Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  COMPULSION

  That plants could produce addictive metabolites was old—but the Siren pseudotrees had something else going for them. And Telzey found it was enormously more than she’d bargained for!

  I

  There’d been a dinner party at the Amberdon town house in Orado City that night. Telzey was home for the weekend but hadn’t attended the party. Graduation exams weren’t far away, and she’d decided she preferred to get in additional study time. It was mainly a political dinner anyway; she’d been at enough of those.

  Most of the guests had left by now. Four of them still sat in the room below her balcony alcove with Gilas and Jessamine, her parents. They’d all strolled in together a while ago for drinks and conversation, not knowing someone was on the balcony. The talk was about Overgovernment business, some of it, from the scraps Telzey absently picked up, fairly top-secret stuff. She wasn’t interested until a man named Orsler started sounding off on something about which he was evidently very much annoyed. It had to do with the activities of a young woman named Argee.

  Telzey started listening then because she disliked Orsler. He was an undersecretary in Conservation, head of a subdepartment dealing with uncolonized and unclaimed worlds and the life forms native to them. Telzey had scouted around in his mind on another occasion and discovered that those remote, unsuspecting life forms had a dubious champion in Orsler. He was using his position to help along major exploitation schemes, from which he would benefit substantially in roundabout ways. She’d decided that if nobody had done anything about it by the time the schemes ripened, she would. She gave the Overgovernment a little quiet assistance of that kind now and then. But the time in question was still several months away.

  Meanwhile, anything that vexed Orsler should make enjoyable hearing. So she listened.

  The group below evidently was familiar with the subject. There was a treelike creature, recently discovered somewhere, which was dangerous to human beings. Orsler’s department had it tentatively classified as “noxious vermin,” which meant it could be dealt with in any manner short of complete extermination. Miss Argee, whose first name was Trigger, had learned about this; and though she lacked, as Orsler pointed out bitterly, official status of any kind, she’d succeeded in having the classification changed to “quarantined, pending investigation,” which meant Orsler’s department could do nothing about the pseudotrees until whatever investigations were involved had been concluded.

  “The girl is simply impossible!” Orsler stated. “She doesn’t seem to have the slightest understanding of the enormous expense involved in keeping a planet under dependable quarantine—let alone three of them!”

  “She’s aware of the expense factor,” said another guest, whose voice Telzey recognized as that of a Federation admiral who’d attended Amberdon dinners before. “In fact, she spent some time going over it with me. I found she had a good grasp of logistics. It seems she’s served on a Precol world and has been on several long-range expeditions where that knowledge was put to use.”

  “So she’s annoyed you, too!” said Orsler. “If any citizen who happens—”

  “I wasn’t annoyed,” the Federation admiral interrupted quietly. “I rather enjoyed her visit.”

  There was a pause. Then Orsler said, “It’s amazing that such an insignificant matter could have been carried as far as the Hace Committee! But at least that will put a prompt end to Argee’s fantastic notions. She’s a Siren addict, of course, and should be institutionalized in her own interest.”

  Federation Councilwoman Jessamine Amberdon, who served on the Hace Ethics Committee, said pleasantly, “I’d prefer to think you’re not being vindictive, Orsler.”

  “I?” Orsler laughed. “Of course not!”

  “Then,” said Jessamine, “you’ll be pleased to know that the Committee is handling this as it handles all matters properly brought before it. It will await the outcome of the current investigations before it forms a conclusion. And you needn’t be concerned about Miss Argee’s health. We have it on good authority that, while she was at one time seriously addicted to the Sirens, she’s now free of such problems. Her present interest in them, in other words, is not motivated by addiction.”

  Orsler evidently didn’t choose to reply, and the talk turned to other subjects. Regrettably, from Telzey’s point of view. Orsler had found no support, and had been well squelched by Jessamine, which she liked. But now she was intrigued. Treelike Sirens which addicted people and rated a hearing in the Ethics Committee were something new.

  She could ask Jessamine about it later, but she’d have to admit to eavesdropping then, which her mother would consider not quite the right thing to have done. Besides, one of the minds down there could tell her. And having been in Orsler’s mind before, reentry would be a simple matter—

  Unless there happened to be a Guardian Angel around. Frequently enough, they hovered about people in upper government levels for one reason or another. She’d picked up no trace of their presence tonight, but they were rather good at remaining unnoticed.

  Well, she’d find out. She dropped an entry probe casually toward Orsler.

  And right enough.

  “Telzey Amberdon, you stop that!”

  It was a brisk, prim thought form, carrying distinct overtones of the personality producing it. She knew this particular Guardian Angel, or Psychology Service psi operator, who probably was in a parked aircar within a block or two of the Amberdon house—a hard-working, no-nonsense little man with whom she’d skirmished before. He was no match for her; but he could get assistance in a hurry. She didn’t complete the probe.

  “Why?” she asked innocently. “You’re not interested in Orsler, are you?”

  “He’s precisely the one in whom I’m interested!”

  “You surprise me,” said Telzey. “Orsler’s a perfect creep.”

  “I won’t argue with that description of him. But it’s beside the point.”

  “A little mental overhauling wouldn’t hurt him,” Telzey pointed out. “He’s no asset to the Federation as he is.”

  “Undersecretary Orsler,” the Angel told her sternly, “is not to be tampered with! He has a function to perform of which he isn’t aware. What happens after he’s performed it is another matter—but certainly no business of yours.”

  So they knew of Orsler’s planetary exploitation plans and would handle it in their way. Good!

  “All right,” Telzey said amiably. “I have no intention of tampering with him, actually. I only wanted to find out what he knows about those Sirens they were talking about.”

  A pause. “Information about the pseudotrees is classified,” said the Angel’s voice. “But I suppose that technicality means little to you.”

  “Very little,” Telzey agreed. “Then I suggest that your mother knows more about the subject than anyone else in the room.” Telzey shrugged mentally. “I don’t snoop in Jessamine’s mind. You know that.”

  A longer pause. “You’re really interested only in the Sirens?” asked the Angel.

  “And Trigger Argee.”

  “Very well. I can get you a report on the former.”

  “How soon?”

  “It will be in your telewriter by the time you reach your room. As for Miss Argee, we might have a file on her, but you can hardly expect us to violate her privacy to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to violate anyone’s privacy,” Telzey said. “All I’d like is her background, what kind of person she is—the general sort of thing I could get from a good detective agency tomorrow.”

  “I’ll have a scan extract made of her file,” the Angel’s voice told her. “You’ll receive it in a few minutes.”

  The blue reception button on the ComWeb’s telewriting attachment was glowing when Telzey came into her room. She closed the door, took the report tape on the Sirens from the reception slot, put the study reader she’d brought with her on a table, locked in the tape and sat down. The report began flowing up
over the reading screen at her normal scanning rate.

  An exploration group had discovered the Sirens on a terratype world previously covered only sketchily by mapping teams. They were the planet’s principal life form, blanketing the land masses in giant forests. The explorers soon discovered that a kind of euphoria, a pleasurable feeling of being drawn to them, was experienced by anyone coming within a few hundred yards of the pseudotrees. So they began referring to this life form as the Sirens.

  It was a hospitable life form. Every other creature found on the planet turned out to be a Siren parasite, living on the seemingly endless variety of edible items they produced. Tests disclosed surprisingly that many, perhaps all, of those items also satisfied human nutritional needs, and that most were pleasantly flavored. It wasn’t long before half the expedition personnel were plucking their meals from the Sirens whenever they felt like it, in preference to resorting to their Hub supplies.

  The notion of establishing this interesting and useful find in the Federation naturally arose. However, some caution seemed indicated; there was reason to believe the Sirens had a potentially very high propagation rate, perhaps enough to make them a problem on civilized worlds. Two expedition ships presently carried Siren saplings and seedlings, along with other specimens from the planet, back to the Hub for further research.

  At that time, several disconcerting discoveries were made almost simultaneously. A number of expedition members deserted together, leaving a message explaining that they intended to spend the rest of their lives among the Sirens, and it was realized belatedly that all who had been in contact with the Sirens for any length of time had developed varying degrees of emotional addiction to them. Then the ruins of a human colony, judged to be eight hundred years old, were unearthed; and the question of what had happened to the colonists on the Siren world was solved by the dissection of one of the parasitical specimens brought back to the Federation. Much of its internal structure still recognizably followed the human pattern. Without such evidence, no one could have suspected that this slow-moving, blind climber and crawler had branched away from the human species less than a thousand years ago.

  It appeared that the Sirens induced other creatures to become dependent on them, and that even a highly evolved species then degenerated very rapidly to the point of becoming a true parasite, unable to survive away from its hosts. A space scan disclosed that two other worlds in that stellar area were also covered with Siren forests. On those worlds, too, there seemed to be no creatures left which hadn’t become Siren parasites, and the indication was that their original human discoverers had introduced them to two associated colonies. In effect, all three human groups then had been wiped out. Their modified descendants could no longer be regarded as human in any significant sense.

  The discovery of the Sirens wasn’t publicized. General curiosity might be dangerous; there was a chance that Sirens could be transplanted to a civilization which wouldn’t recognize their strange qualities until it was virtually destroyed. Various Overgovernment departments began making preparations for the sterilization of the three worlds. It seemed the only reasonable solution to the problem.

  But there was somebody who wouldn’t accept that.

  The report didn’t give the name of the former expedition member who argued that it wasn’t the Sirens but their dangerous potential which should be eliminated, that they had intelligence, though it was intelligence so different from humanity’s that it had been impossible for them to recognize the harm they did other creatures.

  That couldn’t be proved, of course. Not on the basis of what was generally known.

  But neither could it be disproved—and the Overgovernment had been systematically alerted to the fact all along the line. A stop order went out on the preparation of sterilization measures . . .

  Telzey’s lips quirked approvingly. Unless it could be shown that there was no alternative, or that a present emergency existed, the extermination or nearextermination of a species, let alone that of a species possessing sentient intelligence, was inexcusable under Federation law. The former expedition member had made a very good move. Investigations were now being conducted at various levels, though progress was hampered by the fact that investigators, unless given special protection, also became liable to Siren addiction.

  “At present,” the report concluded, “no sufficiently definite results appear to have been obtained.”

  The telewriting receiver had emitted a single bright ping-note a minute or two earlier, and the blue button was glowing again. Telzey dropped the tape on the Sirens into the room’s disposal, and locked the tape on the determined former expedition member into the reader.

  This extract was considerably shorter. Trigger Argee was twenty-six, had a high I.Q., had been trained in communications, administration, basic science, survival techniques and unarmed combat at the Colonial School on Maccadon, had served in Precol on the world of Manon, and been employed in an administrative capacity on three U-League space expeditions. She was twice a pistol medalist, responsible, honest, had a good credit rating, and maintained a fashionable on-and-off marriage with an Intelligence colonel. She’d been recently issued a temporary Class Four Clearance because of volunteer activities in connection with a classified Overgovernment project. Previous activities, not detailed in the extract, qualified her for a Class One Clearance if needed.

  The last was intriguing. Of the high-ranking people in the room below the balcony alcove, probably only Jessamine Amberdon held the Overgovernment’s Class One Clearance. It might explain why Undersecretary Orsler and others had been unable to check the Siren crusade. Telzey dropped the extract into the disposal, made a mental note to check occasionally on the progress being made in the project.

  When she got back down to the alcove, they were still talking in the room below, but it appeared that Orsler and his Guardian Angel had made their departure, the Angel presumably having provided Orsler with an unconscious motivation to leave. He believed in taking no chances with his charges.

  Telzey grinned briefly, quietly gathered up her study materials and carried them back to her room.

  II

  The Regional Headquarters of the Psychology Service on Farnhart was housed in a tall structure of translucent green, towering in wilderness isolation above a northern ocean arm. Pilch stood in gray Service uniform at a window of the office on the eightieth level which she’d taken over from the Regional Director that morning, gazing at the storm front moving in from the east. She was a slender woman, rather tall, with sable hair and ivory features, whose gray eyes had looked appraisingly on many worlds and their affairs.

  “Trigger Argee,” announced the communicator on the Director’s desk behind her, “is on her way up here.”

  Pilch said, “Show her through to the office when she arrives.” She went to the desk, placed a report file on it, turned to the side of the room where a large box stood on a table. Pilch touched one of the controls on the box. Its front wall became transparent. The lit interior contained what appeared to be a miniature tree planted in a layer of pebbly brown material. It stood about fifteen inches high, had a curving trunk and three short branches with a velvety appearance to them, and a dozen or so relatively large leaves among which nestled two white flower cups. It was an exquisitely designed thing, and someone not knowing better might have believed it to be a talented artist’s creation. But it was alive; it was a Siren. Three months before, it had been a seedling. Left to itself, it would have stood three times Pilch’s height by now. But its growth had been restrained, limiting it still to a seedling’s proportions.

  The office door dilated, and a mahogany-maned young woman in a green and gold business suit came in. She smiled at Pilch.

  “Glad to see you!” she said. “I didn’t know you were on Farnhart until I got your message.”

  Pilch said, “I arrived yesterday to handle some Service business. I’ll leave again tonight. Meanwhile, here’s your specimen, and copies of our investigators’
reports.”

  “I’m sorry no one found anything positive,” Trigger said. “I was beginning to feel we were on the right track finally.”

  “We won’t assume it’s the wrong track,” said Pilch. “The results aren’t encouraging, but what they amount to is that the xenotelepaths we had available weren’t able to solve the problem. Various nonhuman xenos were called in to help and did no better. Neither, I’ll admit, did I, when I was checking out the reports on the way here.”

  Trigger moistened her lips. “What is the problem?”

  “Part of it,” Pilch said, “is the fact that the investigations produced no indication of sentiment intelligence. The Sirens’ activities appear to be directed by complex instinctual drives. And aside from that, your specimen is a powerhouse of psi. The euphoria it broadcasts is a minor manifestation, and we can assume that its ability to mutate other organisms is psi based. But it remains an assumption. We haven’t learned enough about it. Most of the xenos were unable to make out the psi patterns. They’re very pronounced ones and highly charged, but oddly difficult to locate. Those who did recognize them and attempted to probe them experienced severe reactions. A few got into more serious trouble and had to be helped.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Trigger asked uneasily.

  “Assorted mental disturbances. They’ve been straightened out again.”

  “Our friend here did all that?”

  “Why not? It may be as formidable as any adult Siren in that respect. The euphoric effect it produces certainly is as definite as that of the older specimens.”

  “Yes. that’s true.” Trigger looked at the box. “You’re keeping a permanent psi block around it?”

  “Yes. It can be turned off when contact is wanted.”

  Trigger was silent a moment, watching the Siren. She shook her head then. “I still don’t believe they don’t have intelligence!”

  Pilch shrugged. “I won’t say you’re wrong. But if you’re right, it doesn’t necessarily improve the situation. The psi qualities that were tapped appear to be those of a mechanism—a powerful mechanism normally inaccessible to alien psi contact. When contact is made, there is instant and violent reaction. If this is a reasoned response, the Siren seems to be an entity which regards any psi mind not of its own species as an enemy. There’s no hesitation, no attempt to evaluate the contact.”