The Resident (part seventeen)

 

 

 

Chapter Three

Tithonians

 

 

 

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ii.

 

 

They sat, faces blue in the faintness of a battery lantern, Gemma’s.

“Why, again, is this a good spot for our talk?” Debra said. “I don’t doubt you. You’re a lister and a PhD, and I’m only…”

“I know Aura didn’t raise you to belittle yourself.”

“Gemma, I can’t be my mother. Another story! I just wonder, why the crack shack? Or meth shed, or…”

“No, no. The cabin is especially safe, as Des and Wiss can vouch. No one sets foot inside.”

“It was empty and terrifying when we visited, absolutely.”

Gemma had popped the lock with a magnetic card, bumped them indoors with a bag of camping gear. They were crosslegged on space blankets, devouring (nervously) trail bars.

“Can I confess?” Wissary asked. “A majorly impo thing. I need to feel…what? What is it when you go and sin no more?”

“Forgiven. Not happening.”

“You joke, Des, but when you know what I’ve done! Look!”

“Made a diary? No…it’s not your writing…”

Gemma peered, and straightened her back.

Debra peered. “Wait. My gosh… Yes, Des, I said my gosh. It’s Claudine’s. I know that book. Guys! John showed me, he wanted me to read it… And I couldn’t, it was crushing, it was too private.”

“Claudine,” Gemma said, “did a stupid and endangering thing. And so did John, keeping it, sharing it, not calling me. And I’ll have that.”

Daunting as a lister—as their own Gemma—could be, Wiss tightened his fingers. “I thought we might all read it together, first. Because someone was asking, I think you, Gemma. Ma’am.”

Gemma snatched the book, flipping its pages.

“Can you read that fast?” Debra asked.

“No. But I’m an ace gister. Wiss has a point… Did you steal this from John?”

“From his chocolate box.”

“That’s why you stole the chocolates, too.”

“I didn’t steal them, Des. I’ve just delayed gifting them until I buy more.”

“Does she explain the green?”

“She explains her illness, the growths. Are you gasping for a reason, Deb?”

“Growths.”

“Nodules. Cutting them off didn’t hurt.”

“No… I heard her say it, to John.”

“They were plant material, basically. Removal didn’t stop them taking over, cell by cell. Claudine describes a sense of deficiency sapping her strength, a need for earth. She would have rooted…she had always to be on guard against it, and what she would have become, to Before Time eyes, might look quite horrible. It can’t be allowed, a rooted Tithonian, we have to dig them up and take them back. Once a Tithonian goes plant, she loses speech. She is alive, she may be happier, left alone, than any human ever…

“We just don’t know. You see we’d made Tithonians first, before we made time travel. We understood—though we didn’t, fully—the vast symbiosis of life. Fungus, bacteria, little squigglies, as we call them…trace chemicals, ugly amounts of manmade introductions. Add that to the evolutionary legacy unique to each person. We needed plant people because we needed immortality, and plants had the genes to renew themselves…this was hundreds of years after the cataclysm.

“The small, the smart, the self-reliant, the helpful, the uncomplaining of the human race, had been better at making off, let’s say, with resources. And knew not to destroy what produced resources, or harbored them still. So, moving well forward, our kind survived. The uncooperative, selfish, bullying ones were left to each other. And presumably… No one really knows, but after a time we were not troubled by them. We got to work.”

 

 

30

 

 

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Dark Paneling

The Resident (part eighteen)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2022, Stephanie Foster)