Wandering Woods by Gustavo Bondoni

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This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #9

“What a dump.” Stella Rasna was balanced precariously on a large pyramid of electronic waste.  Similar pyramids spread as far as the eye could see in every direction.  “It’s amazing they managed to survive this long.”

“Well, they won’t survive much longer,” Wacky responded.

Wacky wasn’t really the being’s name.  It was just what Stella and the rest of the delegation called it; the actual name was unpronounceable by any of the other species in the coalition. Wacky was a sentient strata of the atmosphere of a gas giant who had been downloaded into a robotic body for the duration of the evaluation.

“It is no longer worthwhile to expend resources on this project,” Wacky continued.  “Seeing the situation from the ground merely confirms what my cells had already postulated.  It is too late for remedial action.  They were warned.”

The robot went limp for a moment, and then its automatic homing program began marching it back to the landing ship.  Wacky had terminated its connection.

This left only four people on the ground: three humans and the Himbia, the Squirrel.

Like Wacky himself, the Squirrel wasn’t actually a squirrel, but the species’ resemblance to the rodent had made the nickname stick. They were actually a sophisticated spacefaring species which controlled a number of rich ocean worlds in nearby systems.

“Drat,” Himbia said, although Stella suspected that the translation program had filtered out some much stronger language.  “Their resources would have been helpful in the project.”

“Are you going to cancel it, then?”

“No.  We owe a debt to the Forest.  We’ll pay for the reclamation ourselves.”

“Fine by me,” Stella told her.  “But it’s going to be a bear of a job.  Who’d have thought that any species could screw up a planet this badly?  Hell, even we were well on our way to getting Earth cleaned up, last I heard.”

“The Forest have never been too concerned about what happens outside their direct sphere of influence.  I believe they only recognized the problem when it forced itself upon them.  In fact, it would probably be safe to say that they only understood that a problem could possibly exist when they started dying off for no reason they could understand.”

“Well, looking at this, they deserve it.  How long did you say they’ve been simply tossing their obsolete electronics into the countryside?”

“About fifteen million of your Earth years.”

Stella shuddered.  Humanity wasn’t even living in caves then.  It made her feel very small.

#

“You want me to do what?” The contractor seemed determined to play his part to the fullest. 

“Clean it up.  All of it.  Get it offworld.  Recycle it or toss it into a star somewhere.  What you do with it after it’s gone is of no interest to me,” Stella replied.  Himbia had asked her to handle the conversation.  The Squirrel race didn’t understand the nature of negotiations.  In their view of the universe, there were just two states: agreement and disagreement, peace and war.  So, if someone refused to accept your terms, the only logical reactions were to break off all contact with them regarding the point in question, or attack them.  Their first contact with other spacefaring races had been extremely interesting for all parties.

“But the entire planet is full of junk.  And it has a huge land surface,” he looked down at the screen he was holding.  “Over three hundred thousand square kilometers.  That’s way too much for the fee you’re proposing.”

“The fee includes dredging the ocean as well.”  The planet had a single large ocean occupying a quarter of its total area.”

The contractor pretended to be outraged.  He was a tall, white-haired man whose extreme thinness and elongated features pointed at an origin within the Centauri system. “We can’t even pay the fuel costs to get our team here for that budget level.”

Stella sighed.  “I know that.”

“Then how can you…”

She cut him off.  “Look, I was in the terraforming business before I got pressed into diplomatic service.  I know all about the numbers, and I know exactly how much the stuff lying there is worth.”  She held his gaze.  “We both know that you’ll make so much money off of this job that you’ll be able to either retire to your own planet when it’s over, or buy such a huge fleet that it will make you the biggest player anywhere in this sector.  Are you really going to put that in jeopardy over your fuel allowance?”

“I’ll have to pull my people off every other job.”

“I expect you will.  But that doesn’t change my offer.  I would prefer to have you guys do it, but there are other contractors.”

He opened his mouth to complain but caught himself and grinned at her instead.  “You do know that you take all the fun out of everything, don’t you Miss Rasna?”

She held out her hand and breathed a sigh of relief.  She’d been bluffing about having other options, and suspected her opponent knew it.  But she had also been telling the truth about the value of what he’d receive in exchange.  As soon as the contract was signed, he would be the richest entity in five planetary systems. 

He shook the proffered hand, grinning at the archaic, unhygienic gesture. 

“Welcome aboard Mr. Dyangels.  It’s good to have you on the team.”

#

Before the Squirrels approached the human colonies at Gliese 581 and asked for help with the rescue project, the planet hadn’t even had a name.  It still wasn’t officially catalogued, but the initial survey team had called it Garbagia.  The unfortunate name had stuck.  As far as Stella was concerned, it was the perfect moniker. 

Dyangels seemed to agree with her. “The mercury readings in the soil down there are incredible,” he said, studying his ever-present monitor. “Micro-organism counts are the lowest I’ve ever seen on a life-supporting planet.  Forget the value of the electronic junk, if we could dig up the dirt and bottle it, we could make a fortune selling it as a disinfectant.  It would probably kill the people using it, too, but that can’t be helped.”

She studied the contractor, wondering if the man’s slightly strange sense of humor was due to his upbringing in Centauri or whether working big engineering jobs had driven him a little batty.  A little of both, probably.  “Yeah,” she replied, “but you’d need to take all the junk off the top before you could even reach the soil.”

“You’re probably right.”

They climbed over a final mound of what looked to be discarded mainframes and gasped.

From space, their objective was just a large green spot surrounded by desolate waste.  It was just visible with the naked eye, ten kilometers in diameter.  From atop the pile of trash, it was gigantic.  Though they were perched on the pyramid, and though the trees were hundreds of meters away, they could clearly tell that the upper branches towered above them.

“They’re huge.”

“Those are just the juveniles.  The truly big trees are in the center, near the sacred lake.

It took them five minutes to cross the distance between the trash and the forest.  It was a dry grassland, slowly turning to desert.  Every hundred meters or so, Dyangels would stab the ground with a long sensor and keep walking while his portable analytics center did its job.

Finally, they reached the shade of the first tree, and it was as if the planet was transformed.  A cool breeze caressed their skin and Stella felt droplets of water in it, as if the rules of the rest of the planet simply didn’t apply to the Forest.  It was possible they didn’t, of course.

“Greetings,” a voice inside her mind said.  “I am Kwi, and I will be your contact.”

Dyangels jumped, and Stella got a little juvenile satisfaction from seeing it.  The contractor had been so coldly efficient and professional up to that point that she’d neglected to tell him about their hosts.  He turned to her with a sour look.

“Telepathic trees?”

“No.  Not telepathic.  They’re actually using some pretty sophisticated comm equipment buried somewhere under this forest.  It modulates the electrical currents in our brain, with the result that we can hear them.”

“Interesting.  So that’s why they need all this junk.”

“That and other stuff.  They’re one of the oldest interstellar races anyone’s ever heard of.  They were sending seedlings out among the stars when our ancestors were wondering if walking upright might be fun.  That satellite network we saw is how they communicate with their far-off empire.  And they coordinate all of it from the computer rooms below.  Plus, they never stop buying the newest stuff they can get hold of.”

“Which begs the question: why do they need us to clean up the mess for them?”

“They’re not very mobile, and their servants don’t have interstellar capacity.”

“Servants?”

Kwi’s voice interrupted.  “One of them will be here soon.  Please stay where you are so he can show you around.  That is much easier than having me try to guide you.”

The creature that appeared looked almost exactly like Himbia, about three feet long, brown and furry, the main difference was that it approached in a four-legged lope.  All the other Squirrels Stella had met walked on their hind legs and used their forelimbs for manipulation – much like humans and most other humanoid species.

“Hello,” Stella said. 

The Squirrel cocked its head at her, but showed no other sign that it had heard.

“I’m afraid that our servants are not intelligent enough to speak, not even standard system-speak.”

“But I know plenty of Squirrels.  Most of them are much smarter than even the most intelligent humans.”

“The beings you refer to as ‘Squirrels’ are not the product of natural evolution.  They were created by the Forest using creatures like this one as a base. Unfortunately, they were a failed experiment.  They soon became too sophisticated for the tasks we assigned to them, and expressed their discontent.  Since we felt responsible, we freed them all and gave them a fleet of ships to explore the galaxy with.  Their success fills us with pride.  But the creature in front of you is more akin in intelligence to the animals that humans call dogs.  But it should serve its purpose.”

As they followed the creature, Dyangels took samples of the soil, until they reached a small stream that flowed into the woods from wasteland.  Here, the contractor asked for a halt and spent quite some time making readings of both the water and the soul around it.

As she waited for him to finish, Stella spoke to her host.  “Which of the trees holds your mind?” she asked.

In response, she felt something akin to laughter.  It was a strange sensation, because although it was inside her head, it wasn’t her amusement.  “My trunk is a lot deeper in the Forest, and your path won’t cross it.  But even if it did, it would make little difference – most of what you’d recognize as mental activity happens underground.  Our deep roots are the sentient part of our bodies, and the part that moves – the rest exists just to keep that part alive.”

They followed the river into a wonderland.  The trees around them grew less frequent but more magnificent.  Trunks twenty meters across extended high into the sky, and Stella remembered her briefing.  These were more mature individuals, and they needed more sunlight and nutrients to stay alive.  Despite their size, the huge trees were able to use their root systems, edging ever closer to the center of the Forest as they aged.

Stella hadn’t asked how the long-lived trees avoided overcrowding in the center, but it was obvious they did: the trees grew ever sparser as they advanced.

Finally, they reached the very center of the Forest, where they found the lake.  According to her map, it was big, nearly a kilometer across, and seven long.

But the boughs of the nearest trees covered it completely.  From space, it was invisible beneath the green.

From the ground, it was indescribable.  Perhaps a lake in a cavern might come close, but only if that cavern was illuminated with a diffuse green light, and filled with long-tailed birds and the noise of millions of insects.  And only if the air in the cavern had the fragrant smell of the woods after a rain shower.

Stella sat on the ground and lost herself in the beauty of it as Dyangels took his readings. 

She started when he put his hand on her shoulder.  “We need to go back,” he said with a serious expression.  “Now.”

#

Back aboard the project’s control ship, Dyangels herded Stella and Himbia into one of the meeting rooms.  Three more Squirrels, the ones Stella had always thought of as the “money men” were already inside.

“Are you quite certain that the Forest can’t listen in on this conversation?” he asked them.

“Yes.  Completely.  It is electronically blocked even against the technology they have buried down there.”

“All right.  Then I need to tell you that our friends the trees are pretty much dead already, even if we clean up their planet.”

 “That’s impossible,” one of the finance Squirrels said.  “We’ve done a thorough evaluation.”

“I’ve seen it.  But it’s not up to date.  I took dozens of readings today, and then ran a few simulations.  They’re all going to die inside of the next month, starting with the big ones nearest the lake.  Have a look.” He set up a graph which ran a simulation which showed poison concentrations in the ground against life expectancy of one of the trees that made up the Forest.  “Here’s what I’ve found.  See?  They can’t make it.”

This was met with silence as each member of the team looked over the numbers.  Finally, the same finance Squirrel spoke again.  “The toxin levels do not match what we’ve been shown.”

“I know.  That’s why I said your readings were old.  The problem is the water.  Some deposit of nastiness must have ruptured somewhere, because the stream we followed has incredible concentrations of mercury and arsenic.  More than could be accounted for exclusively because of dissolving old computers.”

“If we find the source, can the trees survive?”

“I doubt it.  The lake is full of the stuff and it’s already started leaching into the soil.  The further you get from the water, the less concentration, of course, but the whole Forest is in pretty bad shape.  My simulation says the older trees will begin to die within the next fourteen days as the concentration gets beyond even what they can survive.”

“Those trees are their elders, the greatest exponents of Forest civilization.  Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Short of transplanting all of them somewhere else?  No.  I can’t think of anything.”

***

Himbia sat in the galley drinking some kind of vegetable soup when Stella walked in.  She was often surprised at how similar some of the Squirrel’s attitudes towards setbacks were to humans, despite how different they were in other respects.  Had Himbia been human, Stella would have thought she was the picture of dejection.

“What do you think they’ll do?”

“The only logical course of action is to suspend the whole program.  It seems that Wacky was correct after all.”

“I’m sorry,” Stella said.

“They created us, made us better than we would have been.  They set us free when they could have kept us as slaves.  And we were unable to save them.  Our race will be covered in dishonor.”

“I still don’t understand why they didn’t save themselves.  They have advanced technical capacity – if they’d planned for this, they could have done the cleanup without any outside assistance.”

“Humans will never understand the way the Forest thinks.  Only things within its borders matter.  Anything outside… they barely think about it.”

“But they colonized other worlds.”

“That is exactly why they can afford not to.  The Forest feels that younger offshoots of their race will continue to explore.  They have done their part already.”

“So strange.”

The Squirrel’s screen lit up, and Himbia glanced at it.  “It’s settled.  There can be no more resources allotted to this project.  We simply don’t have any more wealth, and we haven’t got enough time to clean up.  Will you accompany me to the surface now?”

“To tell them their fate?”

“That, too.  But mostly, I feel our race must say goodbye.”

She thought about it.  “I’ll come with you, but I need some time to speak to my people. Can we go down tomorrow?”

#

This time they ignored the trash and landed their shuttle directly in the grassland surrounding the Forest.  It was forbidden to land anywhere within the forest, but even worse was the prohibition against machinery.  They couldn’t even use bicycles to get to the shores of the central lake, so they had to walk. 

The forest provided them with an escort.  Stella observed the differences between the servant and the interstellar Squirrels and wondered how she could have thought them similar.  Coloration, behavior, expressions and especially posture were completely different. 

But it was interesting to note that Himbia acted like the guide wasn’t there. She followed where it lead, but at no point acknowledged its existence or looked at it directly. 

They walked in silence, and Stella had to work to keep up with her two forest-reared companions.

At the lake, Himbia made a beeline for what seemed to be the widest and tallest of the trees.  She knelt before it.  “Venerable one,” she said.  “I’m afraid I have some terrible news.”

Once again, Stella felt the feeling of alien amusement rolling through her, but the voice in her head merely said: “Please tell me.”

“You have only a few more days to live, then you will all die.”

Amusement again.  “Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  I will certainly die within the next few days.  I’ve known that for decades.  It is my time, and I will soon collapse into the waters of the sacred lake and, eventually, float down into the ocean.”  The voice paused.  “And it’s possible that others might die as well.  But perhaps the situation is not as dire as you feel?”

“How can it not be dire?  The entire Forest, the creators of my people will be gone in… in no time.  And there’s nothing we can do to help you.”

“No.  Only some of us will.” Stella felt the amusement again.  “Perhaps you should speak to your human friend.  They seem to be a most unusual species.  They certainly don’t think in the same ways that the rest of us do.”

Himbia turned to face her.  She’d spent so much time with the Squirrels that she was beginning to be able to read their expressions.  It was very obvious that her friend was confused by the conversation.

Stella held up her hands.  “I’m not the right human to talk to.  I just work here.”

The confusion in Himbia’s expression deepened. 

“Sorry.  That is an old human joke.  I suppose it wouldn’t mean much to you.  What I meant was that we need to locate Dyangels.  He knows the details, and only he knows what he’s discussed with the Forest.  All I did was ask him to think about it.”

The Squirrel still wasn’t convinced, but turned to practical matters.  “Then we’ll need an uplink to orbit, I suppose.”

“Probably not.  Dyangels is working on planet.”

“The one you call Dyangels,” the tree chimed in, “Is working with some of my younger peers nearby.”

“Greetings.” This was also a voice of the forest, but it was a different voice.  Stella didn’t know how she could tell the voice was different – after all they were both just modulations of electrical currents in her head – but there was no doubt that she was being addressed by another individual.  “I’ve instructed the guide to bring you here.”

It was a short walk, thirty minutes along the banks of the lake and four of five minutes away from it.  When they arrived, Himbia stopped, aghast.

Stella was expecting to find Dyangels working with the forest.  When she negotiated the final bend in the path, her mouth fell open.

It looked like someone had set up a factory in the middle of the forest.  Cranes, trucks, an army of workers and a bunch of machines she couldn’t identify scurried around in a huge hole perhaps five meters deep and a hundred meters square.  It was all illuminated by arc lights that turned the gloom of the forest into something that resembled an operating room.  The lights were so bright that the browns and greens of the forest paled into pastel shades.

They reached a corner of the hole just as Dyangels was emerging from it on an elevator platform.

“Hello Stella, hello Himbia,” he said.

“What is happening here?” The Squirrel asked.  Stella had never seen her this agitated.  “I thought we’d established that cleaning the forest floor in time was unviable.”

“It is.”

“Then why are you digging holes?”

Dyangels turned to look at Stella, a questioning expression on his face.  She shrugged back at him, indicating that she hadn’t spoken.  Then, Dyangels after ascertaining that Himbia was completely engrossed in the hole below them, gave her a theatrical wink.

“After delivering my report,” he said, “I started thinking about the Forest, and how terrible it was that an entire civilization might disappear in just a couple of weeks.  It seemed especially sad because they were such an ancient culture.

“Then Stella came to me and told me that you felt your entire race would be dishonored by their disappearance, and asked me if there wasn’t anything more I could think of, any way to resolve the issue.”

“It is a hopeless issue.  We told you that there could be no more resources allotted to the project.  This is not a part of our agreement.”  Himbia’s fur was bristling and Stella wondered whether the Squirrel would actually attack a human twice her size backed by an army of workers.

Before she could intervene, Dyangels continued.

“That’s true.  Which is why we’ve decided to run this particular study at no further cost.  And if it turns out that our idea is viable, to do the original job plus the emergency tree-saving work at the agreed-upon cost.”

Himbia deflated.  “That is acceptable, but not logical.  Why would you give us free labor?”

“I was brought up to believe that everyone deserves a second chance. When I was very young, a judge decided to bet that I’d straighten out.  I’m betting that the Forest will learn from this and decide on some new infrastructure projects to keep it from happening again.  And I’m betting they’ll remember who saved their butts last time.”

Again, Stella felt the amusement in her head.  Who’d have thought that trees would have a sense of humor?

“All right,” Himbia replied, all traces of confusion and aggression gone.  “I suppose that makes sense.”  She peered down into the hole, and Stella did so as well.  There didn’t seem to be anything there except for gigantic machines.  “But what are you expecting to gain from this excavation?  I don’t see anything useful”

The amusement in their heads grew in intensity, and the voice of the tree who’d brought them to the dig spoke.  “The problem is probably that you’re looking in the wrong direction.  Might I suggest you look up instead of down?”

They did.  Stella nearly fell on her backside.

Suspended in the air fifty meters above the ground was a mass of thirty-meter-long tentacles that writhed like angry snakes. 

No, Stella thought, not tentacles.  Roots.

Above the roots, Stella could clearly see the trunk of one of the trees, wrapped in colossal braces and slings, to which several miles of thick cable were attached.  The branches above prevented her from seeing what was being used to lift the tree, but she suspected that there were some serious heavy-lift hover-flyers up there.

“I must admit,” the voice of the tree said, “that it feels very unusual to be exposed like this, but not painful in the least.  I should survive perfectly well.  I’m glad I volunteered.”

#

As they sat at the edge of the Forest watching the equipment descend from orbit, Stella turned to Dyangels.  “Can you do it in time?  Can you save them all?”

“I shouldn’t jinx it, but I actually think it’ll turn out to be an easy job.  We might lose one or two, but I hope not.  It’s nice to dig up trees who actually know what you’re doing and can help you out.  Saves all sorts of time.”

“But there’s so many of them.”

He laughed.  “I have enough equipment in-system to clean up an entire planet.  Moving a hundred square kilometers of Forest to a different continent in child’s play.  We’ve even found a nice patch where the trash was only three meters deep and the soil was clean enough.  All we really have to do to make it perfect is to dig them some new rivers and a lake.  With what I have on the command ship, that should take about three hours, and we won’t even have to leave orbit to do it.”

Stella nodded.  Compared to a terraforming job, what they were discussing was minor cosmetic surgery.

“If I’d known you’d already brought the equipment, I would have negotiated harder. You’d have done it for free, and if not, you’d have had to eat the cost of shipping everything out here.  Could you have survived that?”

“Maybe.  Maybe not.  I definitely didn’t want to lose this one.  But I’m glad I gambled.”  He looked out across the trash they’d eventually be hauling off.  “There’s something about saving an entire planetary civilization against all odds that seems poetic.  It makes me feel like I was meant to be here.”

“And the fact that you’re going to be taking home a king’s ransom in salvage, and you’ll be just about the richest human ever, has nothing to do with that?”

He smiled.  “It might. But the other stuff sounds better, don’t you think?”