Part 3 (1/2)
”They're a kind of bird,” he said drearily.
”Birds--nesting in my hair! I wouldn't think of allowing it. But then I suppose Terrestrial birds are quite different from ours? More housebroken, shall we say?”
”Everything's different,” James said and, for an irrational moment, he hated everything that was blue that should have been green, everything sweet that should have been vicious, everything intelligent that should have been mindless.
Since matters could not grow much worse, they improved to a degree.
After a day or two had pa.s.sed, Phyllis, being a conscientious girl, came to realize how wrong it had been for her as a Terrestrial immigrant to show overt hostility toward a native of the planet that had welcomed her.
”But how can she be a--a person?” Phyllis wanted to know, when they were inside the cottage, for she had learned to hold her tongue when they were near Magnolia or any of her sisters, who, though they could not speak the language as fluently as she, understood it very well and eavesdropped at every possible opportunity in order, they said, to improve their accents. ”She's a tree. A plant. And plants are just vegetables.” She stabbed her needle energetically through the tablecloth she was embroidering.
”You mustn't project Terrestrial att.i.tudes upon Elysian ones,” James said, patiently looking up from his book. ”And don't underestimate Magnolia's capabilities. She has sense organs, and motor organs, too.
She can't move from where she is, because she's rooted to the ground, but she's capable of turgor movements, like certain Terrestrial forms of vegetation--for example, the sensitive plant or blue gra.s.s.”
”Blue gra.s.s,” Phyllis exclaimed. ”I'm sick of blue gra.s.s. I want green gra.s.s.”
”However, these trees have conscious control of their _pulvini_, whereas the Earth's plants don't, and so they can do a lot of things that Earth plants can't.”
”It sounds like a dirty word to me.”
”_Pulvini_ merely means motor organs.”
”Oh.”
He closed his book, which was a more advanced botany text, covered with the jacket of a French novel in order to spare Phyllis's feelings.
”Darling, can't you get it through your pretty head that they're intelligent life-forms? If it'll make it easier for you to think of them as human beings who happen to look like trees, then do that.”
”That's exactly what I _am_ doing. And I'm quite sure she thinks of you as a tree who happens to look like a human being.”
”Phyllis, sometimes I think you're being deliberately difficult. Do you know one of the reasons why I took such pains to teach Magnolia English?
It was that I hoped she would be a companion for you, that you could talk to each other when I had to be away from home.”
”Why do you call her Magnolia? She isn't a lot like one.”
”Isn't she? I thought she was. You see, I don't know so much botany, after all.” Actually, he had picked that name for the tree because it expressed both the arboreal and the feminine at the same time--and also because it was one of the loveliest names he knew. But he couldn't tell Phyllis that; there would be further misunderstanding. ”Of course she has a name in her own language, but I can't p.r.o.nounce it.”
”They _do_ have a language of their own then?”
”Naturally, though they don't get much chance to speak it, since they've grown so few and far apart that verbal communication has become difficult. They communicate by a network of roots that they've developed.”
”I don't think that's so clever.”
”I merely said ... oh, what's the use of trying to explain everything to you? You just don't want to understand.”
Phyllis put down her needlework and closed her eyes. ”James,” she said, opening them again, ”it's no use pretending. I've been trying to be sympathetic and understanding, but I can't do it. That tree--I've forced myself to be nice to her, but the more I see of her, the more convinced I am that she's trying to steal you from me.”