h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

“There it is,” Talbon says, pointing towards the gnarled behemoth towering over the craggy corkwoods, shimmering in the hot and hazy distance. “Oh, it’s magnificent,” Nisur affirms, using his left hand to wave away the tiny flies swarming about his face, and his right to shield his eyes from the glaring sun. They walk on, dry Mopane leaves crunching beneath their sandals. “You can clearly see that the morphic resonance node is here,” Talbon continues. “A pity it took us so long to find it. And the tree is actually rooted in it! Just look at it, it has been around for so long … the battle-scars, and the healing also, and still it remains, its spirit still strong. Those great limbs … do they not seem like arms, stretched out in invitation, in welcome?”

The staccato piping of a bustard suddenly rings out, close by. Nisur, smiling, waits for it to end before replying. “So it does! The way it spreads, the way it opens itself up.”

“And the animals sense it,” Talbon says. “See, the buffalo weaver nests, there … and you can see those twiggy ones dangling there …”

“Red-headed weaver nests, yes. I haven’t seen that many in a single tree before. Look, there they are! Very pretty – I wonder, shall I become one of those?”

“For you to decide.”

“They look happy … everything looks and sounds happy. Despite how harsh this land looks when you first see it …”

They reach the enormous baobab tree. Ancient, immense, inscrutable, it rises before them, a living monument, overpoweringly solid and yet ethereal at the same time, belonging to all time and to no time, an emanation of the soul of the planet itself, seemingly rooted in its very core.

Nisur steps right up to the trunk, looking upward along it. He whisks a few more flies off his face. The tree’s thick bark forms ridges and folds, as if the living tissue has been drooping, sagging, and even flowing freely downward like candle wax, over centuries and centuries of time. Yet, it is still suffused with a fresh, healthy, pinkish-red glow. Nisur places his hand on it; it is pleasantly cool in the intense savannah heat. But he can also detect a very faint thrill of energy, coursing through the tree, and now through him as well. He feels the little hairs on his arms stand on end, lightly quivering; it almost seems to him as if they are humming, along with the tree, with the Earth’s own song.

This tree has been here for more than two thousand years, he muses. It was here in the times of turmoil, when mankind was still at war with itself and with the rest of creation. It must have been a sizeable tree already when the Final Calamity happened … quietly growing in this little corner of the world as things heated up, as humanity sweltered and turned on itself. But this little corner they left alone. And now … it is a little piece of Paradise. And over all that time, we have changed – as was necessary. Now we can appreciate it.

Images flash through Nisur’s mind. Through hot and cold, flood and drought, this tree has persisted, and has given a home to so many different living things! Some were merely passing through, fleeing, desperately seeking more favourable climes, briefly enjoying its shelter; others stayed more permanently, weathering the fluctuating conditions as best they could, until at last stability returned. Its yearly crop of fruit and leaves have fed monkeys, baboons, warthogs, antelopes, elephants; legions of squirrels, geckoes and agama lizards have scrambled up and down its bole and branches, hiding and sleeping in the deep grooves, folds and cavities molded in its living bark. Flocks of fruit-bats have feasted on the nectar and pollen of its flowers. And the little creatures! Year after year cicadas droned incessantly amidst its limbs; bees, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, wasps, spiders, scorpions buzzed, crawled, clambered, spun their webs, ambushed their prey in it. Once, in the times of turmoil, a band of parched, wild-eyed human refugees stumbled upon it, and found a pool of fresh, cool, heavenly rainwater that had accumulated in a hollow near the top of its trunk. Nisur wonders for how much longer it had sustained them … but that the tree cannot tell him.

And then there were the birds! Its branches have borne nests of the big and the small and everything in between! The fluffy nests of penduline tits, tightly nit, like tiny purses; the cobwebbed-together, lichen-encrusted hanging bags of sunbirds; the neat cup-nests of bush shrikes, the chaotic, grassy bundles of the buffalo weavers … over the ages just about every kind of tree-nesting bird has made use of its hospitality. Even the great ground hornbills … back in the days when they still existed. They had hung on here longer than anywhere else, Nisur notes with sorrow. The last one grew up here, hatched in that very cavity that’s still visible there, under the big branch on the south side. It was raised successfully but it never found a mate, and it died, old but alone, the last of its kind.

But most importantly now – the birds that are still here! Nisur’s mind goes out, rising upwards, spiraling around the tree. A nest of spinetail-swifts, carefully concealed in this hollow. There are chicks in it! Hello, little ones! Have your parents been gone for long? I hope they return soon. Shall I become such a one as they? Oh, they must see a lot! But they are small and vulnerable … I should not wish my experience to be cut short. But do not fear, I hope that nothing bad should happen to them! Moving on … there’s a nest of red-headed weavers. Hello, you pretty things! Shall I become one of you? But you are so busy right now, always building nests and rejecting them … I should not get time to see much! A buffalo weaver maybe? But the constant cackling would cause me to go crazy! Can’t you keep it down for just a minute or two? Moving on … there, a White-headed Shrike! You have things good in life; not many enemies, enough time to sit here at the top of the tree, or to fly around if you wish; but you are cruel, you prey on little animals, you would even snatch the chicks from these nests if the watchful parents didn’t keep you away! And the same goes for you, little kestrel.

He returns his mind to himself – somewhat reluctantly, it must be admitted.

“So,” Talbon asks, “have you made your decision?”

Nisur considers a short while longer. “I think I will go with the swift. It is true, they are small and could perhaps be caught by a kestrel or a falcon … but I shall take the risk. I shall fly fast – and be alert! And think of how much I would see … how far I would fly every day! And in this beautiful landscape … to be able to see all these great trees from above, the hills, the plains, the rivers, to fly so high where the air is cool, and drink in the sights and sounds as I soar over this shimmering land! And also I would be having a bit of revenge on these little flies! I think I shall never be in want of food,” and he brushes off some flies that had settled at the corners of his eyes.

Talbon smiles at him. “It is decided then! It would not be too difficult. The process of the metamorphosis would take about two weeks. And you would wish to remain a swift for a year, is that right?”

“Yes, I think that would be sufficient. I shall certainly be able to experience a lot in that time. Allow me to thank you and the other elders once again, for giving me this opportunity.”

“It is our pleasure. Just make sure you return safely, to bring all of your experience back to us!”

“I shall do my best. Let us return now – I am eager to begin my meditations.”

As they start back towards the outpost, Nisur thinks again of the people of the old times. Their great, roaring, poisonous machines with which they stormed over the land, so rapidly and so easily, that they didn’t even see the beauty around them. Their monstrous metal birds, faster than any that ever flew with feathers – and the men in them not noticing the glories of the landscape, not looking down unless there were targets to be bombed.

Have we changed? I really hope we have. Now that we are starting to become a civilization again … now that we are learning again, developing new technologies, beyond what even the old people would have thought possible … what new pitfalls await us? Will we end up abusing our powers again – and suffer such disasters once more?

But … now that we can actually merge our minds and change our bodies, becoming one with all the living things that share this amazing world with us … would this broadening of our horizons not be a safeguard?

I really hope it would, Nisur thinks, as he glances over his shoulder one last time. Silhouetted against the intense, shimmering blue sky over the tree, a couple of small, dark crescents are darting to and fro. His eyes follow them as they mount up, up, up, until finally he can make them out no more.