The Tree of Life (novel)

 was the seventh full length novel published by Big Finish Productions as part of their Big Finish Bernice Summerfield series. It was written by Mark Michalowski.

Publisher's summary
What's the most famous archaeologist in the sector to do when she receives an uninformative message from a woman she hardly remembers on a planet she's never heard of?

Go and investigate, of course!

But the unending, unyielding jungle on Tollip's World doesn't make it easy. Nor does the paranoia around the research team's mysterious discoveries there. Before long, Benny's under attack from humans, long-dead aliens and unpleasant fungal infections.

What happened on Tollip's World 8,000 years ago? What's the origin of the electrical discharges beneath the surface of the planet? Why is there a greenhouse in the middle of a jungle? And what are the Trees of Life?

Could the secrets of Tollip's World mean the extinction of humanity?

Plot
Benny receives a message from Liso Fortuna, an old friend and paleobotanist, asking her to come and investigate the situation on Tollip's World. She then receives a message from Piotr Valkov, a colleague of Liso's at a research base, who informs her that Liso might have found sensitive information on their employer and has vanished. Benny initially declines to help as, having left him several times recently, she does not want to leave Peter and allow Jason and Adrian the opportunity to continue their arguments about how he should be brought up.

Despite this, Benny asks Ms Jones to look into flights and, when Ms Jones makes a comment about whether or not it is appropriate for Benny to keep abandoning Peter, she becomes irate and decides to go with Joseph. At the research base in the jungle, Benny meets Hugo Tollip's right-hand woman, Bleize, and share a room with Janny Mwesto, who tells her that there is a rumour of a secret research facility called the Greenhouse. Artificial tunnels subject to electrical pulses are found beneath the jungle and Bleize gathers a team, including Benny, to examine them.

In the tunnels, the guard Ogosto is hit by a pulse and collapses. Benny calls for help but the others have left the tunnel and cannot return until the pulse has dissipated. She uses this opportunity to explore without a guard, leaving Piotr with Ogosto, and goes to investigate how, among other things, there seems to be fresh air circulating. She finds a chamber containing the skeletons of hamster-like creatures and is confronted by Ogosto, who does not seem to recognise her and communicates with grunts before leaving. Benny tries to pursue him but loses him and drops her radio, leaving her lost in the tunnels and, upon finding a way out, lost in the jungle.

In the jungle, Benny comes across the Greenhouse and sneaks in, finding that it is an experimental facility where biological weapons are being made from the native plants, including a spore capable of, in mere hours, consuming an individual from the inside out. In a room where a giant robot is being unearthed, Benny is spotted by Dr Silkram and pretends that Bleize had sent her to look for Ogosto. She tells him about the skeletons that she found, piquing his interest, and learns that animal life on the planet was wiped out by a virus engineered by the planet's trees, a virus which the trees then wiped out with a counter-virus. Dr Silkram leaves Benny in his office whilst he gets in contact with Bleize, who tells him to keep her there for questioning.

Benny tries to escape but finds that Dr Silkram has sealed the airlock through which she had entered. When she tries using her sonic trowel, a fail-safe is triggered which will incinerate everything inside. Benny is saved by Liso, who opens the door from outside and runs off with her. Later, Bleize and her guards arrive and find that Ogosto has killed all of the scientists before jumping naked into a pit with an exposed tree root. He touches the root and fires an electrical blast at Bleize and her guards when she confronts him; although Bleize is able to avoid it, her guards turn on her.

Benny learns that Liso had learnt about the Greenhouse experiments and sent evidence to her in the lining of the message she had sent her. Liso takes her to a tree and, when she touches it, they meet the hammies, an indigenous race who live in a symbiotic relationship with the Trees of Life. Benny meets their spokesperson, Morweningart, and learns that they were behind the Trees' engineering of the virus as they were threatened by an ape-like race. The virus, however, went out of control and wiped out all life on the planet. The Trees were able to neutralise the virus by putting the hammies to sleep and storing their minds, but, being slow-thinkers, they had not yet woken them up.

The electrical pulses are caused by the mental energy of Assapartemya, a hammy who has now possessed Ogosto with a copy of his mind. He was unhappy with how long it took for the hammies to decide what to do during the virus disaster and, instead of resting, he has remained somewhat active and has been experimenting with his Tree's electrical field. Although Benny wants to questioned Assapartemya about what the copy of his mind is planning, Morweningart informs her that the stored mind and its copy are seen as two completely different individuals and do not have to answer for one another. Benny is annoyed and leaves the Tree.

Benny and Liso return to the research base and find that Piotr has broken into Liso's room looking for clues for how to find her. Piotr confesses that it had been Bleize's idea to bring Benny here so that she could keep an eye on her, as Bleize was unaware of how much Liso had told Benny. Joseph informs them that Tollip himself has come to the planet to examine the skeletons and that they have lost contact with the Greenhouse. Liso says that she has a copy of the evidence that she sent to Benny and they go looking for a computer to view it on; however, they are caught by Tollip and arrested for industrial espionage. Tollip says that he is planning on exploiting the Trees' abilities to produce drugs and weapons but is willing to listen to Benny and Liso's arguments. They are interrupted when a team returns from the Greenhouse and, whilst Tollip talks to them, he has Benny and her friends locked up.

Benny sends Joseph through the ventilation system to listen to the guards. Ogosto and Bleize's guards enter the base and neutralise Tollip's men; Ogosto says that he wishes to punish Tollip for his treatment of the Trees and shits down the facility, locking up the staff. Joseph reports this to Benny and tells her that he downloaded the evidence earlier. The group escape by tricking the guard and encounter Bleize, who formally releases them as she needs their assistance to defeat Ogosto. Benny agrees to help and wonders why Ogosto has locked up the staff rather than killing them as he had at the Greenhouse. Given that Ogosto has killed people, Bleize suggests that Morweningart might be willing to let them question Assapartemya.

Benny, Liso, Piotr and Joseph travel to the Tree of Life whilst Bleize tries to rescue Tollip. Joseph tells them that the Greenhouse scientists had learnt how the hammies and the Trees had lived symbiotically and how the Trees had engineered the virus; they believed that the retrovirus could be used to repair human telomeres and grant immortality and planned to take a Tree off-world to be studied further. It is possible that, in doing so, all of the hammies whose minds are stored in said tree would die or that the Tree might release a virus to exterminate the humans.

Bleize is able to tranquillise Ogosto but is forced to surrender when one of his guards threatens Tollip's life. The guards are, in fact, possessed by other copies of Assapartemya. Their plan is to have Tollip summon reinforcements and to then insert copies of Assapartemya's mind into them before waging war against humanity, aware that humans will always want what the Trees can offer. Ogosto wakes up and forces Bleize, Tollip and the other humans to dig up the root of a Tree of Life. Benny returns with Morweningart, who is in possession of Liso's body, and Ogosto tranquillises Morweningart when she accuses him of forcing his will on others and of being a dictator.

An electrical pulse arrives along the root and strikes Tollip and the staff members (although Bleize is able to avoid it) and they become possessed by copies of Benny. They overpower Ogosto's guards but Ogosto escapes with Tollip as a hostage. Benny explains to Bleize that Morweningart had managed to replace Assapartemya's mind in the pulse with Benny's as the Trees think too slowly for them to stop it from sending out the pulse altogether. The copy of Benny's mind within Tollip agrees to allow him to stun Ogosto with a sonic blast but, as he begins entering the code, she sees in his mind that he is actually planning to unleash the Greenhouse spores and wipe out all humans on the planet with the exception of himself, having taken the antidote. When Benny and her friends arrive, Ogosto shoots Tollip and himself.

With Morweningart's help, Benny absorbs the copies of her mind from the base's staff, leaving her with eighty conflicting sets of memories and thoughts. She agrees to keep quiet about the illegal research in exchange for Bleize reporting that Ogosto had killed Tollip and keeping quiet about the hammies, who begin to rebuild. She also learns that Assapartemya is not mad but that the copy that entered Ogosto became so due to being in a human body. The Greenhouse and its research are destroyed.

Benny returns to the Braxiatel Collection and encounters Ms Jones, who again expresses her disapproval of her leaving her son behind yet again. This angers Benny, who had grown closer to Ms Jones in the wake of the Fifth Axis occupation but now feels that there is a rift between them.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Joseph
 * Liso Fortuna
 * Piotr Volkov
 * Bleize
 * Janny Mwesto
 * Ogosto
 * Dr Silkram
 * Luis Vittorino
 * Morweningart
 * Assapartemya
 * Hugo Tollip

Continuity

 * Ms Jones coldly warns Benny that she needs to spend more time raising Peter, leading into the events of Something Changed.
 * One of the Benny copies mentions the last time she was in another body. (PROSE: Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Squire's Crystal)