Tex and Molly in the Afterlife, page 25
a) that these fuckers weren't worried about getting caught, and
b) that they weren't growing this pot with the idea of harvesting flower buds; and therefore
c) that something very strange was going on.
Tex spiraled around and around. Eventually he made himself dizzy. The dizziness turned into wooziness, like you feel when you're halfway stuck in a dream and halfway trying to wake up, to respond to—say—objectionable music issuing from your clock radio. Then Tex realized that he was waking up; the magical bird was dematerializing; the only thing left of his dream was one lingering image—a glorious vision of amber waves of pot.
THE MESSENGER
Molly was tidying up the Bee, though she couldn't think why—was she expecting company?—when she found a sprig of some dark-needled evergreen, still hanging on to a clutch of last year's withered berries. Tex must have brought it home from somewhere, for unfathomable reasons of his own. The resinous sap was sticky, and the needles left a fresh, pungent smell on her fingers, so Molly popped the sprig into a little Swedish rooting ball that hung from a bracket in the galley. You never knew what was going to take root, given a chance—Molly once succeeded in growing roses from florist's cuttings—and in any case it was her policy not to discard a plant until she was absolutely certain it was dead.
When Tex woke up at last and came bouncing into the galley, he discovered her staring at the little evergreen as though waiting for some vestige of life to declare itself. ''Molly," he told her, "you won't believe it." Not believe something? That was hard to imagine. She smiled, pointed at the Sun mug. "Want me to nuke your tea?"
"Funny you should mentions nukes," said Tex. "My god—what's that?"
He stared at the rooting ball. Molly looked.
The sprig she had placed in water only a short time ago (she was not certain how long, now that Time had lost its moorings in mortality—but surely not that long) was beginning to grow. As she and Tex watched, it sprouted tiny new olive-green candles that extended into stems from which needles emerged in a regular, distichous pattern—the alternating featherlike structure common in conifers and grasses but not elsewhere. From the bottom of the sprig rootlets formed and ramified. The rooting ball became crowded with them. It was like a nature film done in time-lapse photography, only cooler because you didn't have those jerky leaps from one frame to the next.
"Better get that thing out of there," said Tex, "before the glass breaks."
Then the glass broke. The prophet sighed. Molly leaned forward as quickly as she could, and droplets of water and particles of glass spattered onto her hands. The sprig itself—now grown to the stature of a minor branch—had gotten wedged in the wrought-iron bracket, where the swaying motion of the boat made the little thing appear to be squirming to free itself.
But just because you're hallucinating doesn't mean there aren't alien monsters in your kitchen. The little evergreen flexed; its stems fattened and stiffened. It turned toward the light, and its dangling root mass squirmed in what must have been a desperate grasping for soil and water.
"What is it?" Molly asked. As though Tex could have told her.
Tex told her: "It's a yew. It was growing out by the Well. The Well's a spring now. There was a naiad swimming in it. Only the naiad turned out to be just a teenage girl. The yew was dying, so I brought a piece of it home. I was a raven at the time, see, although just before that I had been a bear. Before that I was an acorn. It's kind of complicated."
Molly looked back and forth between Tex, who was hard to believe, and the writhing yew, which was impossible.
Afterlife Factoid #14
Being dead takes some getting used to.
The yew branch looked plaintive now: all hung up and helpless with its roots flapping in the air. Save me, it seemed to cry out. So Molly grasped it carefully by the thickest part of the stem and lifted it free of the wrought-iron bracket and held it out before her.
"About time," said the yew.
Then the yew turned into a woman and jumped out oi Molly's hands, landing with two (size 11) feet on the glass-and-water-strewn deck.
This was not like computerized morphing. In actuality, the way such transformations occur is more like the way you look at a certain image on paper and over the course of time you understand that you can see it in more than one way. Like one of those 3-D graphics that emerge out of a pattern of color-specks; or the more old-fashioned optical illusions where a thing can either be a wineglass or it can be two faces staring at one another. That's how the yew branch revealed itself to be a woman. Molly came to see how, really, it had been a woman all along. A yew branch, too. Both. Or more than both.
She wondered if there was any Dramamine on board.
"Some place you've got here," the yew woman said. Her voice was ripe with sarcasm.
Tex shot a quick, apologetic glance at Molly—like, When you've been around as long as I have, kiddo, you learn to take this sort of thing in stride. She resented his attitude.
The yew woman was not remarkable-looking, one way or the other. She appeared to be in early middle age, trim and healthy. There were frown-lines at the eyes and mouth. A touch of gray in the hair. Clothing dark and sensible. Something bothersome, an air of morbidity, about the way she carried herself. Little mannerisms with the hands—a habit of rubbing them, one at a time, along the opposite wrist—that might get annoying after a while. All in all, about what you'd expect of a yew tree.
"So, hey," said Tex, making conversation, "are you another dryad, or what?"
"Another dryad?" said the woman.
"I'm a friend of Beale's," Tex explained.
"Who's Beale?" said Molly.
Tex shrugged. "Oh, just this oak tree guy."
The yew woman nodded. "I see. Well, perhaps that's why I was sent to you."
"You were sent?" said Tex. "To me? But I thought it was me that picked up you."
"Don't be sophomoric," said the woman. "You ought to know that no possibility exists in isolation. All movement arises from the Field." Her lips curled in a sort of smirk. "When did you die, yesterday?"
"A couple of weeks ago," said Molly. "I think. Do you have any idea what day it is?"
"It's still the Day of the Humans," said the woman. "Unfortunately."
Tex and Molly eyeballed one another. Tex made a little wiggle of the brow, as though assuring her that whatever she might be thinking, he wholeheartedly agreed.
Molly gave the yew woman a sweet smile that she used on rude checkout clerks at the Co-op, where people sometimes were a bit too sure of their moral correctness to bother with being polite. She said, "Would you like to have a seat in the living quarters? I'm sure you must be tired, after all you've been through."
The woman lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Her hair rustled, very faintly, like a bed of fallen needles. "You can't even begin to imagine," she said.
"Oh, I'm sure," said Molly.
The yew woman left the galley, looking for a place to plant herself.
"Was your friend Beale like this one?" Molly said quietly to Tex.
"No, no. He was cool. He was ... odd. And he changed—you know, like he was trying to find a human form that he could get comfortable with. But he had a good heart. Or whatever."
"Pith," suggested Molly. "Then, what's the matter with her!"
"Hey," said Tex, shrugging, "you know how it it with yews. The Final Tree, right? Thrice deadly. Most beloved of the Worm."
"What are you talking about?"
"You'll see," said Tex. He goosed her below the ribs, prodding her into the living quarters, where their houseguest had taken up a central position on the sofa. Goblin the Cat-Person lurked nervously under the coffee table.
Molly entered with the Majolica pot. "Care for some tea?" she asked.
The yew woman raised her head a few degrees higher than was absolutely necessary. "I don't drink the juice of other species," she said.
Molly nodded. "I've heard that before."
"So," said Tex, sliding into an armchair, under the wide leaves of a pinanga palm, "do you have a name or anything?"
"Or anything?" said the yew woman. "I have many things. If a name makes you feel more at ease in your dealings with me, then I shall answer to the name of Idho."
"As in My Own Private?"
"No."
They fell into a three-way stare. Goblin slunk over and wrapped himself around Tex's leg. Tex reached down to give him a dutiful stroke.
"Is this cat gaining weight?" he asked, mystified.
"Beats me," said Molly. "There's a 40-pound bag of cat food in the pantry."
"I assume," said Idho, the yew woman, "you have matters you would like to discuss with me."
"We do?" said Molly.
Idho fixed her eyes upon Tex. The pupils were exceptionally dark and hungry-looking. For an instant he felt a tightening of the throat.
"You mentioned," he said, uncertainly, "you were sent to us?"
"I did."
"Could you, um—elaborate on that? A little? Please?"
Idho sighed. She crossed one leg over the other. As she moved, her body seemed to shift from plane to plane: the yew's rough, blackened bark supervening the dark fabric of her slacks, then fading again. She allowed a few moments to pass, then spoke abruptly.
"You have been in the presence of the Bishop of Worms."
Tex flinched: an involuntary reaction that caught Molly's eye. "The who?" she said.
Tex shook his head. "You don't want to know."
Idho appeared to smile very thinly, though this might have been a shadow briefly falling across her face. "The Worm," she said, "has given due thought to your petition. And I have been elected to deliver Its reply."
"Would somebody," said Molly, "like to tell me what is going on?"
Idho flicked a glance at her.
"Later, babe," murmured Tex. He had gone pale, as though the mere recollection of the Bishop of Worms was sapping his vitality.
"Why later?" said Idho. "I have been sent with a message and I am quite sure the message is intended for both of you. You are in this quest together, are you not?"
"Quest?" said Tex. His eyes rolled, as though he felt seasick.
Molly took his hand. "Of course we are," she said firmly.
Idho regarded the two of them in apparent distaste.
"Very well. Now the Bishop, of course—" with a nod toward Molly "—is the Destroyer of Forms. The Gaping Maw Beyond Eternity. That Which Endlessly Devours Yet Remains Unfilled."
Molly nodded, paying careful attention, like a student in the front row. "You mean like Kali, the Goddess of Destruction?"
"Bush league," said Idho. "The Worm excretes a billion Kalis with every drop of Its blessed sweat."
Molly looked at Tex, who grimaced. "Smelled like it, too," he said.
Molly nodded for Idho to continue.
"This deceased human," the yew woman said, not quite deigning to look Tex in the eye, "had the presumption to appear before the Worm with a request that certain matrices of morphic potential be spared from the Maw and allowed to remain a while longer in the Field of Possibilities."
"Pardon me?" said Molly.
"Dryads," Tex said quietly. "Tree spirits. White oaks, and a bunch of other things. All the stuff that's being wiped out from the woods around here. You know, the subspecies, the variant strains—all the forms that are lost when you convert forests to tree plantations. See, this guy Beale explained it to me. Sort of."
"I doubt," said Idho, "that Beale or any other of my kind could succeed in explaining very much to you. Obviously you have failed even to begin to comprehend the nature of the implicate form-creating fields that you call dryads, to take a relatively minor point. Nonetheless, a petition was made to the Worm, and the Worm, in Its omnivorous knowingness, has pronounced a ruling, which I shall hereby relay to you. I suggest that you attempt to stabilize yourselves."
Tex and Molly exchanged glances. Wordlessly, each tightened his or her grip on the other's hand.
"Shoot," said Tex.
Idho smiled. She raised her arms, which turned into scaly limbs and then to tree adders. The adders uncoiled, lashing out and seizing Tex and Molly around the necks and squeezing until it seemed their heads would explode.
Then their heads exploded.
THE WORM SPEAKS
On WURS, Indigo Jones began a long set oi Julian Cope ditties. The sun set and rose and set and rose over Dublin Harbor. Ludi came and watered the plants and fed the cat and left again.
Two guys got stabbed outside the biker bar on Water Street.
In Glassport, another proposed school budget was voted down.
The heavens opened. The wind shifted to seaward. Waves slapped like rabbet flippers against the hull.
After a week or so, the voice of the Worm fell silent.
On the Linear Bee, things settled down. Sort of.
MITES?
Molly raised her hands very tentatively to feel her head. There was something there, at least. She looked over at Tex. He was clutching his throat.
Idho still sat in the middle of the sofa. She stared at her fingernails as though checking for stains beneath the tips of them.
"Come again?" said Molly.
"Please," said Idho, disdainfully. "Don't make me repeat myself. It will be worse the second time."
"Yeah, really," croaked Tex. He sounded as though his throat was lined with newsprint. "I think I got the gist of it"
"You did?" said Molly. Like, incredulous.
He nodded. "You've just got to get used to the guy's accent, I guess." He turned to Idho. "But what I want to know is: did he say mites?"
"Mites," repeated Idho. "That is correct."
"Mites?" said Molly. Like, even more incredulous.
"That's what I thought," said Tex. "So listen—what's so special about mites?"
"What are you talking about?" said Molly.
Tex patted her hand. He continued to stare at Idho. "I mean, why would the Bishop grant my request in consideration of the mites?''
"The Bishop," said Idho—shrugging, as though this ought to be obvious enough—"is exceptionally fond of mites."
"I see," said Tex.
"Well, I don't," said Molly.
"Obviously you do not," said Idho. "Obviously you are both completely blind."
"Half-blind," said Molly, huffily. "You don't have much in the way of manners, for a divine immortal Nature spirit, or whatever you are."
Idho smiled. It was the smile of a satiated jackal. "'Whatever I am," she said, "is not a well-mannered thing. It comes of dining on putrefaction, I suppose. The Bishop is exceptionally fond of me, also."
"Wait," said Tex. "Tell me what's such a big deal about mites."
Idho sighed. "Mites," she said wearily, "are the supreme guarantors of the health of a forest. They are the caretakers of elderly trees, the defenders against disease and pestilence."
"Give me a break," said Tex.
"You asked. Now hear the answer. You present yourself as a friend of trees. Yet clearly you understand nothing about trees at all. Have you never wondered how it happens that an oak tree—which can live to be many centuries old. and which during all that time is confined to a basic package of physiological traits that it inherited at birth—is nonetheless able to survive in an environment in which predatory insects can evolve through several generations in the course of a season? And where hostile microbes can do the same in the course of a day? Have you never thought to ask how the stolid old oak tree can possibly adapt to such a fluid and ever-changing world?"
Tex shrugged. "I guess not."
Idho gave a nasty sort of laugh. "Of course not. Your understanding of life is crippled by a mind-set of ruthless competition, the Selfish Gene, Nature red in tooth and claw."
"No it's not," Tex protested, weakly.
"Your whole species," she went on, "sees life as a struggle of all against all. That's evident in everything you do—the way you live and the way you think and the way you structure your society. And because you see so narrowly, you do not ask—you cannot conceive—the questions which ought to be obvious to anyone, which would reveal at once the fundamental flaws in your ideology."
"I don't really think I've got an ideology," said Tex. "Not that one, for sure."
Idho dismissed him with a wave of the hand. "What's the big deal about mites," she said, mocking him. "The big deal about mites is that they keep your mighty oak trees alive. They form vast, interlocking colonies high above the ground, among the leaves and in the uppermost branches. They feed on bacteria and fungi. They feed on dust, on particles of smoke. They feed on the bodies of other mites. They digest organo-chemicals that fall with the rain. They inject the host with toxins that render it unpalatable to insects. They manage farmsteads of nitrogen-fixing flora. They exist in such numbers and in such a diversity of form that by comparison to the forest canopy, the soil itself is only half-populated. And they adapt to changing circumstances with a speed and creativity you cannot imagine. They exchange genetic material freely with the organisms that pass among them. They can reorganize their genomes so as to spawn whole new species in the presence of a significant threat. And all these things they do every day, every night, without stopping, and without the slightest recognition from you sapient apes who think of living beings as so much organic machinery."
"Hey, not me," said Tex.
"Not you?" Idho feigned consternation. "Have I confused you with some other species, perhaps? Did the great Worm send me to the wrong place?"
"Calm down," said Molly. She wasn't sure whom she was speaking to. Both of them seemed to take her advice, settling back into their seats and glaring across the contested space.
"That's pretty cool," said Tex after a minute or so. "About the mites, I mean."
Idho smiled at him. That terrible jackal expression. "Do you remember the rest?" she asked him. "The Worm's conditions?"
Tex sighed, fatalistically. "There would have to be conditions," he said.
