“Oh,” Jake says briskly. “Well, those trees are equally significant as the stands I showed you earlier.”
In the month since she first spotted the two firs with browned needles, Jake has made several after-hours attempts to study them, only to be turned back by a patrol of Rangers each time. It wasn’t until two weeks ago that she finally managed to reach the afflicted firs, set her rainfall meters, and take a series of soil samples from around the trees. And since her findings indicated that the rainfall has been adequate and the surrounding soil is rich with nutrients, the only potential cause left to consider is something biotic. But she found no evidence of bacterial pathogens or fungal infestations in the tissue. Still, she’s been avoiding the trees during her tours, just in case one of the more observant Pilgrims spots the browning and sounds the alarm.
“Excuse me, we’re here to see the big, beautiful trees?” one of the Chinese girls interrupts with painful politeness, pointing at God’s Middle Finger. “And those trees are biggest?”
“We want them,” her companion adds, nodding solemnly.
“Sure,” Jake says. “Of course.”
Jake escorts the group along the bark-mulched trail, her eyes cast downward, watching her thighs alternately rise and fall inside her Cathedral-issue shorts. She brings them to a halt, and when the time comes for her canned speech, she’s forced to lift her gaze. “This 230-foot titan was already 150 feet tall when Shakespeare sat down and dipped his quill to begin writing Hamlet,” she says with all the enthusiasm she can muster, as the other half of her mind examines the diseased trees. While the needle-browning hasn’t changed, it’s immediately clear that the soggy bark has spread, and now afflicts five trees in total. Even God’s Middle Finger appears compromised. She notes several places where the colossal tree’s bark has pulled away, revealing something growing on the tree’s nutrient-rich cambium, its tissue as slick and deep black as a dog’s gums. And higher up, pileated woodpeckers have punched numerous holes in the softened bark, around which beetles and ants are swarming. The tree is being plundered, Jake realizes with horror, like a thousand-year-old museum with all its precious antiquities flying out the door.
Thankfully, none of the Pilgrims notice, and after concluding her speech, Jake hastily sends them back up the trail and takes a quick tissue sample from the afflicted area of God’s Middle Finger. With a sick, sinking feeling, she rejoins the Pilgrims a minute later, and as they set off for the Villas, she strains to dispel the swirling globs of panic that now hinder her every breath.
She stops to pour water over her neck, scrubbing her sweaty face with her hand, watching a duo of ravens dogfight through the branches above. She’s reminded of a story Knut once told her of a region in northern Minnesota that was particularly hard hit by the Withering, where people woke late one night to the sound of hundreds of blunt objects striking the shingles of their roofs. When they ran outside, they saw that it was birds, of every size and species imaginable, falling from the sky like hail. It was later discovered that they’d been flying for months straight, and had flown themselves to death, searching in vain for somewhere to nest.
THEIR EQUAL
IT TAKES JAKE an hour of examining the latest samples under a microscope before she sees it. And even then, she isn’t exactly sure what it is she’s seeing: a haze of ghostly filaments that have woven between the xylem cells she took from God’s Middle Finger, replacing the lignin that normally gives them their structure. On closer inspection, and only after she strategically stains the tissue, she identifies the filaments as the fruiting bodies of a new species of fungus, one that’s flourishing between the cell walls. Whatever it is, the fungus is aggressive, and if the tree can’t make enough tannins to fight it off and the fungus manages to penetrate through the sapwood and into the heartwood, God’s Middle Finger won’t stand a chance.
Jake leans back in her chair and emits a pained sigh as despair courses through her body. What she’s dreaded for so long has finally occurred: the island’s local microclimate, which has shielded the Cathedral’s trees from the Great Withering, has shifted enough that the trees have become stressed and can no longer properly defend themselves against intruders. And if this follows the same epidemiology of other fungal blights brought about by the Withering, the fungus will spread, and all the island’s ancient trees, some of which have survived for a thousand springs and a thousand autumns, will perish.
If there were ever a time for bourbon, it would be now; but instead Jake brews a pot of mint tea and buries her head under a pile of blankets on the ratty loveseat that commands most of her staff cabin’s floor space. Sometime later there’s a knock at the door. When she opens it, Knut is standing there with a large bottle of peppermint schnapps dangling from his fist.
“You’ve been so busy lately, Jacinda,” he says as she invites him inside. “I’ve missed our evening conversations. You’re the only sane person on this island, you know.”
“Sorry, I quit drinking. And I haven’t really felt up to socializing lately,” she says, giving him a hug. “But I think you’re going to need one.”
After she pours Knut a glass of schnapps and herself a mug of lukewarm tea, she points to the microscope. “That slide is a sample of tissue I took from the trunk of God’s Middle Finger this afternoon.”
Knut grooms his mustache with his fingers and bends to the eyepiece with his other wrinkled lid pinched shut. While he looks, Jake relates the story of how she first noticed the browned needles and the soggy bark during one of her tours, and how she’s sorry that she kept it from him for so long. “But now I need your help,” she says in a tight, hopeless voice.
After another minute at the lens, Knut grimaces, straightens up, and drains his glass. “We will do something,” he says, his eyes fiery with conviction. “Tonight. Before it’s too late. Even though it may already be too late.”
“We’ll tell Davidoff,” she suggests, attempting to steer his usually rash thinking toward reason. “Management will launch an official investigation. They could shut the Cathedral down and let us do more tests.”
“Those Corporate snakes are only interested in protecting their investment, Jake,” Knut says with a sneer. “And Davidoff couldn’t even keep a Christmas tree alive past Boxing Day, let alone some of the most significant life forms remaining on this planet. No, these poor, sick trees must be brought down and then burned. Immediately. It’s the only hope to halt the spread of the fungus. And we need to do it ourselves.”
“Now?” Jake says. “Knut, the Rangers will hear our chainsaws.”
“We can do it together,” Knut says, putting his hands on her shoulders.
She feels her gaze sink downward. “I can’t lose this job,” she says, her voice wavering. “I’m too deep in debt. And I think I might be pregnant. So can we just press pause until we understand it a little better? We’ll do more experiments. Perhaps there’s an antifungal treatment we can prepare.” She doesn’t say that she’s terrified of getting banished to the Mainland, even with Knut at her side. He’s been at the Cathedral from the very beginning, and has no idea what it’s like out there: the dust, the firestorms, the squalor, the children choking with rib retch.