The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D.

by David H. Keller

  Milligan, the iron man, the dauntless explorer of the waste places of the earth, looked at the biologist as though fascinated by his remarks. He had often faced danger, but it seemed as though he dreaded to face this thought. Yet, he forced himself to speak.

  “That is what I thought,” he said, “when I studied those dead cities. Something drove those people out. It came slowly, not like killing waves of animals or migratory invasions of savage tribes. It came slowly and the people deserted, while they still had time, and left the cities to the vegetable kingdom. Now a few monkeys sport furtively on the temple roofs of Angkor and a few parrots scream in Lubaantum, but they are afraid to venture too close or too near the ground. And the natives are afraid; they say the places are populated with demons, but in reality they will not be honest with you and tell you just what it is that they are afraid of. I feel that this threat from the ground drove those busy millions into an enforced exile, and it was so terrible, so horrible in its menacing frightfulness, that instinctively they decided to forget it, to blot the whole episode from the mental pictures of the history of their race.

  “That is what I had in mind. And I could not tell anyone, because I was sure he would laugh at me. Then I saw a starting of it in England, and here in America I met a man who believes it possible and another man who says that he knows a place where a swamp-hole is just beginning to belch forth its gruesome cargo. Suppose we go to Yeastford and study that hole? Perhaps then we will be able to see what can be done.”

  “And it will have to be done secretly and fast, because if it attacks our cities as it did in ages past or as it has that little part of England, then our civilization is doomed,” cried White.

  “Bosh!” cried the Major. “Bosh and fiddle-faddle! Nothing can destroy us. We are too great, too powerful, too highly intellectual.”

  The Yeastford Real Estate Company had known about the swamphole when they bought the large area of land over in South Yeastford. They had been forced to buy the hole in order to secure the rest of the land. They knew when they bought it that they would never be able to sell it. It would never return a dollar of their investment to them; so, they simply charged up that acreage to profit and loss and added a little extra to the price of each building lot they sold.

  * * * *

  The town grew around the hole. A National Highway passed one side of it, a railroad another side, and two streets the remaining sides. Thus, the hole was surrounded on three sides by cement streets and on the remaining side by the tracks of the D. L. and W. R. R. A busy, happy and prosperous neighborhood of substantial folks lived there and passed the hole daily. They had become so accustomed to its being there that hardly any of them realized its presence.

  From the stout fence that surrounded it on all sides the land fell rapidly down to a circular center. The pitch was so steep that it was difficult to descend to the bottom. And there was nothing there when the bottom was reached except a mud hole, ice in winter, dry in summer and a muddy pond after every hard rain. Trees grew on the steep sides, ferns and moss covered the ground, a few pond lilies tried to live in the stagnant water, their only visitors the myriad mosquitoes, their only friends the little frogs who sat shyly on the lily pads.

  Birds flirted in the tree tops and gorged themselves in the fall on the wild grapes, while below a few rabbits and squirrels claimed ownership of the nuts that fell from the walnut and hickory-nut trees. Occasionally a dog would dash through the underbrush and in the fall a few hunters tried to kill the rabbits that had the temerity to live so close to civilization. That was the Swamp Hole of South Yeastford.

  The three men arrived at Yeastford about forty-eight hours after the hunter had lost his dog. They had decided that it would be best to keep the real reason for their triple visit a secret. So the Major simply told his housekeeper that he had two political friends visiting him, and asked the inquisitive reporter to say nothing about the fact that the Mayor was entertaining company. Fortunately, the next day was dismally drizzling, making it possible for the three to reach the hole unobserved, climb over the fence and slide down the steep embankment without anyone’s being the wiser.

  In a few minutes, aided by the force of gravitation, they reached the mud hole at the bottom. Sure enough, there was the new growth of ivy and on one side was the dead fox-hound. He attracted as much attention as the ivy. The Major poked him with a stick and then gave his verdict.

  “Dead as a doornail and dry as a piece of old leather.”

  “Looks like leather and bones to me,” observed White.

  “All the blood sucked out of him,” whispered Milligan. “See those long white tendrils? They have suckers on them just like those on the arms of an octopus. They just wrapped around the poor cur and sucked him dry. See those branches move! I do not know whether you have noticed it, but since we have been standing here there has been a marked movement over in our direction. I worked on that point with rabbits for a while and the long tendrils seemed to be able to either see or feel or smell flesh. Let me show you. That is why I brought over this pole and the pound of liver. We will tie the liver to the pole and do some experimenting. Suppose we go around on the other side. Those long white arms are too close to me for comfort. There,” and he held the liver high in the air over a part of the plant, “we will see how it acts.”

  They did not have to wait long. The plant slowly lifted its stems into the air and surely, with almost an uncanny, human precision, sent its tentacles towards the piece of liver suspended in the air. As the meat on the end of the pole was moved, the vine moved, following it. And at last, moving with a swiftness that surpassed the agility of the human arms holding the pole the vine wrapped around the piece of meat and drew it down into the middle of the leaves.

  “The leaves themselves,” commented White, “are remarkably like the ordinary ivy except that they are white in spots. Were it not for those long tendrils, I would think that it was nothing exceptional. Of course, the fact that it eats meat is not unusual for the vegetable world—lots of plants eat meat.”

  “As far as I can tell,” interrupted Milligan, “this is just the same kind of ivy we saw in England. At least it looks the same to me; the thing that frightened us was the largeness of it and the thought of where it was coming from and what would happen if it did not stop coming. Of course, over there we saw miles and miles of stems, while here there seem to be just a few yards.”

  “It must have just started here,” explained the Major. “Just started. Fortunately, we found it in time. We must think of some way of stopping it—killing it—driving it back into the hole.”

  The three men made a queer spectacle as they stood there in the mist, talking about a danger that no one else in America realized. They were terribly in earnest, profoundly impressed with the immensity of the problem; and as they talked, the ivy grew towards them; grew towards them, especially Mayor Young, and silently sent a thin tendril up his trouser leg and wrapped around the ankle. He turned to go and fell, tripped by the vine. Other tendrils came toward him. White and Milligan pulled at him, took out their pocket knives and started to hack through the restraining bands. It seemed as though others came faster than they could be destroyed. At last the Major was free and the three men started to run up the hill as fast as they could.

  And as fast as they went up the hill the ivy came after them. “Hell!” gasped White, shivering as he turned around for a minute. “It is up with us, and it’s not growing. No plant could grow as fast as that! It is coming out of the hole. Hurry! HURRY!!” He paused on a flat spot, seized a large stone and hurled it down the hill. The rock bounded into the air, was caught in flight by a dozen tendrils, played with in the air and then tossed aside as though inventoried as useless. And a minute later the three men reached the fence, climbed awkwardly over it and stood breathless on the cement walk. Major Young uncovered his legs and looked at them. They were bleeding from fifty small wounds.

  Even as he bent over, a hand tapped his shoulder. “You three
men are under arrest for trespass,” said the policeman. “Can’t you see that there is a ‘no hunting’ sign on that tree?”

  Mayor Young stood erect and eyed the man coolly.

  “I should think you would know me, Thomas?” he barked.

  “Certainly he knows you,” interrupted another man, none other than Hiram Jones, President of the Yeastford Real Estate Company. “Certainly he knows you, and so do I. You thought you were clever at that last election. You have tried for years to make a fool out of me, and now I am going to make one out of you. You three men are arrested for trespass. Tell your stories to the Magistrate. Go ahead, Thomas. I will make the necessary charges against them.”

  “But my dear man,” expostulated Milligan, “you don’t know—”

  “Don’t ‘dear man’ me,” shouted Jones. “You talk like an English actor. I’ll teach the three of you to hunt on my land!”

  “It was the ivy we were after,” explained White.

  “It’s something you ought to know about,” added Milligan.

  “If you do not believe me, look at my legs,” pleaded the Major.

  “The three of you are drunk. That is another charge, Thomas. Drunk, disorderly and trespass. Run them in.”

  That night the three men sat comfortably in the bachelor home of the Major. Their experiences had been decidedly unpleasant. All the political enemies of the Mayor had delighted in his arrest, and while it had resulted in nothing more serious than a fine, which he paid at once for the three of them, still, it was a humiliation which rankled the spirit of the proud ex-soldier. Besides, his legs hurt. There must have been a poison in the tendrils which was infecting the minute wounds. He sullenly bit on the end of the cigar that he was smoking. The other two watched him closely. At last he threw the butt into the ash tray and growled.

  “That stuff is growing fast. By morning it will fill the whole damn hole. Perhaps by tomorrow it will start to cross the fence.”

  “Are we just going to sit here and do nothing?” asked White.

  “The people ought to be warned of their danger. When it gets into the road, the little children playing there—you know what might happen to the little children. And after all, Major Young, you are the Mayor of the town. You owe something to your office.”The Mayor of Yeastford looked sharply at the Englishman.

  “What do you think I ought to do?” he asked.

  “Let’s wait till morning,” urged White. “Then we can go and see just what the situation is. I guess they won’t arrest us for just walking on the street or the sidewalk.”

  * * * *

  That is what they did; just waited till morning. All during the night the plant came out of the hole and all during the night it climbed up the hill and up on the trees and it grew, as well as crawled. The morning came, bright and free from the fog of yestermorn. The men, after a leisurely breakfast, walked towards the swamp-hole. Even from a distance they could easily see that there was a change in it. The trees looked larger and greener, and as they neared the hole they saw that it was not a hole anymore; there was a large hill of green ivy with a few dead trees sticking their bare branches through the white and green leaves, and the whole mass was moving with a sickening undulation that made the three observers shudder.

  They were not the only ones watching the hole. Thomas, the policeman, was there, and Hiram Jones and half a dozen others, and as many women, who were holding their children tightly by the hands. One of the women was talking in a shrill tone to Jones, and holding her three-year-old child in her arms.

  “It’s dangerous!” she screamed. “You own that land, and you ought to do something. I tell you it was dragging my child down there when I heard the scream and ran and pulled her loose. I was peeling potatoes and luck would have it, I carried the knife with me. You going to let that weed grow there and kill our children?”

  “Bosh!” sneered Hiram Jones. “It is just ivy. Started to grow there and the swamp-hole was so rich it grew fast. Just ivy, I am telling you. I am going to make cuttings of it and sell it for ten cents a cutting. Lots of folks will buy a fast-growing vine like that for ten cents. I’ll show you what I think of it. Bah! I’ll walk through it.”

  He jumped over the fence and started down the hill. Mayor Young called to him to stop, to come back, but he kept on. That is, he kept on for a little while, and then he turned around and started to scream. It was a shrill, animal cry, and before it was ended the ivy was over him, barring him from the onlookers except for a few undulating movements. Another scream, and then silence.

  The ivy started in a hundred places to cross the road. The folks of South Yeastford shrank back from it. Women grabbed their children and ran trembling to their nearby homes, shutting the doors and locking them. Thomas walked over to the Mayor.

  “What does it mean, Major?” he asked. There was no doubt about the fact that he was bothered. “Should I get some of the boys and go in after him?”

  “Better not, Thomas. He is going to stay there and so will anyone else who goes in there.”

  “But it is just a plant, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, it is just a plant,” the Mayor replied, rather absently. “Just a plant. I think they call it ivy, Thomas. You go around and tell all the women to keep their children indoors. Mr. White and Mr. Milligan, suppose we go back to my home and talk this over. I am sure that we can do no good by standing here and watching that damn thing grow. At the rate it is going it will be across the roads by noon, and then—well—we will either have to stop it or make the people get out of their homes.”

  In an hour the Courthouse bell called the men of the town to a mass meeting. The bell was used only during Court week or in case of fire. Naturally the men of the town were curious. The Mayor lost no time in telling them the reason back of the meeting. He talked to them right from the shoulder; there was no mincing of words.

  “The men of this town had better get axes and knives and hatchets and start fighting,” he ended. “Otherwise, the people in South Yeastford will be driven from their homes in a few days. And they had better leave if the ivy comes near them. I am going to leave this in the hands of the Councilmen, and I and my guests are going to see the Governor.”

  Of course, there was endless talk. Everyone knew that the Mayor had been fined the day before for disorderly conduct. Perhaps he was still drunk. Still, most of the men who attended the meeting left it to walk over to South Yeastford. What they saw there was not especially assuring. The ivy was now over the road and starting to grow over the lawns on the other side. An automobile had been driven over that street, but it had been caught by the ivy, and the man driving it had barely escaped with his life. It did not take the curious spectators long to realize that they had to start in and get busy. They did so, but without discipline or order, each man for himself and in any way and place that he wanted to. They worked all the rest of that day, and then, rather satisfied with clearing the street, they went to their homes for the night.

  The next morning the ivy had recrossed the street and was curling around some of the houses. By that time the State Constabulary, under orders from the Governor, arrived and took charge of the work. It was rumored that several regiments of State Militia had been ordered out. Eager newspaper reporters began to interrogate the town people. Thomas, the policeman, was in his glory. He was especially clever in describing how Hiram Smith had yelled as the ivy dragged him under.

  It is an interesting fact that the Governor gave one hundred percent credit to the story told him by the three visitors from Yeastford. Major Young, White and Milligan had been able to show him that a very real danger existed in his state of Pennsylvania. He promised the Mayor all the help that the state machinery could afford. He even offered to come to Yeastford himself, as soon as he could do so. After the conference, he gave a long interview to the newspapers, in which he spoke much about himself and little about his three visitors. One would judge, from reading the article, that the Governor had been the first one to discover the ivy and to
recognize its danger.

  On the fifth day two regiments of National Guards and over a thousand citizens were actively fighting the growing ivy. The men were working in relays. The work was being performed in an orderly and systematic manner. With the greatest difficulty, the roads were kept clear and the ivy was confined to the swamp-hole.

  The fight to keep the ivy inside the fence was apparently a fairly easy one. Every night the ivy grew, and every day the branches that went over the fence were cut off. Of course, it took till nearly dark to finish the day’s work, but when darkness came the road and sidewalks were cleared of the vegetating threat. There were some casualties, but the offensive powers of the plant seemed to be considerably diminished by the multiple traumatisms that it was suffering. It looked like an easy victory. Even Milligan, with his superior knowledge, was hopeful of success. On the second day White had returned to New York for further study of the plant in his laboratory. He did not return till the sixth day of the fight.

  On the train from New York he thought over the situation. As the train neared the Water Gap he went out on the rear platform. The Gap was passed and then the pulp-mill and the track began to parallel Broadhead’s Creek. There, above the power dam, he saw something that made him turn white. He was still swearing when he jumped off the train at East Yeastford. Milligan, who had received the wire announcing his return, was astonished to see the usually placid biologist so upset.

  “Milligan, what have those fools been doing?”