The Signature of All Things

feared she might tumble over, lose her nerve, or—worse!—lose her idea.
    To tell this story—the story of species transmutation, as demonstrable through the gradual metastasis of mosses—Alma did not need notes, or access to the old library at White Acre, or her herbarium. She needed none of this, for a vast comprehension of moss taxonomy already existed within her head, filling every corner of her cranium with well-remembered facts and details. She also had at her fingertips (or, rather, at her mind’s fingertips) all the ideas that had already been written over the last century on the subject of species metamorphosis and geological evolution. Her mind was like a terrific repository of endless shelves, stacked with untold thousands of books and boxes, organized into infinite, alphabetized particulars.
    She did not need a library; she was a library.
    For the first few months of her journey, she wrote and rewrote the fundamental guiding assumptions for her theory, until she finally felt she had it correctly and irreducibly distilled to these ten:
That the distribution of land and water across the face of the earth has not always been where it is now.
That, based upon the fossil record, mosses appear to have endured all geological epochs since the dawn of life.
That mosses appear to have endured these diverse geological epochs through a process of adaptive change.
That mosses can change their fate either by altering their location (i.e., moving to a more favorable climate), or by altering their internal structure (i.e., transmutation).
That the transmutation of mosses has expressed itself over time in a nearly infinite appropriation and discarding of traits, leading to such adaptations as: increased resistance to drying, a decreased reliance upon direct sunlight, and the ability to revive after years of drought.
That the rate of change within moss colonies, and the extent of that change, is so dramatic as to suggest perpetual change.
That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.
That moss was almost certainly a different entity (most likely algae) before it was moss.
That moss—as the world continues to transform—may itself eventually become a different entity.
That whatever is true for mosses must be true for all living things.
    Alma’s theory felt audacious and dangerous, even to herself. She knew she was in treacherous territory—not only from a religious perspective (though this did not much concern her), but also from a scientific perspective. As she marched toward her conclusion like a mountaineer, Alma knew she was at risk of falling into the trap that had consumed so many grandiose French thinkers over the centuries—namely, the trap of l’esprit de système , where one dreams up some giant and thrilling universal explanation, and then tries to force all facts and reason to bend to that explanation, regardless of whether it makes any sense. But Alma was certain that her theory did make sense. The trick would be to prove it in writing.
    A ship was as good a place as anywhere to write—and several ships, one after another, moving ponderously across the empty seas, were better still. Nobody disturbed Alma. Roger the dog lay in the corner of her berth and watched her work, panting and scratching at himself and often looking terribly disappointed in life, but he would have done that wherever in the world he happened to be. At night, he would sometimes jump into her bunk and curl up against the crook of her legs. Sometimes he woke Alma with his little moans.
    Sometimes Alma, too, uttered little moans in the night. Just as she had found during her first voyage at sea, she discovered that her dreams were vivid and powerful, and that Ambrose Pike figured prominently in them. But now Tomorrow Morning made frequent appearances in her dreams, as well—sometimes even melding with Ambrose into strange, sensual, chimeric figures: Ambrose’s head on Tomorrow Morning’s body; Tomorrow Morning’s voice emerging from Ambrose’s throat; one man, during sexual congress with Alma, suddenly transforming into the other. But it was not only Ambrose and Tomorrow Morning who blended together in these strange dreams— everything seemed to be merging. In Alma’s most compelling nighttime reveries, the old binding closet at White Acre metamorphosed into a cave of mosses; her carriage house became a tiny but pleasant room at the Griffon Asylum; the sweet-smelling