Unexplored Frontiers

There was a face in that bush. Diana Winstead stared at it, scratching her head with the tip of a gloved finger. It wasn’t so much that there was a face IN the bush as much as the bush WAS the face. Like some sort of made-up creature from her childhood, the mouth of the low evergreen shrub gaped a great half-moon smile at Diana. She had been standing on the path, waiting for her team to catch up, eyeing the bush and trying to decide if her imagination was in one of its overactive stages or if the features she observed were legit. Gordon would be able to tell her, once he and the others caught up. Gordon was good at reality.

Standing at the top of the rise, Diana looked over her shoulder, down the path, trying to spot the team she’d left in a dip in the landscape. Diana concluded they must still be ascending the hill. She turned back to the bush.

It winked at her.

Diana’s pulse quickened, as visually indicated by the increased speed of the flashing heart icon on her wrist monitor. She slid her foot back slowly, wishing her magnetic boots were not so heavy and cumbersome. Not that she exactly felt threatened by the smiling bush. It still bore a delightful, childlike expression, but appearances could often be deceiving, especially on an alien planet.

The bush made no further move, save for a slight rustling of its needles in the breeze that seemed to constantly blow on this planet. Diana took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, careful not to fog her face mask.

Your imagination is acting up, she told herself. The stress of the landing and the excitement of your first expedition since the incident is putting images in your head.

If the bush was alive, it was sure being a jerk about it. Why stare at a person with a great stupid grin on your face and not say a word of introduction? Of course, Diana realized, she was standing staring at it and hadn’t made a single friendly gesture in return. That was rude.

“Hello,” she said to the shrub, her voice ringing hollow and mechanical through the speaker in her mask. “My name is Diana Winstead.”

“I know who you are, you crazy bogtrotter,” Gordon’s electronically-amplified voice came from behind. “What are you doing, practicing the meet-and-greet for when we make contact with the natives?”

Gordon Rainier stood on the path, bent over with his hands resting on his knees. The other three members of their team were just cresting the top of the hill, trudging with exhaustion.

Diana felt a huge sense of relief at seeing them, at no longer being on her own. She opened her mouth to reply to Gordon and chide the team for lacking the basic fitness skills to climb a hill, when again she was surprised by a voice from behind.

“I am Mee-ip.”

“Gordon,” Diana whispered, pointlessly, as the voice box in her suit was controlled by a volume button rather than her larynx. “Did you hear that?”

“What? Your introduction when you thought you were alone on this hill? Yeah, I heard that. You weren’t as alone as you thought.”

He had not heard the voice of the bush. Diana turned back to the grinning shrub.

It waved a shaggy limb at her. “I am Mee-ip,” it repeated, its mouth opening and closing as it spoke. There could be no mistaking the fact that the voice had indeed come from the alien plant.

Its friendly demeanor melted away Diana’s apprehension.

“Hello, Mee-ip. I am Diana.” She gestured to the other astronauts. “This is Gordon and the rest of our team.”

“Hello, Gordon and team,” Mee-ip said, at the said time Gordon spoke:

“Diana, why are you talking to a bush?”

Uh-oh. Diana’s brows furrowed. Do I need to recalculate reality again?

“Because we just made an introduction,” she told Gordon, gesturing to the space shrub. “This is Mee-ip.”

“Yes, I am Mee-ip.”

Diana made a, “Don’t be rude, talk to the bush,” face at her teammate. He regarded her as if she’d lost her mind.

“Diana,” Gordon said, “Bushes don’t talk. Or have names. Even on this planet.”

“How do you know?”

Mee-ip chimed in, himself sounding like the conversation was puzzling. “Because I am me.”

Exactly, Diana thought. Gordon’s proposition that bushes don’t speak on alien planets was self-defeating, because clearly there was a sentient shrub right here.

Gordon cast a concerned glance at the rest of their team, who returned the sideways looks and unspoken communications in a way that made Diana feel both excluded and self-conscious.

“Diana,” Gordon extended a hand as if entreating her to come to him, away from Mee-ip. “Do you think maybe you are having another episode?”

“I’ve already considered that. This is real.”

“Yes, it is real,” Mee-ip backed her up.

“And all these other bushes,” Gordon said, gesturing to the open landscape dotted with plant life, “are they alive, too?”

“How should I know?” Diana shot back, growing annoyed. She looked at Mee-ip, whose half-moon grin had grown uncertain. She thought he shrugged at her. Poor little guy.

Gordon stepped forward and put his hand on Diana’s shoulder. “It’s been a long journey,” he said. “We had a rough landing and an exhausting walk up this hill. Let’s go back to the shuttle and get some rest. We can come back and talk to the bushes later.”

Diana sighed. Maybe he was right. The longer she considered, the more this situation seemed like one of those attacks of imagination which had landed her in the institute that last time. Gordon would know better than she.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s go.”

Diana Winstead and her team started back down the path that would return them to the shuttle. Surrounded by her comrades, Diana felt comfort in their presence. She looked behind her just as the top of the hill was about to disappear from sight. Mee-ip was waving at her. Diana moved her hand to wave back but thought the better of it. Her team would think she was crazy to wave at a bush.

>><<>><<

The evergreen shrub stretched its roots deep into the alien earth, questing until it made contact with another root system.

“That was strange,” Mee-ip communicated to Ee-int.

“Very odd,” Ee-int confirmed. “Quite rude, in my opinion.”

“Should we try to make contact again?” Mee-ip asked.

There was a pause as Ee-int spread his older, wider roots to poll the others.

“We are willing to give this Diana another chance, if she can be less confusing next time,” Ee-int came back.

Mee-ip conveyed his assent.

“Who could she have been talking to?” he wondered.

Across the planet’s yellow hills, the shrub-men shrugged.