The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,85

The Brazilian rainforest has been transplanted to Park Avenue South. It was everywhere.

"Riddley," Kenton said with obvious relief. "Sandra."

"What are you doing here, Riddley?" Gelb asked. "I thought you weren't coming back until the middle of next week."

"My plans changed," I said. "I got in on the train less than an hour ago."

"What happened to your accent?" Porter asked. He was standing there with that crazy plant growing all around his feet, caressing his ankles, for God's sake, and looking at me with beetle-browed suspicion. At me with suspicion!

"That's it," Sandra breathed. "That's what's different."

I freed my hand from her grip, feeling that I might need my fingers in reasonable working order before the day was done. The picture (a picture, anyway) was coming clear in my head: a kind of silent movie, in fact. I was getting some of it from them and some of it from Zenith.

The suspicion had left Herb Porter's face. It was only my lack of accent which had bothered him, not me. What I felt as we stood there amid that green madness was a sense of family, a sense of all I had missed down in Alabama, and I embraced it. Away from the plant it is still possible to question, to mistrust. Within its range of influence? Never. These were my brothers, Sandra my sister (although the relationship between she and I is admittedly an incestuous one). And the plant? Our father, which art in Zenith. Color - white, black, green - was just then the least important thing about us. This afternoon it was us against the world.

"I wouldn't go in your office just this minute, Sandra," Roger said. "Mr. Detweiller is currently in residence. And he ain't pretty."

"The General?" she asked.

"The plant took him," John replied, and at that moment Zenith spat back the remaining bits of Hecksler it had decided it couldn't digest, perhaps conveying them all the way from the back of the office. The stuff hit the carpet in a rainy, metallic tinkle. There was a pocket watch, the chain it had been on (in three pieces), a belt buckle, a very small plastic box, and several tiny pieces of metal. Herb and Bill picked all this stuff up.

"Good Lord," Bill said, looking at the box. "It's his pacemaker."

"And these are surgical pins," Herb said. "The kind orthopedic surgeons use to hold bones together."

"All right," Wade said. "Let's assume that the plant is taking care of the General's corpse. I think it's clear we can dispose of his remaining... accessories... with no trouble, should we choose to. Detweiller's attache case, too."

"What do you think is in it?" Sandra asked.

"I don't want to know. The question is what to do with his body. I'm on record as saying we shouldn't feed it to the plant. I think it's had all the... all the nourishment it needs."

"All that's safe for it to have," John said.

"Maybe more," Bill added.

I should step in here just long enough to say that, although I am presenting all of this as spoken conversation, a good part of it was mind to mind. I can't remember which was which, and wouldn't know how to express the difference, anyway. I'm not sure it even matters. What I remember most clearly was a sense of absurd happiness. After nine months of pushing a broom or the mail-cart, I was attending my first editorial meeting. Because isn't that what we were doing? Editing the situation, or preparing to?

"We could call the cops," Roger said, and when Bill and John both started to protest, he raised his hand to stop them. "I'm just articulating the idea. They wouldn't see the plant, we know that."

"But they might feel it," Sandra said, clearly dismayed. "And Roger - "

"Zenith might decide to lunch on one of them," I finished for her. "Filet de flic, the special of the day. He might not be able to help himself. Or itself. Zenith may or may not be our true friend, but it's essentially a man-eater. It would behoove us to remember that."

I have to admit I found the way Herb Porter was looking at me rather delicious. It was as if, while visiting the zoo, he'd heard one of the monkeys begin to recite Shakespeare.

"Let's cut to the chase," John said. "Roger, may I?"

Roger nodded assent.

"We've gotten this raggedy-ass publishing company to the edge of something," John said, "and I'm not talking about mere financial solvency. I'm talking about financial success. With Last Survivor,