“Marian, doll-baby,” how do you know about this?”
“My family collects things. Father is a philatelist and my mother is a numismatist—”
“Yeah-yeah, coins—”
“And two of the didrachmas show zilphion. I looked it up again in the library. Sprouts are going to come up from each leaf base and grow a round flower. The central stalk will have a larger blossom on top. I imagine they’ll be something like onion flowers, or maybe agapanthus. You wait and see. But while we’re waiting, Snuggles—”
So that’s the way it is at our house.
You’ll see my pickup parked around Fletcher Hills during the day. I cut grass and prune shrubs and sell exotics and suck in my breath politely. Behind my inscrutable Oriental face, brother, I got problems.
You buy a man a drink and he buys one back.
We inadvertently gave the beetles a whee, and they gave us zilphion seeds. Now, dammit, are they friends or foes? Was the flowering of Greece due to zilphion? Or the decay? Demographers, the guys who study populations, guess that Greece grew like mad during that time. But no one has a monopoly on plants. What about the Egyptians and the Minoan Cretans, or was the Greek way of making olive oil different?
Olive oil is a synergist for zilphion. So is alcohol.
That’s what Haru Watsonabe thinks about while he trims hedges and empties cuttings into plastic sacks for the compost pile. When he’s feeling cheerful, that is. But look at our ZPG chapter. It has splintered off into SPG. That means Select Population Growth. “Why let the stupids outbreed us?” said Hazelrigg. “We can do anything they can do better,” said Connie Wechsler.
While I don’t think zilphion is habit-forming, the predisposition induced gives me withdrawal symptoms when I go to work.
Will the bettles be back, or do they drop in every twenty-five hundred years?
Marian was quite right about the flowering of the plant. The central stalk grew fibrous but the shoots were delicious. She found an old cider press with a hand-crank macerator, and I put a belt-drive, geared-down electric motor on it. We collected two pounds of mature seed and then I pulled the plants, washed the roots, ran stalk and all through the macerator, and we squeezed twenty-two quarts of sweet, spicy syrup. We used a cupful as the sugar base for daiquiris at our last ZPG meeting—the one that turned into a little orgy by the swimming pool.
And the withdrawal symptoms when I leave Marian.
And the overpopulation of the world.
And the Arabs of North Africa boil and eat the leaves of a thorny plant called zilla, oddly a brassicacea, but not to be confused with zilphion.
And the Egyptians used the scarab as the symbol of the sun god Khepera, though the scarabaeus beetle rolls dung balls, and did those old Eygptians know something I don’t know?
And the golden age of Greece.
I lowered the moisture content of the seeds by sealing them into a large tin container over calcium chloride, using enough so the moisture absorbed produced no visible change in the chemical. Marian and I don’t talk together as much as before, so I made the decision myself. I gathered all the seeds into eight containers and rented space in a cave owned by a data storage company. Judging by the Malpighian layer—the seed-coat—zilphion seed is mesobiotic—three to fifteen years of viability. With a moisture content of six percent and a constant temperature of 50°, the seeds should be vigorous for five years minimum.
Somebody has got to be responsible.
I never asked for the honor. I was just standing there watching beetles dip water from the swimming pool. But the buck stops somewhere and I have five years of grace to think it over. If I don’t last that long—some mornings I’m not sure I will—the seeds and a short cover letter will be mailed to eight U.S. Agricultural Experiment stations.
But it’s not easy—
As a right-thinking man—
Go home and—uh—talk to Marian—
A tiger by the—
You see why I’m snarled up, why I bumble and buzz like a bee in Japanese tennis shoes from garden to garden. I wonder what the other gardeners think about?
Ugh!
<
* * * *
Doris Piserchia
IDIO
WE ARE IDIO:
Genadee: Her hair is short and black and sleek, and grows down to a fraction of an inch from her eyebrows. To look at her eyes alone, you wouldn’t know she was once brainless. They’re dark and shiny. She has a nice smile. Her build is like a pumpkin. No, a gourd. She has damp hands.
Creel: One of her ancestors must have been a spider. She has four arms. She can’t wear shoes because her feet leak. Anytime you want to find her just look for a yellow trail; at the end of it is Creel. Since she has become part of this three-in-one trinity, Creel has taken to stealing. When anyone misses something they look in her locker.
Risa: Me. How do I know what I look like? I’m back here gawking the other way. Except that I have big legs. Big arms, too. The hair on me is about half an inch long. Not bad.
We would rather be one trinity than three human vegetables. Now we don’t scream without making noise. Now if we want to scream, we do it.
Idio is a scientific experiment. It is living proof that anyone can perform meaningful work. It is a kick in the prunes of women who buck for abortion and mercy killing.
Right after Creel and Genadee and I were born, our mother gave us to the government. If anyone asked me what our I.Q. was, I wouldn’t know what to tell them. We vary from 60 to 75, except when the Cycler breaks down, then our I.Q. is about 25. For a dog, that’s okay. For a woman, it means she might as well be growing out in the garden.
The integrator in my head stimulates the waking parts of my brain, then it gathers up the energy and passes it on to the machine in the second brain of the trinity, which passes it on to the third brain. The Cycler takes all this current and sends it back through me. Each of the brains in Idio gets to share the energy produced by all three.
What this means is that our I.Q. is high enough so that we can get out of bed and act human. Without the machines, we would just lie still with our mouths open.
Idio is in the desert. We are working on a scientific project. This place is a weather station. Near one edge of the project is a radar unit. Idio goes into the unit four times a day-and pushes five buttons.
Don’t knock it. Nobody can push those five buttons but us, on account of a disease called boredom.
We had two caretakers. One of them we called Brown. He had brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. Green wore a green hat all the time. They said they were geniuses compared to us. Their regular job had been kicking Boots in the Navy, and they were always saying how they wanted to get back to it and leave the desert and the dumdums to hell where they belonged. We couldn’t have cared less, even when they called us names. They were supposed to look after us and cook for us and make sure we stayed in good shape, and if they didn’t, they would catch hell from their bosses “out there.” They didn’t bother us about how we kept house. If we didn’t want to clean the shack, it was our business. Our stink was their business. Brown and Green told us we had to take baths every night or they would switch off the Cycler.
* * * *
“All right, idiots, drag your slimy butts out of bed or I’ll switch you back into a cabbage, turnip and radish.”
I opened my eyes and looked up and saw God-only-knew-what. The integrators in our brains lost power when we went to sleep. Idio became three dumdums. These woke up in darkness, inside and out. After a few minutes the integrators perked up and and the darkness faded.
Idio sat up.
“Hi there, Brown, you look good enough to lap,” I said.
He didn’t know what I was saying. We could understand him and Green when they talked, but they said we were mushmouths who would never learn to speak. I was always trying to figure that out. Creel and Genadee and I had no trouble understanding one another.
“One of these days I aim to strip
the pants off him,” said Genadee. She giggled and her widow’s peak touched her eyebrows. “Got a feeling he’s interesting.”
“Hey, you know what? Somebody wet my bed.” Creel leaned forward and reached for Brown, who hotfooted it away. One of his hands hovered near a machine on a table. That was the Cycler.
“Goddammit, Creel, leave him alone,” I said. “He might turn it off.”
We sat on our beds and started discussing what it would be like if the Cycler were turned off permanently.
Brown listened to us for a minute, then he said, “Jesus,” and went out
“Why do you call Brown a him?” said Genadee.
“Get your mind off stupid subjects,” I said.
She stood up and scratched herself all over, then she got dressed with everything going on wrong side out. She forgot underwear.
I sat on the edge of my bed and looked at the hair on my legs. Sometimes I thought about shaving it off, only I did that once and it grew back in stiff and since it’s all the way up my belly I was damn uncomfortable.
“I recollect I had six cans of beer,” I said.
“Don’t look at me.” Genadee made a big to-do about putting on lipstick. Her shoes were on the wrong feet. She had on a pair of jeans and a red sweater. Since the pants were on backwards she couldn’t get the zipper all the way up without grinding some meat. Sometimes she did that.
“You’re a dirty liar, and don’t remind me that you took a bath last night.”
“Kiss off,” she said, and hauled her rosary from a drawer and began praying. I think that was the first thing they taught her after she graduated from being a vegetable.
I felt crabby as hell. Stomped into the bathroom and tore open the first door and there sat Creel with a can of beer in one hand and one of Brown’s pictures in the other. Should have known better, but I reached out and grabbed the beer. She let out a howl and came up off the pot and rammed me in the belly with her head. Then she took back the beer and sat down again.
I went out and spent a few minutes kicking a hole in the wall. Pretty soon she came in, and when I told her the beer was mine, she handed it over. She was an amiable critter except when she was on the can.
My clock wasn’t on my bureau. It was in Creel’s locker, along with just about everything else I owned. I took it all back to my own locker and gave that thief a kick in the rear.
Idio walked out onto the desert. We wore sunglasses because our pupils didn’t respond to light fast enough. We didn’t mind the heat, in fact we liked it. I walked in front. Genadee kicked sand on my legs. It itched and reminded me that I forgot my jeans.
“First time I ever knew King Kong had that much hair on her behind,” said Creel.
“He’s a him,” I said over my shoulder.
“What’s the difference?” said Genadee. She ran ahead of us, slowed down and began to strut. Something was wrong with the way God put her hips together. When her feet hit the ground they were about a yard apart. Kind of funny-looking.
The radar unit was a big sonofabitch made of white rock. There was only one door in it, and when you went in you felt like you were walking into a grave. Smelled dry. It was quiet.
Idio was afraid of the machines in the radar building. Luckily, we were attracted to the color red. The five buttons on the five machines were a bright red.
“Tit,” I said and punched the first one.
“Tit,” said Creel and punched the second.
“Tit,” said Genadee and punched the third.
Quick as could be I punched the last two buttons. Usually we punched those last ones together. I got clobbered for taking their turns, but it was worth it. They slugged me and busted me in the mouth and then I finally got sore, picked them both up by their sweater fronts and tossed them out the door and let them eat dirt.
“You look sick,” I said to Green at lunchtime.
“He looks sick?” said Creel.
“Why is he a he?” said Genadee.
“I’ll ask Sister,” I told her. Again I said to Green, “You look sick.”
It didn’t do any good. Green never talked to us. He never looked at us, either, unless he had to.
We ate canned spaghetti and salad.
“Did you wash that lettuce?” said Brown, and Green nodded.
Genadee dropped her spoon and looked as if she might scream.
“He isn’t calling you a cabbage,” I said to her. “Lettuce and cabbage ain’t the same.”
We liked the cafeteria. It had wooden walls and tables and chairs and red curtains and a potbelly stove. Brown called the stove a rotten bastard and why can’t we have decent equipment in this place God forgot.
Creel put some spaghetti in her pocket.
“All right, get up and stand in the corner,” said Brown. “All three of you. Stay there until you fall over. You’re nothing but slobs.”
I stood with my nose in the crack and wondered at the ignorance of pretty Brown boy. It wasn’t much of a punishment to stand us in the corner. Creel couldn’t stay straight and still for more than five minutes before her head started spinning. She had something wrong with a tube of water in her ear. Everytime she stood still for a while she always fell unconscious, and when one part of Idio conked out that was the end of the trinity and the rebirth of the dumdums.
I heard Green go outside. From the corner of my eye I hunted for Brown. Couldn’t see him. Turned and looked. He wasn’t there.
“They’re gone,” I said.
“So what?” said Genadee. “They say we stand here, we stand.”
“Why?”
“Well, why not?”
“Sister says independence is not listening to orders.”
“Does that include an Idio?”
“You know what an Idio is?” I said. “It’s people born with something wrong with them. Three people.”
“A trinity?” said Creel.
“Right. A trinity is an Idio. That doesn’t mean we’re idiots. Sometimes we are and sometimes we aren’t. Depends on the chemistry of the moment.”
“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” said Genadee.
We went back to our shack and listened to records. It was a nice change to do that instead of standing in the corner until Creel fainted and we all fell on our heads.
* * * *
A few days before, I was punching the buttons in the radar station and dropped my top down in one of the machines. I tried to get it out, but it was stuck in a crack and I couldn’t work it loose. Got irritated and punched wild and pushed a yellow button. Sister was born that day. She may not have been a genius, but I never asked her a question she couldn’t answer.
“You ever hear of Idio?” I said.
“Project Idio is on my tapes,” said Sister.
“Don’t recollect you being around before.”
“Who’s in that machine?” said Creel.
“Get the hell out,” said Genadee. “What do you think you’re doing hiding in there?”
“I respond to questions,” said Sister.
“How do you figure we can talk all of a sudden?” I said.
“You activated my mechanism.”
“What does that mean?”
“We are in communication.”
“Hell, this thing is another idiot,” said Genadee.
* * * *
Brown and Green used to read books, but later they spent most of their time looking at pictures. I described some of the pictures to Sister and she said they were pornography. She said some of the people in the pictures were women.
“Bull,” said Creel.
‘Tit,” said Genadee.
“This Idio is women,” I said to Sister. “Why don’t we look like the pictures Brown and Green study all the time?”
“Idio is physically defective.”
“What does that mean?” said Genadee.
“It means we aren’t beautiful,” I said.
“Go to hell, I’m as good-looking as you any day,” said Creel.
&
nbsp; “Why does Creel have four arms and all that piddling equipment?” I said to Sister.
“Define the word ‘piddling.’ “
“Going to the bathroom.”
“The Idio portion known as Creel is androgynous.”
“What kind of language is that?” I said.
“It only means she got four arms,” said Genadee.
Orbit 13 - [Anthology] Page 12