It might once have been some kind of lava‑flow. The underlying color was dark, almost black, but the surface was paler, as if it had been ground down or worn by crushing. It was as smooth as a stretch of well‑laid road in Mary’s own world, and certainly easier to walk on than the grass.
She followed the one she was on, which flowed in a wide curve toward the trees. The closer she got, the more astounded she was by the enormous size of the trunks – as wide, she estimated, as the house she lived in, and as tall – as tall as… She couldn’t even make a guess.
When she came to the first trunk, she rested her hands on the deeply ridged red‑gold bark. The ground was covered ankle‑deep in brown leaf skeletons as long as her hand, soft and fragrant to walk on. She was soon surrounded by a cloud of midgelike flying things, as well as a little flock of the tiny hummingbirds, a yellow butterfly with a wingspread as broad as her hand, and too many crawling things for comfort. The air was full of humming and buzzing and scraping.
She walked along the floor of the grove feeling much as if she were in a cathedraclass="underline" there was the same stillness, the same sense of upwardness in the structures, the same awe within herself.
It had taken her longer than she thought it would to walk here. It was getting on toward midday, for the shafts of light coming down through the canopy were almost vertical. Drowsily Mary wondered why the grazing creatures didn’t move under the shade of the trees during this hottest part of the day.
She soon found out.
Feeling too hot to move any farther, she lay down to rest between the roots of one of the giant trees, with her head on her rucksack, and fell into a doze.
Her eyes were closed for twenty minutes or so, and she was not quite asleep, when suddenly, from very close by, there came a resounding crash that shook the ground.
Then came another. Alarmed, Mary sat up and gathered her wits, and saw a movement that resolved itself into a round object, about three feet across, rolling along the ground, coming to a halt, and falling on its side.
And then another fell, farther off; she saw the massive thing descend, and watched it crash into the buttress‑like root of the nearest trunk and roll away.
The thought of one of those things falling on her was enough to make her take her rucksack and run out of the grove altogether. What were they? Seedpods?
Watching carefully upward, she ventured under the canopy again to look at the nearest of the fallen objects. She pulled it upright and rolled it out of the grove, and then laid it on the grass to look at it more closely.
It was perfectly circular and as thick as the width of her palm. There was a depression in the center, where it had been attached to the tree. It wasn’t heavy, but it was immensely hard and covered in fibrous hairs, which lay along the circumference so that she could run her hand around it easily one way but not the other. She tried her knife on the surface; it made no impression at all.
Her fingers seemed smoother. She smelled them; there was a faint fragrance there, under the smell of dust. She looked at the seedpod again. In the center there was a slight glistening, and as she touched it again, she felt it slide easily under her fingers. It was exuding a kind of oil.
Mary laid the thing down and thought about the way this world had evolved.
If her guess about these universes was right, and they were the multiple worlds predicted by quantum theory, then some of them would have split off from her own much earlier than others. And clearly in this world evolution had favored enormous trees and large creatures with a diamond‑framed skeleton.
She was beginning to see how narrow her scientific horizons were. No botany, no geology, no biology of any sort – she was as ignorant as a baby.
And then she heard a low thunder‑like rumble, which was hard to locate until she saw a cloud of dust moving along one of the roads – toward the stand of trees, and toward her. It was about a mile away, but it wasn’t moving slowly, and all of a sudden she felt afraid.
She darted back into the grove. She found a narrow space between two great roots and crammed herself into it, peering over the buttress beside her and out toward the approaching dust cloud.
What she saw made her head spin. At first it looked like a motorcycle gang. Then she thought it was a herd of wheeled animals. But that was impossible. No animal could have wheels. She wasn’t seeing it. But she was.
There were a dozen or so. They were roughly the same size as the grazing creatures, but leaner and gray‑colored, with horned heads and short trunks like elephants’. They had the same diamond‑shaped structure as the grazers, but somehow they had evolved, on their front and rear single legs, a wheel.
But wheels did not exist in nature, her mind insisted; they couldn’t; you needed an axle with a bearing that was completely separate from the rotating part, it couldn’t happen, it was impossible –
Then, as they came to a halt not fifty yards away, and the dust settled, she suddenly made the connection, and she couldn’t help laughing out loud with a little cough of delight.
The wheels were seedpods. Perfectly round, immensely hard and light – they couldn’t have been designed better. The creatures hooked a claw through the center of the pods with their front and rear legs, and used their two lateral legs to push against the ground and move along. While she marveled at this, she was also a little anxious, for their horns looked formidably sharp, and even at this distance she could see intelligence and curiosity in their gaze.
And they were looking for her.
One of them had spotted the seedpod she had taken out of the grove, and he trundled off the road toward it. When he reached it, he lifted it onto an edge with his trunk and rolled it over to his companions.
They gathered around the pod and touched it delicately with those powerful, flexible trunks, and she found herself interpreting the soft chirrups and clicks and hoots they were making as expressions of disapproval. Someone had tampered with this: it was wrong.
Then she thought: I came here for a purpose, although I don’t understand it yet. Be bold. Take the initiative. So she stood up and very self‑consciously called:
“Over here. This is where I am. I looked at your seedpod. I’m sorry. Please don’t harm me.”
Instantly their heads snapped around, trunks held out, glittering eyes facing forward. Their ears had all flicked upright.
She stepped out of the shelter of the roots and faced them directly. She held out her hands, realizing that such a gesture might mean nothing to creatures with no hands themselves. Still, it was all she could do. Picking up her rucksack, she walked across the grass and stepped onto the road.
Close up – not five steps away – she could see much more about their appearance, but her attention was held by something lively and aware in their gaze, by an intelligence. These creatures were as different from the grazing animals nearby as a human was from a cow.
Mary pointed to herself and said, “Mary.”
The nearest creature reached forward with its trunk. She moved closer, and it touched her on the breast, where she had pointed, and she heard her voice coming back to her from the creature’s throat: “Merry.”
“What are you?” she said.
“Watahyu?” the creature responded.
All she could do was respond. “I am a human,” she said.
“Ayama yuman,” said the creature, and then something even odder happened: the creatures laughed.
Their eyes wrinkled, their trunks waved, they tossed their heads – and from their throats came the unmistakable sound of merriment. She couldn’t help it: she laughed, too.
Then another creature moved forward and touched her hand with its trunk. Mary offered her other hand as well to its soft, bristled, questing touch.