Antigrav : Cosmic Comedies by SF Masters

by Philip Strick

  Pollination is by pseudo-copulation, as in many species of plant, but is exceptional in this case in that the pollinating agent is the male Gaggus. The flowers are exact replicas of native women, and their whole structure, composed of united sepals and petals, is complete in almost every external detail. One of the few visible differences is the threadlike though robust stem emerging from the small of the plant’s back.

  The petal, analogous to the lip in other orchidacae, is primarily bright red or blue, although other shades based on these colours can often be found. Giving the appearance of a short garment, it is united to the perianth only by a tiny join at the nape of the neck and may be removed completely without any noticeable damage, although it quickly shrivels.

  The flowers have a very powerful scent, and while the chemical structure of this has yet to be determined it is known to have pronounced hallucinatory and aphrodisiacal properties, which it is thought acted originally to prevent the Gaggus from discovering the true nature of the girl that apparently confronts him. Under the influence of the scent, for example, the male finds the eyes of the plant lifelike and mobile, whereas in reality they are the least successful part of the imitation.

  Capable of a quite sophisticated series of mechanical movements and reactions, Gigantiflora will on being disturbed by a suitable stimulus go through motions resembling those of a primitive coquette. The native male Gaggus is often completely addicted to the pleasures afforded by these flowers, to the extent that he will neglect his own wife. The female Gaggus, on the other hand, destroys these plants whenever she finds them. The theory appears tenable that the population of Rosy Lee is maintained at a low level by the waste of male effort expended on cultivating Gigantiflora.

  The pollen develops before the gynoceum and forms a thick powder on the plant’s ‘pubic’ area. During pseudo-copulation this pollen adheres to the male, and when next he amuses himself with a Gigantiflora it is transferred to the area surrounding the new flower’s ‘navel’—which is in fact the stigma, thus completing the pollination. Directly after this process the flower is able to discourage further attempts by the same male, becoming rigid and unapproachable so that self-pollination is avoided.

  The seeds of the plant are dust-like and blow many miles, even across oceans. On some of the planet’s many uninhabited islands, whole colonies of the plants may be found; as the Gaggus is disinclined to travel, lacking any great incentive or energy to do so, these colonies presumably never reach the flowering stage. When members of the present expedition landed on one such island, the flowers appeared by the second day in numbers approaching infestation proportions, the effect resembling that of an overcrowded brothel. Since the team was wholly female, it was not possible to judge the effect on a male, but the sight, smell, and hallucinatory vapours were such as to convince us that the effect would be overpowering even for a civilized man.

  I must confess (the report added, taking a suddenly personal tone), that while as a botanist I found the flowers fascinating, as a woman I found them profoundly disturbing, almost disgusting. Even when I was cutting portions of the petal from the ‘face’, an unsettling exercise, the plant’s lower half made several attempts to seduce me, although as far as we were aware only males could inspire the pollination mechanism. The fact that in uninhabited regions the flowers might react to women as well leads to interesting speculation about alternative means of pollination. And although every member of our team professed disgust for the flowers, several plants unquestionably set seed during our stay on the island despite the impossibility of self-pollination.

  Further research could doubtless be pursued in this area, but while this would be diverting enough for the specialists involved, no particular value can be anticipated from it. We are familiar in botany with the basic principles of pseudo-copulation, studied in detail on Terra in the last century. (Ref: Wild Flowers of the World by Everard & Morley, reprinted under the Treasures of Antiquity label: ‘The insect-like form of the lip and the scent of the flower in the Ophrys attract the males of certain insects and stimulates them into abortive attempts at copulation. During this pseudo-copulation the insects pick up pollinia or transfer pollen to the stigmas. Some tropical orchids have likewise been shown to possess particular scents which excite insects sexually.’) A Research Priority Rating is accordingly recommended at no more than Z-Grade.

  Some technicalities followed about the morphology and cytology of the plant, but Randy had read far enough. His head hurt as a torrent of ideas and schemes poured through his mind, and he realized that the hypnoconditioning he’d gone through at Sector XI13 was, thanks to his uniquely exhausted condition, at last getting the chance to work. In dizzy flashes of inspiration, he saw that he was destined to become the greatest gardener ever known. He grabbed a screwdriver and got started.

  The rest of course is history. Randy waited on Rosy Lee long enough to collect the ten pods of seeds he was later to refer to in his autobiography as his offspring, and within a few months he appeared on the ‘dry’ planet Bergia (where prostitution is illegal) as the proprietor of ‘The Pleasure Gardens of Rosy Lee’. The uproar led to a court case, a magnificent specimen of Bacchantius Gigantiflora was produced before the enraptured judge, and all charges were dismissed. The galaxy rang with the news, and Randy’s fortune was made.

  He was able to make the unprecedented purchase of a plus-light ship—his own—from the Federation, complete with Ship’s Companion.

  Plus-light travel being as complicated as it is, few were in a position to track down the planet where Randy got his supplies, but those who made it to the islands of Rosy Lee said they found there only desert scrubland and bleak crags. The place had an atmosphere of terror, they said, and they were glad to leave; the Gaggus population, however, seemed undisturbed despite the odd preference on the part of the males for a species of cauliflower with a stench like rotten pulp.

  It seems that Randy and his screwdriver, whirled to the heights of creativity by the hypnoconditioning that ran through his brain, had converted the Ship’s Companion to new levels of chemical accomplishment. When the computer had finished with Rosy Lee, the aphrodisiac breeze that drifted across the planet had acquired a tang that went unnoticed by the Gaggus nose but which filled the human senses with stark revulsion. Thus Randy and his brood could preserve a comfortable monopoly. The Companion, too, proved to be an unrivalled teacher; the girls in the ‘Pleasure Gardens’, now a universal attraction, are renowned as much for their seductive conversation as for their physical skills. Naturally they are all experts in bluegrass music. And the hybrid strains developed with the aid of the computer become more delectable year by year, especially those highly prized specimens reputed to resemble famous beauties of the past. The Cleopatra Convulser, the Bardot Brainstorm, and the Lovelace Paralyzer have passed into legend.

  So that, girls, is the story of the famed horticulturalist Randy Richmond, known throughout the galaxy (although the plus-light pilots have, I believe, a slightly different version) as ‘Mr Greenfingers’. All strength to his compost, and may his flyspray never dwindle! Now, dig in. Another batch of conservationists just stopped by our greenhouse.

  By the Seashore

  R. A. Lafferty

  The most important event in the life of Oliver Murex was his finding of a seashell when he was four years old. It was a bright and shining shell that the dull little boy found. It was bigger than his own head (and little Oliver had an unusually large head), and had two eyes peering out of its mantle cavity that were brighter and more intelligent-seeming than Oliver’s own. Both Oliver and the shell had these deep, black, shiny eyes that were either mockingly lively or completely dead—with such shiny, black things it was hard to say which.

  That big shell was surely the brightest thing on that sunny morning beach and no one could have missed it. But George, Hector, August, Mary, Catherine and Helen had all of them missed it and they were older and sharper-eyed than was Oliver. They had been looking for bright shells, goi
ng in a close skirmish line over that sand and little Oliver had been trailing them with absent mind and absent eyes.

  ‘Why do you pick up all the dumb little ones and leave the good big one?’ he yipped from their rear. They turned and saw the shell and they were stunned. It actually was stunning in appearance—why hadn’t they seen it? (It had first to be seen by one in total sympathy with it. Then it could be seen by any superior person.)

  ‘I wouldn’t have seen it either if it hadn’t whistled at me,’ Oliver said.

  ‘It’s a Hebrew Volute,’ George cried out, ‘and they’re not even found in this part of the world.’

  ‘It isn’t. It’s a Music Volute,’ Mary contradicted.

  ‘I think that it’s a Neptune Volute,’ Hector hazarded.

  ‘I wish I could say that it’s a Helen Volute,’ Helen said, ‘but it isn’t. It’s not a Volute at all. It’s a Cone, an Alphabet Cone.’

  Now these were the shelliest kids along the seashore that summer and they should all have known a Volute from a Cone, all except little Oliver. How could there be such wide differences among them?

  ‘Helen is right about its being a Cone,’ August said. ‘But it isn’t an Alphabet Cone. It’s a Barthelemy Cone, a big one.’

  ‘It’s a Prince Cone,’ Catherine said simply. But they were all wrong. It was a deadly Geography Cone, even though it was three times too big to be one. How could such sharp-eyed children not recognize such an almost legendary prize ?

  Oliver kept this cone shell with him all the years of his growing up. He listened often to the distant sounding in it, as people have always listened to seashells. No cone, however, is a real ocean-roarer of a shell. They haven’t the far crash; they haven’t the boom. They just are not shaped for it, not like a Conch, not like a Vase Shell, not like a Scallop, not even like the common Cowries or Clam Shells or Helmet Shells. Cones make rather intermittent, sharp sounds, not really distant. They tick rather than roar.

  ‘Other shells roar their messages from way off,’ Helen said once. ‘Cones telegraph theirs.’ And the clicking, ticking of Cones does sound somewhat like the chatter of a telegraph.

  Some small boys have toy pandas or bears. But Oliver Murex had this big seashell for his friend and toy and security. He slept with it—he carried it with him always. He depended on it. If he was asked a question he would first hold the big cone shell to his ear and listen—then he would answer the question intelligently. But if for any reason he did not have his shell near at hand he seemed incapable of an intelligent answer on any subject. .

  There would sometimes be a splatter of small blotches or dusty motes on the floor or table near the shell.

  ‘Oh, let me clean those whatever-they-ares away,’ mother Murex said once when she was nozzling around with the cleaner.

  ‘No, no—leave them alone—they’ll go back in,’ Oliver protested. ‘They just came out to get a little sunlight.’ And the little blotches, dust motes, fuzz, stains, whatever retreated into the shell of the big cone.

  ‘Why, they’re alive!’ the mother exclaimed.

  ‘Isn’t everybody?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘It is an Alphabet Cone just as I always said it was,’ Helen declared. ‘And those little skittering things are the letters of the different alphabets that fall off the outside of the shell. The cone has to swallow them again each time, and when it has digested them they will come through to the outside again where they can be seen in their patterns.’

  Helen still believed this was an Alphabet Cone. It wasn’t. It was a deadly Geography Cone. The little blotches that seemed to fall off it or to come out of it and run around—and that then had to be swallowed again—may have been little continents or seas coming from the Geography Cone; they may have been quite a number of different things. But if they were alphabets (well, they were those, among other things), then they were more highly complex alphabets than Helen suspected.

  It isn’t necessary that all children in a family be smart. Six smart ones out of seven isn’t bad. The family could afford big-headed, queer-eyed Oliver, even if he seemed a bit retarded. He could get by most of the time. If he had his shell with him, he could get by all the time.

  One year in grade school, though, they forbade him the company of his shell. And he failed every course abysmally.

  ‘I see Oliver’s problem as a lack of intelligence,’ his teacher told father Murex. ‘And lack of intelligence is usually found in the mind.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be found in his feet,’ Oliver’s father said. But he did get a psychologist in to go over his slow son from head to foot.

  ‘He’s a bit different from a schizo,’ the psychologist said when he had finished the examination. ‘What he has is two concentric personalities. We call them the core personality and the mantle personality—and there is a separation between them. The mantle or outer personality is dull in Oliver’s case. The core personality is bright enough, but it is able to contact the outer world only by means of some separate object. I believe that the unconscious of Oliver is now located in this object and his intelligence is tied to it. That seashell there, now, is quite well balanced mentally. It’s too bad that it isn’t a boy. Do you have any idea what object it is that Oliver is so attached to?’

  ‘It’s that seashell there. He’s had it quite a while. Should I get rid of it?’

  ‘That’s up to you. Many fathers would say yes in such case; almost as many would say no. If you get rid of the shell the boy will die. But then the problem will be solved—you’ll no longer have a problem child.’

  Mr Murex sighed, and he thought about it. He had decisions to make all day long and he disliked having to make them in the evening, too.

  ‘I guess the answer is no,’ he finally said. ‘I’ll keep the seashell and I’ll also keep the boy. They’re both good conversation pieces. Nobody else has anything that looks like either of them.’

  Really they had come to look alike. Oliver and his shell, both big-headed and bug-eyed and both of them had a quiet and listening air about them.

  Oliver did quite well in school after they let him have the big seashell with him in class again.

  A man was visiting in the Murex house one evening. This man was by hobby a conchologist or student of seashells. He talked about shells. He set out some little shells that he had carried wrapped in his pocket and explained them. Then he noticed Oliver’s big seashell and he almost ruptured a posterior adductor muscle. .

  ‘It’s a Geography Cone!’ he shrieked. ‘A giant one! And it’s alive!’

  ‘I think it’s an Alphabet Cone,’ Helen said.

  ‘I think it’s a Prince Cone,’ Catherine said.

  ‘No, no, it’s a Geography Cone and it’s alive!’

  ‘Oh, I’ve suspected for a long time that it was alive,’ Papa Murex said.

  ‘But don’t you understand? It’s a giant specimen of the deadly Geography Cone.’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Nobody else has one,’ father Murex said.

  ‘What do you keep in it?’ the conchologist chattered. ‘What do you feed it?’

  ‘Oh, it has total freedom here, but it doesn’t move around very much. We don’t feed it anything at all. It belongs to my son Oliver. He puts it to his ear and listens to it often.’

  ‘Great galloping gastropods, man! It’s likely to take an ear clear off the boy.’

  ‘It never has.’

  ‘But it’s deadly poisonous. People have died of its sting.’

  ‘I don’t believe any one of our family ever has. I’ll ask my wife. Oh, no, I needn’t. I’m sure none of my family has ever died of its sting. I just remembered that none of them has ever died at all.’

  The man with the hobby of conchology didn’t visit the Murex house very much after that. He was afraid of that big seashell.

  One day the school dentist gave a curious report of things going on in Oliver’s mouth.

  ‘Little crabs are eating the boy’s teeth—little microscopic crabs,’ the dentist
(he was a nervous man) told Mr Murex.

  ‘I never heard of microscopic crabs,’ Mr Murex said. ‘Have you seen them, really, or examined them at all?’

  ‘Oh, no, I haven’t seen them. How would I see them? But his teeth just look as if microscopic crabs had been eating them. Ah, I’m due for a vacation. I was going to leave next week.’

  ‘Are the teeth deteriorating fast?’ Mr Murex asked the dentist.

  ‘No, that’s what puzzles me,’ the dentist said. ‘They’re not deteriorating. The enamel is disappearing, eaten by small crabs, I’m sure of that; but it’s being replaced by something else, by some shell-like material.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right then,’ Mr Murex said.

  ‘I was going to leave on vacation next week. I’ll call someone and tell them that I’m leaving right now,’ the dentist said.

  The dentist left, and he never did return to his job or to his home. It was later heard of him that he had first abandoned dentistry and then life.

  But little Oliver grew up, or anyhow he grew out. He seemed to be mostly head, and his dwarfish body was not much more than an appendage. He and the great seashell came to look more and more like each other by the day.

  ‘I swear, sometimes I can’t tell which of you is Oliver,’ Helen Murex said one day. She was more fond of Oliver and his shell than were any of their brothers or sisters. ‘Which of you is?’ she asked.

  ‘I am.’

  Oliver Geography Cone grinned.

  ‘I am.’

  Oliver Murex grinned.

  Oliver Murex was finally out of school and had taken his place in the family business. The Murex family was big in communications, the biggest in the world, really. Oliver had an office just off the office of his father. Not much was expected of him. He seemed still to be a dull boy, but very often he gave almost instant answers to questions that no one else could answer in less than a week or more. Well, it was either Oliver or his shell who gave the almost instant answers. They had come to resemble each other in voice almost as much as in appearance and the father really didn’t care which of them answered—as long as the answers were quick and correct. And they were both.