Tamia stepped out of Dr. Block’s truck into a section of forest just north of the scientist’s cabin. Tamia had done her homework, rereading old articles and digging up new ones. Suspicious tree-related accidents had been reported from Bellingham down to Centralia, but the only official investigation she could find was the one into the casualties down at the Palalla Reservation. And nothing about tree speech had come up at all.
Tamia checked her cell phone battery—full and ready to film. This time she was going in with more background and a healthy skepticism. She had to either disprove Dr. Block’s theory and put it to rest, or prove it and . . . what then?
She pinned her hopes on disproving it.
She joined Dr. Block near a large hemlock and held out her hand, motioning for the metal box. “Can I see that for a second?”
Tamia turned the machine over in her hands, looking at it from every side. It had an LED display and some switches and dials on the face, and a clip on each end for the strap. She peered at the headphone jack on top, then flipped it over. There was a little stethoscope-like attachment on the back, but it didn’t look like any of the spy equipment she’d researched online. The dish would have to be a lot bigger to pick up her voice as far away as she had been last time—and it would have to be pointed toward her instead of pressed up against a tree. She wished she knew an engineer, someone who could come with her and look at this thing. But this was supposed to be a secret. Tamia almost regretted having said anything to her mother.
“Here, let me get it hooked up,” said Dr. Block.
“Actually, can I try holding it?” asked Tamia. She placed it against the hemlock. “Is this the ‘on’ switch?”
“No, this one.” A stream of random letters and symbols appeared on the readout. “And you adjust this dial until . . .”
The monitor continued to scroll: %*A R$D XX* THIS DIAL UNTIL
“There it is,” said Dr. Block. “You want to observe first?”
“Yes, please.”
YES PLEASE
Dr. Block nodded and walked off, pointing out trees and plants, stating their scientific and common names long past Tamia’s earshot. Holding the machine against the tree with one hand, she turned on her phone’s camera with the other. Dr. Block probably wouldn’t want her recording this, but she was going to need some evidence, whether to prove or debunk this phenomenon. She filmed the machine as it mimicked the botanist, spewing out the names of every tree, bush, moss and lichen around them. Then she pointed the camera outward to capture how far away the woman was.
Tamia kept the camera rolling while she experimented with pulling the machine away from the trunk, holding it in the air, putting it against her leg, a rock, a fallen log. No matter what she did, the machine only registered speech when it was attached to the tree. She turned the camera off when she saw Dr. Block turn around and start back toward her. From the display she noted that the scientist had switched to reciting The Raven again.
As Dr. Block got closer, however, Tamia could see that her lips weren’t moving.
Tamia looked at the monitor again, and the words of the poem kept spilling onto the screen.
“Dr. Block! Come here!”
The botanist jogged the short distance back.
“Look!” Nobody was speaking, but the machine continued to scroll through Poe’s Raven.
“I wasn’t—were you reciting this, Tamia?”
She shook her head. “I never memorized it.”
Dr. Block furrowed her brow and took the machine out of Tamia’s hand. “Odd, it’s never done that before.” She turned it off and on again, then held it back up to the tree.
LENORE
“Hello? Hello?” Tamia called out. “It’s not responding.”
NEVERMORE
“Something’s wrong with the interface,” muttered the scientist.
“Hello?” Tamia repeated. “Hello?”
After a pause, the word HELLO appeared. Both women sighed with relief.
HELLO TAMIA HELLO HELLO TAMIA
Tamia gasped.
HELLO DOCTOR BLOCK HELLO HELLO
Tamia stepped away from the trunk, staring at the display.
Dr. Block cursed. She turned the machine off and on again. “It’s broken.”
NO NOT BROKEN
“Dr. Block, are you doing this? How are you doing this?”
HELLO DOCTOR BLOCK HELLO TAMIA COMMUNICATE
The translator shook in Dr. Block’s unsteady hand. “This is impossible,” she whispered.
HELLO HELLO COMMUNICATE
Dr. Block fished the translator’s strap out of her pocket, and Tamia held the machine while the scientist strapped it to the tree.
HELLO DOCTOR BLOCK COMMUNICATE
“Yes, communicate!” yelled the scientist, patting her pockets. “Tamia, do you have—can you record this?”
Tamia dug her phone out and started taking video again. Dr. Block inhaled, as if to gather herself, then faced the camera and spoke. She was clearly struggling to remain calm as she stated her name and credentials, the date and their location. “Subject is a Western Hemlock,” she continued. “Tsuga heterophylla, approximately one hundred and fifty feet tall, diameter about three feet, perhaps three hundred years old. This,” she said, pointing to the box, “is the translator previously shown.”
Tamia directed her camera to the machine’s monitor. She shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the doctor had taken videos before.
“This specimen is displaying a new trait. Rather than simply repeating human speech, this hemlock seems to be generating sentences independently.”
The biologist turned toward the tree and spoke in its direction. “Hello—tree?”
HELLO DOCTOR BLOCK HELLO
“Are you talking to me?” asked the scientist.
COMMUNICATE DOCTOR BLOCK
“And who else is here? Who else are you talking to?”
HELLO TAMIA HELLO HELLO
“Oh my god, oh my god,” breathed Tamia.
NOT BROKEN
“I know,” said Dr. Block. “The machine is not broken. Tell me, can you identify yourself?”
TREE
Tamia’s whole body tingled and she could barely hold the phone still. She looked over at Dr. Block for an explanation—but the doctor’s eyes were just as wide as hers.
TREE COMMUNICATE DOCTOR BLOCK TAMIA HELLO
“This is unbelievable,” Dr. Block stammered. “Tree, how did you—how did you learn to speak?”
There was a pause.
“Tree, do you understand me?”
YES
“Ohmygod, ohmygod,” Tamia whispered again. Her heart hammered in her chest.
“Did somebody train you?”
NO
Dr. Block looked down, deep in thought. “How did they manage this? Human language isn’t a natural trigger for a tree—aside, perhaps, from the C02 we exhale when we speak. But even if a sensitivity to language were introduced, it would still have to be shaped—”
“Tree,” interrupted Tamia. “Do you speak with other trees?”
NO
“But you communicate with other trees?” asked Dr. Block.
YES
“And how do you communicate?”
WIND EARTH MOVE
“Volatiles, root system, mycorrhizae, yes.” The scientist nodded in confirmation. “But what do you mean by move?”
LITTLE LITTLE MOVE
Tamia raised her eyebrows even higher than they already were. The “move” incidents—rumors—she’d researched weren’t exactly “little little.”
“Vibrations?” guessed Dr. Block.
VIBRATIONS
She faced Tamia. “Do you realize this could confirm acoustic theories of plant communication?”
Tamia nodded, slowly enough to avoid shaking the video. But she wasn’t exactly concentrating on the finer points of scientific research at this moment because hello, a tree was talking to them!
The botanist turned toward the tree again. “And how do you communicate with us?”
MACHINE
Dr. Block addressed the camera. “As you can see, the hemlock appears to be aware of its surroundings and interlocutors.”
“Can I ask another question?” Tamia interjected. “Tree—hemlock—when you say vibration, do you mean you feel them, or you make them?”
FEEL MAKE VIBRATIONS
“So both. And when you make vibrations, do the ‘little little’ movements ever get ‘big big’?”
The tree didn’t answer.
Tamia bit her lower lip and asked again. “Tree, can you move? Is it true?”
IS IT TRUE
“That you can move, is it true?”
IS IT TRUE
“Tree? Hemlock?”
TREE HEMLOCK
Dr. Block frowned. “Looks like it’s had enough for one day.”
ENOUGH FOR ONE DAY
“Let’s get our samples,” said Dr. Block, digging around in her backpack. “We’ll try speech again when we’re done.” She reached up and twisted off a broken branch, examining its short, flat needles briefly before putting it into a plastic bag. Then she unfolded a chunky Leatherman multi-tool and snipped off another small piece of branch with a cone on the end.
NO
“Then hemlock, can you tell me: have you been altered in any way? Has someone done something to you to enable you to communicate?”
COMMUNICATE
“Yes, but how?”
COMMUNICATE
The botanist sighed. She reconfigured her Leatherman and used a single blade to pry up a scale of the reddish-brown bark. After peering underneath with a lens, she wrenched off a bark sample and put it in a bag.
NO DOCTOR BLOCK
“Dr. Block?” asked Tamia. She was still filming as the scientist took a small shovelful of dirt from around the base and sealed it in a jar, then scraped down to the roots and shaved off another sample.
NO DOCTOR BLOCK STOP
Tamia stiffened. How could they be sure this tree wasn’t of the “big big move” variety? “Doctor Block, I don’t think it likes that.”
“Well, sorry. Diagnostics aren’t always pleasant for us either, but they’re necessary.” She glanced at Tamia. “Just wait till your first mammogram.”
The botanist crossed her arms and stared at the ground for a moment. “I still need more information.” She looked up into the tree’s branches and asked, “Hemlock, how old are you?”
NO HOW OLD TREE
“Do you understand what I’m asking? Do you know how old you are?”
HOW OLD FOREST
“No, I mean how many years are you, as an individual?”
There was no answer.
Dr. Block breathed out sharply and trudged to her truck. She came back with a long, slim, metal instrument. Tamia kept filming while the botanist unscrewed the end of the metal rod and pulled two long sticks out of it. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Increment borer,” answered the scientist. She fitted one of the sticks into a hole in the hollow rod, creating a T-shape, and guided the bottom of the T into a crease between thick chunks of the hemlock’s bark.
Tamia eyed the instrument warily. “It kind of looks like a corkscrew.”
“Well, it works a little like one too. We need to extract a sample.” Dr. Block pushed the tip into the trunk and twisted the handle. Tamia’s stomach clenched at the soft crunch of metal biting through bark and wood.
The screen strapped to the tree flashed: NO NO STOP
“Do you have to do that?” asked Tamia.
Dr. Block continued to turn the borer. “Short of chopping it down, this is the only way to know exactly how old a tree is. The ring spacing will also tell us about growth rates over the years, perhaps helping us pinpoint when the tree changed, if not how it happened. Wish I had a full lab.”
NO NO NOT NO
Tamia leaned over and put her hand on Dr. Block’s, not caring that she was ruining the video.
Calmly but firmly, the older woman removed Tamia’s hand and resumed drilling. “I’m sorry, I need this data, and unfortunately you can’t tell me.” Tamia wasn’t sure if the doctor was addressing her or the hemlock.
STOP STOP PLEASE STOP STOP
Dr. Block stopped turning the handles. She switched off the translator, pulled the strap from around the trunk, and handed it all to Tamia. “This is a standard practice. When done correctly, it doesn’t harm the tree.” She turned back to the hemlock and kept on boring.
“We’ve known for decades that plants can ‘hear’ in their own way. It was just a matter of how sensitive they were to specific sounds. Remember Dr. Appel’s research?”
Tamia nodded. According to the article Dr. Block had sent her, when merely the sound of caterpillars eating leaves was played to plants, they mounted their chemical defenses against the perceived invaders.
“Auditory stimuli are one thing,” the older woman continued, “but human speech? Trees don’t have the necessary structures to hear and recognize human auditory input, much less translate and repeat it. And even if they had the physical capability, language skills only develop with time and training. I don’t know of any labs teaching saplings to speak English, and yet here we are with a whole forest of full-grown talkers.”
She glanced at Tamia. “Look, boring into trees isn’t my favorite thing either, but I don’t see another way right now.”
Tamia thumbed off her phone’s camera and hugged the translator to her chest. Dr. Block returned to her sampling. Tamia looked up into the hemlock’s flat, splayed branches and whispered to it that everything would be all right. She couldn’t say for sure if it was just the wind that made the needles quiver.