“That won't be necessary,” I reassured her. “I'm sorry about the lawyers, but everyone has to sign to say they understood the safety talk. Liability insurance costs a fortune these days.” I handed out a pile of forms to the human contingent. Head office had already cleared the alien. What was her name again? Holly and brown rice ... Olibrys.
“When you're carrying a spade, you keep it down by your legs, parallel to the ground, holding it at the point of balance.” I demonstrated, balancing the spade on one finger before an arthritic tremor made me hastily clutch the shaft with a full grip. “This is so that if you fall, the spade goes harmlessly off to the side. You don't swing it around, or carry it over your shoulders, because if you tripped you could chop someone's head off. And then we'd lose our no-claims bonus."
As I mentioned each incorrect use of the spade, a hologram made comic pratfalls to illustrate the dreadful consequences. “When you're not digging with it, you don't hang it on a branch, or lean it against a tree, or leave it in a trench with the handle sticking up. You place the tool flat on the ground, in an out-of-the-way spot, with the blade pointing downward—so that if anyone does tread on it, they don't have a Tom and Jerry moment.” Holographic cartoon characters chased each other round the flitter park, tripping over spades and treading on rakes that sprang up to whack them in the face.
“Any questions on the spade? No? We also have mattocks and bow-saws in the flitter, and I'll instruct you on those if we need them. But for now, if you've all signed your waivers, we can get on and attack some weeds."
I counted the forms to make sure everyone had signed. Six volunteers—it was the biggest Sunday group I'd run for years. Maybe I could entice some of these newcomers into coming along regularly. It would be good to chat with new people. When you live alone and all your old friends have died or emigrated, it's hard to get any conversation except with voice-activated appliances.
Everyone picked up a spade, and we headed down toward the river. It was a beautiful day to be outdoors. The sun blazed through fleecy clouds gambolling across the sky, and the whirling wind turbines atop the valley showed there was plenty of breeze to cool us while we worked. Yellow flowers of lesser celandine shone in drifts under the trees. Lower down, the trees gave way to brambles and great swathes of ramsons, their small white spikes just beginning to bloom. I tore off a leaf and crushed it under my nose, inhaling the scent of wild garlic.
The path turned left by the riverside. Small patches of darkness began to appear among the bluebells, like drops of poison spilt in the undergrowth. The blotches grew bigger, along with the plants that made them. Tall dark fronds sucked in light like succulents drinking every drop of desert dew, not wasting a single red, blue, or green photon. The shadowy fern swallowed the color of the spring countryside, leaving only darkness growing by the river.
I clutched my spade tighter. “Here we are,” I said. “This is Hastillan blackweed."
One of the new volunteers stared at the weed as if it were Satan wearing a Manchester United scarf. “The alien plot to conquer the Earth,” he said, delivering the line as though he'd been saving it up all morning.
At my age I don't recall names so well as I used to. We'd had a round of introductions before the tools talk, but the effort of memorizing one alien had squeezed out all the humans. Yet his “Save the Memes” T-shirt jogged something in my brain. Tim, was it? Jim?
Whoever he was, he turned to Olibrys with a menacing expression. “What does it do?” he demanded.
“I don't know what you mean,” she said. The translator's neutral tone made it sound as if she didn't care.
“Will it poison the atmosphere? Or infect us with a fatal disease?"
“Kim,” I said, “there's no need for that attitude. We're all here today for the same reason: to get rid of the blackweed. Olibrys has come to help, so if you can't be friendly, be polite. And if you can't be polite, shut up."
“It's Keith. And this stuff must be evil, or we wouldn't be cutting it down."
I sighed. “No plant is evil. It's just disruptive in the wrong place, which in this case happens to be the Earth. As for what it does—you can see what it's doing. It grows faster than the native plants, so it shades them out. And here it has no enemies or parasites, so nothing keeps it in check. Most wildlife won't eat it, which is just as well because it's poisonous.
“But none of that's unique to blackweed. Introduced plants have been causing havoc for centuries. Rhododendrons look lovely in the garden, but out here they poison sheep. We battled Japanese knotweed for decades before we finally got rid of it. On the other hand"—I walked a few paces to a small bamboo-like stem—"with Himalayan balsam, we eventually had to give in. Bee-keepers like it, because bees love Himalayan balsam, but conservationists hate it because it promotes erosion, and crowds out other plants, and doesn't support water voles or other mammals. Yet it's so well established, there's nothing we can do.
“That's the key point. The quicker we tackle the blackweed, the more chance we have of stopping it. So let's get on with it, shall we?"
The volunteers did not look especially eager to start. “You say it's poisonous?” said a woman with thick-framed glasses and hair the vibrant copper of dogwood in autumn. On the walk down, her shiny new boots had been baptized with mud.
I've always found the Scottish accent particularly sexy. No doubt she'd be more eager to talk if she thought I wasn't trying to poison her.
“It's not lethal to humans—but I recommend you all wear gloves. Did we bring the gloves?"
“Right here,” said John, the only one of my few regulars who'd come out today, and the only one of the group with enough sense to wear a sun-hat. He put down a bucket full of gloves of all colors, textures, and states of disrepair. John and I had already snagged the best pairs before we set off.
I donned my gloves and demonstrated digging up one of the weeds. “Don't start too close to the plant, or you won't get all the roots. Everything needs to come out, or it'll just grow back.” With a practiced wrench of the spade, I had the intruder out in no time. It still looked menacing in death: a black tangle on the green moss, looking wrong because it combined features that had never evolved together on Earth.
“Because they're poisonous,” I continued, “we can't leave the dead plants to compost down. Please pile them up somewhere open and level, so when we finish I can bring the flitter down and we'll load them in.
“If you have any questions, speak to me or John. We're both qualified first-aiders, by the way. And if you didn't catch it before, my name's Ben.” As I said this, I looked at the Scottish woman and smiled.
She said, “Why are we digging up this stuff by hand? Why can't we just use weedkiller or something?"
“The only chemicals that kill the blackweed are so toxic we'd rather not slosh them around a riverbank. This is the safest control method.” I paused. “Any other questions?"
“What time's lunch?” someone called.
I laughed. “Spoken like a true volunteer. I'll give you a shout around one o'clock. Anything else? Okay, let's spread out and do some work."
While I talked, I'd edged toward Olibrys. “Let's go up the valley,” I said. “That's where the bigger weeds are.” I thought it would be politic to separate her from Keith and his friends.
I let Olibrys go in front, so I could get a good look at her while we walked. It was the first time I'd seen a Hastillan in the flesh. On TV they tend to look pale and fragile, but Olibrys exuded strength as she strode on ahead. She probably shaded two meters—a few centimeters taller than me—if you included the cilia that rippled on her head like a restless crown, poking up to sample the air, then drooping again in a complex cycle. Her narrow waist gave her a slightly insectile appearance from behind, an impression heightened by occasional iridescent glints from her greyish skin. She wore a stiff blue something-or-other around her upper torso—I barely know what women's fashions are called, let alone alien garments. A shawl? A shell? I wondered what she ha
d under it. Not breasts, of course. Indeed, I only assumed she was female because her translator had a woman's voice.
As we climbed a short incline, the river growing louder as we approached the weir, I checked the steps and revetments I'd put in a few years ago. The wood was beginning to rot—we don't use chemically-treated timber—but I figured it would last another year or so. We had more pressing priorities right now.
At the top, a clump of young blackweed blocked the path. I glimpsed a thin black filament trailing from an enormous frond growing by the river. A stolon, we'd call it in an Earth plant. Back home, my strawberries were doing the same thing: spreading by sending out runners that rooted wherever they could. The only difference was that slugs kept munching my strawberries, but not even slugs would touch the blackweed.
“Now you can show me your Most Adept Shoveling,” I said to Olibrys.
It's a good thing I'm well past the age of being competitive, because she was strong and fast and tireless. Her muscle-power propelled the spade blade-deep into the earth with one smooth push, as if she were shoveling sand, rather than thick Yorkshire soil full of stones and roots. Soon, the entire clump of blackweed lay limp beside the path.
I glanced back down the valley at the other volunteers, who weren't working nearly as hard. Some of them had yet to start, finding it necessary to warm up to the task with a long chat. But John looked to have things in hand, as he pointed out various thickets of weed, and sent a group across the bridge to clear the other bank.
Olibrys and I tackled the huge parent frond by the waterside, digging on opposite sides. Unable to read her body language, I couldn't tell whether she enjoyed the task or resented it. I reckoned her presence was probably a PR stunt by the Hastillan embassy, a conciliatory gesture after the fuss we'd kicked up about the blackweed, but I couldn't complain about her work-rate.
I wiped sweat from my brow, and Olibrys opened her snout wide and panted like a dog, as we vanquished the giant weed, then grubbed up all the roots. Afterward I took a refreshing drink from the river—it always tastes so much better than tap water—and rested on a moss-encrusted rock. Looking at the dead weed, I noticed pale specks where berries had started to grow. The blackweed didn't rely solely on stolons, but also flung its pollen to the wind. Soon a crop of large orange berries would appear, and float downstream to choke yet more riverbank with weed. Others might be eaten by birds, who'd excrete seeds before succumbing to the poison. We had to get rid of as much blackweed as we could, before the berries ripened.
“So how did this stuff get out here?” I asked Olibrys.
“Biocontrol breach,” she replied.
The Hastillan ambassador had used the exact same phrase. “What does that mean?"
“It means that our anti-contamination procedures were broken."
“How exactly?"
“I don't know,” said Olibrys.
“Does anyone know?” I asked, trying to remain patient. The embassy had been apologetic but evasive. If Olibrys was going to be out here all day, I'd keep asking until I got an answer.
She paused, staring at a twig caught in an eddy below the weir. “There's nothing more I can say."
“Don't you think we deserve an explanation? This is our home!"
“You live here? I thought—"
“I live on this planet, yes. And I've been a woods warden in West Yorkshire for thirty years.” Twenty of them unpaid, I added to myself.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I do think you deserve an answer. But I've been asked not to talk about it."
I threw a stone into the river with an angry splash. “Don't you see how bad that looks? It makes people like Keith think you really are trying to poison the Earth."
“That's what I told my mother,” said Olibrys. “She's embarrassed, that's all, and she asked me to keep quiet. But I don't want to lie. I'm not a diplomat, so I shouldn't have to."
“Your mother?"
“She's the ambassador. The embassy is one big family—sisters, cous-ins.... “The translator beeped to indicate another, uninterpretable concept. “They bring their offspring with them. And of course the kids get bored, stuck on a primitive world with nothing to do. So they come out here and get high."
I frowned, wondering if the translator had spoken correctly. The Yorkshire moors aren't especially high, not compared to the Lake District. Or did she mean—"The blackweed is a drug?"
“That's right. The embassy is all overseen—surveillance everywhere—so we can't do anything at home. But there are no monitors out here. It's just like the backwoods on Hastilla. Chew the berries, spit the seed, spread the weed ... and come back next year."
I stood up, and pointed to the patches of blackweed smothering the valley. “You people planted this here deliberately, just so you could get high?” My voice trembled with outrage. I hadn't been so angry since someone fly-tipped garbage on the orchids.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “They're only kids. They didn't know it would spread so fast. I've never seen so much blackweed in my life. On Hastilla it's rare: that's why people spit the seeds, to encourage it."
I grabbed my spade and moved to the next blackweed. As I stabbed the blade into the earth, each blow shook the fronds and made them spill pollen from feathery catkins. Fueled by anger and adrenaline, I wrenched the interloper out of the ground with one mighty heave. Olibrys worked alongside me, creating a vast pile of weed. I had to hastily spread the heap before it toppled into the river.
I'd assumed the blackweed's introduction was an accident. I could forgive the aliens that: we humans had made enough mistakes on our own planet that we could hardly criticize someone else's. But a deliberate introduction—the wanton despoliation of countryside I'd stewarded for decades—made me want to scream.
Dark paranoid thoughts crossed my mind. The blackweed was rare on Hastilla; it grew well here. Drugs are always a profitable crop. Maybe the Hastillans planned to turn Earth into a blackweed farm, so the whole home planet could get high.
Yet the embassy had seemed genuinely contrite when we complained about the weed. And Olibrys stood beside me, rooting out the plants far faster than I.
In the silence between us, birds squawked to defend their territory.
“I appreciate your coming out here to help dig this stuff up,” I said at last. “I guess that won't make you very popular with the berry-eaters."
“No, it won't,” said Olibrys. “They've already accused me of careerism and crawling to my mother, of caring far too much about some primitive little planet's habitat and government."
I laughed. “Which of those is true? Why are you really here?"
“I felt we had an obligation,” Olibrys said, making me wonder if she'd originally helped plant the weed. She continued, “We are guests here, even if unwelcome. Though if you all feel so strongly about protecting your home from alien infestations, I'm surprised there aren't more people out here today."
“Conservation hasn't been fashionable since space travel came along. Now that we have access to other planets, this one's become disposable.” I thought of my friends who'd emigrated. “Is that how it is with your people? Do you have much environment left on Hastilla, or is it all cities and wasteland?"
“There's hardly any wild habitat. That's one reason the blackweed is rare. Of course, kids try to grow it in their gardens, but the monitors put a stop to that."
She turned the conversation to Earth, asking what we did for fun. I talked about booze and football and nightclubs, and all the other things I dimly remembered. I enjoyed chatting with Olibrys; her translator didn't have all the latest slang and catchphrases that infested young people's conversations like weeds.
As we talked, we continued digging. It's a curious paradox that conservation so often involves destruction. Over the years I've felled rhododendrons, burned gorse, pulled ragwort, cleared Himalayan balsam, destroyed GM escapees—all plenty of practice for rooting out alien drug crops.
My aching muscles told me it was lunchtime. I
walked back down the path, looking for a suitable space with convenient rocks for us all to sit on. My old bones don't like squatting on the ground; I like to perch on a tree-stump, or a rock with enough moss to cushion my scrawny backside.
Some of the volunteers had clustered into a gossipy knot. “Anyone fancy a cup of tea?” I called. They nodded eagerly. “Then go get me some dry wood."
I filled the kettle from the river. As people brought back wood, I heaped up the smallest, driest scraps. In the flitter I had a gadget that would zap water to an instant boil, but there's something primal about building a fire. It always reminds me of going camping as a boy, of the year I spent in Canada, of all the cups of tea drunk on all the volunteer outings over the decades—the hedge laying, the wildlife surveys, the footpath repair—all the unsung things that keep the countryside alive for those who come to drop cigarette butts and throw beer-cans out of flitter windows.
I got the fire going—I'm not above using a modern gadget for that—and put the kettle on. It's a tall hollow cone with the water in a sleeve surrounding the central fire, so it heats up quickly when flames start licking out of the top. I dropped a couple of larger twigs down the chimney next to the spout.
As usual, I didn't need to shout, “Lunchtime!” Drawn by the fire and the prospect of a hot drink, the volunteers started to bag the least uncomfortable rocks to sit on. I had already placed my rucksack on the mossiest stump. John fussed with the brew-kit, and I let him sort out everyone's drinks. He knew what I wanted: black tea, no sugar, none of that fancy herbal crap.
“I saw a few piles of blackweed on my way down,” I said to the group. “I think we've made a good start. How are you finding it?” In truth the volunteers hadn't done much yet, but I've found that it's best to praise them—then they're more likely to come back. It takes people time to get used to hard work, especially soft office drones who've never done anything more strenuous than ten minutes on an exercise bike.
“It's hard getting those roots up,” said a young guy in a Leeds Rhinos shirt, as he tucked into his sandwiches.
Asimov's SF, February 2006 Page 11