The Visitors (v1.0)

25. THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Dr. Albert Barr said to Jerry Conklin, "Miss Foster phoned to say that you wanted to talk with me, but she wasn't too specific. She indicated it had something to do with the visitors." He said to Kathy, "You assured me this is not an interview for an article in your paper.

"It's not an interview," said Kathy, "and I was not specific because I think that Jerry should tell you what happened."

"I've been worried about it," said Jerry, "ever since it happened.

"Please tell me what happened," said Barr. "Start at the beginning."

He lounged behind his desk, regarding his two callers with a quizzical expression. He was a sandy-haired man, much younger than Kathy had expected him to be, with the build of a football player. Through the open window of his office came the sounds of a late afternoon on campus, the shrill laughter of a girl, students shouting back and forth, the deep humming of a started car and the scream of tires on pavement as it was gunned to a sudden take-off. Golden spangles of light flecked the windows as the westering sun shone through a birch tree decked in bright autumnal color.

"You may have read about the car that was smashed when the first visitor landed at Lone Pine," said Jerry.

"Could it have been your car?" asked Barr.

"It could have been. It was. I had parked at the end of the bridge to get in some fishing. I had been told there were some big rainbow in the pool below the bridge."

Barr did not interrupt as Jerry told his story. A couple of times he seemed to be on the verge of asking questions, but he did not ask them.

When Jerry had finished, the exobiologist said, "There are a number of points I would like to raise and discuss with you, but tell me first, why have you come to me? What do you want of me?"

"There are two things," said Jerry. "This business of home. The visitor thought of home, or made me think of home. I've mulled it over and over and there seems to be no sense to it. I am convinced that it induced the thought I had of home. In a situation such as that, I would not have thought of home. And the thought was real enough—not just a brief impression, but something that continued. As if the visitor or whatever was inside the visitor wanted me to think of home, kept on pressuring me to think of home."

"Are you trying to say that telepathy was involved?"

"I don't know what was involved. If by telepathy you mean that it was talking with me, or trying to talk with me, no, that was not the case. I tried to talk with it, which might have been a foolish thing to do, but something, that under the circumstances, I imagine might have come quite naturally. There I was, trapped in a place that I did not understand and I was reaching out for information, for any kind of information that would help to explain what was going on. So I tried to talk with it, to establish any kind of contact, to seek some answers. Probably I was fairly well aware that it would be impossible to establish contact, but..

"Do you consider yourself in any way telepathic?"

"No, I do not. I have no telepathic ability that I am aware of. The simple fact is that it is something I had never thought about. I would say I'm not a telepath."

"And yet it talked to you. Or you think it talked to you."

"Dr. Barr, that's not what I said," said Jerry. "At no time did I think the visitor was talking to me. No conscious communication, no words forming in my mind, no pictures, nothing like that at all. There was just this feeling of home, this overpowering sense of home.~~

"You are convinced the feeling came from the creature?"

"Where else could it have come from? I am convinced the thought of home would not have occurred independently to me. There was no reason for it to. There were a lot of other things that were more important for me to think about."

"You said two things. What was the other thing?"

"It seemed to me," said Jerry, "that the visitor was a tree or very like a tree.~~

"You mean after you learned about the cellulose?"

"No. I'm convinced the cellulose had nothing to do with it. I don't think that was the case. I imagine there must have been some underlying question of what it was and there seemed to be some familiarity and.

"You're in graduate work in forestry. You must know a lot about trees.~~

"He's in love with trees," said Kathy. "Sometimes I get the impression that he talks with them."

"She's exaggerating," Jerry told Barr. "But, yes, I do know a fair amount about them and I guess I could say I have a fair degree of empathy with them. There are people who are gone on animals, those who are flower enthusiasts, devoted bird watchers. Maybe you could say I'm a tree watcher."

"You used the word ‘familiarity' back there a ways. What made you use that word?"

"Perhaps because I think I could have felt some familiarity with it, not being aware of it at the time. To start with, when I found myself inside it, I was frightened—deep-down, deadly, screaming frightened, although I didn't scream. But in a little time, a far shorter time than one would think, I wasn't frightened, at least not frightened in that way. I got all tense and cold, but I wasn't garden-variety scared any longer. I was even getting interested before it threw me out."

Barr said, "You must realize that an exobiologist is a strange Sort of animal. Really, there is no such thing. Rather, they are men in other disciplines, mostly the biological field, although physics and chemistry also could enter into the picture, who because of personal interest have branched out into a study of what might be expected under extraterrestrial conditions. So you understand, of course, that there is no real, precise science of exobiology."

"Yes, of course," said Jerry. "But at least the exobiologist would be thinking about what might be found in space and on other planets."

"So, with such a disclaimer duly noted," said Barr, "I must agree that your idea of an intelligent tree-like organism need not be too far off the mark. In the last twenty years or so, there have been botanists who have contended that on occasion plant life may show some capacity for sentience, possessing powers of sense or sense perception, experiencing sensation and feeling. For years, we have known that certain people seem to have green thumbs, under their care plants will flourish while under the care of others who do not have this capability, they fade and die. There are those who advocate that plant owners talk sympathetically to their plants. If plants, in fact, do have such sensitivity, then it is only a couple of long steps until we arrive at a true intelligence and full sentience. Could you explain a little more fully how you arrived at the realization the visitors could be plant-like, akin to trees?"

"I'm not sure I can," said Jerry. "I get a certain feeling when I

look at a tree, or when I work with trees. A sort of kinship to

them, which may sound strange.

"And you think you may have felt the same kinship to the visitor?"

"No, not kinship. The visitor was too alien to feel anything like kinship. Perhaps a realization that some of the same qualities I feel in trees were also in the visitor. But skewed around. Not like a tree of Earth, but a tree of somewhere else."

"I think I understand," said Barr. "Have you told anyone else

of this?"

"No. Someone else would have laughed at me. You didn't and

I thank you for that."

"The government would like to know. The federal observers

and other scientists who are investigating the visitors would be

grateful for any kind of data."

"I have no data," said Jerry. "Lacking data, they would try to dig it out of me, feeling that I must have some hidden information that I might not be aware of. Either that or they would think I was another UFO crackpot trying to cash in on the visitors."

"I see your point," said Barr. "If I were in your place, I would

have the same reservation."

"You sound as if you believe me.

"Why not? Why should I have reason to disbelieve you? There

is no reason in the world you should have made up such a story.

You felt a need to tell someone who might just possibly understand and take what you have to say at face value. I'm glad you came to me. I haven't been much help, but I'm glad you came. And on this business of thinking about home… I've been thinking. Could it be possible you misinterpreted what was going on?"

"I know there was a powerful compulsion to think of home."

"I don't mean that. Maybe the visitor was not talking to you at all, not trying to convey anything at all. You might have cued in on its thoughts. You may be just a little telepathic, whether you know it or not, or the signal, the emotions of the visitor, might have been so strong that no human could have avoided reacting to it. The thought comes to me that it may not have been broadcasting any thought of your home, but of its home."

Kathy gulped. "You mean here, the Earth? That it was thinking of Earth as home?"

"Consider this," said Barr. "It had come from God knows where, over no one can imagine how great a distance, looking for a planet where it could settle down, looking for a new home to replace the one that somehow had been lost. Maybe the Earth is that kind of planet—where it could bud and reproduce its young, find food for them, live the sort of life it perhaps had despaired of ever living again. Saying to itself, ‘Home! Home! I've finally found a home! "