The Other Tree Page 2

  “I’d like to make you an offer,” he said.

  “Can I refuse?” Chris glanced at the durian she kept under the desk.

  “If you want to stay here for the rest of your life.”

  Chris didn’t particularly believe in serendipity, but she did believe in hidden cameras and cruel humour.

  “Go on,” she said carefully.

  The man took a smooth step around the desk. Chris noted with some unease that he moved with controlled precision, as though every movement were lining up the next four.

  “I work for a company with a large pharmaceutical research and development division,” he said. “We’re about to commence a research expedition to investigate the potential medical properties of an extremely rare plant. We’re looking for someone with significant botanical experience to join our team for an immediate start. The remuneration is excellent, and you will be credited third on the initial journal paper.”

  And the million-dollar question.

  “Why me?” asked Chris.

  The man’s expression didn’t waver.

  “I understand you’re a qualified cryptobotanist,” he said.

  Chris returned the gaze, edged with razor wire.

  “Most people don’t think it’s a real qualification.”

  “I know better.”

  Chris studied his calm, businesslike demeanour.

  “What’s the plant?” said Chris.

  “The Tree of Life. Genesis. Chapter Two. Verse Nine.”

  The man was straight-faced, his grey eyes steady.

  Something in Chris snapped, like a broken spring in a watch wound too tight. A sad smile. A closing door. A phone call. The smell of damp earth. Silence.

  “Who do you work for?” Chris’s voice was like a blade being drawn.

  “A thirty-percent down payment can be deposited into—”

  “Who do you work for.” It was less of a question now.

  “The expedition is being funded by SinaCor—”

  “Get out.”

  The vehemence behind those words could have levelled a small fishing village. Chris’s eyes blazed as she stepped forward.

  The man fixed Chris with a faintly reproachful expression, then reached into his jacket. Chris grabbed the durian from under her desk and braced to hurl it. She had a pretty good arm from hefting textbooks, and at point-blank range a durian could do a hell of a lot of damage.

  He withdrew his hand slowly from his jacket, holding a slim business card between two fingers. He slid the card delicately onto the desk, beside the dead spider.

  “If you change your mind.” He paused at the door. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  Chris’s heart skipped several beats.

  “What do you mean?”

  There was a brief, theatrical pause.

  “Oops,” said the man.

  The door closed softly.

  2

  “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

  - Genesis, Chapter Two, Verse Nine

  Softly glowing laptop screens lit the room, and shadowy objects glinted on the floor. Several figures occupied indistinct surfaces, although one may have been in a hammock. The man entered the room, discarding his wire-rimmed glasses and pulling off his tie with a grimace.

  “No joy?” said a lanky man with blond hair.

  “It’s not important,” said the man, shrugging off his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster.

  “You owe me twenty,” said the lanky man to a woman studying a laptop screen.

  She ignored him.

  “I told you not to go, Docker,” continued the lanky man. “You creep people out. So does Roman.”

  The woman looked up, her red irises catching the light.

  “It’s a congenital disorder, Stace,” she said flatly.

  Stace shrugged. “So, do we just go?”

  Docker glanced towards a shadowy figure leaning against a wall.

  “Almost,” said Docker.

  * * *

  Chris pounded her fist on the flaky front door, her heart racing, stomach trying to crawl somewhere it wasn’t supposed to go. She felt as though she’d leapt from a cliff, hanging in that awful moment just before you started to fall.

  Not again, thought Chris. I can’t… Not again…

  A chain rattled, and the door opened to reveal a man in his fifties with a permanently sceptical expression.

  “Dad!” Chris pushed inside. “Are you okay? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  “It’s Wednesday,” said Mr. Arlin.

  “You don’t answer your phone on Wednesdays?”

  “You don’t visit on Wednesdays. I probably had my phone off.”

  Chris felt tears of relief pricking at her eyes.

  “I just finished baking a custard,” said Mr. Arlin. “Take your shoes off.”

  Chris followed him into the small kitchen, the comforting smell of sweet baked goods filling the air. Framed sketches of small reptiles and frogs hung on the yellow-papered walls.

  “Dad, is everything okay?”

  “Sure,” said Mr. Arlin. “You could do something about the cat next door, though. Got any plants that eat cats?”

  “Let me get that.”

  Chris gently took the baking tin from the oven. Words ran circles through her head, repeatedly bypassing her mouth.

  “Dad. Are you… Are you okay?”

  Mr. Arlin opened the kitchen cupboard, taking out two white china plates. The silence stretched a little too long, and Chris suddenly knew, in that heart-stopping moment just before he answered—

  “Doctor Phisbe said maybe there’s something up with my lungs,” he mumbled.

  Mr. Arlin rummaged through the kitchen drawer for clean forks, and his mumbling decreased further in volume.

  “Maybe some kind of cancer.”

  Chris stood perfectly still as the world turned nauseatingly wobbly, and then sank slowly in on itself like a deflating soufflé. There was a sense of floating unreality as the room seemed to burst into swarms of brightly coloured goldfish, bubbling through the air.

  “I was waiting for the right time…” said Mr. Arlin.

  The imaginary fish all went belly-up. Chris swayed, putting down the baked custard. Mr. Arlin steered Chris gently towards the living room, guiding her to the couch.

  “At least it’s not Ebola,” said Mr. Arlin.

  Chris’s brain got a foothold as it slid towards deranged grief, and it started climbing.

  “There’s medication, they have—”

  “Chris, it’s—”

  “I’ll find a way,” said Chris. “I can find a way—”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” said Mr. Arlin, a faint edge in his voice. “New treatments take generations to develop. It takes decades, and sometimes centuries, of scientists building on the work of the scientists before them. Your mother never understood that.”

  Desperation spilled through Chris as she gripped her father’s hands. Mr. Arlin’s bravado bent a little.

  “Just come for dinner more often.”

  * * *

  She cried that night, all night, for the first time in years. Her throat throbbed raw and her chest panged with every breath, as though she’d been hit by an elephant driving an eighteen-wheeler. Every memory of happiness seemed to evaporate, overwhelmed by the terrible sense of being finally, utterly alone.

  The next day was pale and washed out, like a day that lacked the conviction to be real. Everything was too bright and too brittle, seeming to have shape and colour but no substance. Chris’s dreams had been full of ornately patterned snakes coiled around dark, twisted trees. Bright red apples rolled through carpeted corridors, while breezes blew through sunlit halls.

  Yesterday’s drama at the notice boards seemed incomprehensibly insignificant. Everything seemed insignificant. The pain had boi
led everything into a numb morass, and there was a certain soothing quality to letting her body carry out mindless tasks while her brain remained catatonic.

  Therefore, it was with some surprise that Chris found herself standing in front of a grey laminate door, slotted with the nameplate Religious Guidance – Miscellaneous Christian. She stared blankly at the door for some time before she realised it was open. Inside the small office, a slim blond man in his mid-twenties sat behind a spartan desk, studiously ignoring her. Chris found this mildly insulting, particularly as the man was a wearing a clerical collar.

  Chris had never been particularly religious, and personal experience had left her disinclined to believe in miracles. To Chris, religion was something that just floated around, like airborne bacteria—you didn’t really think about it, but there was probably some stuck to you, anyway.

  “Are you the campus priest?” she found herself saying.

  The young man didn’t look up from his magazine.

  “If you’re here to tip over the altar, you should have gotten here before the grad celebrations started,” he said.

  Chris glanced around the monochromatic office. The room was bare, aside from a small rack of faded leaflets and a shelf of assorted Bibles, including a Theatrical Bible for Mimes.

  “Actually, I just had some ques—” Chris began.

  Without looking up, the young man flicked out a plain business card. It was printed simply with the words “Christian FAQ” and a website address.

  “The online FAQ covers the usual things, like ‘Will my dog go to Heaven?’” he said, still not looking up from his reading.

  “Do dogs go to Heaven?”

  “Read the FAQ.”

  “Are you a substitute priest or something?” said Chris, wondering if the Church was now poaching casual staff from the cafeteria.

  The young man closed his magazine, and Chris caught a glimpse of glossy green water and white sand. He placed the magazine in a desk drawer and looked at her with tired patience.

  “My name’s Luke. How can I help you?”

  Chris hesitated, wondering the same thing.

  “Do you believe in miracles?”

  Luke’s hand twitched towards the business cards, and he visibly restrained himself, folding his hands neatly on the desk.

  “Religion isn’t like science,” said Luke. “It’s a completely different way of looking at the world, for a completely different purpose.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “It means you shouldn’t take everything literally, including miracles. In the New Testament, when people didn’t understand that parables were actually metaphors, it drove Jesus insane. Metaphorically speaking.”

  Chris eyed Luke dubiously.

  “Are you an actual priest?”

  Luke gave Chris a slightly sour look.

  “I’m an assistant priest, but yes, that still qualifies as a priest. Just cheaper.”

  “Ah, ‘heritage.’”

  Chris’s gaze drifted back to the blank walls of the office, and Luke’s manner softened slightly.

  “I’m sorry about before,” said Luke. “There’s a girl who comes in every Thursday just to yell at me.”

  A voice carried from across the hallway. “I DON’T YELL. I ASK QUESTIONS. I COME FROM A LOUD FAMILY.”

  Luke got up and gently closed the office door. He sat on the edge of the desk.

  “And there’s always some smart-aleck who points out that God didn’t make the sun until the third day. Everyone’s so literal.”

  “People don’t miraculously get better, do they?” said Chris, her voice tight. “Even if I prayed.”

  “Not usually,” said Luke gently. “But praying helps.”

  “Who?” said Chris, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

  Something seemed to pass across Luke’s eyes, like a flash of something wounded, and Chris bit back the rest of her rant. Taking out her frustrations on a priest was probably some kind of sin. Or at the least, something that would get her banned from the Religious Studies building.

  “I’m sorry. Thanks anyway,” said Chris disconsolately.

  She took a business card and left.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until later that Luke found the rock. A pebble, really, sitting by the leg of his desk. Usually, he only found rocks in his office when they were preceded by breaking glass and hoots of “Loki rules!” He’d lodged complaints with both the Norse Mythology Association and the Comics Appreciation Society.

  Luke never knew what to do with the rocks afterwards. Throwing them in the bin seemed wasteful, but he couldn’t be bothered with carrying them out to the gardens. And he wasn’t sure if God had a particular stance on recycling.

  In any case, this pebble was different. It was brushed with soil and had left a little trail of smudges on the floor, as though it had tumbled from someone’s pocket and rolled a few times. He suddenly remembered the woman from earlier, who’d smelled of freshly raked leaves and waiting graves.

  She’d come looking for consolation, and he’d offered her a business card. He’d searched for words of comfort, but nothing had come to him that didn’t sound trite or patronising. His own prayers often felt like a call into the darkness, waiting for an echo. He had prayed for courage, for guidance, for faith, but all he had were more unanswered questions.

  As a child, Luke had always been described as sensitive. People had used the word in the same way they might use the word “troubled” to describe a child who set things on fire, including dogs. Luke possessed a certain intuition for people, sensing the feelings they kept hidden beneath polite façades. Unfortunately, what people felt mostly these days was scepticism and hostility. They were full of questions and accusations. Pushing, prodding, gouging for answers.

  But sometimes, you came across a grief so raw and ferocious it could take the skin off your fingers. He’d watched her leave with a sense of mournful déjà vu. So many people asking questions he couldn’t answer, wanting hope he couldn’t give them, needing peace he didn’t have—he wished that once, just once, he could actually make a difference when it mattered.

  Luke walked over to the wastepaper bin, rolling the pebble in his hand. His finger caught on something, and he noticed a fine crack on the stony surface. On closer inspection, he realised that it wasn’t a rock he held.

  A slender shoot had just started to push through.

  * * *

  Chris didn’t know what she’d been hoping for. Comforting lies, she supposed. Miracles. Hope. She needed something to hold onto, before she lost her grip on the world and tumbled into despair. Uncontrolled grief led to madness, and in a cryptobotanist, that meant slipping into mad-scientist territory, hiding in the basement, cooking up mutant plants, and drooling into your beaker.

  “Chris!”

  Chris looked up, wondering if she’d wandered into oncoming traffic while introspecting. A lean man in his late twenties was weaving through the student rush, wavy brown hair falling into his eyes. He wore a crisp shirt and jeans, with a sleek satchel slung over his shoulder. He smiled broadly as he caught her gaze, and it took a moment for Chris to recognise him.

  “Emir?”

  Emir hugged her warmly, pulling back to look at her.

  “The prodigal returns,” he said wryly.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Chris, slightly dazed. “Are you taking up studies again?”

  “I was in the neighbourhood, heard you had your own office here, now. Swish.”

  Chris could not imagine the word “swish” being applied to her office, unless describing the noise it would make if you flooded it. The thought of Emir seeing the millipede-infested basement filled her with wordless horror.

  “It’s a little scary how nothing’s changed,” said Emir, looking around the quadrangle. “Want to show me your office?”

  “No! Yes! I mean, it’s kind of messy right now, but there’s a really cool lab they’ve finally removed most of the asbestos from.” Chris walked quick
ly towards the science buildings.

  The construction of the hydroponics lab had been a rare expenditure by the university. The Botanical Sciences department had managed to convince senior management that growing specimens hydroponically would allow more campus land to be released for commercial use. They had even invited a “hydroponics specialist” to give a presentation, and although he hadn’t been entirely coherent, the photographs had been very impressive, if incriminating.

  Chris and Emir slipped through the white double doors into the empty lab, where row upon row of yellow seedlings basked under banks of hanging lights.

  “Those Petri dishes are the fungal experiments, but the fruit flies from the genetics lab keep getting in and eating them,” said Chris.

  The university had become a veritable Galapagos of mutant fruit flies, reigning terror over the vegan student population. Emir looked over the rows of benches and beakers, a hint of wistfulness in his expression.

  “Sometimes I wish I’d kept studying,” said Emir, the regret in his voice mingled with something else.

  “What are you doing, these days?” Chris hopped onto a lab stool.

  “I’m in artefact identification and retrieval. Muscle, really.”

  Silence drifted through the sunny lab, and Emir stared out the window, watching as students rushed between lectures, arms laden with folders and partly eaten snacks. Emir shifted uncomfortably, and something dark flashed briefly across his face before he turned to Chris.

  “Chris, I’m on the SinaCorp mission.”

  Chris didn’t move.

  “I wondered, why now. But sending you to convince me—that’s tacky.”

  “They didn’t send me. Well, they asked me. But I wanted—” He exhaled sharply. “Your degree is wasted here. You’re wasted here. You shouldn’t have to beg for grants so you can write one lousy paper. With your skills, you should have a fully staffed lab, with actual equipment. You could be making things happen. You still feel that way, don’t you?”

  “I guess you’re the good cop,” said Chris.

  Emir flinched. “I guess I deserved that.”

  No, thought Chris, looking away. You didn’t.

  “I know you still blame SinaCorp,” said Emir. “But maybe you can finish what your mother started. Maybe this is a chance for SinaCorp to make up for what happened in some way, to help you get what you deserve.”