The Other Tree (3 page)

“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 quickly 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.”

That could be read in so many different ways
, thought Chris.

“I’ll never trust SinaCorp,” said Chris. “And neither should you.”

“It’s not about trust. It’s about looking out for yourself. You can’t rely on fate, or charity, or luck. You either take the chance to get ahead, or you waste your life wondering.”

It was the same face
, thought Chris. The hair was a little shorter, the cheekbones a touch sharper, but they were the same features. Only the eyes had changed. Something in them had grown a little harder, something had taken a little of the light away.

“You’ve changed,” said Chris.

“You haven’t.”

Emir headed towards the doors.

“Marrick wants to see you,” he said. “Your call.”

* * *

Curiosity
was
the hallmark of scientists everywhere, and often also their epitaph. The path to knowledge was littered with the bodies of recklessly determined men and women who had exposed themselves to strange radiation, swallowed vials of unfriendly bacteria, and combined chemicals that probably should not have been put in the same universe, all in the name of answering that all-powerful “I wonder what would happen if…?”

Chris told herself that it was this kind of selfless curiosity which had drawn her to SinaCorp’s headquarters, rather than the kind of curiosity which tempted people to inspect the contents of other people’s bathroom cabinets and handbags.

Nice floors
, thought Chris, as she followed the man called Hoyle towards the elevators.

The floor of the reception hall was crisp, white marble, with very faint veins of gold, as though ornamental fish were gliding beneath the surface. Immaculately dressed staff stood behind sleek reception stations, hands darting over shimmering holographic panels swirling with information. The vaulted hall reminded Chris of a futuristic cathedral, with a direct electronic feed from God.

The elevator was enormous. She noted with mild mortification that it was four times the size of her apartment, and she wondered for a moment whether she was being taken up in the freight elevator in some obscure slight. All four walls of the elevator had sliding doors, and some of them had several. There were no buttons to indicate the various floors, just a smoky glass strip running the circumference of the elevator. Hoyle waved his wrist in front of this, and there was a soft beep as the elevator doors closed.

There was no elevator music, just a very soft buzzing noise, which Chris suspected came from Hoyle’s discreet earpiece. His head was cocked slightly to the side, and his frown occasionally deepened. Chris felt vaguely like the kid who’d turned up to class with a magnifying glass only to discover that everyone else had electron microscopes.

The elevator doors opened onto a very different level. The corridors were narrow, and the floor was seamless obsidian. Chris wasn’t a fan of black floors—they made getting rid of millipede infestations very difficult. The only complaint she had about the green linoleum in the basement was the fact that cockroaches got stuck to it in hot weather. Then again, there had also been the cicada plague two years ago. Somehow they had gotten into the basement, and no matter how often Chris thought she had scooped up the last cicada, there was always one bleating sadly somewhere. But she could never find it against the mottled green floor.

Hoyle paused beside a polished, black door.

“Chris Arlin, sir,” said Hoyle.

“Come in,” came a voice.

The door slid into the wall, and Chris stepped into a large, circular office, overlooking Varria City through a sloping wall of glass. Marrick stood by the window, her dark hair in a flawless French twist. She looked in her late fifties now, but the bearing was the same. Confident, contained, no regrets, no mercy.

“I remember you,” said Chris.

“I was at her funeral,” said Marrick.

“Too bad there was nothing left to bury.”

Marrick turned to Chris, seeming to draw all she needed to know in a single glance.

“I didn’t ask you here to reopen old wounds,” said Marrick. “Your mother’s death was a tragic accident, and I wanted to give you the courtesy of telling you this myself. SinaCorp’s team is leaving tonight, and they
will
find the Tree of Life. It
will
become the property of SinaCorp, and any beneficial properties
will
be studied and shared with the scientific community in the same manner as all our other intellectual property.”

“The highest bidder,” said Chris.

“The free market. Out of respect for your mother, we offered to make you a part of this expedition. You are free to decline, but consider whether you’re throwing away a promising future out of some misdirected childhood grudge.”

The hollow burning that had filled Chris over the past day was now turning into a different kind of fire. Older, darker, growing stronger over time.

“What will SinaCorp do, once it has the Tree of Life?” asked Chris. “Grind it down into chemicals and market immortality to those who can afford it?”

“And what would you do, Arlin? Open a free clinic and heal the world? Create a deathless society? Or just save your father?”

That was the thing about death. Education, equal opportunity, human rights—they all acted as levellers in one way or the other, but death was the one thing that made everyone equal. It was the one inescapable fate. To divide the world into the eternal and the mortal, based purely on market economics—it wasn’t just immoral, it was unscientific.

Scientists were regularly accused of playing God. But there was a quiet, persistent undercurrent of thought that trickled through the millennia, that maybe if God cured cancer, and healed sick babies, and stopped entire countries from being wiped out by famine, then maybe scientists wouldn’t have to do it.