Gwen, in Green

“Let’s try something else.” He hooked up to an African violet. The plant was due for water. He reached for a glass, ran it full, and started to pour. The reaction was much weaker, but there was a reaction, a movement of the recording stylus, before he started watering the plant. And when he thought an image of fire, of burning a leaf of the lush plant, the “fainting” reaction was there. The stylus leaped, as when a human being shows emotional distress, and then it leveled off into a straight line.

George had a new interest. First thing Monday morning, he was in the yard, the polygraph hooked into a tree. He stroked the tree with his hand. He threatened it with an ax. Since it was one which had been slated to be cleared, he drove the sharp blade into the wood and then watched, grim-­faced, as the pain reaction sent the recording stylus dancing.

“This is crazy,” he told a watching Gwen.

“I could have told you.”

“If I believe this, I can never mow a lawn, clear brush, cut firewood, trim bushes. Hell, I won’t even be able to eat greens. This bastard fainted when I came at it with an ax.”

“You’re beginning to understand,” Gwen said softly.

“Not at all,” he said.

He did some reading. He found that his discovery was not original. There’d been work done in the polygraph field with plants, and the results were the same as his own. The pioneer in the work, Cleve Backster, even used the same words, saying that plants “fainted” when threatened. Backster, he found, had some pretty heavy thoughts regarding plants. His work, according to printed reports, showed that plants appreciated being watered, that they worried when a dog came near, that they sympathized when harm came to life near them, plant life, animal life, insect life. Some of it was ­pretty fantastic; Backster said that fresh vegetables “fainted” when selected to be dropped into boiling water and that even eggs, without any indication of embryonic development, “fainted” just before the­y were broken. A North Carolina foundation had given Backster a grant to further his research. Backster thought plants to be telepathic. He was quoted in one article: “We’re getting into another dimension, a scientific twilight zone in which something can go from point to point without going between them and without consuming time to get there.”

“If I hadn’t seen it happen,” George told Gwen, as they discussed the articles, “I’d agree with the members of the polygraph association and call him a nut.”

“They feel,” Gwen said.

“Something,” George agreed. “Do we give up eating tomatoes?”

“I don’t know. It’s not quite clear.”

“Maybe you knew all along,” George said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, you’ve talked to the African violets and the bastards are healthier than any I’ve ever seen.”

“Just T.L.C.,” she said, trying to laugh it off.

“Think what happens when a reaper goes through a field of wheat,” George said. “Thousands, millions of screams of mortal agony.”

Seeing her shiver, he took her into his arms. “Look, this is all too heavy for me. I’m not going to give up greens and asparagus. I’m going to continue to keep my yard cleared. Isn’t it the same as eating beef if the plants actually do feel? We know a cow feels fear and pain.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “There is an answer, I suppose.”

“Not on this earth,” George said.

12

“Really, I think that it’s foolish to go on spending money that way,” Gwen was saying. She’d spent Monday and Tuesday in peace, the only sounds of heavy equipment coming from far across the waterway. She was clearing the breakfast table and George was finishing his second cup of coffee and frowning up at her. “He’s a perfectly nice old man. He’s a delightful conversationalist, but I feel as if we’re paying money to have me listen to him talk, and that isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. Is it?”

“I have to take his machine back,” George said.

“Why not wait until Friday?” she asked. “You can drop it off and we’ll take in a movie or something.”

“Does that mean that you’re not going back to see King?”

“Do you think I need to?” She stood behind him and pressed her breasts into his shoulders. She’d taken to going braless around the house. It was nice. She was built for it and it was, for George, quite a novelty. Nothing like being able to grab a loving handful of softness unharnessed. He thought it over. She’d been a doll since the scary incident with the cat, no hang-­ups, no problems.

“Well, honey, we’ll leave that up to you,” he said.

“I think the main thing is that by talking to Dr. King, even briefly, I’ve been able to talk to myself. I’ve learned a lot.”

“Miracle cure,” he said, turning to put his arms around her and pushing the side of his face into her stomach.

“Buddy, if you’re planning to go to work, you’d better stop that.” He was caressing the roundness of her hips.

“I really should,” he said. “But I could be late.”

“No,” she said, laughing, pulling out of his arms. “I’ll be the woman behind the man and send you off to conquer the electronics world.”