Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  “A couple of hours ago, the Bureau called me back. They had the information I wanted. The charting work done in that sector indicates two other terratype planets within the area I had inquired about are also covered with a blanket of apparently homogeneous forest vegetation.”

  Mantelish nodded. “With its inherent growth capacity unchecked, it would be likely to cover the land areas of any world where it could live very rapidly. There is no question about that.”

  “But why the ruins?” Trigger asked, a touch of uneasiness in her voice. “I can see that the colonists who found the tree would have planted it on the other two worlds where they had settled. But even eight hundred years ago, they must have had any number of ways to keep It out of areas where they didn’t want it to be.”

  “Of course,” Holati Tate agreed.

  She looked at him, her face troubled. “You’re thinking of the three men who walked off the job back there?”

  “What else? They’d never be settlers in any sense, Trigger. They’ve simply gone native . . . or would if we let them do it. The colonists did the same thing. They deserted their settlements, went to live among the trees.”

  “But not all of them!” Trigger said protestingly. “Some people might want to spend their lives like that, and if that’s what they like, why not? But a whole group of colonists doesn’t simply leave everything they’ve built up and go away!”

  “Not under normal circumstances,” the commissioner said. He pursed his lips, was silent a moment. “That feeling of yours that the trees want us around,” he went on. “The evidence is that you’re right. They want us around, and they do something about it. It hadn’t occurred to me to look for the symptoms before, but I’d say now that in the short period of time we were there, all of us who were in regular contact with the trees—eating the fruit and so on—have become somewhat addicted to them.”

  “Addicted?” Trigger repeated. She looked up at the tree, back at the commissioner, her face startled, then turning reflective.

  “Yes,” she said slowly at last. “I’ve become addicted to them, anyway! Slightly. Not just the fruit. It’s liking to be near them, the feeling that they like you to be there, that they’re beautiful, friendly things . . .”

  “I know,” he said. “In the case of our AWOL paleontologists, those feelings simply grew strong enough to override their ordinary good sense, and the colonists, who were constantly surrounded by the trees, had no chance of escaping the effect indefinitely. We’ll have to assume they all succumbed to it.”

  Trigger said after a moment, “Then I wonder what happened to them. You’d think with the trees to look after them, their descendants would still have been there when we arrived.”

  The commissioner made a small grimace.

  “I wondered about that, too,” he said. “And then there was the question of whether the tree was native to the world where we found it, or brought there from one of the other two.”

  Mantelish frowned.

  “The tree is native there, obviously, Holati,” he said. “The fauna is so completely adapted to it that—” He paused, scowling at the commissioner. “Unless . . .”

  “Yes,” said Holati Tate, “that was my thought. In eight hundred years, the assortment of creatures we found there couldn’t have adapted so completely to living with the trees as it has, become so dependent on them, unless the life form which likes to have other life forms around has methods beyond simple addiction to keep them with it permanently.

  “I took three of the specimens in the other boat apart on a hunch. The third of them was the thing which looks a good deal like a limp, gangly, hundred-pound frog. It’s practically blind and it has about the same amount of brains as a frog. Of course, it doesn’t need much intelligence to crawl from leaf to leaf and along the branches. But most of its internal arrangements are still essentially human.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Trigger said faintly, “But that’s horrible!”

  “From our point of view,” the commissioner said. “From its own, if it had any, the creature probably would feel it was leading a very comfortable and satisfactory existence.” He shrugged. “The planet will be quarantined at once, of course. So will the other two worlds if the trees are found on them. I’m rather sure they will be.”

  Trigger looked up at the tree again, swallowed, said, “Do you think they’ll all have to be killed?”

  “There may be another answer to the problem than exterminating them or keeping their worlds quarantined indefinitely,” the commissioner said. “I’d like to see one found. After all, the only charge against the trees is that they’re entirely too hospitable to every other kind of life.”

  BALANCED ECOLOGY

  It’s sometimes hard to define the term “pet”—and to decide which is whose pet. Let’s just say “symbiote” and let it go . . .

  The diamondwood tree farm was restless this morning.

  Ilf Cholm had been aware of it for about an hour but had said nothing to Auris, thinking he might be getting a summer fever or a stomach upset and imagining things and that Auris would decide they should go back to the house so Ilf’s grandmother could dose him. But the feeling continued to grow, and by now Ilf knew it was the farm.

  Outwardly, everyone in the forest appeared to be going about their usual business. There had been a rainfall earlier in the day; and the tumbleweeds had uprooted themselves and were moving about in the bushes, lapping water off the leaves. Ilf had noticed a small one rolling straight towards a waiting slurp and stopped for a moment to watch the slurp catch it. The slurp was of average size, which gave it a tongue-reach of between twelve and fourteen feet, and the tumbleweed was already within range.

  The tongue shot out suddenly, a thin, yellow flash. Its tip flicked twice around the tumbleweed, jerked it off the ground and back to the feed opening in the imitation tree stump within which the rest of the slurp was concealed. The tumbleweed said “Oof!” in the surprised way they always did when something caught them, and went in through the opening. After a moment, the slurp’s tongue tip appeared in the opening again and waved gently around, ready for somebody else of the right size to come within reach.

  Ilf, just turned eleven and rather small for his age, was the right size for this slurp, though barely. But, being a human boy, he was in no danger. The slurps of the diamondwood farms on Wrake didn’t attack humans. For a moment, he was tempted to tease the creature into a brief fencing match. If he picked up a stick and banged on the stump with it a few times, the slurp would become annoyed and dart its tongue out and try to knock the stick from his hand.

  But it wasn’t the day for entertainment of that kind. Ilf couldn’t shake off his crawly, uncomfortable feeling, and while he had been standing there, Auris and Sam had moved a couple of hundred feet farther uphill, in the direction of the Queen Grove, and home. He turned and sprinted after them, caught up with them as they came out into one of the stretches of grassland which lay between the individual groves of diamondwood trees.

  Auris, who was two years, two months, and two days older than Ilf, stood on top of Sam’s semiglobular shell, looking off to the right towards the valley where the diamondwood factory was. Most of the world of Wrake was on the hot side, either rather dry or rather steamy; but this was cool mountain country. Far to the south, below the valley and the foothills behind it, lay the continental plain, shimmering like a flat, green-brown sea. To the north and east were higher plateaus, above the level where the diamondwood liked to grow. Ilf ran past Sam’s steadily moving bulk to the point where the forward rim of the shell made a flat upward curve, close enough to the ground so he could reach it.

  Sam rolled a somber brown eye back for an instant as Ilf caught the shell and swung up on it, but his huge beaked head didn’t turn. He was a mossback, Wrake’s version of the turtle pattern, and, except for the full-grown trees and perhaps some members of the clean-up squad, the biggest thing on the farm. His corrugated shell was overgrown with a plant which had
the appearance of long green fur; and occasionally when Sam fed, he would extend and use a pair of heavy arms with threefingered hands, normally held folded up against the lower rim of the shell.

  Auris had paid no attention to Ilf’s arrival. She still seemed to be watching the factory in the valley. She and Ilf were cousins but didn’t resemble each other. Ilf was small and wiry, with tight-curled red hair. Auris was slim and blond, and stood a good head taller than he did. He thought she looked as if she owned everything she could see from the top of Sam’s shell; and she did, as a matter of fact, own a good deal of it—nine tenths of the diamondwood farm and nine tenths of the factory. Ilf owned the remaining tenth of both.

  He scrambled up the shell, grabbing the moss-fur to haul himself along, until he stood beside her. Sam, awkward as he looked when walking, was moving at a good ten miles an hour, clearly headed for the Queen Grove. Ilf didn’t know whether it was Sam or Auris who had decided to go back to the house. Whichever it had been, he could feel the purpose of going there.

  “They’re nervous about something,” he told Auris, meaning the whole farm. “Think there’s a big storm coming?”

  “Doesn’t look like a storm,” Auris said.

  Ilf glanced about the sky, agreed silently. “Earthquake, maybe?”

  Auris shook her head. “It doesn’t feel like earthquake.”

  She hadn’t turned her gaze from the factory. Ilf asked, “Something going on down there?”

  Auris shrugged. “They’re cutting a lot today,” she said. “They got in a limit order.”

  Sam swayed on into the next grove while Ilf considered the information. Limit orders were fairly unusual; but it hardly explained the general uneasiness. He sighed, sat down, crossed his legs, and looked about. This was a grove of young trees, fifteen years and less. There was plenty of open space left between them. Ahead, a huge tumbleweed was dying, making happy, chuckling sounds as it pitched its scarlet seed pellets far out from its slowly unfolding leaves. The pellets rolled hurriedly farther away from the old weed as soon as they touched the ground. In a twelve-foot circle about their parent, the earth was being disturbed, churned, shifted steadily about. The clean-up squad had arrived to dispose of the dying tumbleweed; as Ilf looked, it suddenly settled six or seven inches deeper into the softened dirt. The pellets were hurrying to get beyond the reach of the clean-up squad so they wouldn’t get hauled down, too. But half-grown tumbleweeds, speckled yellow-green and ready to start their rooted period, were rolling through the grove towards the disturbed area. They would wait around the edge of the circle until the clean-up squad finished, then move in and put down their roots. The ground where the squad had worked recently was always richer than any other spot in the forest.

  Ilf wondered, as he had many times before, what the clean-up squad looked like. Nobody ever caught so much as a glimpse of them. Riquol Cholm, his grandfather, had told him of attempts made by scientists to catch a member of the squad with digging machines. Even the smallest ones could dig much faster than the machines could dig after them, so the scientists always gave up finally and went away.

  “Ilf, come in for lunch!” called Ilf’s grandmother’s voice.

  Ilf filled his lungs, shouted, “Coming, grand—”

  He broke off, looked up at Auris. She was smirking. “Caught me again,” Ilf admitted. “Dumb humbugs!” He yelled, “Come out, Lying Lou! I know who it was.” Meldy Cholm laughed her low, sweet laugh, a silverbell called the giant greenweb of the Queen Grove sounded its deep harp note, more or less all together. Then Lying Lou and Gabby darted into sight, leaped up on the moss-back’s hump. The humbugs were small, brown, bobtailed animals, built with spider leanness and very quick. They had round skulls, monkey faces, and the pointed teeth of animals who lived by catching and killing other animals. Gabby sat down beside Ilf, inflating and deflating his voice pouch, while Lou burst into a series of rattling, clicking, spitting sounds.

  “They’ve been down at the factory?” Ilf asked.

  “Yes,” Auris said. “Hush now. I’m listening.”

  Lou was jabbering along at the rate at which the humbugs chattered among themselves, but this sounded like, and was, a recording of human voices played back at high speed. When Auris wanted to know what people somewhere were talking about, she sent the humbugs off to listen. They remembered everything they heard, came back and repeated it to her at their own speed, which saved time. Ilf, if he tried hard, could understand scraps of it. Auris understood it all. She was hearing now what the people at the factory had been saying during the morning.

  Gabby inflated his voice pouch part way, remarked in Grandfather Riquol’s strong, rich voice, “My, my! We’re not being quite on our best behavior today, are we, Ilf?”

  “Shut up,” said Ilf.

  “Hush now,” Gabby said in Auris’ voice. “I’m listening.” He added in Ilf’s voice, sounding crestfallen, “Caught me again!” then chuckled nastily.

  Ilf made a fist of his left hand and swung fast. Gabby became a momentary brown blur, and was sitting again on Ilf’s other side. He looked at Ilf with round, innocent eyes, said in a solemn tone. “We must pay more attention to details, men. Mistakes can be expensive!”

  He’d probably picked that up at the factory. Ilf ignored him. Trying to hit a humbug was a waste of effort. So was talking back to them. He shifted his attention to catching what Lou was saying; but Lou had finished up at that moment. She and Gabby took off instantly in a leap from Sam’s back and were gone in the bushes. Ilf thought they were a little jittery and erratic in their motions today, as if they, too, were keyed up even more than usual. Auris walked down to the front lip of the shell and sat on it, dangling her legs. Ilf joined her there.

  “What were they talking about at the factory?” he asked.

  “They did get in a limit order yesterday,” Auris said. “And another one this morning. They’re not taking any more orders until they’ve filled those two.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Ilf asked.

  “I guess so.”

  After a moment, Ilf asked, “Is that what they’re worrying about?”

  “I don’t know,” Auris said. But she frowned.

  Sam came lumbering up to another stretch of open ground, stopped while he was still well back among the trees. Auris slipped down from the shell, said, “Come on but don’t let them see you,” and moved ahead through the trees until she could look into the open. Ilf followed her as quietly as he could.

  “What’s the matter?” he inquired. A hundred and fifty yards away, on the other side of the open area, towered the Queen Grove, its tops dancing gently like armies of slender green spears against the blue sky. The house wasn’t visible from here; it was a big one-story bungalow built around the trunks of a number of trees deep within the grove. Ahead of them lay the road which came up from the valley and wound on through the mountains to the west.

  Auris said, “An aircar came down here a while ago . . . There it is!”

  They looked at the aircar parked at the side of the road on their left, a little distance away. Opposite the car was an opening in the Queen Grove where a path led to the house. Ilf couldn’t see anything very interesting about the car. It was neither new nor old, looked like any ordinary aircar. The man sitting inside it was nobody they knew.

  “Somebody’s here on a visit,” Ilf said.

  “Yes,” Auris said. “Uncle Kugus has come back.”

  Ilf had to reflect an instant to remember who Uncle Kugus was. Then it came to his mind in a flash. It had been some while ago, a year or so. Uncle Kugus was a big, handsome man with thick, black eyebrows, who always smiled. He wasn’t Ilf’s uncle but Auris’; but he’d had presents for both of them when he arrived. He had told Ilf a great many jokes. He and Grandfather Riquol had argued on one occasion for almost two hours about something or other; Ilf couldn’t remember now what it had been. Uncle Kugus had come and gone in a tiny, beautiful, bright yellow aircar, had taken Ilf for a couple of rides in
it, and told him about winning races with it. Ilf hadn’t had too bad an impression of him.

  “That isn’t him,” he said, “and that isn’t his car.”

  “I know. He’s in the house,” Auris said. “He’s got a couple of people with him. They’re talking with Riquol and Meldy.”

  A sound rose slowly from the Queen Grove as she spoke, deep and resonant, like the stroke of a big, old clock or the hum of a harp. The man in the aircar turned his head towards the grove to listen. The sound was repeated twice. It came from the giant greenweb at the far end of the grove and could be heard all over the farm, even, faintly, down in the valley when the wind was favorable. Ilf said, “Lying Lou and Gabby were up here?”

  “Yes. They went down to the factory first, then up to the house.”

  “What are they talking about in the house?” Ilf inquired.

  “Oh, a lot of things.” Auris frowned again. “We’ll go and find out, but we won’t let them see us right away.”

  Something stirred beside Ilf. He looked down and saw Lying Lou and Gabby had joined them again. The humbugs peered for a moment at the man in the aircar, then flicked out into the open, on across the road, and into the Queen Grove, like small, flying shadows, almost impossible to keep in sight. The man in the aircar looked about in a puzzled way, apparently uncertain whether he’d seen something move or not.

  “Come on,” Auris said.

  Ilf followed her back to Sam. Sam lifted his head and extended his neck. Auris swung herself upon the edge of the undershell beside the neck, crept on hands and knees into the hollow between the upper and lower shells. Ilf climbed in after her. The shell-cave was a familiar place. He’d scuttled in there many times when they’d been caught outdoors in one of the violent electric storms which came down through the mountains from the north or when the ground began to shudder in an earthquake’s first rumbling. With the massive curved shell above him and the equally massive flat shell below, the angle formed by the cool, leathery wall which was the side of Sam’s neck and the front of his shoulder seemed like the safest place in the world to be on such occasions.