He looks at his leg again. She’s at his side before he realizes it, utterly uninterested in the capsule. She’s looking at him, waiting for him to move. He starts walking.
They journey through lavish forest. On each side of the path he chooses, the trees are thick and knotted, overlaid with moss and lichen. Knotted vines, from an abundance of old growth, stretch to a knitted canopy far above his head that leaves the forest floor in a cool silence. The forest is pristine, like nobody has ever set foot here before. The air is like nothing he has ever experienced. Every breath is a pleasure, full of so many layers of scent. Familiar and yet strange, a permanent reminder he is a long way from home. Every now and then, he hears leaves and branches rustle. Tiny legs scamper as unseen creatures scuttle out of their way. Animals or people, he knows not which.
The path ahead seems to be open in accordance with his intention. On several occasions, just as he is about to change direction to avoid what appears to be an impassable obstacle, one step further reveals a trail that takes him where he had intended to go all along. Only when his mind starts to drift and he loses focus does that trail disappear. And when he stops to consider where to go next, Holtz simply asks him once more, “Which way?” When he makes a decision, the trail reappears. Like the forest is responding to him.
It occurs to him there is something missing here. He walks up to a moss-covered log and pokes around on its surface. The wood is rotten. He picks up a rock and bashes through the soft decayed timber to the hollow inside. The violence of his action appears to startle Holtz, but she says nothing. When he reaches inside the log his hand pulls out wood pulp and moss, but it’s devoid of animal life. The log is warm and damp, a perfect nesting place for small insects and invertebrates, but there is no sign of them. “Where are all the bugs? A forest like this should be teeming with them.” She looks at him like she doesn’t recognize the word. “Bugs… cockroaches, ants, spiders. Mosquitoes, flies, moths. Forests can’t survive without them. Nor can the animals who live in them — they’re an essential part of the food chain. Where are they?”
They appear in their hundreds, crawling over his hand and up his arm. He shakes himself free and brushes them off. “Are these what you mean?” She gazes at a particularly large beetle like she’s never seen one like it before. “This chain of food, you have this in your forests. Of course you do, I remember my history.” Her eyes open widely and he stares at her, mesmerized. She says, “We have food. No chain. Martians don’t require it.”
“How is that possible? Everything needs food for energy. How do you survive without energy?”
“The universe is an infinite source of energy.”
Borman sits down on the log and runs his hand through his hair. “Lady, I’m starting to wonder if we really are understanding one another.”
Holtz takes his hand and urges him to stand up. She walks him over to a large tree — probably one of the biggest trees in the forest. Its pale and glossy trunk is as wide as a car, the branches stretch hundreds of feet in the air. He looks up and has trouble even making out its uppermost limbs. Holtz tells him to put his arms around the trunk.
“You want me to hug the tree?”
She nods.
“Why?”
“Do it and you’ll see.” Emphasis on the ‘see.’
He shrugs and wraps his arms around the trunk. It feels like no bark he’s ever touched before, more like a glassy skin.
“Close your eyes.”
He does as she suggests and the forest opens up to him. He’s viewing it from above, like he’s standing in the topmost branches of the tree. As if the tree itself has eyes. The sensation is one of both freedom and of total immobility. He sees the forest stretching away in all directions, and the banks of a river flowing a short distance away. He senses the incredible age of the tree and even some sort of residual consciousness. The tree itself is aware of its own existence. He feels a light breeze moving across the top of the forest canopy, hears birds singing in the distance and recognizes their call, even though he is hearing it now for the first time.
He lets go of the trunk and slowly opens his eyes. For a moment, he almost expects to find himself falling through the air from the treetop. But he finds himself in the same place he’s always been, safely on the forest floor, the trunk of the tree stretching above him now trusted and familiar.
Holtz simply nods in understanding, happy he has seen what she wanted him to see.
14
“Your science has a theory called quantum mechanics,” says Holtz. “You are familiar with it?”
“Of course,” Borman replies.
“This theory notes that matter has the characteristics both of a particle and a wave, what is known as particle-wave duality.”
“That’s right.”
“In our world, there is no such duality. All matter is a wave. It is fluid. Which means energy passes through all things much more freely.”
Borman’s eyes widen. “Then… You’re saying this is an entirely different universe.”
She nods. “There is a problem with this quantum theory of yours. It doesn’t explain everything. It is incomplete. Because it cannot describe the entire fabric of your universe when so much of it consists of radical energy.”
“Why radical?”
“It adheres to none of the laws of observable matter. It is a free agent, malleable, fluid and metamorphosing in exotic and unpredictable ways. It is radical energy that shapes this universe in direct synthesis with the Martian mind. It is a world of our creation.”
Not knowing how to respond, he simply starts to walk. “I want to see the river.”
She smiles and nods her approval. Almost as soon as he sets off, the river reveals itself. He is amazed how close they had been to its banks. The water is fast flowing, too wide and deep to cross. More than anything he finds he wants to cross, perhaps because the option is no longer open to him. There is a towering mountain range beyond the river that seems to be calling to him.
He kneels down at the edge of the river to take a drink. The water is cool and remarkably refreshing. The air is warm on the riverbank, bathed in sunlight. He finds pleasure in the sensation of the wind on his skin. Gratitude that he is still alive, that he miraculously can walk, but perhaps something more. As if the air itself is alive, the conscious breath of the forest. It feels far warmer here than logic would dictate. Mars is about one and a half times further away from the sun than the Earth. He would expect a corresponding drop in temperature, despite the thick Earth-like atmosphere. Yet it feels no cooler than a Spring morning in Texas.
He picks up a rock at the water’s edge and examines it. It appears familiar and unexotic, like a pebble you’d find in any fast-flowing river in America. He skims it over the surface, eliciting an exclamation of shock — or joy — from Holtz. The pebble keeps bouncing all the way over to the bank on the far side of the river. Borman has never skimmed a pebble this far in his life. The next one he picks up is smaller, intricately laced with bands of dark brown through speckled grey. He puts it in his pocket.
She sits down beside him. “Which way?”
He stares at the river. The water is flowing left to right. There’s something about those mountains. It makes sense to get to higher ground to see the lay of the land. “We should probably head upstream toward the source.”
“Is that your choice?”