Read Online The Memory of Trees by F. G. Cottam - Free Book Online
Authors: F. G. Cottam
Tags: Fiction
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bag gloves and did three rounds, shaking the 100lb bag with each heavy blow on the chain it hung from, the staccato thud of his punches echoing around the room.
When he finished and pulled off the gloves, he saw that friction had rubbed raw the skin from the two most prominent knuckles of his right fist. He should have wound bandages to prevent the friction from doing that but he hadn’t. Hitting the bag had been a spontaneous urge. Wrapping bandages was a laborious task. The lost skin was an only slightly painful tribute to the weight of his shots.
The gym was there because Saul Abercrombie had not really believed the prognosis when his specialist had determined it. Instead, he’d sought a second opinion that transpired to be just as bleak.
He still didn’t believe it. Most people thought that doctors were somehow God-like. They had the power, didn’t they, of life over death? Surgeons were especially God-like because in the operating theatre they presided over modern-day miracles.
But Saul, by contrast, didn’t really buy any man’s superiority over his own human capabilities. He had achieved staggering wealth. He had provided a workforce of thousands in a dozen different countries with their livelihoods. He had given millions away. To him a doctor was only a specialist in the same mechanical way a software designer or an actuary was. They had a set of professional credentials and a given area of expertise. There was nothing really awe-inspiring about them. They could as easily be right as wrong.
So before the disease really gripped, he had the gym built; as though exercise could counter a lifetime’s contempt for routine physical exercise and heavy indulgence in bad habits. Of course, it hadn’t worked.
But it was good news for Freemantle, who took his responsibilities to his employer very seriously, who liked to keep in shape and who believed very strongly in checks and balances. There wasn’t a man born who didn’t have a few bad habits. But you could counter the damage they were likely to cause unchecked by compensating for them with some good ones.
The gym was one of his good habits. It kept his cholesterol and blood pressure down and helped with his resting pulse. It made him physically strong and sharp and it countered the natural aggression that could sometimes cause him to act regrettably when someone chose to provoke him. He liked how his gym work made him look. He had been given a pretty good start genetically, but had built on that foundation over the years.
The comms room was necessary to the smooth running of Abercrombie Industries. Freemantle didn’t know how Saul managed to juggle so many balls with the skill and enterprise he did. Even sick, he kept everything in the air. It would have a second use now, of course, that the planting was to begin. They would get accurate meteorological information. Weather prediction was pretty crucial in so vast a challenge as planting a mature forest of the size they intended.
Some of the info the comms room provided was sort of freaky. Saul had taught him how to use the monitoring equipment and made it his task to take regular readings. He didn’t really understand the motive for this. Nor did he understand the anomalies thrown up. Why were some parts of the estate persistently cold? Pockets of ground fog could reduce the temperature of low-lying spots, particularly at night. But while that wouldn’t be exactly random, it would be more arbitrary than the puzzling consistency of the readings he got.
The fog bank, though, was a new one on him altogether. It had been like nothing he’d seen before in the weeks that they’d been here. And he hadn’t seen the thorn bush move with quite the same barbed restlessness as it had when he had shown it to the tree guy. It had shifted in the past. It hadn’t seethed. In a funny way, it seemed to him as though the place was preparing for something. It was a ludicrous thought, held up to the light. But it was
When he finished and pulled off the gloves, he saw that friction had rubbed raw the skin from the two most prominent knuckles of his right fist. He should have wound bandages to prevent the friction from doing that but he hadn’t. Hitting the bag had been a spontaneous urge. Wrapping bandages was a laborious task. The lost skin was an only slightly painful tribute to the weight of his shots.
The gym was there because Saul Abercrombie had not really believed the prognosis when his specialist had determined it. Instead, he’d sought a second opinion that transpired to be just as bleak.
He still didn’t believe it. Most people thought that doctors were somehow God-like. They had the power, didn’t they, of life over death? Surgeons were especially God-like because in the operating theatre they presided over modern-day miracles.
But Saul, by contrast, didn’t really buy any man’s superiority over his own human capabilities. He had achieved staggering wealth. He had provided a workforce of thousands in a dozen different countries with their livelihoods. He had given millions away. To him a doctor was only a specialist in the same mechanical way a software designer or an actuary was. They had a set of professional credentials and a given area of expertise. There was nothing really awe-inspiring about them. They could as easily be right as wrong.
So before the disease really gripped, he had the gym built; as though exercise could counter a lifetime’s contempt for routine physical exercise and heavy indulgence in bad habits. Of course, it hadn’t worked.
But it was good news for Freemantle, who took his responsibilities to his employer very seriously, who liked to keep in shape and who believed very strongly in checks and balances. There wasn’t a man born who didn’t have a few bad habits. But you could counter the damage they were likely to cause unchecked by compensating for them with some good ones.
The gym was one of his good habits. It kept his cholesterol and blood pressure down and helped with his resting pulse. It made him physically strong and sharp and it countered the natural aggression that could sometimes cause him to act regrettably when someone chose to provoke him. He liked how his gym work made him look. He had been given a pretty good start genetically, but had built on that foundation over the years.
The comms room was necessary to the smooth running of Abercrombie Industries. Freemantle didn’t know how Saul managed to juggle so many balls with the skill and enterprise he did. Even sick, he kept everything in the air. It would have a second use now, of course, that the planting was to begin. They would get accurate meteorological information. Weather prediction was pretty crucial in so vast a challenge as planting a mature forest of the size they intended.
Some of the info the comms room provided was sort of freaky. Saul had taught him how to use the monitoring equipment and made it his task to take regular readings. He didn’t really understand the motive for this. Nor did he understand the anomalies thrown up. Why were some parts of the estate persistently cold? Pockets of ground fog could reduce the temperature of low-lying spots, particularly at night. But while that wouldn’t be exactly random, it would be more arbitrary than the puzzling consistency of the readings he got.
The fog bank, though, was a new one on him altogether. It had been like nothing he’d seen before in the weeks that they’d been here. And he hadn’t seen the thorn bush move with quite the same barbed restlessness as it had when he had shown it to the tree guy. It had shifted in the past. It hadn’t seethed. In a funny way, it seemed to him as though the place was preparing for something. It was a ludicrous thought, held up to the light. But it was
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