The Ship Is a Tree

How it begins

Ari Fen found a root in the oxygen duct and recognized the smell of home. This was impossible for two reasons. The ship contained no trees large enough to produce it, and Ari had never lived on a planet.

She cut away the duct cover. The root drew back, not quickly, but with enough intention to make her lower the pruning shears. Its bark carried tiny pale lights that pulsed in time with the engines.

Pablo Keene arrived from hull maintenance carrying a thermal scanner.

'Please tell me that's one of yours.'

'It seems to belong to itself.'

The scanner displayed a branching structure running through three decks. Yesterday those spaces had contained ordinary conduits. Now the branches followed the load-bearing ribs with a precision no invasive plant should possess.

Ari touched the bark. For a moment she stood beneath a sky so wide she could not find a ceiling. Warm rain struck leaves larger than her hands. Somewhere nearby, a creature sang three descending notes. She knew the song. She did not know how.

Pablo caught her elbow.

'You stopped breathing.'

'I was somewhere else.'

On the navigation display, a new destination appeared. No coordinates. Only a branching green mark. The ship turned half a degree without authorization.

The captain's message arrived before Ari could answer Pablo. BIOLOGICAL OBSTRUCTION. REMOVE IMMEDIATELY.

She had tended the ship's gardens for twenty years, feeding a thousand people from carefully measured beds. She understood why roots in an oxygen system were dangerous. She also understood what healthy growth looked like, and this root was reaching toward something it needed.

Pablo watched the ship's course change again.

'If we cut it, can we put it back?'

Ari looked at the shears. The root had opened one tiny leaf around her finger.

'Let's find out what part of the ship we've been living inside,' she said, 'before we decide which part to remove.'