The Saliva Tree

by Brian W Aldiss

  There were wound marks across his neck and throat and what had been his face, and from these wounds his substance drained, so that he slowly deflated into his trampled bed of flour and dust. Perhaps the sight of fabled Medusa's head, that turned men to stone, was no worse than this, for we stood there utterly paralyzed. It was a blast from Farmer Grendon's shot– gun that brought us back to life.

  He had threatened to shoot me. Now, seeing us despoiling his flour sacks and apparently about to make off with a calf, he fired at us. We had no choice but to run for it. Grendon was in no explaining mood. Good Nancy came running out to stop him, but Neckland was charging up too with the pair of savage dogs' growling at the ends of their chains. .

  Bruce and I had ridden up on my Daisy. I had left her saddled. Bringing her out of the stable at a trot, I heaved Bruce up into the saddle and was about to climb on myself when the gun went off again and I felt a burning pain in my leg. Bruce dragged me into the saddle and we were off1 half unconscious.

  Here I lie now in bed, and should be about again in a couple of days. Fortunately, the shot did not harm any bones.

  So you see how the farm is now a place of the damned! Once, I thought it might even become a new Eden, growing the food of the gods for men like gods. Insteadalas! the first meeting between humanity and beings from another world has proved disastrous, and the Eden is become a battleground for a war of worlds. How can our anticipations for the future be anything other than gloomy?

  Before I close this over-long account, I must answer a query in your letter and pose another to you, more personal than yours to me.

  First, you question if the Aurigans are entirely invisible and sayif I may quote your letter"Any alteration in the refrac– tive index of the eye lenses would make vision impossible, but without such alteration the eyes would be visible as glassy globules. And for vision it is also necessary that there should be visual purple behind the retina and an opaque cornea. How then do your Aurigans manage for vision?" The answer must be that they do without eyesight as we know it, for I think they naturally maintain a complete invisibility. How they "see" I know not, but whatever sense they use, it is effective. How they communicate I know notour fellow made not the slightest sound when I speared his foot!yet it is apparent they must communicate effectively. Perhaps they tried originally to communicate with us through a mysterious sense we do not possess and, on receiving no answer, assumed us to be as dumb as our dumb animals. If so, what a tragedy!

  Now to my personal inquiry. I know, sir, that you must grow more busy as you grow more famous; but I feel that what transpires here in this remote corner of East Anglia is of momentous import to the world and the future. Could you not take it upon yourself to pay us a visit here? You would be comfortable at one of our two inns, and the journey here by railway is efficient if tediousyou can easily 'get a regular wagon from Heigham station here, a distance of only eight miles. You could then view Grendon's farm for yourself, and perhaps one of these interstellar beings too. I feel you are as much amused as concerned by the accounts you receive from the undersigned, but I swear not one detail is exaggerated. Say you can come!

  If you need persuasion, reflect on how much delight it will give to

  Your sincere admirer,

  Gregory Rolles.

  Reading this long letter through, scratching out two superfluous adjectives, Gregory lay back in some satisfaction. He had the feeling he was still involved in the struggle although temporarily out of action.

  But the later afternoon brought him disquieting news. Tommy, the baker's boy, had gone out as far as the Grendon farm. Then the ugly legends circulating in the village about the place had risen in his mind, and he had stood wondering whether he should go on. An unnatural babble of animal noise came from the farm, mixed with hammering, and when Tommy crept forward and saw the farmer himself looking as black as a puddle and building a great thing like a gibbet in the yard, he had lost his nerve and rushed back the way he came, the letter to Nancy undelivered.

  Gregory lay on the bed worrying about Nancy until Mrs. Fenn brought up supper on a tray. At least it was clear now why the Aurigans had not entered the farmhouse; they were far too large to do so. She was safe as long as she kept indoorsas far as anyone on that doomed plot was safe.

  He fell asleep early that night. In the early hours of the morning, nightmare visited him. He was in a strange city where all the buildings were new and the people wore shining clothes. In one square grew a tree. The Gregory in the dream stood in a special relationship to the tree: he fed it. It was a job to push people who were passing by the tree against its surface. The tree was a saliva tree. Down its smooth bark ran quantities of saliva from red lips like leaves up in the boughs. It grew enor– mous on the people on which it fed. As they were thrown against it, they passed into the substance of the tree. Some of the saliva splashed on to Gregory. But instead of dissolving him, it caused everything he touched to be dissolved. He put his arms about the girl he loved, and as his mouth went towards hers, ter skin peeled away from her face. .

  He woke weeping desperately and fumbling blindly for the ring of the gas mantle.

  Dr. Crouchom came late next morning and told Gregory he should have at least three more days complete rest for the recovery of the muscles of his leg. Gregory lay there in a state of acute dissatisfaction with himself. Recalling the vile dream, he thought how negligent he had been towards Nancy, the girl he loved. His letter to her still lay undelivered by his bedside. After Mrs. Fenn had brought up his dinner, he determined that he must see Nancy for himself. Leaving the food, he pulled himself out of bed and dressed slowly.

  The leg was more painful than he had expected, but he got himself downstairs and out to the stable without too much trouble. Daisy seemed pleased to see him. He rubbed her nose and rested his head against her long cheek in sheer pleasure at being with her again.

  “This may be the last time you have to undertake this particular journey, my girl,” he said.

  Saddling her was comparatively easy. Getting into the saddle involved much bodily anguish. But eventually he was comfortable and they turned along the familiar and desolate road to the domain of the Aurigans. His leg was worse than he had bargained for. More than once, he had to get the mare to stop while he let the throbbing subside. He saw he was losing blood plentifully.

  As he approached the farm, he observed what the baker's boy had meant by saying Grendon was building a gibbet. A pole had been set up in the middle of the yard. A cable ran to the top of it, and a light was rigged there, so that the expanse of the yard could be illuminated by night.

  Another change had taken place. A wooden fence had been built behind the horse trough, cutting off the pond from the farm. But at one point, ominously, a section of it had been broken down and splintered and crushed, as if some monstrous thing had walked through the barrier unheeding.

  A ferocious dog was chained just inside the gate, and barking its head off, to the consternation of the poultry. Gregory dared not enter. As he stood wondering the best way to tackle this fresh problem, the door of the farmhouse opened fractionally and Nancy peeped out. He called and signalled frantically to her.

  Timidly, she ran across and let him in, dragging the dog back. Gregory kissed her cheek, soothed by the feel of her sturdy body in his arms.

  “Where's your father?”

  “My dearest, your leg, your poor leg! It's bleeding yet!”

  “Never mind my leg. Where's your father?”

  “He's down in South Meadow, I think.”

  “Good! I'm going to speak with him. Nancy, I want you to go indoors and pack some belongings. I'm taking you away with me.”

  “I can't leave Father!”

  “You must. I'm going to tell him now.” As he limped across the yard, she called fearfully, “He has that there gun of his'n with him all the timedo be careful!”

  The two dogs on a running chain followed him all the way down to– the side of the house, nearly choking in their e
fforts to get at him, their teeth flashing uncomfortably close to his ankles. He noticed Neckland below Grubby's little hut, busy sawing wood; the farmer was not with him. On impulse, Gregory turned into the sties.

  It was gloomy there. In the gloom, Grendon worked. He dropped his bucket when he saw Gregory there, and came forward threateningly.

  “You came back? Why don't you stay away? Can't you see the notice by the gate? I don't want you here no more, bor. I know you mean well, and I intend you no harm, but I'll kill 'ee, understand, kill 'ee if you ever come here again. I've plenty of worries without you to add to them. Now then, get you going!”

  Gregory stood his ground.

  “Mr. Grendon, are you as mad as your wife was before she died? Do you understand that you may meet Grubby's fate at any moment? Do you realize what you are harboring in your pond?”

  “I ent a fule. But suppose them there things do eat everything, humans included? Suppose this is now their farm? They still got to have someone to tend it. So I reckon they ent going to harm me. So long as they sees me work hard, they ent going to harm me.”

  “You're being fattened, do you understand? For all the hard work you do, you must have put on a stone this last month. Doesn't that scare you?”

  Something of the farmer's pose broke for a moment. He cast a wild look round. “I ent saying I ent scared. .I'm saying I'm doing what I have to do. We don't own our lives. Now do me a favor and get out of here.”

  Instinctively, Gregory's glance had followed Grendon's. For the first time, he saw in the dimness the size of the pigs. Their great broad black backs were visible over the top of the sties. They were the size of young oxen.

  “This is a farm of death,” he said.

  “Death's always the end of all of us, pig or cow or man alike.”

  “Right-ho, Mr. Grendon, you can think like that if you like. It's not my way of thinking, nor am I going to see your dependents suffer from your madness. Mr. Grendon, sir, I wish to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage.”

  For the first three days that she was away from her home, Nancy Grendon lay in her room in “The Wayfarer” near to death. It seemed as if all ordinary food poisoned her. But gradually under Doctor Crouchorn's ministrationterrified perhaps by the rage she suspected he would vent upon her should she fail to get bettershe recovered her strength.

  “You look so much better today,” Gregory said, clasping her hand. “You'll soon be up and about again, once your system is free of all the evil nourishment of the farm.”

  “Greg, dearest, promise me you will not go to the farm again. You have no need to go now I'm not there.”

  He cast his eyes down and said, “Then you don't have to get me to promise, do you?”

  “I just want to be sure we neither of us go there again. Father, I feel sure, bears a charmed life. It's as if I was now coming to my senses againbut I don't want it to be as if you was losing yours! Supposing those things followed us here to Cottersall, those Aurigans?”

  “You know, Nancy, I've wondered several times why' they remain on the farm as' they do. You would think that once they found they could so easily defeat human beings, they would attack everyone, or send for more of their own kind and try to invade us. Yet they seem perfectly content to remain in that one small space.”

  She smiled. “I may not be very clever compared with you, but I can tell 'ee the answer to that one. They ent interested in going anywhere. I think there's just two of them, and they come to our little old world for a holiday in their space machine, same as we might go to Great Yarmouth for a couple of days for our honeymoon. Perhaps they're on their honeymoon.”

  “On honeymoon! What a ghastly idea!”

  “Well, on holiday then. That was Father's ideahe says as there's just two of them, treating Earth as a quiet place to stay. People like to eat well when they're on holiday, don't they?”

  He stared at Nancy aghast.

  “But that's horrible! You're trying to make the Aurigans out to be pleasant!”

  “Of course I ent, you silly ha'p'orth! But I expect they seem pleasant to each other.”

  “Well, I prefer to think of them as menaces.”

  “All the more reason for you to keep away from them!”

  But to be out of sight was not to be out of mind's reach. Gregory received another letter from Dr. Hudson-Ward, a kind and encouraging one, but he made no attempt to answer it. He felt he could not bear to take up any work that would remove him from the neighborhood, although the need to work, in view of his matrimonial plans, was now pressing; the modest allowance his father made him would not support two in any comfort. Yet he could not bring his thoughts to grapple with such practical problems. It was another letter he looked for, and the horrors of the farm that obsessed him. And the next night, he dreamed of the saliva tree again.

  In the evening, he plucked up enough courage to tell Fox and Nancy about it. They met in the little snug at the back of “The Wayfarer's” public bar, a discreet and private place with red plush on the seats. Nancy was her usual self again, and had been out for a brief walk in the afternoon sunshine.

  “People wanted to give themselves to the saliva tree. And although I didn't see this for myself, I had the distinct feeling that perhaps they weren't actually killed so much as changed into something elsesomething less human maybe. And this time, I saw the tree was made of metal of some kind and was growing bigger and bigger by pumpsyou could see through the saliva to big armatures and pistons, and out of the branches steam was pouring.”

  Fox laughed, a little unsympathetically. “Sounds to me like the shape of things to come, when even plants are grown by machinery. Events are preying on your mind, Greg! Listen, my sister is going to Norwich tomorrow, driving in her uncle's trap. Why don't the two of you go with her? She's going to buy some adornments for her bridal gown, so that should interest you, Nancy-Then you could stay with Greg's uncle for a couple of days. I assure you I will let you know immediately the Aurigans invade Cottersall, so you won't miss anything.”

  Nancy seized Gregory's arm. “Can we please, Gregory, can we? I ent been to Norwich for long enough and it's a fine city.”

  “It would be a good idea,” he said doubtfully.

  Both of them pressed him until he was forced to yield. He broke up the little party as soon as he decently could, kissed Nancy good-night, and walked hurriedly back down the street to the baker's. Of one thing he was certain: if he must leave the district even for a short while, he had to have a look to see what was happening at the farm before he went.

  The farm looked in the summer's dusk as it had never done before. Massive wooden screens nine feet high had been erected and hastily creosoted. They stood about in forlorn fashion, intended to keep the public gaze from the farm, but lending it unmeaning. They stood not only in the yard but at irregular intervals along the boundaries of the land, inappro– priately among fruit trees, desolately amid bracken, irrelevantly in swamp. A sound of furious hammering, punctuated by the unwearying animal noises, indicated that more screens were still being built.

  But what lent the place its unearthly look was the lighting. The solitary pole supporting the electric light now had five companions: one by the gate, one by the pond, one behind the house, one outside the engine house, one down by the pig sties. Their hideous yellow glare reduced the scene to the sort of unlikely picture that might be found and puzzled over in the eternal midnight of an Egyptian tomb.

  Gregory was too wise to try and enter by the gate. He hitched Daisy to the low branches of a thorn tree and set off over waste land, entering Grendon's property by the South Meadow. As he walked stealthily towards the distant out– houses, he could see how the farm land differed from the territory about it. The corn was already so high it seemed in the dark almost to threaten by its ceaseless whisper of movement. The fruits had ripened fast. In the strawberry beds were great strawberries like pears. The marrows lay on their dunghill like bloated bolsters, gleaming from a distant shaft of light. In the
orchard, the trees creaked, weighed down by distorted footballs that passed for apples; with a heavy autumnal thud one fell over-ripe to the ground. Everywhere on the farm,, there seemed to be slight movement and noise, so much so that Gregory stopped to listen.

  A wind was rising. The sails of the old mill shrieked like a gull's cry as they began to turn. In the engine house, the steam engine pumped out its double unfaltering note as it gen– erated power. The dogs still raged, the animals added their un– easy chorus. He recalled the saliva tree; here as in the dream, it was as if agriculture had become industry, and the impulses of nature swallowed by the new god of Science. In the bark of the trees rose the dark steam of novel and unknown forces.

  He talked himself into pressing forward again. He moved carefully through the baffling slices of shadow and illumination created by the screens and lights, and arrived near the back door of the farmhouse. A lantern burnt in the kitchen window. As Gregory hesitated, the crunch of broken glass came from within.

  Cautiously, he edged himself past the window and peered in through the doorway. From the parlor, he heard the voice of Grendon. It held a curious muffled tone, as if the man spoke to himself.

  “Lie there! You're no use to me. This is a trial of strength. Oh God, preserve me, to let me prove myself! Thou has made my land barren till nownow let me harvest it! I don't know what You're doing. I didn't mean to presume, but this here farm is my life. Curse 'em, curse 'em all! They're all enemies.” There was more of it; the man was muttering like one drunk. With horrid fascination, Gregory was drawn forward till he had crossed the kitchen flags and stood on the verge of the larger room. He peered round the half open door until he could see the farmer, standing obscurely in the middle of the room.

  A candle stood in the neglected hearth, its flickering flame glassily reflected in the cases of maladroit animals. Evidently the house electricity had been cut off to give additional power to the new lights outside.