The ‘culturists, short for horticulturists, which means gardeners, and The Junglists, short for Jungle-ists, who live in the jungle, will be two opposing clans of people. They will be but they aren’t yet. At the moment the world of people and technology is concentrating on machines. We make wonderful things, made of steel and plastic. But in the future, when all the machines have been made, people will start inventing plants and animals to do things that we can’t imagine now... Or maybe we can.
In the future there will be two opposing tribes, The ‘culturists and The Junglists. The ‘culturists will plant orderly gardens, all over the world. They will be gardens for living in, gardens for learning in, gardens for playing in. The gardens will cover half of all the land in the world. There will be flowerbeds the size of fields. People will have to be careful when they walk through flowerbeds that size, in case the sweet scent overpowers them. There will be banks of other scented plants, thyme and sage and parsley. Herbs, flowering fruit trees and plantations of tea. Their roads will all be tree-lined and they will be called avenues. Their houses will have turf roofs to keep the warmth in and the rain out. Their hospitals will be made of medicinal plants.
In this future garden there might be a young man called Michael Philp. He could be a messenger, driving all over the garden on his quad bike delivering letters. His bike will be a wonder of ‘culturist technology. The seat of the bike might be set atop its fuel tank. The fuel that it will use should be fermented from fruit so that the engine gives off a pleasant smell while running. Each of the fat tyres might be a magnificent fruit that grows from the axle. If a wheel is damaged Michael could pull it off and it should grow again. The bike’s speed will be controlled by a series of valves which let different grades of fuel into the turbines. There will be a tank of turbo-fuel at the front of the bike. Perhaps Michael’s helmet will be made of a huge, hollowed out nut. Instead of clothes maybe Michael will wear a coating of moss and lichen that grow on his skin and keep him warm and clean. On the back of the bike there might be a trained squirrel, so that if Michael gets into trouble the squirrel can run home and tell his friends of the danger. If all of these things come true then this is a story which might happen to him.
Michael buzzed along the wide, turf road that connected his nest to the common grounds. His top of the range ATV hummed quietly beneath him. Michael rarely left his bike. Sometimes when he could not sleep he would climb into the saddle and turn the engine on. The soft thrum and birrr of the twin turbines turning over soothed him and soon he would be asleep. He would wake up in the morning still face down on top of his faithful steed. Then he would rouse himself and start the morning with a little turbo injection as he screamed along the avenues to work. The bike would have warmed up and warmed him up too by the time he got to the common grounds and his captain’s garden. Usually he would be given an important message for the head gardeners and he would blast at top speed into the deep garden. He would quickly negotiate the enormous hedge-maze that protects the inner garden. Michael knew the maze well and could find his way through any part of it. He would usually deliver his message, wait for a reply, and tank back to his commander for his reward. His reward is often a roast bird or two, all fruits and vegetables are free in the ‘culturists society.
Today he isn’t given a message for the centre. He is given a message to take to the very edge of the garden and beyond. Trouble has started with The Junglists and a team of Appleseeds have to be warned. Appleseeds are the ‘culturists who expand the garden. They plant straight lines of apple trees into the jungle and draw maps with the straight lines of trees on them. The lines of trees are known as Orientation Lines and the gardens that will fill the gaps between the lines are planned before the garden moves forward and tames the jungle.
The Appleseed team that Michael has to contact are stuck in the middle of an approaching Junglist army. The message for them is simple. Get out while you still can.
Michael has never been out of the garden and the stories that he has heard worry him. The plants in the Jungle are man-eating. The jungle is always dark and the darkness can swallow people whole, never to be seen again. The Junglists are insane savages, they make nothing and prey on the edges of the garden, carrying off what they need into the lost wastes of the jungle.
Michael stops dreaming and tries to listen to his commander.
“You cannot follow the Orientation Line directly. There is an advance force of Junglists moving along the line in this direction. The fighting will make it almost impossible to get through. We are sending you down a little used avenue and we are going to cover your insertion with a bombing run. You will be safe from the nets in your little avenue and you should be able to outrun any Junglists that you come across. When you deliver your message you cannot stay and wait for the Appleseeds, you must leave them and come straight back the way you came or the avenue you used may have been discovered. Go now and quickly. Here, take a binder, you may need it.”
Michael runs from his commander’s woven banana-leaf hut and leaps onto his Quad. He set the valves and the faithful bike whirred into wakefulness. He leans in close to the handlebars and pushes the engine to full power. His fingers trace the surface of the turbo valve but he does not turn it, he might need it later. The ATV dashes along the familiar turf roads of the garden, Michael knows the way without even thinking. Soon, though, he will be out of his bounds, all the things that he knows and relies on in the garden will be gone. But first he has to get out.
His commander has directed him to a release-path. Animals that are not needed in the garden are put on a release-path. The paths lead to the jungle and people never come down them after they are built. Sometimes dangerous creatures come up them but they are not easy to escape from if you don’t know how and the animals have to go back to the jungle. Occasionally a big predator will camp in the release-path and consume any creature that is turned loose down it. Michael kept his binder in his hand.
Binders are the traditional weapon of both sides of the ‘culturalist/ Junglist struggle. A binder is a cross between a living plant and a woven net. They are launched from a handle and if they hit a target they wrap closely around it and hold it still. Each side uses a different species of binder and each side keeps secret the way in which the bindings can be released. Many Junglist binders are attached to their handle by a rope, like that of a harpoon, and the rope is used to reel in anything caught by the binder. Many ‘culturists have been pulled off the garden wall and kidnapped by The Junglists. Michael knew many stories about how The Junglists could turn a gardener into one of them if they were captured and taken deep into the jungle.
A wildcat stood stock still for a moment in the path of Michael’s bike but then it realised that the strange creature was not going to stop and it dashed into the undergrowth.
The release-path is not constantly upkept like the rest of the garden, the walls are not trimmed, the path is not swept. Some of the plants have the telltale signs of parasites on their leaves. Shrubs and flowers grow together without a thought for the way they look. Dead plants lie in the road without being picked up. Michael gets the feeling that nobody ever comes here, a feeling that he had never had before in the crowded, busy garden. The path widens out and becomes scruffier and scrubbier. The quad-bike’s superb gripping wheels, which had never been fully used in the orderly garden, bite into the soft dirt and push him forwards, ever forwards.
Soon the abandoned garden gives way to plant-life that has never been gardened. The trees here are gnarled and ancient. Their roots bulge up out of the ground and their branches droop down towards them. Michael knows that he is entering Junglist territory and just as his fears start to rise he sees the last evidence of the garden that he would see for a long time.
High in the sky, only occasionally visible through the broken canopy of the trees, he sees a formation of bombers. The bombers come from deep inside the garden where they keep great open expanses of grass on which to take off and land. Bombers consist of a huge bird powering, but also resting on, a glider made of broad leaves. The trained bird controls direction and steers the bomber according to its knowledge of air currents. Only the ‘culturists have bombers, the Junglists cannot discipline themselves or their environment enough to make them work.
From the bellies of the bombers drop soft parcels. They float and seem to break apart in the air but they are spreading out. They are massive nets, designed to drop over a huge area and prevent any movement by the people caught in them. The bombers drop net after net, carpeting the area with piles of restricting fibres. Only Michael in his little rat-run is still able to move. He guns his engine and gives it a little burst of turbo. The ATV shoots forward, Michael ducks under trailing edges of net. The bike leaps over fallen trees and up muddy banks. Michael has to concentrate very hard. He is not in the garden any more. He does not know the way and has to plan his route very carefully. He cannot take much time to look around at the jungle that he has never seen. All he knows is that it is hot and wet, that you cannot see more than a few feet in front of you, that the ground is black and lifeless, that the trees hold all the life at their tops, near the sun. The Junglists that he sees are all at the tops of trees. Wrapped in nets they shout down at him. Some are struggling to be free, struggling to get down to him and catch him. Whole groups of Junglists are netted together and they hang in the tree tops like the stored food of some kind of giant spider. They shout at him as he passes, words he cannot understand.
Michael’s brilliant bike nips between the trees, taking the rough ground in its stride. Michael hunkers down close to the saddle as low branches whip around him. His fear has gone, replaced by exhilaration. He is loose, outside the garden. Perhaps nobody else has ever been this way, no ‘culturist anyway. His wonderful bike can take him anywhere, there are no roads that he must follow. He does have an aim though, and he tools his bike through the crazy mess of the jungle towards it.
He cuts across a line of apple trees and changes direction to follow them. The jungle had been cleared and uprooted to make way for the straight line of fruit trees. When the work of the Appleseeds was described to him in the garden it was made to sound as if the apple trees grew in the jungle without effort. As if the apple trees had more right to be there than the jungle. But now he sees the line of trees he saw how it is made. The jungle is torn down and uprooted, sometimes the way ahead is burned. The apple trees do not grow well in the black soil and many of them are sick and dying. The Orientation Line was a line of destruction, cut wickedly into the lush jungle. Michael buzzes forward along the line, deep in thought.
He is thinking so hard that he doesn’t really hear the high-pitched whine that starts up in the distance. Maybe he hears it but he thinks that it is the call of some jungle bird. Anyway he doesn’t look for the source of the sound until it is very close. Michael has never heard a chainsaw but that is what the noise sounds like. The noise alarms him and he scans the jungle ahead of him for danger.
Suddenly from out of the darkness ahead of him there leap three dirt-bikes. Machines from ancient times. The bikes are made of metal and on each one there was a wild-eyed Junglist. The dirt-bikes are a little like his quad but they have only two wheels and from their exhaust they belch stinking smoke. Panicking, Michael fires his binder and one of the Junglist riders is wrapped to a tree. He guns the ATV’s engine and springs towards the two Junglists that are left. One fires a binder at him but the trailing tendrils go wide and he zips between them and into the darkness from which they had come.
Shouting and yelling the Junglists pour after him into the jungle. The three, two on bikes and one on a quad, dash through the confusing tangle of growing plants. Michael turns the turbo valve and leaps a river but the two bikes leap after him. Michael tucks his head in and sends his quad flying at full speed through buffeting underbrush. The branches whip at his face and exposed hands but he holds on. One thick branch bends as he pushes past and then flicks back, knocking one of his pursuers from their bike. The terrifying noise of the last petrol-driven bike is very close behind Michael and he hopes that it is this rider who has already fired his binder. In the race Michael doesn’t notice that he has lost the line of apple trees until it is almost too late. He cuts desperately right and motors slap-bang into the middle of the party of Appleseeds. The sound of the dirt-bike has gone from behind him and Michael is relieved until he realises that the Junglist has probably gone for reinforcements.
Michael hands the leader of the Appleseeds his important letter. Not waiting for a reply, as he had been told, he gives the All Terrain Vehicle full throttle and speeds back towards the garden and sanity. The metal bikes had frightened him, he had only seen things made of living matter before this. As he drives away he hears an enormous thump from behind him. The Appleseeds are coming under attack from the Junglists. The Junglists  drop a heavy net over them using a catapult and charge in on elephants. The Junglists use living and non-living tools in their struggle with the garden. To stop the garden growing and growing they use chainsaws and fire and elephants. They pull up the hedges and divert rivers into the orderly beds of labelled plants. The elephants munch and crunch and stomp and push things over, making a terrible noise. The helmeted Junglists on their bikes roar their engines and buzzzzz their chainsaws. When they have crashed everything to the ground they move on and find some more garden to destroy. If they don’t then eventually there will be no really wild places left.
The elephants charge past the hapless, luckless Appleseeds and launch after Michael. His ATV bobs and bounces through dry river beds and water filled ditches. Behind him a grey wall of elephants thunders through the trees, pushing some over as they go. The air is filled with the trumpeting of the elephants and the groaning of falling trees, the thudding of the ground beneath the stampede and the confusing yells of the Junglists. Michael dodges and dips, he goes flat out and hangs on for dear life. Trees and leaves blur as he cannons through the dense rainforest. He looks behind him but the elephants were still there, still far too close.
The wild ride rattles Michael around and gives him a pounding; and he is about to really lose his head to fear when his sense of direction tells him that the release-path is near by. He makes the path by the skin of his teeth and the elephants are slowed by the heavy net-drop that the bombers laid down before. Michael twists the turbo valve to maximum and flies up the path towards home and safety.
When he gets back to his common grounds there is nobody about. They are all at the garden wall resisting the charge of the elephants. Michael makes his way slowly towards the wall to carry any messages that are needed. On the way he meets the defenders of the garden fleeing towards him. The elephants have breached the garden wall and the Junglists are pouring in through the gap.
“Run, Run for the Inner-Garden!” Comes the cry from the routing ‘culturists.
The local Inner-Garden is at the top of a hill cut off from the surroundings by a complex maze. The trees and shrubs of the maze grow so closely together and are daily bound so that they can resist even an army of elephants, at least for a time.
Michael turns his quad-bike and set off towards the centre. He knows the way like the back of his hand and he makes good time. He has left danger far behind by the time he comes to the entrance of the maze. Going into the maze he feels the same as he had going into the jungle the first time. The way is clear but the environment is frightening. The sharp lines and orderly pattern of the maze look as strange to him now as the muddle of the jungle had looked to him that morning. There are no leaves on the ground, someone has swept them all up, and this seems strange to him now. In the jungle everything lay where it fell, life grew from the smashed remains of other life. But here in the garden life seems to come from nowhere and disappear into nothingness. The constant work of the gardeners looks spooky to Michael now. Why must everything be kept so tidy?
Putting his fears behind him, Michael moves into the maze. The walls are endlessly green, always the same green, green and square, square and green. The hedges are perfect and straight and clean. Michael is still a little frightened. There are no people, it is quiet in the maze. He goes on and on and on, turning left and right and second left and third right and left and right and left. Then he stops dead.
In front of him is a wall of green hedge. He has come to a dead end. He who knows the ways of the gardens better than any other. He who has travelled every path and rolled down every avenue. He has come to a dead end in the maze.
The terrible elephants have scared him into making a mistake and he is now as terribly lost in the maze as they must be. You do not take a wrong turn in the maze, you either know the way or you do not. Michael had never been lost in the maze in his life. Now he was lost he could not seem to find himself. He drives and drives but he might be driving in circles. He searches and searches for a sign but the maze is seamless. Eventually, his quad-bike has run out of juice and sputtered to a stop. It is very quiet.
After a while Michael gets up carefully off the bike and looks at it. He walks around and around it, looking at it all the time, but he can not think of a way of making it go. If he pushes it he would become more and more tired and he could never get out of the maze. He is just about to leave his bike when he has an idea. He scrambles back onto the bike and stands up on his tiptoes. He clasps a branch of the hedge in both hands and pulls himself into the air. He struggles and fights to pull himself to the top. Years of sitting on a quad bike have not strengthened his arms.
Finally he makes it to the top of the hedge.
From on top of the maze Michael can see the army of elephants, split into ones and twos, meandering aimlessly about in the early stages of the maze. By sheer luck, and a little bit of brains, a few elephants and their riders are making progress into the maze. The bulk of the army has been bamboozled but a few wily warriors are forging ahead towards the Inner-Garden.
Seeing that the Inner-Garden is safe, Michael sits down, calms down, and concentrates. He calls up his knowledge of the maze, he seeks the path that will take him in. It is obvious and Michael thrills with the knowledge that he has saved himself; even as he shudders with the realisation of how stupid he was to miss the way. He starts off running and jumping over the hedges towards the Inner-Garden.
He is not the first to arrive in the Inner-Garden but he is one of the first. He greets well known faces and comforts those who seem shaken by the race to safety. He meets a quad-bike courier from another Inner-Garden who tells him that although the garden lost ground here today it gained territory elsewhere. The rider also gives him more juice so that he can rescue his bike when the clamour has died down.
A few elephants and their riders make it into the Inner-Garden and they are welcomed with food and open arms, as is the rule. The Junglists who make it this far are the Junglists who have the most logical minds and the greatest self-discipline so they are perfect for becoming new gardeners. By bringing a few rebels into the heart of the garden the garden stays healthy and beautiful and balanced. One of the Junglists says, although he needs an interpreter, that when a ‘culturist is taken deep into the jungle they get the best ideas about how to make it wilder.
Darkness comes to the garden and the thud of drums replaces the thump of elephant’s feet. A fire is lit in the great fireplace on top of the hill and the fruit and the juice and the wine flow freely. There are dates and figs and olives and greengages and plums and cherries and corn-on-the-cob and blackberries and currants and marshmallows on sticks. There are split coconuts and drinks crammed with crushed ice. There are melons and loganberries and onion, pepper and mushroom kebabs. There are bowls of garden peas and trays of mixed nuts. New ‘culturists and old Junglists sit under the stars and eat fabulously. Then they throw scented bark onto the embers of the fire and stretch out on their backs. Safe within the garden wall and the maze they sleep and the elephants go home.