Even when split in two, the sarcophagus is too heavy for the researchers to manage, so they bring over a harness. With the help of a hydraulic lift, they hoist one half, then the other, away from the operating table.

There is a kind of gloppy shawl or placenta that surrounds the body. The scientists suction it off and now she can be seen more clearly. A girl. Or a young woman. Peaches would guess her a preteen or teenager. Her hair—the texture of seaweed—glistens down the length of her back. Her fingernails and toenails are as long and curled as talons.

They haven’t slept in some time, and Director Ricketts opens what must be her tenth can of Diet Coke with a snap and a fizz. She drops a straw in and sucks until its length is darkly veined with soda. “When I say well,” she says with a smack of her lips, “I mean, ‘How in the H-word is this possible?’”

“That’s a question so commonplace these days it might be considered a verbal tic.”

“What are you thinking? I want to know what you’re thinking. I can tell you’re holding back on me.”

He is thinking about how fungal networks—the billions of miles of hyphae strands in every acre of soil—don’t just underlie a forest, they unite it. He is thinking about how they communicate information, alerting nearby trees of blight or beetle infestation or even the cut of a chain saw. He is thinking about how they trade chemicals and nutrients, killing arthropods and sapping minerals from rocks and transferring it all into the root systems of trees. He is thinking about how before Douglas firs die, they flood their silo of nutrients into the fungus cabling the ground to share with neighboring trees. He is thinking about how if something came to this planet, if it was trying to create a knowledge database and community connection, it would plug into the nervous system that runs beneath the surface, the synaptic wilderness beneath our feet. And watch. And wait.

She taps her nails against the Diet Coke can. “You’re the one who found her. You could feel her down there. You have a connection. So what’s that green antennae of yours telling you?”

“I believe,” he says, “it has peaceful intentions.”

“A human is locked inside there like a prisoner, and your assumption is that this thing is peaceful?”

Right then the girl stirs. First an arm unfolds damply. Then a leg.

The scientists back up, one of them so suddenly he knocks over a tray of tools.

“Your little plant lady is waking up,” she says. “Should I be worried?”

“Fungus is not a plant,” he says.

“And tomatoes are a fruit, not a vegetable. Who cares? They’re plant enough.”