The Bud in the Growing Room
"Do any of these ever open?" Vera asked, pulling herself along the corridor rail. Fern rode in her jacket pocket, spines tipped mossy green, quiet as a stone. The growing room hummed at the end of the hall. Inside, green things leaned toward a long warm lamp. Vera stopped at the last tray. A vine climbed the wall, and near the top hung one pale bud, closed tight as a fist. Earth turned slow and blue in the round window behind it. Fern peeked out then, just her nose. "That one," Vera said. "I have watched it for six days."
Vera floated closer and touched the bud with one finger. It was cool and smooth and shut. She tried, very gently, to ease one petal back. The petal did not want to go. Fern tucked her nose away into the pocket. Vera let go and folded her hands and let herself drift. "All right," she said. "It opens when it's ready, not before." She hooked her foot under the bench so she would stay put. Outside the window, the blue edge of the world slid by. Inside, the lamp buzzed its small steady buzz, and nothing hurried at all.
Waiting turned out to be full of things. Vera counted eleven silver clips along the tray rail. She watched a loose water drop lift off the sponge, wobble, and become a perfect little ball. She saw dust turn in the lamplight like slow snow. She breathed on the window and watched the fog shrink back to nothing. Fern climbed out of the pocket and sat on Vera's knee, front paws together, looking where Vera looked. "You waited longer than me," Vera told her. Fern's spines flattened the way they did when she was pleased. The bud stayed shut, and that was fine.
Then the station swung round into the shadow side of the Earth, and the window went dark and soft. The lamp became the only light in the room. It lay along the leaves in one long warm stripe. Vera looked up at it properly. It had been there every day of her whole time aboard, humming above the trays, and she had never once looked at it. Its glass was grey with dust. Its little clips were grey. It had been feeding every green thing in the room without anybody saying a word about it. Fern turned her face up too.
Vera pulled her sleeve over her hand and wiped the lamp glass, slow, corner to corner. Grey came away in a smudge. Underneath, the light was warmer than she expected, and yellower, like late afternoon on a floor at home. It spread down over the leaves and over Fern's mossy spines and over Vera's knuckles. The whole room looked newly awake. "There," Vera said. "Now you can see out." She settled back with her foot hooked under the bench. "It opens when it's ready, not before." Fern yawned a small hedgehog yawn and leaned against her arm.
Something moved. Not fast. One petal loosened at the tip and curled back like a finger uncurling. Then another beside it, and another, until the pale bud sat half open with the lamplight lying inside it in a pool. It smelled faintly of rain on warm stone. Vera did not touch it. She held very still and watched the last petals let go, one at a time, taking as long as they liked. Fern crept down her arm to the tray edge and put her nose almost against the flower. The light in it kept getting rounder and softer.
When the flower was all the way open, Vera got up and went along the row. She wiped the other lamp glasses, one after another, until each shone. She pressed water into the dry sponges with her thumb. She turned two trays whose seedlings had grown leaning away, so the light could reach their backs. Fern followed, padding between the pots, snuffling at the wet ones. It took a long time, and Vera did not mind. At the end she came back to the vine and said good night to it, quietly, the way you say it to someone tired.
Vera dimmed the lamps to their low evening glow and wedged herself into the corner by the window with her jacket bunched under her head. Fern curled into the warm crook of her elbow, spines down, breathing small. Earth came back around, a slow blue shoulder in the dark. In the nearest tray a last loose drop of water drifted, wobbled, and sank into the sponge with the others, and the whole tray went still and shining. "It opens when it's ready, not before," Vera whispered. The flower held its little pool of light, and Vera closed her eyes.
