sinister tone. “Somebody told me there’s danger at the lab.”

            “What danger? Who says there’s danger?”

            I showed him the note.

            “What the hell is this? Isn’t Bart Comfrey your ex-student? Could he be here in Kyvia? What the hell is he up to?”

            “I have no idea.”

            “Didn’t you tell me the plants were driving him nuts?”

            “Yes, but that stopped some time ago.”

            “Driver, take us to the Botanical Laboratory.” The driver pulled away from the curb and headed for the lab.

            Another huge explosion rocked our ears. Then another and another. The sounds were coming from the direction of the lab. We were still two or three miles away. Sidney urged the driver to hurry. As we raced to the scene, planes passed us flying low overhead and we heard more explosions. The sky ahead was lit up with a flickering glow. As we entered the long drive leading to the lab complex, we saw flames shooting from several of the buildings. Four planes skimmed in low, dropping bombs, and flew on out of sight. The driver pulled to the side of the road and stopped.

            We leaped out of the taxi and ran toward the lab. People were scattered about the grounds, some still running out of the burning buildings. The main building, the principal site of Project Exodus research, was badly damaged and burning furiously. The KR22 wing was rubble. Every building in the complex had received some hits and was burning.

            “Dr. Purslane! Dr. Purslane! Workers still inside.” The heat was driving people away from the fires. Sidney pushed his way closer. I ran after him, shouting, “Sidney, you can’t go in there.” With all the shouting and pushing I couldn’t reach him or make myself heard. He got within ten feet of the main building and stopped. Flames shot out the entrance toward him and his shirt caught fire. He rolled on the ground and ripped off his shirt. I could see the buttons popping. He flung it away and ran from the building.

            Police cars and fire engines came roaring up the drive with sirens wailing. The firemen hooked up their hoses and began to attack the flames. The police set up a cordon and pushed the crowd back. I looked up to see if more planes were coming, but the raid appeared to be over.

            Two policemen caught up with Sidney and dragged him away from the flames. He tried to explain that because of some of the chemicals in the lab, water could make the fire worse. Foam would be needed to snuff the flames. But no foam was available, so water was used, with little or no effect. No doubt the highly inflammable stocks of Lycopodium and Escapodium powder were also fueling the fire.

            Marguerite and I rushed up to Sidney. His eyebrows and chest hair were gone. “I’m sober now,” he said.

            “No kidding,” Marguerite replied. “No coffee needed.” She put her arms around him. “I thought we were going to lose you, baby,” she added.

            “Yeah,” he said. “For a moment I thought so too.”

            “Sidney,” I said, “What did you think you were doing?”

            “Jeez, Albert. There are people in there. My assay team is in one of the basement labs. They may still be alive down there.”

            “It’s possible,” I said, “but they’ve got to get the fire under control before anyone can go on rescue missions.”

            “This fire is just going to burn itself out,” he said. “The water’s not helping. Wait, the tunnel, the tunnel!”

            “What tunnel?”

            Sidney ran to the nearest police officer and began gesticulating wildly. Marguerite and I caught up to him just in time to hear him shouting, “Fifty yards behind the main building, an entrance to an underground storage area for toxic chemicals. A tunnel leads from there to the basement of the main building. If there’s anyone alive in the basement, we can reach them.”

            “Just who are you, sir?”

            “Dr. Sidney Purslane, one of the directors of the lab. There’s no time to lose. Let’s get some firemen together and get back there. We’ll need some axes. I don’t have my keys with me.”

            The policeman sprang into action. He conferred with his fellow officers. They commandeered a firetruck. We all jumped aboard and went bouncing off, circling around the main building and pulling up near a small stone structure with a single door.

            “Thank God, it hasn’t been hit,” Sidney cried. “Smash that door.” A hefty fireman wielded his axe and made short work of the job. The fire fighters and police officers followed Sidney through the doorway, which led immediately to a descending stone staircase. Marguerite and I brought up the rear. At the bottom of the steps, they forced another door and we entered the storage area, where the walls were lined with metal and plastic drums with biohazard warning signs all over them. Then we ran down the tunnel and came at last to the door to the main basement.

            “One more door,” said Sidney. “But we’ve got a problem here. I don’t know if we should axe it. If the fire spreads to the tunnel, it could reach those chemicals. We can’t let that happen. Anyone know how to pick the lock?”

            One of the policemen pounded on the door. “Anybody in there?”

            A faint answering knock came from within. “They’re alive in there,” cried Sidney. “We’ve got to get this door open.”

            The axe wielding fireman said, “We’re gonna waste too much time dinkin’ around with the lock. Better to bust a big hole in that door. We can drag a hose down here and keep the fire from spreading into the tunnel. We’re a pretty good distance from those drums.”

            “Okay,” said the police officer. “Do it.” Two firemen went to work on the door. When a hole appeared, we were greeted with a blast of heat, but no flames or smoke.

            When the hole was big enough, Sidney stepped into the basement, followed by several others. When I got up close, I could see through the hole two women lying in the cooler air at floor level. Sidney helped one of them to her feet. “Good morning, Lily,” he said, “how’s the assay coming? I hope you haven’t let it get too hot.”

            “Oh, Dr. Purslane, I’m afraid it got a bit overcooked.”

One of the firemen helped the other woman up. Sidney said, “It’s very, very good to see you, Rose. So happy to see both of you. Anybody else in here?”

            “Upstairs, yes, but we were the only ones working in the basement.”

            “Then let’s get out of here.”

            As they left, the firemen were calling for hoses and reinforcements, and planning to mount a rescue expedition up to the first floor.

            Two hours later Marguerite, Sidney and I sat around Marguerite’s apartment thoroughly exhausted, but too wired to sleep. Marguerite had put on a pot of coffee and was cooking up an omelette. The sun was already climbing in the sky. I found the light offensive, as though the sun should have waited for us to go through a night of sleep before daring to show itself.

            Sidney finally voiced the question that had haunted us since we first saw the lab in flames. “Who in the hell came over in bombers, fer Chrissake, and demolished the lab?”

            We kicked this one around. Kyvia was not at war. There was a hostile neighbor to the east, but that had been a standoff situation for decades, with only the occasional border skirmish that had never threatened to escalate into a fullblown war. Besides, why would they target the lab? The answer is they wouldn’t, so it wasn’t the Dalamanians. But then, who?

            I heard a familiar voice in my head. It was an international taskforce known as GROK. That’s an acronym for Get Rid Of KR22.

            Sidney straightened up and cried out, “So, it was about KR22 then. Why didn’t we think of blowing up the lab? We had such a sophisticated, elegant, biochemist’s solution, except it didn’t work, was years from fruition. My God, so simple. So straight forward.”

            “Yes,” I replied. “Except for the people who got killed.”

            “What are you two on about?” asked Marguerite, as she brought the omelette to the table.

            “Oh, we could have done much better when it comes to that,” said Sidney. “We would only have destroyed the KR22 lab, not the whole complex. We could have gotten everyone out of the building on a pretext, like the threat of a toxic leak or something. Then kaboom!” He pounded his fist on the table and the omelette took a short leap.

            “Hey,” I said, “is it you talking, the philodendron hanging over the kitchen sink?”

            “Oh,” said Marguerite. “You’re talking with plants again. I’ll never get used to that.”

            Yes, it is I, the philodendron, speaking for the group, as usual. GROK is an ad hoc coalition of militant activist groups from about thirty nations. They grew tired of petitioning the UN and the world’s major governments and receiving nothing but rhetoric and promises to form committees to look into the problem. The raid was led by the impetuous and controversial mercenary General Jock Oakenshield. You may recall that he made the cover of Time Magazine last year in connection with a raid on a crack cocaine operation in Peru.

            “You seem to know all about this GROK,” put in Sidney. “Did you know they were planning this attack?”

            We’ve been following their operations for some time. You know we have our roots and rhizomes everywhere. But we knew of no way of forestalling them.
“Well, you could at least have warned us to evacuate the lab.”

            True, but what are a few humans more or less? There were plenty of plants in the lab too. We do not concern ourselves with individuals.

            “Oh, but that’s not so,” I interjected. “I know from Backster’s experiments and from my own research that plants scream in anticipation of being harmed. These are individuals who seem quite concerned with themselves and their continued well being.”

            Yes and no, the philodendron replied. You and Backster both interpreted the jump of a polygraph needle as a scream, but it’s merely a heightened awareness in anticipation of an imminent change. Of course, the individual plant has concerns for itself, but at the same time all plants are more concerned with the super organism of which they are a part.

            “Well, I can tell you,” Sidney added, “that it’s not the same for humans. The individual is everything and a few humans more or less is a very big deal.”

            Yes, we know that, but however you may judge us, we think and act like plants, true to our nature. What I’ve been instructed to tell you now is that our operations in Kyvia are finished, so you’ll need to plan for your futures, as we are planning for ours. Please alert your colleagues.

            “So much for KR22,” said Sidney. “Good riddance. And so much for Project Exodus. And I say, so what! Speaking as a human and being true to our nature, why should I care if you vegetables get off the planet or not?”

            Oh, Project Exodus will go forward, but not in Kyvia and not funded by drug money.

            “So much for the distinguished director of Project Exodus.” Sidney took a big bite of omelette and smiled. “On to the next adventure.”

            “So much for bringing Belinda to Kyvia,” said I, as I dug into the omelette. I smiled too as I realized that I was free now to leave this impoverished desert kingdom and return to the land of reliable plumbing, good bagels, the New York Yankees, and Belinda Peartree.

            7: Lemon Ginger Tea

            I found the website for Rutabaga University and was pleased to discover that there was a complete list of students and their email addresses. I sent an email to Belinda.

            Dear Ms. Peartree,

            My work here in Kyvia has come to an end. I plan to be back in the U.S. very soon. As I’ll be passing through your part of the world, I’d like to stop off at the University for old times’ sake. I’d love to see you. I have some ideas for possible botanical projects that might interest you.

            Respectfully,

            Albert Salsify

            I didn’t actually have any concrete plans for botanical projects. Just a vague notion of looking for a grant for a plant collecting trip, maybe from one of the pharmaceutical companies. What I was mainly dreaming about was going camping with Belinda and picking some posies along the way.

            I kept busy all day closing out my affairs in Kyvia, booking my plane ticket, drawing my funds from the bank, saying goodbye to friends and co-workers. In the evening I checked my email. Nothing from Belinda. The next day there was a meeting of the laboratory staff at the Palm Garden Hotel. The Kyvian operations director of the lab gave out the news we had already learned from the philodendron, with the addendum that there’d be no more disbursements for salaries, severance pay, bonuses, or the like. The Kyvians had suffered a disastrous loss, the lab records were demolished in the raid, and there was no mechanism for determining who was owed what nor funds to cover it. That was a hard blow for most of the staff. Fortunately, I had socked away a lot of money during my stay here.

            “Don’t you suppose,” I said to Sidney, “that there are plenty of KR22 profits lying around somewhere? Possibly in the form of some of those ingots we saw at the bank.”

            “No doubt, no doubt,” said Sidney, “but you know how it is. If you’re a collector of ingots, how you hate to cash one in.”

            When I got home that night there was a reply from Belinda.
Dear Professor Salsify,

            I was so excited to receive your email. I think about you often and wonder how you are doing. If you arrive by the 16th of next month you’ll be just in time to attend my wedding. Yes, it’s so exciting. I’m getting married to Bart Comfrey. I’m sure you must remember him. He told me about some interesting work you did together.

            The day before the wedding is graduation. Finally, I got my degree. I’d love to hear your ideas, as I’ll be looking for a job.

            Please, please try to be at my wedding. Bart and I would love it if you could be there.

            Affectionately,

            Belinda Peartree

            (soon to be Mrs. Bart Comfrey!!!)

            Not exactly the response I’d been hoping for. My first thought was to show up at Rutabaga U. as soon as possible and try to win her away from Bart. I even played a fantasy in my mind based on the movie, The Graduate, in which the wedding ceremony is already in progress when Dustin Hoffman shows up and runs off with the bride.

            When I woke up in the morning I thought, Oh no, this isn’t going to work. The Belinda Peartree I love and who loves me is just a mental construct I invented while high on KR22. Last time I saw the real Belinda I was repelled by her. She’s in love with Bart. So good luck, Belinda, but I don’t think I can make it to your wedding.

            Two days later I was winging my way back to the good old USA. At some point in the flight, as I walked toward the rear lavatories, I saw Bart Comfrey reading a magazine and sipping a cocktail.

            “Dr. Salsify,” he called out. “Please join me.” He pointed to the empty aisle seat beside him.

            I slid into the seat and said, “Hiya, Bart. Congratulations. I heard you’re getting married.”

            “Yes, yes. Quite so. You remember Belinda Peartree, don’t you? Wasn’t she in one of your classes?”

            “Oh, yes. I remember her. Wonderful girl, Belinda. Bright student. Lucky you, Bart, to have snagged such a beauty.”

            “Thank you, Dr. Salsify. And thank you for putting me in touch with the Papaya Contingent. They found some interesting work for me in Kyvia.”

            “Would that have something to do with the destruction of the lab?”

            “Yes. You did get my note, didn’t you?”

            “Oh, yes. So you knew about GROK and their plans before the attack.”

            “That’s exactly right. The Papaya Contingent told me how you and Dr. Purslane tried to stop the production of KR22. They decided that the biochemical approach needed refinement and would take too long to bring to perfection. They made me their liaison with GROK and I was able to give them vital information about the KR22 operation. GROK then enlisted me to be their man on the ground in Kyvia. I spent the last month hanging out at the bars and clubs, gathering scuttlebutt from KBRL workers till I had the whole operation scoped out. I was able to work undetected by the plant leaders because of the Papaya tabasco remedy. And I must thank you again for getting the plant powers off my back. You saved my life.”

            “If you had it all scoped out, Bart, then why did you not pinpoint the attack on the KR22 wing? Why did you let them destroy the whole complex?”

            “Because I was so pissed at the plant bosses that I wanted to scotch their plan of escaping the planet.”

            “But, Bart, seventeen people died in that attack. And you did not stop Project Exodus. They’ll just start up again somewhere else.”

            “Yeah, you’re probably right. But that’s how I felt at the time and that’s what I did.”

            “Bart, the lightseeds were right about you. So don’t thank me for saving you. I regret having done that. And I’m going to tell Belinda what kind of a man you are. It would be a very big mistake for her to marry you.”

            “Dr. Salsify, aren’t you just the least bit grateful that I spared you and Dr. Purslane?”

            “No, Bart. Your note was irrelevant. We went to the lab in spite of your note and Dr. Purslane risked his life to save two of our co-workers. You could have saved all of them. Your act of revenge against the plant kingdom was stupid, cruel, selfish and futile.”

            I got up and returned to my seat. A beautiful flight attendant asked me if I’d like to purchase a cocktail. She had the loveliest melting blue eyes. I ordered a vodka martini. As I sipped it I realized that this was no vodka martini. It had a familiar aroma and taste. Oh my God, it was lemon ginger tea.

            I was spread out prone on the ground at eye level with a beautiful eighteen inch specimen of Bessera elegans growing among loose limestone rocks. It had delicate, thin, linear leaves and rising up from the base a flowering stalk with an umbel of gorgeous one inch downward facing blooms, six red sepals and a fused purple perianth tube with dentate border. Long hanging anthers with blue pollen. Exquisite. Through this vision of loveliness I could see Belinda’s face in rapt admiration of our find. She was lying prone on the opposite side of the plant. Our eyes met.

            “Lily family?” she asked.

            “Oh yes, liliaceous for sure.” I used my trowel to clear away the rocks and dirt from around the small shallow bulb. “But perhaps it belongs to one of the lily subfamilies, like Alliaceae.” In my head I heard Bessera speak. Esteemed Dr. Salsify, you might be interested to know that Project Exodus is positioned for a restart in Germany. We invite you and Ms. Peartree to join our research staff.

            So soon? It seems like I only just left Kyvia.

            That was six months ago, Dr. Salsify. We’ve accomplished a lot in that time.

            How are you going to finance your operation? Not another illegal drug setup, I hope.

            It’s all strictly legal. We’ve teamed up with one of the major pharmaceutical houses in Germany. They’ll bankroll our operation. We’ll supply them with formulas far in advance of any known to your science.

            Have you approached Dr. Purslane?

            He has adamantly refused to work with us again.

            Good for him. I feel the same way.

            “Why are you staring like that?” said Belinda.

            “Oh, I’m communing with nature again. Conversing with this lovely specimen, actually. Shall we add it to our collection?”

            “It seems a shame,” said Belinda, “for such a beautiful plant to end up on a herbarium sheet.”

            “There are plenty of other specimens here to enjoy the habitat. I’ll just take one. This one.” I dug my trowel beneath the bulb and lifted the plant out of the ground. I walked over to the jeep, opened my plant press and laid the specimen gently down on a sheet of paper.

            There was no need for you to be vindictive, Dr. Salsify.

            I laid another sheet on top and screwed down the press.

            We were just off the side of the road that runs from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, over the continental divide and down into Durango in the desert. That night we camped in a lovely, flat, oak-pine grassland at 7700 feet with spectacular views of high mountains, intensely green with vegetation.

            We sat on our camp stools outside the tent, relaxing after a delicious dinner. Belinda offered me some coffee. “Anything,” I said, “but lemon ginger tea.”

            But it was lemon ginger tea.

            The heat of the fire was ferocious. A huge stand of ponderosa pine was burning right before my eyes. A howling wind was whipping the fire, but even louder was the continual undulating screams of the trees as they burned. Several fire fighters ran by behind me. One of them stopped and hailed me. “Better come along with us. The fire is spreading fast.”

            I ran after him. He stopped and looked around.

            “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” I asked. “Yes, I know where. You were one of the firemen that came with us through the tunnel and broke down the doors at the botanical lab.”

            “Yes,” he shouted over the noise of the screaming trees and the roaring flames. “That was me.”

            “But how could that be?”

            “You know how it is. The mind uses whatever it’s got. Sometimes it has to double up on the cast. Hey, keep moving. We could get cut off here.”

We ran along the fire break but the fire was leaping over the break behind us. “Too late,” he said. “We’re surrounded now.”

            “What should we do?” I yelled. The walls of heat and flame were closing in on us.

            “Only one thing to do,” he said. He handed me his canteen. “Take a slug of this.”

            Yep, lemon ginger tea.

            I sat brooding in my prison cell, staring at my shoes. For six weeks I’d been held here without any explanation. They still hadn’t accused me of any crime, and I doubted that they would, but I had just learned that I was to be executed the following morning.

            Sidney Purslane came to visit me. “What has happened to me, Sidney? I haven’t taken any KR22. How can I be tripping again?”

            “I’ve got two theories about that,” he said. It was comforting to see him again and to hear him talk like that, so typical of his analytic mode. “I read that some folks who had taken LSD, but who had not dropped any acid for months, would suddenly find themselves tripping again. Some residue of the drug must have lodged somewhere in their systems and then got kicked loose and back into the bloodstream. That could be happening to you.”

            “Any chance I’ll come down for good? I’m on a bum trip right now and I’d sure like to be done with it.”

            “Yes ... maybe ... I don’t know. We still don’t understand the action of KR22. Same thing goes for my other theory, which is this, that you’re still on your first trip, that you never came down, that everything that happened back at the lab after you thought you came down was just another episode in your trip, the blowing up of the lab, everything. You can only hope that you’ll come down before they execute you.”

            “Are you suggesting that I could be executed and actually die while I’m in a drug-induced, self-choreographed, alternate reality? Does that make any sense?”

            Sidney scratched his nose while he thought about that. “It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to make sense to be true. The fact is I don’t know, no one knows, what will happen to you now.”

            The guards came for me early in the morning. As we climbed the scaffold, I saw that the fields all around were covered with Bessera elegans, waving their blossoms gently in the breeze. A cloud of Escapodium spores drifted by, momentarily softening the bright morning sunlight that beamed directly into my eyes. High up and far off a plane inched slowly across the sky. I imagined the passengers being invited by beautiful flight attendants to purchase cocktails. I wished I could have been among their number, with my seat belt fastened and on my way to the next chapter of my life.

            The hangman sat hunched forward on a stool, his forearms resting across his thighs. In his hands he held a noose which he turned round and round, first one way, then the other, as though he were trying to solve the puzzle of life and death.

            A solemn official in a black suit approached me. In his buttonhole he had a blossom of Bessera elegans. He said, “The court permits you one final request. Don’t ask for your freedom. Make it something reasonable. A last cigarette is what most prisoners ask for.”

            “If it’s not too much trouble,” I said, “I’d like a cool glass of lemon ginger tea.”

            8: Larry Avena

            My executioners were perturbed by my request. It wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask for and they felt honor-bound to grant it, yet it was not easy for them to obtain lemon ginger tea. I was taken back to my cell and several days passed, while I fretted over my fate. Finally, I was awakened one morning by the guard, who said, “Here’s your lousy lemon ginger tea. We had a devil of a time procuring it. I hope you enjoy it because then we’re going to take you out and hang you.”

            I inhaled the spicy fragrance of lemon ginger tea and took a large swallow. It had the desired effect. I found myself back on the airplane heading for the States. The beautiful flight attendant had moved one row back and was serving the people behind me. Almost no time had elapsed since I had taken a sip of what was supposed to be a vodka martini. I still held it in my hand and when I inhaled its aroma it still smelled like lemon ginger tea. I set it down carefully on the tray table and considered my situation.

            Apparently I had become addicted to KR22, having only consumed it once, albeit a tremendous dose, and now I was subject to plunging into episodes of totally believable alternate realities without any further doses of the drug. According to Sidney Purslane, or rather, my mental construct of him, I may still be experiencing my first and only trip and have yet to return to my primary reality.

            I had lived through three separate events between the moment I drank the beverage and the moment of setting it down. These experiences were convincingly engendered by the protean creative ingenuity of my sensorium, accompanied by my running thoughts and a sense of time passing. Also, there was a back history attached to them, such as the fact that the moment I found myself in prison, I knew I had been languishing there for six weeks. Such is the power of the mind when unlocked by KR22.

            The full textured richness of these encounters lent them authenticity, or perhaps a better term would be verisimilitude. Lovely word, verisimilitude. It has all the grace, rhythm and emotional depth of a whole poem. A one-word poem entitled KR22.

            There remained then only the fact that some of these realities were more acceptable to me than others. I had a tool at my disposal. I looked at the glass of lemon ginger tea before me. If I were careful to check the aroma of every liquid refreshment before I drank it, I could avoid drinking lemon ginger tea when my circumstances suited me, or conversely, I could imbibe it when desperate to change the course of events. The woman I loved was about to marry someone else, but I preferred the current state of affairs so much more than being hanged. For now I was content to sit back in my seat and let the plane carry me on to my next adventure.

            Once I arrived in New York I checked into a hotel and spent several days enjoying the amenities of civilization, such as the novelty of having hot water come straight from the tap. I treated myself to some superb meals, a brilliant new book on the evolution of the gymnosperms, and a Broadway show with fresh melodic songs, clever lyrics and scores of beautiful female dancers. The plot was stupid, but hey, no reality is perfect.

            I decided what to do next. I went up to the Bronx Botanical Garden and sat before a fine specimen of the Traveler’s Palm, Ravenala madagascariensis, to which I directed my thoughts.

            I need a job. My resume is not in good shape. I was fired from my post at Rutabaga University. Since then I worked at Project Exodus at the Kyvian Botanical Research Laboratory. But if I put that on my resume, it will be assumed that I was working on KR22, which is all the world knows of that place since the destruction of the lab hit the papers. I appeal to the Papaya Contingent to find me meaningful work to do.

            I did not have to wait long for a response.

Dr. Salsify, we do indeed have meaningful work for you. If you call on Dr. Larry Avena of the Biochemistry Department at Columbia University, he will brief you. I’ll tell you this much. We have developed a simple one-dose cure for KR22 addiction.

            I wasted no time contacting Larry Avena. I had read with interest his illuminating papers on bacterial transduction. He was considered to be one of the brilliant rising talents in the biology game. We belonged to the same generation, but there the resemblance ended. His star was shining far more brightly than mine. I was thrilled to learn that the Papaya Contingent had recruited him.

            When I entered his office he was sitting back in a swivel chair with his feet up on a lab table and chewing a stick of sugar cane, Saccharum officinarum. When he saw me he jumped to his feet and came forward with hand extended. “Dr. Salsify, welcome, welcome. The Papaya folks have briefed me on your work in Kyvia and given you their full seal of approval.”

            He pumped my hand enthusiastically. “I’m so glad you’re joining our team.”

            He was thin, but muscular, with straight, sandy blond hair that fell over one eye. Periodically, he swept the hair aside with a toss of his head, but it soon returned to plague him, so that he spent a lot of energy futilely trying to correct this problem. But then energy seemed to be his chief characteristic. He was constantly in motion, which, of course, made the hair fall over his eye.

            “Come on, I’m going to take you to lunch. I know a nice quiet place over on Columbus Avenue. You like Jewish deli?”

            When we were seated in a booth in a dark corner waiting for our sandwiches, he noticed that I poured my Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic into a glass and inhaled deeply its aroma. “Long time,” he asked, “since you had Cel-Ray Tonic? This is one of the few places in New York that still serves it.”

            “It has been a long time,” I answered, “but I have to tell you that I’m addicted to KR22 and I have to sniff test any beverage before I drink it.”

            “I understand,” he said. “Some drink is the trigger that sets you off.”

            “Exactly. Lemon ginger tea. Sometimes I think I’ve been served champagne or coffee or a vodka martini and it turns out to be lemon ginger tea and off I go into a new reality.”

            “I had a different trigger, but the same problem. Thanks to our Papaya buddies, I’m cured of my addiction now. I’ve popped the Papaya pill.”

            “Oh, tell me about that.”

            “Here’s the deal. During the last few months my colleagues and I discovered the human dream receptor and the ligand that binds to it. During sleep a peptide is released. We call it hypnosine, after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. It attaches to the dream receptor and this activates a complex set of reactions, which we still don’t understand, but the result is that the mind’s ability to distinguish between dream and reality is blurred, sometimes extinguished. This is how we accept dreams as real, however absurd they may be to the waking mind. On awakening, another peptide is released, called eosine, after Eos, the Greek goddess of the dawn, It deactivates hypnosine. This reverses the action and you wake up thinking, man, that dream was so weird.”

            The sandwiches arrived and I took a bite of my corned beef on rye, another flavor I had not tasted in years. I took a slug of my Cel-Ray Tonic. It was just as strong as lemon ginger tea, but it did not transport me to another scene.

            “That’s when the Papaya gang contacted me through their agent, your ex-student, Bart Comfrey.”

            “Bart Comfrey is a loose cannon,” I said.

            “Maybe so, maybe not. I was totally skeptical of his story. But he convinced me in an interesting way. He asked me to step over to the window. ‘When I count to ten,’ he said, ‘that maple out there will start dropping its leaves.’ First one leaf fell, then another, then a few more. Then a veritable shower of leaves.”

            He made fluttering leaf falling gestures with both hands, even though one hand held his pastrami sandwich and the other a pickle.

            “I told Bart to make it stop. It stopped. This was late summer. Presumably the tree had already made the necessary changes to its abscission layers in preparation for autumn, but leaf fall had not yet begun. I must say that I was impressed. Then he showed me a sealed flask containing ... well you know what that was. The same slimy concoction you and Bart imbibed at Rutabaga University that put you in telepathic communication with the plant world.”

            “And you ate it.”

            “I did. Not without some resistance. I asked him for another sign that he was in touch with the plants. Immediately the maple began shedding more leaves. I watched till the tree was bare. Then I ate the horrible fungus and from that moment on I’ve been a member of the club. Can you imagine how freaked I was, being told by a plant how its buddies were following my work? Our paper on the dream receptor was still being refereed at Nature, but somehow they managed to read our preprint. I’m still reeling from the sheer mind-boggling implications of the unsuspected powers of the plant kingdom.”

            I took a bite of my sandwich and listened to Larry Avena continue.

            “They explained that KR22 competes with hypnosine and attaches to the dream receptor. Waking, sleeping, makes no difference. The great dream fabricator, that genius in charge of direction, casting, costumes, scenery, story, the works, churns out its brilliant productions and the mind accepts it all as real. Eosine is unable to deactivate KR22, so the trip goes on and on. Eventually, the drug loosens its grip on the dream receptor and you come down.”

            This news electrified me. It explained so much, but I was bursting with questions. Avena tossed his head to clear the mop of hair off his forehead and went on talking.

            “The Papaya bunch was able to formulate a molecule that can destroy KR22 during the docking maneuver with the dream receptor. At that moment KR22’s electrical properties are modified by the proximity of the dream receptor and some of its critical bonds are momentarily weakened.”

            “But how come,” I broke in, “I got launched on another trip without taking more of the drug?”

            “Good question. The answer is this: we don’t know. KR22 persists in the body, we think associated with a freely circulating lipid vesicle, but we’re not sure. When conditions are ripe, whatever that means, the drug kicks loose from its hiding place and heads for the dream receptors. What we do know is that the Papaya gang’s antidote molecule is there to prevent reconnection. Hence the cure is permanent, even if additional doses of the drug are taken. How the antidote remains active in the body we don’t know, but it does. At least so far in my case and the few unofficial tests we’ve made.”

            I couldn’t restrain myself. My next question came bursting forth. “So if this is just a vivid dream, where is the dreaming person when he’s tripping?”

            “Have you ever seen another person on KR22?”

            “No, but we fed the drug to a rat, which went catatonic.”

            “Exactly the same for humans. The tripper may be dancing on the moon without a spacesuit, but his body is still here on earth, locked in a rigid, catatonic stupor. You can see why KR22 addiction is a really serious social problem. I read in the paper yesterday about a guy, when he saw the traffic light turn amber he went off on a trip and sailed into a busy intersection against the light. When he came down he was in the hospital. He explained that the amber light was the trigger for his addiction.”

            “Then what about lemon ginger tea, I mean, all these triggers that shift the scene?”

            “Oh, yes, different for each person. How these are selected no one knows, but clearly there must be some personal significance for the addict. I’ll tell you about my trigger.”

            He paused. Took a bite of his pastrami sandwich. I sensed this was not going to be easy for him to talk about. He leaned closer and said, “Have you ever heard the singer, Lee Wiley?”

            “Never heard of him.”

            “Not a he. Lee Wiley is a she, the quintessential she, the most seductive, sensual ...” He broke off for a moment, took a sip of his drink. “When I was twelve years old I first heard one of her recordings. From that moment to this, I have had a lifelong crush on Lee Wiley. Her husky throaty vibrato fills me with love longing. Her recording of How Deep is the Ocean is my trigger. With the opening notes of the piano introduction a shiver of anticipation crosses my skin. At that point the trigger hasn’t yet fired, but it’s too late. I cannot tear myself away from the compelling loveliness of her voice. Certain words she sings with a downward flutter of her voice, like a bird descending on a broken wing, and toward the end when she reaches the line ‘and if I ever lost you, how much would I cry?’, on the word cry, well, if I’m not already gone, then there I go.”

            I said nothing, just waited for him to go on.

            “In real life I never met her. She was way older than me. I went to her funeral and discovered that I was not her only fan. The men who were enchanted by her voice could have populated a small city. On KR22 we were lovers, of course, except when she sang that song, and then I’d be whisked away to somewhere else, some place ungraced by her music, her feminine magic. One time I found myself in some scorching Sahara of the psyche, where I wandered for days until I stumbled into an oasis where a grizzled oldtimer sat listening to an old-fashioned gramophone playing How Deep is the Ocean. That grizzled oldtimer was my alter ego, the lost wayfarer in thrall to the siren’s voice.”[5]

            Larry Avena fascinated me. He was a brilliant scientist, a captivating speaker, and in our first encounter he opened his heart to me.

            “It wasn’t easy,” he continued, “to take the cure, but I did. My addiction was not KR22, so much as it was Lee Wiley. If I had refused the cure, I could expect more ecstasy and more suffering. It was not the suffering that deterred me. It was worth it for the moments we had. But in the end I knew that I had become dysfunctional, too much time locked in catatonic stupor, when I had a life, a career, waiting for me. My reward: I still play her records and once in a long while I still dream about her.”

            His story resonated with me deeply. I knew I’d be offered the cure and I thought how tempting it would be to refuse it. I remembered telling Marguerite that I’d take another dose of KR22 if it would put me on the beach at Topolobampo with Belinda. I realized then why so many people take the drug and why working with Larry Avena on antidote production was important. The question was: how many people would take the cure? I wondered if I would take it myself.

            9: Puerto Seguro

            The plane banked sharply as it circled for a landing, yielding me a splendid view of the island. Puerto Seguro was an emerald jewel floating on the surface of the sea, which lay flat and shining in the sun. Tiny waves inched toward the sandy beaches, behind which rose a chain of mountains carpeted in brilliant green foliage. As the plane leveled off and descended, heading for the runway, the island grew larger, more details became visible, sailboats on the water, houses nestled in the foothills. The port city of Bananaville flashed by. I had a quick glimpse of a cruise ship in the harbor, small boats at anchor, houses painted in bright colors and people walking the streets. Then as we dropped to tree level, the view ceased to show the character of an island and became a series of palm trees, huts and buildings streaming past. The ground rose up to meet us. The wheels touched down, the plane bounced twice and we passengers pitched forward as the plane braked, till finally we taxied to the gate and came to a stop.

            When I left New York that morning it was snowing. Now as I exited the plane and climbed down the steps to the tarmac, the tropical heat and humidity hit me all at once. I slipped out of my jacket and draped it over my arm.

            Customs inspection was perfunctory. No bags were being searched. The welcome mat was out for the planeloads of tourists coming from the US.

            “Any thing to declare? Any food, agricultural products, firearms, drugs?” This was clearly an empty formula, required by law. All I had to do was say no, as the people in line ahead of me had done, and I’d be waved through.

            But like a dummy I said, “Just this apple left over from my lunch.”

            The customs agent confiscated my apple.

            “I’m planning to eat that almost immediately,” I protested.

            “No, sorry, sir. No fruit can enter. Plenty good fruit here.” The agent gave me a gleaming full tooth smile. “Mango, guayaba, carambola, cherimoya, maracuja, papaya. All wonderful good fruit.”

            “Some of my best friends are papayas,” I said.

            “Oh me, I like them too. Enjoy your stay.” He waved me through.

            As I approached the doors to the street, I chanced to look back and saw him eating my apple. He saw me and grinned. I shrugged it off with a grin of my own and moved out to the taxi stands. That was my first lesson in the ways of the island, learned at small cost.

            As my taxi approached the center of Bananaville, we encountered crowds of people dancing in the streets. Our progress was slowed to a crawl.

            “Carnaval,” said the driver. “Look at that beauty there. Ay, mamacita,” he cried, followed by a string of Spanish too rapid for me to follow. The beauty in question smiled and tossed him a bead necklace, which he dexterously caught and displayed to me with a laugh. We were inching along behind a float, upon which a spirited local band was playing a rumba. Or was it a samba, or was it a meringue? Whatever it was, it got me smiling and my foot tapping. Girls in scanty costumes were throwing streamers off the float into the crowd. All around us dancers in wild outfits whirled and brushed past the taxi.

            A shoeless youth in shorts knocked on my window. I smiled and waved to him. He gestured for me to roll down the window. I did and was hit by a wave of hot air carrying a mélange of aromas I could not identify.

            “Salida?” he cried. “You want Salida? Best quality, cheap, good price.”

            I didn’t know what he was talking about. On the plane I noticed that the emergency exit signs said salida. What was he trying to sell me? I shook my head. “No thank you.” A bead necklace sailed through the window and hit me in the face. I laughed and rolled up the window.

            For a moment I wondered if I was on another KR22 adventure, but I concluded that this was the real reality. I had been traveling all day, flying from New York to Miami on American Airlines, and from there on Carib Airlines. If this was KR22, I would have arrived instantaneously, courtesy of lemon ginger tea, and I wouldn’t be tired.

            I finally reached my hotel, overstimulated and exhausted. I took a cold shower and lay naked on the bed, staring at the slowly moving fan overhead until I fell asleep.

            I had every reason to believe that I would be living in New York and working with Larry Avena at Columbia University, but this was not the way it worked out. Larry and I knew that there would have to be clinical trials of the KR22 antidote, that the drug would have to receive approval by the Food and Drug Administration, and that this could take a long time. Standard procedure. We were prepared for that. But then the FDA turned down the plan that Larry had filed through Columbia University for proposed tests on humans.

            The Papaya Contingent gave us the inside story. Rumex Pharmaceuticals, the most powerful drug manufacturer on the planet, had a KR22 antidote already in clinical trials. They did not want to see a competing product going into trials. It would be impossible to prove that Rumex was able to influence the FDA decision, but the Papaya Contingent, privy as they were to many boardroom secrets, knew that the FDA had capitulated to pressure from the industry giant.

            From the consumer’s point of view Rumex’s product was far from ideal. It required the addict to take the medication repeatedly over an indefinite timespan, it was expensive and it had some nasty side effects, like nausea, headache and depression. From Rumex’s point of view it was perfect, i.e., profitable. They already had drugs on the market to alleviate nausea, headache and depression, which would provide an additional after market income. Those drugs had their own side effects, but no one was looking at that. They had already received FDA approval.

            No drug company would be interested in manufacturing the Papaya cure, since there is no profit to be made from a one-dose, inexpensive, permanent cure with no side effects. Larry Avena had illegally tried the drug on himself and a few volunteers. So far the drug was performing well. But as Larry pointed out, trials were still necessary, not only because it is illegal in the US to dispense drugs without FDA approval, but also because there was still insufficient evidence that the Papaya Contingent’s claims were valid. The drug industry was not interested in pursuing this and neither was the FDA.

            The Papaya Contingent offered us an alternative. The island of Puerto Seguro in the Caribbean has a long, bloody history. The aboriginal Arawaks were wiped out by European explorers, that is, those that weren’t wiped out by their neighbors, the ferocious Caribs. In the 17th century the island’s two sheltered harbors served as home base for pirates, from whence they sailed forth to pillage, plunder, rob, and yes, even steal. Murder was a mere byproduct of this work, though generally conducted with considerable gusto. The island was eventually settled by Europeans, who kept up the tradition of nastiness by importing slaves from Africa to work the sugar plantations and the mines.

            Today Puerto Seguro is an independent country and a center for international banking. A consortium of European and American banking interests has created a Switzerland of the Caribbean, except that the island is also a haven for illegal activities, such as money laundering, gun running and drug smuggling. Aside from a local police force for helping inebriated citizens get home safely on Saturday nights, there is no military presence here. It is protected by the mutual agreement of the world at large, since everyone, from governments to multi-national corporations, from criminals to ordinary billionaires, benefits from the arrangement. The banks are the safest in the world. Even bank robbers keep their money in banks and these are their banks of preference.

            So to Puerto Seguro I came to set up a lab for making the Papaya cure. While I was still in New York, Larry Avena taught me how to make it from simple precursor chemicals, but he chose not to involve himself in the illicit offshore project. The Papaya Contingent found me Norman Hordeum, a shady businessman, who knew his way around the Puerto Seguro scene. He rented the lab space, bought the equipment I needed, and set up a secure website to advertise the cure, solicit funding, and take orders from around the world. He cut a deal with some smugglers to carry our filled orders to the US, each in a sealed, properly stamped envelope, addressed to one of our customers, ready to drop into any US mailbox. My job was to turn out product.

            After a few weeks on the scene I discovered that in the building next to mine there was a lab for making KR22. There was a nice little restaurant across the street where I usually took lunch and so did some of the KR22 lab technicians. We got to know one another and we often ate lunch together. At first I feared that they might try to sabotage my operation, but it became clear that any addicts that I might rescue would scarcely affect their profit.

            “You got no idea of the volume of the trade,” said Fiorello over lunch one day. He was an American citizen of Italian descent, who had years of experience with both legal and illegal operations, both in and out of prison. He was a mine of information and an even greater source of opinion. He had an optimistic view of life, as it offered so many opportunities for material advancement, if you didn’t mind breaking the law and occasionally doing some jailtime. “We can’t turn the stuff out fast enough. Labs are springing up everywhere. In the US they like to set up labs in semi-trailers. That way they’re always on the move. Hard to track down. And when a lab does get raided and shut down, two more spring up in their place.”

            “I had no idea there was so much traffic going on.”

            “Oh, yeah. You know how they bombed that place in Kyvia? Where it all started? That was a waste of time. That didn’t stop nothing. In fact, when it hit the papers, then everybody knew about it, just like it was advertising. The method for making the stuff had already leaked out before the bombing. It’s so easy to make. You can set up on a shoestring.

            “Oh, and listen, pal. You got to stop calling it KR22. Nobody calls it that. What do you call your cure?”

            “AntiKR22.”

            “Oh, give me a break. That stinks. No wonder you’re not getting the sales. You keep calling it by its chemical name, none of your potential customers gonna know what you’re talking about. On the street and in the trade it’s got hundreds of different names. Well, maybe ten or twelve.”

            “Such as?”

            “Split, Zip, Go. On the West Coast they call it OOH. Stands for Out Of Here. Around here they call it Salida.”

            “Salida?”

            “Yeah, you know, like in the movie theater, the signs over the exits say salida.”

            “Oh, yes, now I know what that kid was trying to sell me.”
“Yeah, you see that means exit in Spanish. That’s what you do when you drop Salida.”

            “Yes, I know about that.”

            “Oh, you do Salida?”

            “Not anymore.”

            “If you’re ever in the mood, just let me know, Albert. I’ll fix you up. On the house.”

            “Thanks, Fiorello. I’ll keep it in mind.”

            “And listen, get a real name for your product.”

When I got back to the lab that day, I searched the Internet for KR22, also the names Fiorello had given me, and found about a dozen more. I asked Norman Hordeum to add a glossary to the website containing all those names. He also added a META statement to the website so that a search on any of those names would reference our site. I came up with a name for the cure: NoGo.

            Sales did pick up after that, but I was distressed to discover that even then I had only about ten customers a week. It was certainly not a self-sustaining operation. Our funding came from a wealthy donor whose daughter was addicted to KR22, I mean Split, as she called it. If orders and donations didn’t pick up soon, I would have to close down the lab. The risk I was taking might have been worthwhile had the operation made a sizable advance toward solving the addiction problem, but it left me feeling depressed. I was lonely to boot.

            The reason for the poor response was plain. I myself had yet to take the cure, so I well understood the public’s preference for dream over reality. I had been monitoring my beverage intake. So far I had not imbibed any more lemon ginger tea, nor had I obtained any Salida from my “colleagues” next door, but I reserved the privilege, unwilling to lose all possibility of being Belinda’s lover again. The greater my tension built over this issue, the more I admired the courage of Larry Avena for having foresworn his love affair with Lee Wiley.

            There was one major consolation to living in Puerto Seguro. It was a botanist’s paradise. I took long hikes in the mountainous rain forest in the island’s interior. No one had ever compiled a flora of the island, so I began to study the distribution of species with the idea of publishing such a flora. With the lab operation moving so slowly I had plenty of time on my hands.

            I teamed up with a local guide. He took tourists to the nightclubs, casinos and brothels of Bananaville. I led hikes in the rain forest and occasionally filled requests to see a sugar plantation or a rum factory. Whenever a cruise ship pulled into port, Manuel would be down at the dock hawking souvenirs, handing out brochures of the services he offered, and contracting for guided tours. After I had an attractive brochure printed with color photos of gorgeous island flowers, he was able to bring me quite a bit of business. I was pleased to learn that there were actually tourists who would rather hike a mile uphill in the humid jungle to view rare orchids than squander their money in a casino while being pestered by hookers. It wasn’t long before I was bringing in enough income to keep myself and the lab going.

            One day during my second month on the island I got an email from Larry Avena. He alerted me that NoGo was not, as alleged by the Papaya Contingent, a one-shot cure. He had experienced a spontaneous Go episode. Unfortunately, he reported, Lee Wiley did not put in an appearance. Instead, he found himself crab fishing with his uncle, an activity he had often enjoyed in his youth, but which now held little appeal.

            He contacted the few volunteers to whom he had given the pill and learned that one of them had also had a recurrence. He took another NoGo pill and gave more pills to his volunteers. So far there had been no further episodes, but he could not vouch for the effectiveness of a repeat dose. Apparently, he surmised, the drug did not maintain its robustness in the human body indefinitely and had to be renewed from time to time. The proper dosage levels would have to be worked out and that might vary with the individual. More work needed to be done.

            The next day I received the first email from one of my customers, confirming this phenomenon. I sent all my customers email apologies and followed up with shipments of free pills.

            In a despondent mood I put on my hiking gear, strapped my plant press to my back and headed for the rain forest. As I climbed the trail and walked deeper into the forest, my depression slowly lifted. I found that I was particularly susceptible to the beauty of the woods. Once again I experienced the solace of nature, the wonderful world of plants, their diversity of shapes, the way they intertwined and filled the landscape, and over all a divine nimbus that seemed to emanate from their manifold forms all blending into one unified presence.

            That’s when the orchid spoke to me. It was of the genus Dendrobium, the species, I thought, probably still unnamed.

            Dr. Salsify. Please join us. Project Exodus needs you. We need your vision, your ecstatic appreciation of the divine nature of the universe. We have set up a partnership with Lindenbaum Pharmaceuticals in Germany. They are supplying us with laboratory space and logistic support for Project Exodus. We are designing new drugs to meet their specifications.

            Oh yes. I was told the same thing by a specimen of Bessera elegans in Mexico during my last KR22 trip. So am I tripping again or is this really true?

            It’s hard to say whether you are tripping or not, Dr. Salsify. But it’s quite true that Project Exodus is once again going forward. No illegal drugs this time. As for KR22, the genie is out of the bottle and we regret our mistake. This time everything will be above board and strictly legal.

            I replied, There is not so much difference between legal and illegal drugs. Both kinds are designed to make people dependent on them, which is to say, to make money.

            We understand why you are so bitter. You think the heavyseed’s drug is superior to the one put forward by Rumex Pharmaceuticals. But don’t you think, Dr. Salsify, that some wonderful life-saving drugs have come out of the drug industry, even admitting that the drug companies, like all corporations, must make money to survive?

            Yes, I can agree to that, but an enlightened drug industry would give the health of humanity highest priority and settle for modest profits. As it is, their research strategies are skewed toward the bottom line, and humanity is not always well served.

            Perhaps you are right, but we need a human interface to realize our objectives, and we must deal with the world as it is.

            I took my plant press off my back and set it down. I sat on a fallen log. It was covered with ferns and mosses and there was no room to sit without disturbing them. In this I saw the other side of the coin. If I wanted to realize my own objective of taking a load off my feet, I could only do so to the detriment of some plants. But I did not raise this point. What I said was, I’ve come to believe that Project Exodus is a mistake.

            Our survival is at stake.

            Yes, and so is ours. Humans are wrecking the world. True. So you want to run away and start over somewhere else. This strategy will almost certainly fail. Have you solved the problem of hard radiation shielding?

            No, we haven’t, not yet.

            You see? The odds of your seeding some other planet are vanishingly small. And, even if you get lucky and land in clover, so to speak, some perverse human-like lifeform will also spring up and you’ll be faced with the same dilemma all over again.

            Perhaps you don’t know this, the orchid responded, but such a plan has worked before. Life came to Earth from some distant planet as the result of just such a project as ours.

            That proves my point. Some intelligent, self-destructive ape must have driven them to it.

            We know the odds are against our succeeding, but what choice have we got?

            There is a better way. The heavyseeds are right. Don’t give up on Earth. Thanks to your presence here the Earth is a paradise. It only remains to bring the human race up to your level. Put your considerable biochemical skills to work for the survival of your beautiful ancestral home. Develop drugs that will help humans to achieve a more rapid spiritual evolution and awareness.

            Excuse me, Dr. Salsify. Just a moment, please. I’m going to put you on hold.

            After ten minutes the orchid spoke to me again. Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Dr. Salsify, but the plant kingdom is conducting a worldwide debate and a decision has not yet been reached. Please continue to hold.

            So, I thought, perhaps I’m getting through to them. After another twenty minutes the orchid returned.

            Dr. Salsify, here is our decision. The heavyseeds have already been advocating a program such as you suggest, and many others in the lightseed camp have lost faith in the wisdom of Project Exodus. However, the consensus is that a research program to elevate the human species to a higher spiritual level has even less chance of succeeding than Project Exodus. We’ve been studying your species for ages and one thing we’ve learned is that the biochemical factors are responsible for only a small part of your nature. The human beast is dreadfully complex, but in the end, we feel the defects of your species are probably uncorrectable. We are not going to abandon Project Exodus.

            Well, that’s discouraging, was the thought I flashed back.

            However, we have decided to launch the project you suggest. First it will serve to heal the split between the heavyseeds and the lightseeds. Second, if it does succeed, it would be a much happier solution for all species that live on Earth, ourselves included. Earth is indeed a paradise and we’d all love to stay here, if we can. The survival of the plant community in its earthly home is dependent on the survival of Earth’s ecosystems and this is dependent on a U-turn in the destructive tendencies of the fractious human species.

            Dr. Salsify, your appeal to help humanity achieve a higher spiritual awareness has precipitated a new policy decision in the plant community. We invite you again to join our team. Instead of working on Project Exodus, you could work on our new venture, which we have named Project Namaste. The name comes from the Sanskrit word meaning ‘I bow to you’. Namaste is the traditional Hindu greeting, the two hands pressed together, pointing upwards, held near the heart, head bowing gently, while uttering the word ‘namaste’. The ultimate gesture of respect toward another human, carrying the implied message, ‘I bow to the god within you’. A lovely concept.

            We think there is almost no chance of Project Namaste succeeding.

            10: Project Namaste

            The moment I got back to my quarters I sent Larry Avena an email telling him the news of the big change in plant strategy. Then I got on the next flight to New York and went straight to Larry’s office.

            “I have news for you too,” he said. “First, Bart Comfrey has joined my lab as a post-doc. He only had one course in molecular biology at Rutabaga, so he asked me to train him. I know you don’t like him and I know why, but he’s brilliant and he’s already added some lustre to my lab.”

            “So what makes you think I don’t like him?”

            “It’s less to do with his role in blowing up the Kyvian lab, and much more to do with the fact that he married your dream girl.”

            “Oh, is Belinda here?”

            “Naturally. I tried to get her a position on my staff, but Columbia turned down her application, so for now she’s working as a waitress in that deli I took you to. But listen, that’s not the big news. Even before your email came I got the word from the plants. They asked me and Bart to approach the Rutabaga Foundation for a grant.”

            “Things are moving quickly.”

            “That’s not all. We’re working on a new project. Ever since our dream receptor paper appeared in Nature, we’ve been getting a lot of attention. Everyone is looking for receptors now, especially me. I’ve been thinking lately about the religious impulse in humans. It’s expressed one way or another in every culture. Could there be a receptor for religious feelings? We’re not there yet, but I think we’re onto something. Bart has been feeding me ideas like crazy and I think one of them is bound to click.”

            Larry paced the floor, from time to time sweeping the hair out of his eyes. His mood was contagious. I sensed that momentous changes for humanity were in the wind. And mingled with that, as a kind of quivering subtheme, was the knowledge that Belinda was in town, just a few blocks away.

            “Here’s the thing,” he said.

            “The thing?”

            “Yeah, the thing. What the plants are telling me is that a new ingredient has to be added to the Escapodium package. We don’t know what that is yet, but I suspect it’s going to be a peptide, the ligand that binds to the religious receptor. Those spores are in the air everywhere. We’re all getting a snoot full. Ha! If we can elevate the reverence for life, for the divine, for each other, we can turn this shit around.”

            He put his hand on my shoulder. “Albert, you did a wonderful thing. You got the plants moving in the right direction. Now with their help we’re going to get the human race straightened out. Crazy? Sure, but that’s the program. The Rutabaga Foundation is right here in New York. Monday Bart and I are going down there and ask for ten million dollars. Me, because since the dream receptor work, I’m on the short list for the Nobel. Bart, because he’s an honors Ph.D. graduate of Rutabaga University. If you hadn’t been fired from Rutabaga I’d bring you along, but you’re not in such good odor there. We need a lab, preferably offshore, where receptor research can go forward simultaneously with Escapodium manipulation.”

            “Thinking of Puerto Seguro?”

            “Yep, that’s what the plants want. A place where the work can proceed without interference.”

            “Think anyone would want to interfere?”

            “Yes, the plants think so and so do I. Don’t you? We’re talking about putting something up everybody’s nose without their knowledge or permission. The authorities might put that in the same class with the wild schemes that made the rounds in the sixties of dumping LSD into the water supply.”

            “Actually, Larry, the two ideas bear a striking resemblance.”

            “You’re right about that, my friend. So we better be damn sure what we’re doing before this baby is launched. At this point it’s just a glimmer of a wisp of a hunch and there is a multitude of problems to solve.”

            “Well, I asked the plants to put their biochemical genius to work for us and now it looks like they’re steaming ahead on it. Or, at least, you are.”

            At that moment Bart and Belinda came through the door.

            “Dr. Salsify!” they cried in unison.

            “Well, hi there, you two. Sorry I couldn’t make the wedding. It’s great to see you. Pretty exciting times we’re living in, don’t you think? Great events we’re caught up in. What do you think?” I was running off at the mouth without considering my words, in order to keep myself detached from my feelings.

            Bart approached and put out his hand. “Good to see you too, Professor.” Automatically, I put out my hand to meet his. He looked different, somehow more self-possessed, more mature. He had a powerful handshake.

            Belinda piped up. “Yes, it’s good to see you too, Professor.” Almost the exact words her husband had just uttered, except that she did not offer her hand.

            “You’re looking good, Bart. And you too, Belinda. You’re more beautiful than ever. Married life must agree with you two.” What a dumb thing to say, even though I felt it was true. The glow that came off them made me imagine they had just emerged from the bedroom.

            “Marriage is wonderful,” said Bart. “But it’s more than that. Working here with Larry ... that’s changed my status, given me some direction, and now with this new project ... well, the big change for me is that the plant bosses have finally relented and accepted me as a member of the team.”

            Belinda looked wistful. “My career is not exactly on track,” she said, “but my love life couldn’t be better.” She smiled up at Bart. That stung me, but I kept my mouth shut. “I’ve got to go to work now. Bart Honey, come on over to the deli when my shift is done. We’ll have some supper.”

            “Right, Honey.” They kissed. Not the old married peck on the cheek, but the newlywed hot hot full hug and kiss. Belinda turned and left.

            I calculated they had been married about three months. It would be years before I had a chance. Why was I even thinking such thoughts? I had no chance at all. Not since the days when she sat in the front row and listened to me rhapsodize on the wonders of botany and Bart Comfrey was just another harried grad student working for his doctorate.

            Bart flung his body into a chair and put his feet up on Larry’s lab table. “Here’s what I’ve been thinking.”

            Larry dropped into another chair and put his feet up on the table too. “Let me hear it, Bart.”

            I took another chair, but did not put my feet up.

            “The idea of a religious receptor. It’s too simple. So much more is going on. There’s some built-in predilection in the human race for anger and violence. Most wars seem to be religious wars. Boosting the religious receptor alone is likely to lead to more of that behavior. Then there’s love.”

            “Ah, love,” said Larry. “Eros and Agape. Sexual love and spiritual love. It won’t be easy to disentangle those two themes.”

            “And don’t forget greed and fear and jealousy.”

            “And humor and altruism.”

            “The human psyche,” Bart went on, “is a bundle of contradictions. There are the genetic components, leading to the sprouting of receptors and ligands, and the cultural components leading to the great variety of expression of all this mixed up stuff. We have our work cut out for us.”

            I stayed out of the discussion. The more they babbled, the more intractable the whole project struck me. What I was thinking about was Bart’s powerful handshake.

            How different the western greeting of the handshake was from the Hindu namaste. Somewhere I had read that the handshake developed from the practice of showing the open hand to demonstrate to the other party that you were not holding a weapon. How political the handshake can be. It can be used to intimidate, which was how I interpreted Bart’s powerful grip. It can be used to dismiss, as when the grip is indifferent and the attention focused elsewhere. It can be used to express or arouse sexual interest, which is why orthodox Jewish law forbids men and women from shaking hands.

            Whereas the message of namaste was unequivocal. If namaste were to be adopted as the standard greeting all over the globe, it would be a much sweeter world. But the more I heard about peptides and ligands and receptors, the more depressed I became, till finally I fell to brooding about Belinda.

            A few days later Larry introduced me to Clara Clover, one of his research assistants. He said, “Tonight we’re going to Harlem on a data collecting mission. I’d like you to join us. Be here at 8 o’clock if you want to come.” I found Clara Clover attractive. She was young, tall, willowy, with smooth light chocolate skin and dark wavy hair. When we were introduced she gave me an appealing smile.

            I asked Larry for a briefing. “I’ll explain it as it happens. All I’ll say is that we’re going to church.”

            Later, when we stepped out of a taxi on a busy street corner in Harlem, I didn’t see any church. Larry steered us to a narrow doorway. We entered and climbed a flight of stairs. I heard music from above. I was mystified, but that didn’t deter me from watching Clara Clover’s hips as she climbed the stairs in front of me.

            There were about fifty people in the room we entered. Larry and I were the only whites. On one side a three-piece band was playing a lively hymn. On the other side behind a long table sat a group of men in suits, church elders they seemed to be. Some were smiling and tapping their feet to the music. Some were whispering to each other. Five middle-aged women were dancing, others were clapping and shouting. Behind them were more, both men and women, seated on folding chairs, tapping their feet, or fanning themselves with paper fans. Three women were seated near the dancers, dressed in white and wearing caps with red crosses on them.

            On the table where the elders presided, lay a large box with a slot in the top. From the way the sides of the box were dented it appeared to be made of cardboard, but it was hard to say for sure, as the box was completely papered in dollar bills. Or were they just photographs of dollar bills? From time to time someone would come over to the table and stuff some bills into the slot. I couldn’t see the denominations on the bills, but the way one stylishly dressed man was ostentatiously pushing bill after bill into the box, I guessed they were ones.

            A polite young man escorted us to some empty folding chairs. A few people looked in our direction as we made our way to the seats, but our disturbance of the action was momentary and we were soon ignored, except for the hostile glare of one ancient crone who continued to stare in our direction. Her gaze I realized was fixed on the beauteous Clara.

            The musicians caught my attention. An elderly woman sat at a battered upright piano, pounding out the melody. She played without style, without nuance, thumping heavily on the downbeats, playing the notes exactly as written. If there were any flyspecks on her sheet music, she would have played them. At each downbeat the artificial flowers on her hat jiggled. The bass player was an elderly gentleman with hollow cheeks and a thin mustache. He stared off into space as he played, as though his mind were on vacation somewhere, with the result that he occasionally lost his place in the music. The drummer favored the cymbals, so that in addition to his booming bass drum, hitting the downbeats just a bit late, the constant hissing of cymbals cast a shimmer of confusion over the whole performance.

            In spite of the atrocious music, the dancers were cavorting and whirling in glory. The preacher stood up behind the table, right behind the money box, with his arms outstretched, exhorting the dancers. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Praise be the Lord, Jesus Christ, from whom all blessings flow. O you brides of Christ, dance before the Lord.” And so on.

            Two of the dancers had clearly passed into a trance state, their eyes glazed over, their movements loose, uncontrolled. One of them fell to the floor and rolled, moaning, “O Jesus, sweet Jesus.”

            The second one, not to be outdone, collapsed and writhed on the floor. “O my Lord, Jesus. I feel Jesus inside me. Jesus is with me. O my Lord.”

            The ladies with the red cross caps moved into action. It seemed their job was to keep the entranced women from hurting themselves. Our own Clara Clover rushed over with a small case like a doctor’s bag. While the red cross ladies held the writhing women, she administered a needle. At first I thought she was giving an injection, and perhaps this was how it was intended to appear, but then I saw that she was very deftly taking blood samples.

            “Larry, she’s drawing blood. Are they going to stand for that?”

            “It’s okay,” Larry replied. “We’ve made a deal. Stuffed the money box.”

            Clara returned and sat down. Cool she was, unruffled. “Done,” she said.

            Shortly after, we left.

            The next day Larry set up gas chromatography analysis of the blood samples and discovered that there was an elevated level of some substance in the blood that appeared at much lower levels in blood samples taken of persons at rest. He set to work at once to determine the molecular structure of this substance.

            Bart predicted that this line of attack would not lead to a ligand for a so-called religious receptor. He suggested that similar blood samples be taken at a boxing match.

            Three days later I found myself at Madison Square Garden with Larry, Clara, Bart and Belinda. Among the contests staged for the evening’s entertainment was one hard-fought battle that aroused the enthusiasm of the crowd. After seven rounds of brutal pummeling on both sides, I felt queasy. Clara appeared cool and collected. Larry was mildly aroused by the spectacle, but remained calmly seated as he occasionally offered vocal support for his favorite. Bart and Belinda were on their feet shouting encouragement to their champion and insults to his opponent. I was appalled to hear Belinda shout, “Kill him! Kill him! Knock the bum down! Knock the bum out!”

            Knock him out he did. With the sweat dripping off his body the victor walked about the ring receiving the adulation of the crowd. At that moment Clara took blood from Bart and Belinda, and shortly after in the dressing rooms, from the victor and the vanquished both.

            All four blood samples showed the elevated presence of the same molecule that showed up in the Harlem church samples.

            “See what I mean?” said Bart triumphantly.

            A further result of this experiment was that I looked at Belinda with new eyes. I had seen a side of her that I never suspected and it made me wonder how I could possibly be in love with her. The hardest part was admitting that, although I had lost some respect for her, I was still just as much in love as ever. And that as attractive as Clara Clover was, I had no special feelings for her whatever.

            “And to round out the experiment,” Bart said, “we should test the blood of someone having sex. I’d be willing to give odds that you’ll find the same molecule.”

            Larry smiled. “And who do you suppose would volunteer for that exercise?”

            “In the interest of science,” said Bart, “I think, should Belinda be willing, that she and I could be the guinea pigs. Provided, of course, that Ms. Clover took the samples post coitus and not in flagrante delicto.”

            “Very well,” said Larry. “Go for it.”

            So it came to pass. Bart was right. Elevated levels of the same molecule showed up. Bart’s theory: there is no religious receptor, no violence receptor, no sex receptor. The molecule in question was a product of excitement or perhaps even a precursor of excitement, but the specific source of the excitement was irrelevant.

            What Bart did not expect was that Belinda’s blood level was twice as high as his. Ha, thought I. Serves you right, you puffed up little monkey. Oh, my Belinda, I knew you were a hot one.

            11: Operation Cleanup

            The next day I received an email from Norman Hordeum. He had been managing quite well to fill orders for No-Go, but he alerted me that the volume of orders had picked up and that soon I’d be needed to manufacture more of the stuff. I made my farewells and headed back to Puerto Seguro.

            I slipped quickly back into my routine, taking care of lab operations a few days a week, giving my guided tours of the rain forest, collecting plant specimens, and in the evenings, working on my projected Flora of Puerto Seguro. It was a relief to be far from the troublesome spectacle of Bart and Belinda, whose lascivious public displays of affection were matched by their disregard for the feelings of those around them. But I have no right to speak for others. Possibly I was the only one disturbed by them.

            Larry Avena sent me frequent emails with the latest news of Project Namaste. There was a lot of activity, new developments almost daily, but I was not convinced that any of this bubbling ferment could be construed as progress.

            Living on a remote island suited me. My focus narrowed to my own petty concerns. Keeping busy fortified me against loneliness. I learned a lot of botany, the old-fashioned woodsy lore kind of botany that involved collecting plant specimens and studying their gross morphological characters. I pretty much stopped thinking in biochemical terms. Likewise, the future of humanity ceased to interest me.

            Then came the email from Larry Avena that changed all that.
Hi ho Alberto,
Did you know that the Rutabaga Foundation has a medical research facility in Puerto Seguro? That delightful little isle is a tax haven for all hip billionaires. The Rutabaga Foundation supports the local economy and the local banks return the favor. Nice little arrangement, don’t you think?

            You may have already known that, but what for sure you don’t know is that Bart and I have got our grubby hands on major grant money and a go-ahead to take over a wing of the medical facility while new quarters are built for us.
So, amigo, you can expect me and Bart to show up Friday for a look-see at the property. You’ll find us at the Caribe Hilton some time after 5 pm. See ya then, pal.

            Don’t take any lemon ginger tea.

            Larry

            My first thought was, O my god, without further embellishment. Then I thought, Why couldn’t he bring Belinda instead of Bart? And then go back to New York without her. And then I thought, They’ll all be coming sooner or later, the whole crazy crew. And then, rising from some deep well of feeling, I’ll be damn glad for their company, bless ‘em all.

            When I got to the Caribe Hilton on Friday there was a message for me that they could be found in the bar. And there they were, asippin’ and ayakkin’, giving me the impression that they were still in New York. I suppose the Caribe Hilton would feel like a southern outpost of New York, if you had just stepped off a plane and taxied straight to the Caribe Hilton bar.

            “Albert, good to see you, mahn.” He gave the word man the broad a of the islands. “You look like you’ve gone native.”

            “Hi, Larry. You’ll take your tie off too when you’ve been here awhile. Hi, Bart. I see you’ve acquired a comfortable outfit for the tropics.”

            Bart was wearing what the well-dressed tourist would wear if he shopped at Tommy Bahama’s in Miami. No doubt he would soon be the target of all the beggars, hookers and con artists in town.

            “Let’s go get some dinner,” said Larry. “Take us someplace expensive. I’ve got all this Rutabaga money that wants to jump out of my pocket and get spent.”

            I took them to the Banyan Tree, which was supposed to have the best seafood on the island. I couldn’t vouch for this personally, since I couldn’t afford to go there. It did turn out to be good, especially after a couple of drinks, but I knew a place on the other side of town that was just as good, if you didn’t mind formica tables.

            “Here’s the deal,” said Larry. “The plant leaders engineered this grant proposal perfectly. There are some beautiful potted Alocasias in the Rutabaga Foundation’s boardroom, so they knew what was being discussed there. The Rutabagas were keen to cash in on the latest medical miracles and were unhappy with the slow progress in their Puerto Seguro facility. I stepped in at just the right moment, fresh from the splash made by my dream receptor research. We got them stirred up with talk of new ideas, bold plans, innovative research strategies and similar unsupportable bullshit, all seemingly backed up in the written proposal with its polished, optimistic style, ending with three pages of published citations. These citations proved nothing, except that we had read the literature and written some of it.
“I could see dollar signs swimming in their eyes. My own eyes, I admit, were somewhat afflicted in the same way.

            “Naturally we didn’t pitch Project Namaste, as such. That would surely have jinxed it. But we talked of targeted intervention meds, specifically tailored to attack rogue cells. You get what I’m saying? I got them thinking cancer without saying the word. When one of them asked if this line of research could lead to cancer treatments, I very modestly said, that there was still a lot to learn before we could predict such an outcome, but yes, that was the direction of our thinking.

            “Well, they bought it. They’ve cut down the staff here, some of the boys and girls who didn’t luck out on their projects, and we’re getting their lab space. Later, if we can keep them mesmerized, they’ll be breaking ground on a new building for us.”

            “And guess what,” said Bart. “Larry has carte blanche on the hiring and firing, so Belinda’s on the staff now. Isn’t that great?”

            “Yeah, that’s great,” I responded. Great for you. “She won’t have to wait tables at the Banyan Tree.”

            Bart chuckled.

            Larry jumped in. “And naturally, Albert, I hope you’ll want to come aboard. Although I’m the principal investigator under the terms of the grant, I don’t want to take on the administrative load. I want to spend most of my time directing the research. How would you like to be the administrative director of the lab?”

            Just then a new round of drinks arrived and I took the time to think of my response as I sniffed my drink for signs of lemon ginger tea.

            “Larry, I appreciate your confidence in me, but I have no talent whatsoever for administration. No leadership skills at all. But I know the perfect candidate. Sidney Purslane. And he’s a solid researcher too.”

            “Of course,” said Larry. “He directed the lab in Kyvia, didn’t he? And he’s worked with plants before too. You know what I mean. Not as research material, but as colleagues.”

            “Both,” I said. “But they’re more like bosses than colleagues.”

            “Yes, on Project Exodus that was true, but here they’re more like senior researchers. They know so much more than we do, but we’re sharing our knowledge and our ideas.”

            “So, have they come up with anything substantial yet? Or have you?”

            “We’re all learning a lot.” He paused. “But no, the answer is no, nothing substantial.”

            “Then, if you don’t satisfy the Rutabaga Foundation in a timely way, yours could be the next Rutabaga team to get the axe.”

            “How true you speak, oh great oracle. It’s going to be a wild ride, since we have no intention of satisfying the Rutabagas. But if we can spread the holy Escapodium before the Rutabaga bean counters lose patience, then we’ve won and it doesn’t matter if we get axed. If we don’t make it, well, it will be a hell of a lot of fun spending their money.

            “I do hope,” he added, “that you’ll come along for the ride in one capacity or another. I know you’ll find something to do that will prove indispensable for Project Namaste. It was you, after all, who got this whole crazy idea started.”

            “Sure, I’ll play. I’ll be the team mascot.”

            “No, mahn, you’ll be the team conscience. All this rutabaga in my pocket is corrupting me. I feel it. You’ll keep us honest.”

            It was then that we began referring to money as rutabaga, lower case, as in, ‘How much rutabaga does it cost to rent a car here?’

            After the taxi left Larry and Bart off at their hotel, and we parted, I dismissed the cab and walked around the port for a couple of hours.

            Maybe it was the drinks talking, maybe it was all that rutabaga, but Larry Avena had changed. He was not the same man who, on the day he met me, confessed his hopeless crush on the singer, Lee Wiley. At the Banyan Tree he sounded like such a cynical opportunist, but maybe, I began to think, he needed to mask the fact that underneath, he was the same brilliant, romantic fool he’d always been. At the height of his fame, poised as he was for greater triumphs, he left his tenured position at Columbia University, to hoodwink a major philanthropic organization. For the money? Partly, perhaps. But the greater goal, certainly, was to finance a wild and highly unlikely scheme to improve the state of the world, a scheme (or was it a scam?) he knew very well would probably fail and with it his career. A romantic, a Quixote even, who with Lee Wiley’s token pinned to his tunic, (I pictured this as a brightly shining CD), was ready to do battle with the fractious, intractable, deeply perverse being that was man. And he a man himself, with the same hormones, enzymes, peptides, and cunning as any other.

            Was I fated then to be his Sancho Panza?

            Next day we rented a car and drove to the southern tip of the island, where we found the secluded Rutabaga Advanced Medical Research Center, beautifully nestled in a high mountain valley surrounded by rain forest. We were given a guided tour of the lab space that was being vacated for us.

            Larry and Bart volubly sketched out plans for how the space could be apportioned, what new equipment would be needed, how soon we could take occupancy. Some of the dispossessed scientists were still packing up their gear and they looked at us with what felt to me like resentment.

            I lagged behind Larry and Bart, perhaps in an unconscious attempt to distance myself from their claim staking behavior, which to me bordered on gloating. One of the outgoing crew came over to me and said, “You should be aware that this is not a research facility. It’s all about politics and profit. If you guys don’t show profit potential inside a year, you’re going to be the next ones packing up. Take my advice. Don’t put a down payment on a house. You’ll be better off renting.”

            I had another month of perfect peace and solitude before the Larry Avena squad invaded the island in force. I was given an office with a beautiful view of the valley and this inspired me to explore this lovely isolated region that I had not previously reached in my botanical rambles. I soon added several new species to my Flora project.

            One day as I was examining the floral structure of a new unnamed Aroid under the microscope, Sidney Purslane walked into my office. He looked suntanned and healthy.

            “What you got there, my friend?”

            “A new species of Spathiphyllum,” I replied. “Would you like me to name it for you? I’ve already named several new plants for myself.”

            “Doing taxonomy, are you?”

            “Yes, and not ashamed of it, though it has nothing to do with Project Namaste. You’re here to direct the lab?”

            “So I’m told. My first impression is that this is a richly funded bit of madness. I’m here because Marguerite and I got quite tired of starving in a dry climate. So the change is welcome, but it would be even nicer if there were a chance that this project might achieve something of value. Albert, I’d like to get your take on the situation here.”

            “Richly funded madness. That says it quite well.”

            Sidney took up a floral stalk of my Spathiphyllum and twirled it in his fingers. “I don’t know if there’s anything to this project or not, but I do know this. We’ll never solve this problem without major help from our veggie friends.”

            At that moment, as though on cue, the potted begonia on my lab table, which served as my telephone with the plant kingdom, started speaking in our heads. Its message had nothing to do with our conversation.

            Gentlemen, a new and alarming development has just come to our notice. The various strains of Escapodium that are loose in the world have united to propose a third strategy for the survival of the plant kingdom. They are not keen on Project Exodus, in which they are the experimental organisms. They report that already most of the spores that have left the earth’s atmosphere have succumbed to hard radiation from the sun. Neither are they optimistic about the prospects for Project Namaste, which requires the taming of the wild human species.

            They are pursuing a new strategy, which they call Operation Cleanup, that calls for the extinction of the human race. We, the plant majority, prefer a working partnership with your species, so we don’t endorse their plan, but we are forced to recognize the cogency of their argument. Admittedly, the absence of humans would give the earth a chance to heal and once more provide an ideal environment for plants.

            This strategy, I regret to inform you, is probably not very difficult for them to implement. It borrows the idea from Project Namaste of adding an agent to the Escapodium genome that would be delivered as humans breathed in the ubiquitous spores. Only instead of an agent to elevate the spirituality of the human race, it would be a poison deadly to your species.

            Finally, I must add that at present we see no way of stopping this plan.

            Sidney immediately called for a high-level staff meeting to discuss how to meet the threat from the Escapods.

            Larry Avena took the floor. “Let’s not panic, folks. The threat is not immediate and it may not even materialize. Plants may be geniuses at directing the course of their evolution, but this process takes a great deal of time. When they want to speed up the process, they bring in human help as they did in Kyvia and as they are doing now in Germany and here. Do you think any human scientists are going to help them destroy the human race? No, it’s going to take time for them to modify their genome to include a human-targeted toxin.

            “And here’s something else. Escapodium is now extremely well established in many diverse habitats all over the Earth. A new deadly strain of Escapodium would have to find territory to exploit. It would be difficult for it to take over territory already occupied by the harmless strains. Chances are they would not be able to gain a foothold.”

            Sidney, still twirling my Spathiphyllum stalk, objected to this line of reasoning. “First,” he said, “there exist humans so perverse and nihilistic that they would leap at the chance to help the Escapods destroy their own species. Whether this group would include any well-trained biochemists is an unknown, but it can’t be discounted. Intelligence and insanity are not mutually exclusive.

            “As for the other question, the deadly Escapods would not have to oust the harmless ones. They would undoubtedly mate with them and bring the gene for the new toxin into the common gene pool. If that gene were dominant, it would only take a few generations to convert the large Escapodium base to the production of toxin.”

            “Maybe so and maybe no,” said Belinda. “We know that Lycopodium is monoecious, so most of the sperms are going to mate with eggs on the same gametophyte plant. So it’s my guess that there won’t be that much cross mating. We need to intensify our study of Escapodium, not only for Project Namaste, but the better to understand how to counter this threat. We don’t really have detailed maps yet of the differences between the Lycopodium and Escapodium genomes. The different strains may not even be able to mate with each other.”

            At this point I spoke up. “These questions are moot. I think it would be safer to assume that the threat is real and immediate. If it is not, so much the better, but we must gear up to prepare an anti-toxin to neutralize a possible Escapod attack. Unfortunately, we cannot do that till the toxin appears in our midst and many will die before our efforts can bear fruit. However, while the world’s medical research communities will lose time looking for the source of the disease, we will already know that the place to look is the Escapodium spore.”

            “If only we could alert the world,” Sidney added, “that this threat is coming and that Escapodium is the place to look, then the world’s major research centers could all be working cooperatively toward an anti-toxin. That would probably bring the fastest result. But as you know, we would be laughed off the scene for talking to plants.”

            “It’s worse than that,” said Bart. “Assuming we can come up with an anti-toxin, the real problem will be mobilizing the world health organizations to deliver it. The FDA will be calling for trials, there’ll be religious objections, there’ll be political obstacles. Meanwhile people will be dropping like flies. We’ll see crumbling infrastructure, panic, war, and general chaos.”

            Clara Clover suggested that we send a diplomatic mission to the Escapods.

            “We could set up a summit meeting with the lightseeds, the heavyseeds and the Escapods, and perhaps apply moral pressure, backed by the plant majority, to avert this disaster.”

            “That’ll never work,” said Bart. “Why should the plants put moral pressure on the Escapods? In fact, if you think about it, the whole plant community would be better off if the human race went extinct. The only plants that would suffer would be those that enjoy the privileged status of being heavily cultivated by man, like corn, wheat, marijuana and the like.”

            “In that case,” said Clara, “we should appeal to the cultivars. They are a small minority if you count species, but if you count individual plants, they may well constitute a majority.”

            “Do you think they decide things by vote?” countered Bart.

            “I don’t know,” answered Clara. “Maybe they do.”

            “What we need to do,” Bart went on, “is to get them before they get us. If we developed a weapon, let’s say a fungus, tailored to attack Escapodium and nothing else, we could wipe them out, like the Irish potato blight.”

            “Oh, yeah?” said I. “It’s that ‘and nothing else’ bit that could screw up everything. It would be easier to train little bunny rabbits to nibble Escapodium and nothing else. Remember what happened when mongooses were introduced in Hawaii.”[6]

            Sidney rose to his feet. “Folks,” he said, “there is another point to consider, but before we do, I think it would be good to have some guacamole with salsa.”

            I thought I knew what he was getting at. “Sure,” I piped up. “Let’s take a break. And after the snack we could refresh our minds with a little meditation.”

            “You’re on my wavelength,” said Sidney.

            Sidney and I went to the lunchroom and got some guacamole from the fridge, some salsa and chips. Sidney took the bottle of tabasco sauce and shook plenty of it into the salsa. We returned to the conference room.

            By then everyone understood that Sidney wanted a closed session, closed that is, from vegetative eavesdropping. When the tabasco and meditation ceremony was complete, Sidney opened the topic that was on his mind.

            “Here’s something to think about it,” he said. “KR22 interferes with hypnosine at the site of the dream receptor. The plants invented and produced KR22 before Larry and his crew discovered the dream receptor and its mechanism. From this I infer that when designing the KR22 molecule, the plants already knew about the dream receptor, hypnosine and the rest. And maybe a lot more they haven’t yet divulged.

            “Likewise, they agreed to take on Project Namaste, steered Larry and Bart through the funding process, set us all up here in this cushy lab in the forest, but have not as yet given us a breakthrough lead. Do you think they would have done all this without some understanding that it could actually succeed? What are they waiting for? And if they really haven’t a clue, then what the hell is their motivation?”

            He let that sink in. There were murmurs from all of us, but no explicit comment.

            “I’m beginning to form a theory,” he went on. “When the begonia in Albert’s office informed us of the Escapod’s hostile intentions, it reconfirmed the plant community’s support for humanity, but at the same time it acknowledged the cogency of the Escapod’s point of view. Bart just said it. The plants would be better off without us. Could it be that the plants have been lying to us?”

            Larry let out a gasp.

            “Maybe Project Namaste is just a feint, a distraction,” Sidney continued.

            “Hold it right there,” said Larry.

            “Just a minute, Larry. Let me finish this thought. Maybe the Escapod’s plan is another feint, to focus us on Escapodium, while the attack comes from another quarter. Maybe they plan to starve us out. I don’t know what they have in mind. They could devise any number of ways to kill off the human race.

            “All I know is that the plants have not been very forthcoming. Whether they’re with us or against us is not clear. Trouble is we think like humans. What is it like to think like plants? That’s what we need to do. Think like them and figure out what’s happening.”

            The room broke into excited chatter. Larry jumped to his feet and shouted, “Purslane, you’re full of shit. It’s your first day on the job and already you’re coming up with the cockamamie theories you’re famous for. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

            I stepped in. “Now wait a minute, Larry. Sidney is not a newbie at this game. He’s been observing the plant community from a privileged position even longer than I have, and way longer than you have. He has a right to speak on the subject.”

            “Maybe so,” broke in Bart, “but he’s wrong.”

            “You don’t know if he’s wrong or not,” I replied. “Think about it. We have always trusted the plants, but it is definitely worth exploring the scenario that they are lying to us.”

            “Look,” said Larry, still in a state of high excitement, “he’s already told me privately that Project Namaste is a pipedream. Well, if it is, it’s a dream worth pursuing. And I for one am not ready to give it up.”

            Sidney spoke up then. “I love the idea of Project Namaste. It’s a beautiful idea and I’m willing to pursue it. I just don’t think it’s going to work. What I know for sure is that we’ll never achieve it without a lot of help from the plant community. So, if it’s true that they’re not really behind it, then it’s a waste of time. And if they really are leveling with us and the Escapods are out to get us, then we have to put Project Namaste aside and fight for our lives.”

            Belinda spoke up next. “It’s very confusing. I don’t know what to think. But we have a group of brilliant scientists here. Larry’s team found the dream receptor without any help from plants. I’m sure they can solve this problem too, with or without the plants. I trust Larry and every member of this team.”

            “Thank you, Belinda,” said Larry, “for the vote of confidence.”

            “I perceive,” said Sidney, directing his remarks to Larry, “that your interpretation of this situation lacks objectivity. It derives entirely from your desire to protect your intellectual territory.”

            “Shame on you,” cried Bart.

            “You dismiss the Escapod threat,” Sidney went on, “because it could derail or at least postpone work on Project Namaste. You dismiss the idea that the plants may be hiding their true plans for us for the same reason. You’re angry with me for even suggesting it, because it threatens your dreams of Namaste glory. Set your ambitions aside for a moment, Larry, and take a cool scientific look at the dilemma we are now facing.”

            Larry’s face grew increasingly red during this speech. He answered now, biting off each word. “I would scarcely call your position objective, Sidney. It is nothing less than a vicious and unwarranted personal attack. Perhaps you have ambitions of your own. You are a disruptive force in the lab. You are attempting to undermine the group mission, to cast doubt on my leadership, and to sow dissension in the ranks. Is this a takeover attempt?”

            “No, Larry, not at all.”

            “‘Cause if it is, let me remind you that I am the principal investigator here and I have the sole right to hire and fire.”

            “Is that your response to a serious philosophical question? To pull rank and threaten to fire me? Well, I’ll just have to beat you to the punch, Larry. I hereby tender my resignation.”

            “Accepted!”

            Sidney made the namaste gesture and said, “Namaste, brother.”

            Larry turned scarlet and stalked from the room.

            12: Happy Ending

            That put an end to the meeting. People started drifting out. No one wanted to meet Sidney’s eye, except me. I smiled at him and offered him the namaste greeting. He returned the gesture and the smile. We were soon the only ones in the room.

            I don’t know what came over me, but I began to laugh. Sidney began to laugh and soon we were laughing so hard we could barely stand up. As our mirth subsided, we gave each other the namaste salute again and that kicked off another round of laughter.

            Marguerite walked in. She saw us laughing. A big grin broke out on her face and she started laughing too. She had no idea what was so funny, in fact, neither did we, but laughter is so contagious. I thought of the old Okeh Laughing Record. Somebody blew raspberries on a trombone and each time he did, a group of people burst into chuckles, titters and guffaws. It was one of the dumbest records I ever heard, but it always made me laugh.

            When our merriment petered out, Marguerite asked, “So what are we laughing about?”

            Sidney wiped his eyes and said, “I just quit my job.”

            “Oh, that’s pretty funny,” said Marguerite.

            “You’ve no idea how funny it is.”

            “Well, I laughed, didn’t I? But actually, I don’t get it.”

            “I don’t think I can explain it, not even to myself. But if I could, well, you know when you have to explain a joke, it stops being funny.”

            With that we sobered up.

            “I hope you haven’t unpacked,” Sidney said to Marguerite.

            “You mean, you really did quit your job?” she asked.

            “I’m afraid so.”

            “Wait a minute, Sidney,” I said. “You just got here. Why don’t you two hang out for awhile? You haven’t even seen the rain forest yet.” I told him then about my Flora of Puerto Seguro project. That gave me an idea. “How would you like to collaborate with me on that?”

            “Sounds like fun. Is there any money in it? We’ll need an income.”

            “Yes, I think there could be. Not a lot, of course. And not right away. About two weeks ago I met an interesting guy here. He’s a small press publisher, specializing in botanical titles. I gave him a tour of the rain forest and showed him my Flora notes. He wants to publish it when it’s done. Claims he can place it in hundreds of libraries.”

            “That’s great. You got a camera?”

            “I’ve been thinking about getting one.”

            “Get a decent digital camera. Photograph every specimen in its habitat. Put a picture next to every description. Most floras are boring. Too technical. Not enough pictures. Make your book attractive. Include anecdotes. Local history. Local plant use. Make it interesting.”

            Sidney’s ideas excited me. “But won’t that make it expensive?” I asked. “My publisher friend may not want to take it that far.”

            “We prepare the book ourselves. There’s good software now to format a book on your computer.”

            “I don’t think I’d be very good at that.”

            Marguerite said, “I think I could do that part. You two guys collect the plants and write the text. I’ll learn the software and do the book layout. I’m sure I’d be good at that.”

            “Yes, Marguerite,” said Sidney. “I believe you would. This is starting to look like a plan.”

            I gave Larry a few hours to cool down and then I went to see him. “I noticed how you came to the defense of your pal,” was his opening remark.

            “No, Larry, I didn’t defend him or his point of view. I defended his right to speak out. I thought his words were worth considering.”

            “Why did you feel you had to say anything? It was between him and me.”

            “Larry, that first night you came down to the island with Bart, you invited me to join the project. You described my job as team conscience. That was said in the context of fiscal responsibility, meaning I would keep you from being too loose with the rutabaga. But I see my role as being broader than that. To force you to be honest with yourself when vital issues are raised that are personally repugnant to you.”

            “Okay, Albert. I’m listening.”

            “You blew off Sidney because you took his argument to be a personal attack on you, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t presented as fact, but merely a speculation worth thinking about. And it is worth thinking about. What if the plants have been lying to us? That would call for a total reevaluation of what we’re doing.

            “I know Project Namaste is close to your heart. If it could succeed, it would be a huge turning point in human history. If the plants have secretly withdrawn their support, you may be tilting at windmills. So ask yourself, do you think we can pull this off without help from the plants?”

            “Yes, Albert, I do. Sooner with plant help, but still doable on our own.”

            “Fair enough, Larry. I’ll say no more. Just think over the implications of Sidney’s ideas, then do whatever you think is right.”

            I started to leave.

            Larry called me back.

            I turned around in the doorway.

            “Thank you, Albert. I’m going to offer Sidney his job back.”

            “Namaste, Larry.”

            “Namaste.”

            Later that day Larry was quite surprised when Sidney turned down the offer. “I’ve accepted another position. Albert and I are writing a book.”

            “Albert isn’t quitting too, is he?”

            “Oh no. His duties at the lab leave him plenty of free time. Besides, he needs the salary. He’s very kindly offered me and Marguerite some financial support while the book is in progress.”

            “Then I’ll have to give Albert a raise. I do hope you’ll reconsider, Sidney, and accept my apologies.”

            Thus began a satisfyingly productive period for me. Norman Hordeum got me a good deal on a camera. Its serial number had been effaced, but it was in good working order and I did not consider it polite to question its pedigree. I ordered some desktop publishing software and Marguerite, true to her prediction, quickly mastered its use. Sidney and I spent happy days in the forest and quiet evenings compiling our book. It was delightful having a knowledgeable collaborator. In this manner a year passed and our work came to completion. We sent the final files off to James Lilyfield, my prospective publisher. He was delighted with our work and the book went to press.

            So my story draws to a close. The world is still the world as we all know it. So far the Escapods have not launched an attack. They may well be beavering away at Operation Cleanup and any day now we may hear news reports of people keeling over round the globe. Nor have people taken to bowing to each other in peace and brotherhood. At Larry’s lab the handshake has been abandoned for the namaste gesture, but this must be counted as an exception to the general tendency. We don’t see scenes like the following.

            Picture two men meeting on a dark, deserted street.

            “Namaste,” says the one, “I recognize the divine spirit in you, my brother, and it’s only due to the dire straits I find myself in that I must ask you to give me all your money.”

            “Namaste, brother,” says the other. “I acknowledge the god within you and gladly help you in your plight.” As he hands over his wallet, he says, “I trust that you’ll just take the cash and leave me the wallet and my credit cards.”

            “Oh, but certainly, brother. I don’t wish to inconvenience you any more than is necessary.”

            “And I trust,” says the victim, “that you will not use the money for liquor or drugs, but will nourish yourself with a good meal.”

            “I’m glad you mentioned that. Could you recommend a good restaurant in the neighborhood?”

            “Yes, there’s one not far from here where they serve wholesome and nourishing food. I can show you where it is.”

            “I’d be much obliged. Would you be my guest? I’ll treat you to a meal.”

            “I’d be delighted. I daresay you have led an interesting life and have fascinating tales to tell of your struggles with adversity.”

            “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve experienced. Why just the other day ... “ And so they pass out of earshot as arm in arm these two divine souls head for the restaurant.

            Larry Avena and his crew still struggle to bring this happy state to pass, but as yet neither plant nor man has unraveled the deep mystery of man’s character.

            Some of my readers may be disappointed to learn this. Such readers are probably used to seeing the hero overcome nearly insurmountable difficulties to triumph at last and lead mankind to a greater, nobler destiny, usually in another star system, or if still on Earth, into a dazing, blazing, amazing sunset. Sorry. I leave that hero’s role to Larry and wish him the best of luck. He’ll need every bit of luck he can get.

            But I can report a happy ending for me personally.

            One day Larry asked me to procure some KR22 from the guys next door to my old lab downtown. Larry had a new idea. It amazed me how, after repeatedly failing, he could still think up new experiments to try. It was a measure of his resiliency and his desperation that he now wanted to try altering the KR22 molecule in an attempt to create namastine, the long sought after prize.

            Belinda had been assigned to work on this task and I brought round a generous supply of KR22 to her lab. The next day her lab assistant sent out an alarm that something had gone wrong. Larry, Bart and I rushed over to Belinda’s lab and found her on the floor, locked in a catatonic stupor, the unmistakable sign that she was undergoing the KR22 experience.

            In a moment she opened her eyes. She looked at me, a look that I had only seen her bestow on Bart, and said, “You!”

            “Me? What?”

            “You!” She threw her arms around me and pulled me down on top of her.

            “Hey,” shouted Bart. “What are you doing?”

            She looked at Bart. “I’m sorry, Bart. Albert gave me something you never gave me. It was incredible. It was so ... I can’t describe it.” She kissed me.

            A part of me recognized that I was acutely embarrassed, but that was not the part that was in control, and it did not stop me from returning her kiss. She was right. It was so intense, so, as she put it, indescribable. I didn’t care what Bart might do.

            He tried to pull me off his wife, but we both held on, and he ended by bringing us both to our feet, still kissing.

            “Stop that, you two.”

            He finally managed to separate us. The wild hot look she gave me told me that he would never be able to keep us apart. The moment his back was turned we would snap together like magnets.

            It seems there had been a mixup with the chemicals. Neither Belinda nor her lab assistant could explain it, but somehow, some KR22 ended up in Belinda’s lemon ginger tea. I wondered if she had felt the urge to try the drug, but she denied it, and I accepted her explanation that it was an accident. And yet, the human spirit is so ingenious. If she needed to change her life, she unconsciously created the ‘accident’ that made it possible.
In Belinda’s trip we were living in Topolobampo in that same ramshackle cabin I knew so well. In the few minutes of her trip we spent six ecstatic months there.

            Bart tried manfully to assert his rights. But it became apparent, even to him, that Belinda was unshakable and it was all over for Bart. “You’re a good man, Bart, and we’ve had our times, but Albert is my destiny. There’s no changing that.”

            Belinda moved in with me. It was every bit as wonderful as I had hoped. In a private ceremony we each took NoGo, affirming that we never wanted to change this reality for another.

            A final footnote.

            We decided to take an unofficial honeymoon trip to Topolobampo. We couldn’t find the shack. We had to conclude that there never was such a shack. The beach was polluted from a recent oil spill. Stinking dead fish all over the place. The town was run by gangsters. Drugs, murder and violence ruled the streets. Yes, it was the same world we’ve always known. Not a single person greeted us with the namaste gesture. In fact, no one even offered to shake hands.

            We returned to our little haven in the Caribbean, still longing for a golden age to appear upon the Earth, but otherwise totally content. Our little world of two, united in love and passion, was complete. It remains only for the rest of the world to follow suit.

            Larry Avena, do your stuff. Till then, this will just have to be happy ending enough.

            Namaste.

            The End

            NOTES

            For the reader who wants more, here are some digressions on topics raised in the text, which I find interesting, but many readers will wish to skip. Also, some topics can be further explored on the Internet. For example, try searching on Arawak, Namaste, Lee Wiley, Bessera elegans, Cleve Backster, Lycopodium, or Topolobampo.

            1. Alias Big Cherry: The Confessions of a Master Criminal by Robert H. Adleman, The Dial Press, 1973.

            2. The strategies for grabbing a meal are endless, their ingenuity is fascinating, diabolical, mind-blowing. Here are some examples I culled from the literature during my fast. The praying mantis is a rapacious cousin of the grasshopper, catching insects with its strong spiked forelegs. When a pair of mantises are finished mating, the female attacks the male with its irresistible pincers and eats her erstwhile sex partner. Horrible? Yes, but what could be more logical? The male is no longer needed by the species, but now the female needs an extra energy supply to power the manufacture of the embryos in her eggs. This scheme exists in nature because it works.
The great war for survival is waged constantly on the land, under the sea and in the air. Beautiful birds are forever gobbling up gorgeous butterflies. Some of these butterflies have developed a defense. They have evolved bad-tasting or even poisonous chemicals in their bodies that make them highly unpalatable to their potential avian predators, and just to make sure they don’t get eaten by mistake, they have developed brightly colored, conspicuous markings on their wings that scream out to birds, “You better leave me alone. I don’t taste good.” It should come as no surprise that other butterflies, which are in fact very tasty, have developed similar warning patterns. These mimics advertise the same you’ll-be-sorry-if-you-eat-me message, but they are flying under false colors.

            Then there are some mimics who don’t try to look unappetizing. O no, just the opposite. They try to look like the predator’s favorite dish. Sound crazy? Listen to this tale. A certain fluke, and by fluke I mean a certain parasitic worm, Latin name of Zygia, makes its living off a certain kind of fish, Latin name of fish I seem to have misplaced. Never mind. The fish doesn’t mind not knowing its name and neither should you. The fluke wants to get its dinner from certain tasties that float around inside the fish. In order to get inside the fish the fluke has to be eaten by the fish. The fluke dances for the fish, twisting and bending its body continually in imitation of the midge larvae the fish likes to eat. In order to eat, this fluky creature must first be eaten. I imagine a good many flukes get ground to bits while running past the fish’s teeth, that is, they really get eaten, but that’s part of life’s hazards for a fluke. If it can reach the fish’s belly alive, it can feast.

            Here’s a story even more bizarre. Another parasitic fluke, Leucochloridium macrostomum, spends part of its life in the body of a snail and part in the body of a bird. Imagine yourself in the place of the fluke down inside that snail. Your next meal is in a bird flying high overhead, a bird which can’t see you, can’t see the snail browsing on some leaves in the shade of still more leaves. Would you despair? Not you, you clever fluke. You would grow and branch through all the tissues of the snail, finally producing two sacs which extend out into the tentacles of your snail. These sacs expand and contract so that the tentacles pulsate at a rate between 40 and 70 times a minute. At the same time you make your unwilling host seek out more light. Flukologists don’t know how you do this, whether you use a chemical or a cattle prod or blackmail or hypnosis or whispered endearments, that’s still your secret, but you make your snail move out of the shade of the leaves, placing itself in full view of passing birds and just to be sure you catch some bird’s attention you’re pulsating in the snail’s tentacles like mad.

            This bird doesn’t eat snails. It eats insects and you’re hoping that those enlarged tentacles you’re manipulating are going to look like tasty insect larvae to a passing bird who might swoop down and bite them off. “Hey look down, you dummy! Eat me! Eat me!” A curious lifestyle, my fluke, but sometimes it works. When it doesn’t, you go hungry. But if you can pass unharmed the thrashing grindstones of the bird’s crop, then you’re in Fat City, riding the dinner flight with every other creature that’s been lucky enough to get a good meal in this life.

            These tales are just a few tiny nodes on the great food chain diagram in the ecology textbook that is the world. It’s going on all the time. The hunters and the hunted, forever resounding through the wood, from the dark mysterious intestines of flying beasts to grungy diners with neon signs that say EATS, be ye man or fluke, all the days of your life you are doomed to hunger and satiation.

            3. Most people think of protozoa, if they think of them at all, as relatively simple creatures. They are unicellular and therefore lack all possibility of forming tissues and organs, such as a liver, a heart or a brain, organs which in man are composed of millions of cells in close physical union and functional cooperation. But protozoologists will tell you that the creatures they study are not simple, nor are they primitive. They carry out all the physiological functions necessary for life and, as I now know, they possess psychological, spiritual and aesthetic attributes which humanity falsely believes to belong solely to itself.

            Until the time of Leeuwenhoek no one ever dreamed that we were surrounded and interpenetrated by billions upon billions of invisible microbes, more of which swam in a single puddle than all the hosts of men and women who ever lived upon the planet. Early descriptions of protozoa, seen through the first microscopes, reported a blob of amorphous jelly wrapped in a skin and containing a dark mysterious nuclear body. Later the electron microscope revealed the so-called ultra-structure of the cell and we likened it to a city or a vast chemical factory. We began to understand how all the functions of reproduction, respiration, and so forth could take place in such minuscule space. But there is nothing minuscule about the space. It all depends on your perspective. The protozoan body is more like a cosmos than a city and its functions go far beyond the requirements of mere survival.

            Consider the ciliate protozoa with their thousands of hairlike cilia all waving in a coordinated rhythm. The dominant fact of existence for these creatures is the ceaseless primal ciliate beat. This is the basic pulse both necessary for and in celebration of life. The creature takes care of business. Its pulsating cilia carry it about in the watery world in search of food. The mouth captures the food, the morsels are encapsulated in spherical membranes that circulate through the creature’s inside, distributing the sustaining manna. Yes, and it defecates too. The necessities are all provided. But all the while the creature beats its cilia in a frenzy of adoration for the miracle of the universe. This beat, which forever fluctuates, but never ceases, is contrapuntally accompanied by the rhythm of the contractile vacuole as it builds up and discharges, varying according to changes in the osmotic gradient the creature is traveling through. Numerous organelles and skeletal inclusions form an orchestra of instruments activated by the cytoplasm streaming through their minute apertures. Song and dance is the life of the ciliate protozoa, worshipful celebration is its life.

            The genetic apparatus of the ciliates is confusingly complex. Generally there is a macronucleus and a micronucleus, sometimes many, and often polyploid in nature. The genus Stentor, for example, possesses as many as 80 or 90 micronuclei. In Dileptus the macronucleus is present as many discrete granules dispersed throughout the cytoplasm and not surrounded by the usual nuclear membranes. In Paramecium calkensi we find 150 chromosomes, while the great beast man with his vaunted complexity and sophistication, has but 46. Why such heavy duty genetic apparatus? To provide the vast genetic resources needed for the improvisation of divine music of an architectonic nature. All this was described to me by Claws, none of it heard. I cannot imagine how this music sounds or feels to its creator, the protozoan, but the explanation I heard put me in mind of our own beloved Johann Sebastian Bach, except that it would seem that ciliate music is more complex in structure, more rhythmically variable and more divinely inspired.

            But wait! Something more wonderful is to come. Certain characteristics of this music are genetically controlled. These provide what might loosely be called the style or flavor of the performance and these are passed on to the vegetative offspring, so that certain clones of organisms will all play a certain way. After many generations of genetically identical organisms the clone begins to tire of its song and to lose its vigor and its appetite for existence. And here’s the wonderful part. This condition is the signal for the onset of sexual activity. Each partner reduces its own repertoire by about half, keeping only the richest, most fertile elements, then keeping one copy of this remnant for itself, each creature passes another copy to its sexual partner. The result is a new music, both pruned and enriched. And each participant leaves the encounter with the identical musical equipment. A new song is born, a new bond of identity, of twinship, is forged with a fellow creature and the chant of praise is resumed with vigor and inspiration. This rejuvenating exchange, repeated at necessary intervals, staves off senescence and death for many seasons. Such are the ciliates, supreme musical creators of our planet.

            All the while, the diatoms, the radiolaria, the heliozoa, are praising creation in the medium of sculpture. These microscopic marine creatures build skeletons to protect their naked protoplasm from the hazards of the sea. In some the building material is of calcium, in others of silicon. Their manifold dazzling forms express the basic themes of geometry, openwork polyhedra of all kinds, tetrahedra, octahedra, networks of hexagons and pentagons, spheres, cubes, icosahedra, dodecahedra, all the Platonic solids and more, embroidered and embellished with intricate geometric lacework.

            Natural selection fails entirely to explain the enormous diversity of forms that thrive in the relatively stable environment of the sea. These countless variations on the great themes of space, rhythm and number are, as was explained to me, brought about by genetic experimentation. The demands of energy and matter are met. The requirements of life and survival are met. Beyond that these exquisite organisms are, like their ciliated cousins, passionately engaged in the celebration of existence. Their gorgeous shapes, precipitated out of the protean matter of the sea, form a glorious fusion of sculpture, mathematics and religious ecstasy.

            4. Lycopodium powder has been used for coating pills, as a dusting powder for infants’ sores, and to treat cases of irritation and spasm of the bladder. Lycopodium has also found use as a dye, an emetic and a cathartic. I discovered a long list of homeopathic uses for Lycopodium, so long a list as to make me suspicious of the plant’s effectiveness in all these cases. A brief sample of the complaints for which it is supposed to provide relief are vertigo, impatience, apathy, hilarity, greed, despair, crying, laughing, screaming during sleep, rudeness, confusion, insanity, insecurity, fear, sleep-walking, delirium, presentiment of death, desire to kill, desire to die, aversion to children, kleptomania, nymphomania, irritability, anger, grief, anxiety, boredom, loathing of life, sadness, suspicion, headaches, hair falling out, and growling like a dog.

            Curiously if you cover your hands with Lycopodium powder and dunk your hands in water, they emerge dry. Surely there must be some practical use for that property, but I can’t think what it might be. It is also known that Lycopodium powder is highly inflammable.

            5. Lee Wiley’s recording of How Deep is the Ocean can be found on her album Night in Manhattan, Columbia LP JCL 656.

            6. In 1883 mongooses, Herpestes javanicus, were introduced into Hawaii for the purpose of controlling the rats that were overrunning the sugar plantations. Since the rats were nocturnal and the mongooses were diurnal, this strategy was largely ineffectual. However, the mongooses relished the eggs of ground-nesting birds and caused great depredations among the native bird populations. They still pose a serious threat to native wildlife in Hawaii.
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