Trophy Grove Read online

  Chapter 9 – The Terms of Titans

  “You’re such a strange man, Zane Thomas.” Marlena’s eyes are again laughing at me, and her smile surges my blood. “You have a reputation for trying anything once, but you hesitate to take the simple medicine I’m offering you.”

  “What is it?”

  Marlena unwraps a white square of candy from a sleeve of silver foil. “It’s gum.”

  “What does it do?”

  Marlena chuckles. “The people of Earth must be desperate if they can’t even find gum anymore. You simply chew it.”

  “And then what?” I shrug. “Does it help with your concentration, or does it give you a boost of energy in the middle of your day? Does it help you sleep, or does it paint visions upon your sight?”

  “It simply tastes sweet,” Marlena winks. “Chomp on it. The gum will work your jaw, and that will help relieve the pressure the altitude’s built up in your ears.”

  Marlena presses the square of gum on my tongue after I sheepishly open my mouth, and the sensation the candy gives me, though simple, proves pleasant. I work the gum between my teeth, and my ears pop to release much of the pressure that’s making me swoon as our zeppelin continues to climb higher and higher. With my lips smacking on that candy, I can’t help but wonder what else has been lost upon Earth, a vain activity because imagining all the missing treasures of a wasted world brings only hunger and melancholy. I’m of a generation born after the Earth plummeted into ruin, and so I’m fortunate that my mind isn’t filled with haunting memories of the good-old days. I thought I’d tasted every thrill and sweet waiting to be tasted in the stars, and I’m amazed at the pleasure I take from such a simple candy.

  “Feeling better?” Marlena asks.

  I nod. “I do. How much longer do you think we’re going to be floating in this zeppelin?”

  The obliterator pilot sitting behind the zeppelin’s levers and pulleys turns to answer. “Four or five hours more. We’re at this altitude to take advantage of Tybalt’s atmospheric currents.”

  Teddy occupies the seat next to the pilot, grinning from one ear to the next. “It’s a wonderful machine.”

  The pilot nods. “There’s no quicker way to move mudders and equipment about the planet. Trucking things across the ground takes an eternity by comparison, and nothing flies as smoothly as an obliterator zeppelin.”

  The mudders and supplies of Teddy Jackson’s expedition wait in the expansive storage chamber that composes most of the zeppelin’s bulk. Neither hydrogen nor helium lift the large zeppelin. Instead, a ring of anti-gravitational motors hums to create a vacuum around the zeppelin that allows the massive airship to travel at such rapid speeds at such a high ceiling. The weight of Teddy Jackson’s supply of Spartan sentries, mudders, ammunition crates and supplies add up to massive sum of tonnage. Yet the obliterator zeppelin lifts upon the currents as if its cargo hold remains empty. Without a clear expectation concerning how far we’ll have to push into the grove to locate either the monster that hunts the mudders or the woman who torments the obliterators, Teddy has been forced to bring many more supply boxes along on his safari than he would prefer, for he cannot reasonably guess how long the hunt will keep us in that orange jungle, and working mudders possess very hungry stomachs. The cargo hold also carries several motorized scout cars, which Teddy hopes to employ to increase the rate of our exploration. I certainly hope the mudders have sneaked several crates of their mudder gin onto the zeppelin, for no tabloid reporter worth his weight on such a trip can realistically be expected to refrain from strong liquor for more than a handful of days. We’re definitely not travelling light.

  Marlena chomps on her gum and gazes through the windshield’s three-hundred and sixty-degree view. “The grove is incredible.”

  The pilot smiles, and I’m surprised to feel a pang of jealously trip my heart-rate. “Wait another hour for the sun to descend below the top of that grove cliff, and then it’ll seem as if that jungle holds one hell of a fire at its heart. The grove stretches so high that its glow creates streamers of light that seem to sway amid the stars themselves. It’s a heck of a lightshow, and I won’t deny there’s something romantic about it.”

  Marlena shakes her head. “A shame that the obliterators want to knock it all down.”

  The pilot shrugs. “I just get to thinking about the Earth I left behind whenever I start feeling sad for that grove. I want a future of my own out here on Tybalt. I want a place to raise a family, no matter if it takes chopping down a glowing jungle to get it.”

  “So long as you find a way to do it,” adds Teddy.

  The pilot winks. “That’s why you’re all here.”

  We saw the line of the grove the moment the zeppelin lifted us above the launch platform standing in the center of the obliterators’ offices. Then, that boundary of trees looked like an orange river snaking across the otherwise gray landscape. Slowly, the top of that grove has risen higher and higher as our zeppelin races towards that wall of orange foliage, until that glowing barrier seems to scratch at the underbelly of the stars. My mind stammers at the sight of that growing grove. I’ve never seen anything so large.

  “How quickly has that grove spread across the landscape?” I ask.

  The pilot whistles. “There are days when the grove seems to race across the land like wildfire. You can watch the grove grow all day long, and you still won’t believe anything can move that fast across the landscape. In the morning, you might notice a few caps, like orange mushrooms, popped up onto the ground. By the middle of the day, those mushrooms are curling into the sky atop vines that wind around each other like rope, and there’s nothing you can do to pull or cut any of it down. And by nightfall, those vines have thickened into trees, with their tops peeking beyond the range of our sight.”

  “Incredible,” Marlena whispers.

  “Unless you’ve spent the last year of your life working to scrape this planet clean just to watch that grove swallow up all your work in less than a month,” sighs the pilot.

  “Do you think the mudder camp and the obliterator offices behind us are in danger?”

  The pilot nods. “I do, Mr. Jackson. We haven’t been able to do a thing to slow it down.”

  The grove looms ahead of our zeppelin like a fence erected to cage titans by the time we arrive at the base of that jungle several hours later. It’s night, and as the pilot claimed, the grove glows and pulses through shades of yellow, red and orange as if lava flows through the knotted vines. I notice thousands of flecks the color of silver and gold shimmering amid that foliage, and beads of pearl and white hang from every vine like lanterns. It’s impossible for me to estimate the size of the those glowing beads and shimmering flecks of light from our distance, but the scale of those lights must be enormous. Unlike my readers trapped on old Earth, whose only experience with plant-life has been restricted to plastic flowers displayed in museums, I’ve had the opportunity during my star travels to peek at the exotic life that sometimes flourishes on the mining asteroids and moons the obliterators deem unworthy of their attention. I’ve gazed upon the crimson firedrop that’s a delicacy served on the most magnificent restaurants of the luxury starliners, and I’ve helped in harvesting the vermillion grasses found on the moon of Janus many testify to be the greatest aphrodisiacs offered by the heavens. But I’ve never seen anything grow like that grove.

  Our zeppelin rocks gently as its landing pads settle on the surface. A commotion of mudders loading supply crates onto motorized wagons immediately rises from the cargo hold into our pilot’s cabin, and Teddy and Marlena hurry to oversee the efforts to unload all of our expedition’s supplies in the most efficient manner possible. I linger next to the pilot and stare at the view filling the forward windshield, marveling to see how that grove creeps closer to our zeppelin as new shoots of vines stretch out from the ground ahead us. I notice how the pilot peeks at his watch, and I realize he has not pulled any power from his anti-gravitational engines, so that his zeppelin remain
s ready to ascend at a moment’s notice. I appreciate the grove’s splendor, but watching how the pilot fidgets leads me to worry I fail to show the grove enough fear.

  “Promise you’ll come back,” I speak to the pilot before mounting that ladder that leads into the cargo hold. “Promise you won’t forget about us.”

  The pilot’s eyes look sad. “Oh, I never forget. The problem is that no one ever comes back.”

  Teddy and Marlena shout various instructions to the mudders while I dumbly stare upwards at the underside of the rising zeppelin that starts its return to the obliterators. Everything else has served as a prologue, and I’ve a suspicion that the story I’ve always hoped would cement my fame and fortune will be discovered deep within that grove, so long as I can survive Teddy Jackson’s expedition long enough to return my manuscript to Harold Higgins.