Then she saw a filament.
White.
Thin as a hair.
It curved from the base into the soil.
Clara stepped past Henderson.
“There’s a root.”
Blackwell laughed.
Vance looked up sharply.
“What?”
“There.”
She pointed.
Vance adjusted his glasses.
He crouched lower.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then he used two fingers to remove a small amount of mud from the base of the cutting.
Another white filament appeared.
Then another.
His expression changed.
“That could be fungal growth,” Blackwell said.
Vance ignored him.
He moved to the next cutting and dug carefully.
White roots.
Another.
Roots.
Another.
Nothing.
Then one with three tiny root threads extending sideways into the clay.
Vance’s breathing became audible.
“That’s not possible,” he whispered.
Henderson lowered the paper in his hand.
“What isn’t?”
Vance stood so quickly he nearly lost his balance.
“The cuttings are rooting.”
Blackwell snorted.
“Rot.”
“No.”
The word came harder than Vance intended.
Blackwell stared at him.
Vance crouched again and pulled out his magnifying glass.
“These are root primordia. Actual root development.”
Clara moved down the row.
Now that she knew what to look for, she saw them everywhere.
Not all two hundred.
Not even most.
But enough.
Tiny pale fibers at the mud line. Slight swellings beneath the bark. A few nodes changing color.
Then, three rows farther in, Clara saw green.
She stopped so abruptly Henderson nearly walked into her.
A bud had swollen from the side of one cutting.
It was no larger than a grain of wheat.
But it was green.
Living green.
Clara touched it with the tip of one muddy finger.
Her vision blurred.
She did not care that the men saw.
Another cutting held two buds.
A third showed a narrow split in the bark where a new leaf was preparing to emerge.
Vance walked from plant to plant, forgetting the mud on his trousers, his clipboard hanging uselessly from one hand.