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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: A group of 7-foot-tall insectoid aliens appear near an ancient sequoia tree in Yosemite National Park, and an expert in botanical pathology begins to question the nature of communication between humans, the tree, and the silent visitors from space.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Amazing Stories, 1990
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2001

36 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [90 KB], eReader (PDB) [36 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [23 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [22 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [56 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [94 KB], hiebook (KML) [78 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [44 KB], iSilo (PDB) [19 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [24 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [52 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [35 KB]
Words: 6622
Reading time: 18-26 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

I'd almost finished the research for my dissertation in Yosemite National Park when the Xt'la first--appeared. I was going to say arrived, but that implies we saw them coming. We didn't. One day, we looked up and there they were. No one ever found a trace of their ship orbiting Earth, though it must have been, the physicists said. I have no opinion on that; I'm a botanist. Awesome technology! the papers called it when the story finally got out. I think that's journalese for "We dunno what happened."

I remember stepping out of the office that morning, waiting for the jitney that ferried the tourists from the Lodge. I was going to hitch a ride to the groves. It was a typical, crisp July morning in California at nine thousand feet, and the sky was a brilliant blue. You couldn't see the tide of hydrocarbons, aldehydes, peroxyacetyl nitrates and all their equally unsavory cousins rising up into the Sierras from the Bay Area, even though they were already leaving their traces. Sequoiadendron Giganteum, affectionately called the "Big Tree," has been provided by nature with bark two feet thick to protect it from fire and pest. But it was showing ominous signs of coming down with pollution sickness, and that was tearing me apart.

The trees were all I really cared about. Unlike people, they didn't suddenly disappear and rip your life to shreds. I was enrolled in the doctoral program at UC Davis in phytopathology, the study of disease in the vegetable world and what to do about it. Only I was learning there really isn't anything practical you can do when the sweet morning breeze that stirs the forest is loaded with invisible poisons. So I did studies and made notes and worried over each new dead branch I found. And in between I tried to teach tourists who blundered over the fragile root systems that trees deserved to live too.

This particular morning there was a warm pine-dust-and-green-things-growing smell in the air, one of those days so sharply beautiful that even though you know better you start to hope everything's going to be all right after all.

The tourists never got there.