And she had been as happy, she remembered, as it is possible to be, and as close to Calvin as she had ever been to anybody in her life, even Charles Wallace, so close that their separate bodies, daisies and buttercups joining rather than dividing them, seemed a single enjoyment of summer and sun and each other.
That was surely the purest kind of kything.
Mr. Jenkins had never had that kind of communion with another human being, a communion so rich and full that silence speaks more powerfully than words.
Again Calvin was kything with quick, urgent words. “The Wall Street Journal”
“What!”
“Mr. Jenkins reads The Wall Street Journal. Maybe he might have read this.”
“Read what?”
“You remember, just a few weeks ago I was telling you about a science project I did years ago when I was in fourth grade. Even the twins were interested.”
Meg listened intently, trying to kythe simultaneously to Mr. Jenkins.
The subject of the old science project had come up because of the twins’ garden. Sandy and Dennys were baffled and irritated. Some of the pepper plants had large, firm, healthy fruit. On others the peppers were wizened and wrinkled and pale. Calvin had been taken out to look at the undersized, flabby plants, which showed no visible sign of disease, and he had been reminded of his fourth-grade science project.
Meg asked, “Could the plants be having the same kind of trouble mitochondria are having? Could Echthroi bother things like gardens?”
Calvin pushed this question aside to think about later. “Not now, Meg. Listen. I think my science project will help Mr. Jenkins understand.”
Meg seemed to see Mr. Jenkins’s nose twitching as it always did when he was reluctant.
“Okay, then.” She kythed to him, slowly, as simply as possible, Calvin’s kything always a strong current under and through hers.
At nine years of age Calvin read avidly, every book that came into the small village library. The librarian, seeing his pleasure in books, encouraged him, gave him a special corner in the library as his own, and gave him all the old classics of the imagination to read. His span of concentration on these stories was infinite.
But he considered most of the work he was given at school a bore, particularly science projects. However, he was also fiercely competitive, and determined to be the top of his class in all subjects, even those he considered a waste of tune.
When the week came when he must turn in the topic for his science project by Friday, he was disinterested and planless, but he knew he had to choose something. He was thinking about this with particular urgency on Thursday afternoon when he was helping old Mrs. Buncombe clean out her attic. What could he choose which would interest the teacher and class and not bore him completely? Mrs. Buncome was not paying him for the dirty and dusty job— her attic had not been touched for years—but she had bribed him to do it by telling him that there was an old set of china up in the attic, and he could take it as payment. Perhaps she knew that the O’Keefes could never sit down to a meal together, even if they had wanted to, because there weren’t enough plates and cups and saucers to go round.
The china was in a box at the back of the attic, and it was wrapped in old newspapers. Some of it was broken; much of it was cracked; it certainly was not a set of forgotten Wedgwood or Dresden. Who had bothered to wrap it up as carefully as though it were a priceless heirloom? However, there was enough of the set left to make it worth taking home. He unwrapped it for his mother, who complained ungraciously, if correctly, that it was junk.
He cleared up the crumpled, yellowed newspapers, and began to read one. It was an old Wall Street Journal; the date had been torn off, but the paper was brittle and stained and he knew that it must be a good many years old. His eye caught an article about a series of experiments made by a biologist.
The biologist had the idea, unusual at the time, that plants were capable of subjective reactions to stimuli, and he decided to measure the strength of these reactions by attaching electrodes, like those used in a lie detector, to the leaves of a large, healthy philodendron.
At that point in the account a section of paper was torn away, and Calvin lost several sentences. He picked up a statement that electronic needles would record the plant’s responses on a graph, much as brain waves or heart patterns are recorded by the electro-encephalogram or electrocardiogram machines.
The biologist spent an entire morning looking at the needles moving in a straight line across the paper. Nothing happened. No reactions. The needle did not quiver. The line moved slowly and steadily.
The biologist thought, “I’ll make that plant react. I’ll burn one of its leaves.”
The stylus made wild up and down markings of alarm.
The rest of the article was torn off.
Mr. Jenkins’s thoughts came to Meg quite clearly, a little irritably, “I read that article. I thought it was nonsense. Just some crackpot.”
Calvin kythed, “Most major scientific discoveries have been made by crackpots—or at least, people who were thought to be crackpots.”
“My own parents, for instance,” Meg added, “until some of their discoveries were proved to be true.”
Calvin continued. “Listen. There’s more. I found another article among the papers.”
This one described the biologist going on a cross-country lecturing tour. He asked one of his students to take care of, watch, and record the reactions of his philodendron.
The plant’s alarm needles jumped nervously whenever the biologist’s plane took off or landed.
“How would it know?” Meg asked.
“It did.”
“But distance,” she protested, “how could a plant, just an ordinary domestic philodendron, know what was happening miles and miles away?”
“Or care,” came dourly from Mr. Jenkins.
“Distance doesn’t seem to be any more important than size. Or time. As for caring—well, that’s outside the realm of provable fact.”
For his project Calvin had worked out a variation on the theme of plant response. He had no way of measuring the subjective responses of a plant, so he decided to plant three bean seeds.
Mr. Jenkins did not think much of this.
Meg kythed him a warning, “Wait! This was all Calvin’s own idea. He was only nine years old then, and be didn’t know that experiments of the same kind were already being made.”
Calvin planted one of the seeds in a pot which he left in the kitchen at home. He put it on a windowsill where it would get sunlight, and he watered it daily. His brothers and sisters were warned that if they touched it they’d get clobbered. They knew he meant it, and they left his plant physically alone. However, the plant heard—.
“Without ears?” Mr. Jenkins kythed crossly.
“Like Louise, maybe,” Meg returned.
The plant heard the automatic ugly invective of daily speech in Calvin’s home. Calvin himself stayed in the house as little as possible.
The other two seeds he took to the library, where the librarian gave him permission to put his pots in two sunny windows. One of these beans he watered and cared for dutifully. That was all. The third bean he talked to, encouraging it, urging it to grow. When the first green shoot appeared he lavished on it all the love which had so little outlet in his home. He sat, after school, close by his plant, doing his homework, reading aloud when nobody was around, sharing.
The first of the bean plants, the one in the O’Keefe’s kitchen, was puny, and too pale a green, like the twins’ sickly peppers. The second plant, in the library window, the plant given regular care but no special time or attention, grew normally. The third plant, the plant Calvin loved, grew strong and green and unusually large and healthy.
Mr. Jenkins kythed thinly but quite comprehensibly, “If
philodendron and beans can react like that, it should help me to understand farandolae—is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Sort of,” Meg replied.
Calvin added, “See? Distance doesn’t matter. They can know and converse with each other “and distance doesn’t really exist for them.”
Mr. Jenkins sent out waves of disbelief. “And if they’re loved, they’ll grow? And if they aren’t loved—“
“The Echthroi can move in.”
Now she heard what could only be Sporos’s twingling. “They’re dull and slow, like all human beings, but you’re getting through to them at last, cherub.”
“My name is Proginoskes, if you please, mouse-creature.”
The farandola was not amused. “My name is Sporos.” A reproving twingle.
“Meg.” Proginoskes kythed deeply into her. “Do you realize what has just been happening? You’ve been close to Mr. Jenkins, haven’t you?”