Robinson was beginning to hate Magruder. He turned on him angrily. “WFC’s agricultural experts are
reclaiming blight land every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares. It won’t be long before— ”
“You learn that by heart at the army indoctrination class, Hugh?” Magruder jeered. “The old temperate zones don’t get enough rain to grow big wheat harvests any more. Even if we had the rain, we don’t have the manpower to harvest the stuff. We’re past the point of no return—you want to sit on your asses watching WFC propaganda shows and thinking happy thoughts until the day you’re too weak to walk down the road to the ration center? Or maybe you see two billion people shipping to Africa to be near the hippo ranches? When the hippos are all eaten up I suppose we all move to Australia and eat the kangaroos? We’re going to need a helluva lot of ships.”
“So we all come down here and live like bloody insects?” Robinson shouted, helping Anne Richards across a narrow crack in the earth.
“This garden could support thirty thousand people our size. The insects aren’t doing too badly—you know what insects are made of? Proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins. You ever tasted locusts, for instance? Like a cross between veal and tunny fish. When was the last time you had a slice of veal, Hugh? Look round you—this is the garden of plenty! Worms and all.”
“It’s horrible,” said Anne Richards. “I hate it.”
“You could learn to adapt. How about that little fly, Psilopa petrolei —how did it learn to live on the petrol pools around the Californian oil wells? If a fly can learn to live off petrol, we can learn to live down here, can’t we?”
Robinson waited until Magruder was taking a breath. He put on his most cutting voice.
“With a voice like yours, I’m surprised you bothered to bring a radio, Magruder.”
“Very funny. You English are very comical—when you’re not running a firing-squad.”
Bruce could stand it no longer. “Shut up, both of you,” he growled.
“Bob’s right,” said Lena. “Keep quiet, Stanley.”
But Magruder couldn’t keep quiet for long. As they reached the other side of the strip of recently-dug earth, they came to a dandelion plant, its pale stalks crowned by huge white balls of gossamer fine seeds. Magruder hit one stalk with his stick, dislodging dozens of seeds. They floated off in an imperceptible current of air, the seeds hanging under their silken hairs like so many tiny parachutists gliding slowly to land. Magruder brought his short-handled machete out of its sheath and sliced neatly through the stalk, which toppled to the ground, making them duck.
“You are a fool,” Khomich snapped.
“There’s method in my madness,” Magruder said cheerfully, hacking at the stem with his knife. He held up a piece of stalk. “Thirsty, anybody?” he said. “Try some dandelion milk.”
“Sure it isn’t poisonous?” Carr asked.
Magruder looked hurt. “Would I do that to you? Come on, it’s okay.” Carr looked at the yellowish pipe. The flesh was pulpy, with a white liquid oozing from the cut fibers. “You try it first,” he said suspiciously.
“A guy who wrestles with giant earthworms—scared of a little dandelion juice? You want to try some, Hugh.”
“I wouldn’t,” Bruce said, “not unless you’re suffering from constipation. Didn’t you ever keep rabbits as a kid? Dandelions have a laxative effect.”
Khomich moved closer to Magruder. His face gave no warning—he brought his prod down heavily on the stalk, knocking it out of Magruder’s hands. Magruder started to protest—but Khomich raised the stick until it was pointing into Magruder’s throat.
“You think it’s a joke to trick us into eating something that gives rabbits diarrhea? Next time you try a joke like that, I will make you eat this stick.”
“I’ll take some of the goddamn stuff myself if it— ”
“What was that?” Anne Richards said quickly, ducking her head. It had been something dark, passing over their heads with an urgent humming sound. They stared up into the emptiness of the infinite sky.
“It is too dangerous out here in the open,’’ said Khomich. “We must hurry.”
They helped each other across the last few yards of crumbling earth and came to a head-high brick wall— comprised of only one brick. While Robinson and Khomich covered them with their pistols, Carr pulled himself up onto the brick and then grabbed Lena Davidson’s.hands as Bruce gave her a shoulder-lift. Again they heard the humming noise overhead. Lena Davidson sat on a patch of silvery-tipped green bryum moss while Carr pulled Anne Richards up onto the brick. Again, a dark shape passed over their heads.
“It’s only a fly,” said Magruder, throwing up his pack. “Listen—we cross this cinder path and then we’re in the shrubbery—we don’t want to make too much noise in there, so put in your earplugs and use the communicators.”
“What’s in the shrubbery?” Robinson demanded, forming a step with his hands for Magruder to stand on and then pull himself up.
“Nothing to be scared of,” Magruder said patronizingly, reaching down to grab Robinson’s hand, “just that some of the residents tend to come over hungry all of a sudden.”
This time the humming noise was louder and then it was hovering just above their heads like a small, lethal helicopter—a big brown fly, wings beating so fast they would have been invisible but for the blurred arcs of iridescence, sunlight glinting on veined sheets of chitin beating at almost two hundred times a second, so close they could see a vivid slash of red pigmentation across the huge green orbs of the compound eyes.
“Well then, Professor—another mimic is it?” Khomich asked calmly, still waiting to be pulled up onto the brick.
“Tabanus —it’s a horsefly. At our size, it could probably suck us dry. Looks like it’s caught our scent— ”
“Shoot it then!”
“Should I shoot it, Professor?” Robinson asked. Bruce said nothing, unable to take his eyes off it.
“Shoot it, you fools,” Khomich yelled as he tried to dodge out of the way.
The fly darted sideways and then hovered again, as if on a string, the countless lenses of the green eyes giving no indication that it had seen them, yet none of them in any doubt that it was watching them, machine-like, malevolent.
It dropped again, the humming of its wings drowning Robinson’s voice as he yelled at Khomich. “I can’t shoot it—I’ll hit you.”
Khomich slashed at it with his stick, close enough to its white-haired face to see the scimitar antennae and blade-like mandibles which could draw blood from a man or a horse.
“Get down on the ground,” Robinson shouted hoarsely. Khomich didn’t hear. He crouched to dodge it—then broke into a run for the nearest vegetation. The horsefly followed him. He stumbled into a depression of wet earth, boots slipping as he fumbled for his pistol. The fly hovered above him, as big as a hawk. He ran through some soft green moss and then dove forward in a headlong roll, trying to hide himself among some large, flat leaves dotted with pink stalks. The fly’s shadow passed across his face. He lay flat on his back and pulled out his pistol, barely conscious of a sticky sensation on his neck.
Carr vaulted down off the brick. He ran toward the plants, his pistol drawn. Standing knee-deep in the velvety moss, he took careful aim, both arms fully-extended.
The mercury bullet hit the tabby fur of the thorax, just in front of the wing muscle. As if caught in the blast of a vicious wind, the horsefly skidded through the air, disintegrating in an explosion of pale blood and horny fragments.
“Got him, sir.”
“So did I!” came Khomich’s voice from the circle of flat leaves. Slowly he sat up, chin trembling.
“Another second or two and the world would have been a happier place,” Magruder murmured as they looked across from the brick.
Khomich brushed irritably at the stickiness on his neck and started to rise, angry at his own display of panic. When he found that his leg muscles were not responding properly, he
closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His heart was racing. With an effort of will, he took control of his body and then jumped to his feet.
Pink tentacles tipped with little red bulbs brushed against him. He slapped them away, revolted by their stickiness, preparing to cover his shame with a display of anger.
“It’s all right—you can come out now, sir,” Carr said. Khomich caught a trace of mockery in the corporal’s voice.
“What do you think I’m doing?” he snapped, kicking out at the pink stalks which seemed to be clustering round him. He screwed up his face in disgust, holding up his arm to shelter his face as he pushed through the undulating stalks which stood up from the horizontal leaves.
“For God’s sake!” he growled, feeling something pulling him back. “Give me your stick, Corporal, this damned weed is— ”
His mouth dropped open. He frowned. No, it was impossible. He kicked out savagely. The red bulb at the tip of the pink stalk was sticking to his leg. Another was sticking to his neck. He pulled it off—another red bulb attached itself to his hand!
He looked over his shoulder. The stalks were swaying toward him, bending over like the tentacles of a sea anemone. He hit out at them—but suddenly his arm was being gripped.
“Help! It’s sticking to me!”
Carr strode across the moss, shoving his pistol into his waistband. He saw Khomich wrestling with a lot of thin branches.
“What’s wrong?” Robinson shouted. Carr looked across at them.
“The staff-commander has found a sticky plant, sir,” he replied, with a straight face.
THE MICRONAUTS
“Don’t stand there shouting your silly head off,” Khomich snarled. “Give me your stick!”
“I left it back there, sir. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of that.” Carr stepped onto one of the flat leaves which came out on hairy stalks from the base of three tall stems carrying white flowers. The pink fronds sticking up from the leaves made them look like hairbrushes. One of the red tips touched Carr’s hand. His skin was immediately covered by a sticky, glistening syrup. “Funny sort of plant,” he said wryly. “Touch it and it bleeds honey. Give
me your hand, sir, I’ll pull you-”
Khomich’s eyes were desperate. He twisted and slapped and kicked, but the more he struggled, the more he seemed entangled. Wherever the red bulb at the end of a frond touched him, there was a sticky fluid. And once the bulb touched him, it would not let go.
He broke one tentacle and then tried to charge his way out, head down, eyes closed.
He could not move!
/
“It’s sticking to me!”
Carr jerked back his hand. The tentacle kept its sticky hold. Another tentacle bent gracefully to join it. It was as if they could see.
Carr panicked. He pulled his pistol and started firing shots into the leaf.
Khomich found himself being dragged to his knees, his muscles beginning to tire. He tried to bite at a frond, wrestling this way and that like a tethered bear.
“What’s he shooting at?” Bruce demanded, trying to see what they were doing in the vegetation.
“I thought he was shouting something about a sticky plant,” said Robinson.
Anne Richards put her fingers to her open mouth. “The sundew,” she gasped, “George said there were some in the garden.”
“Sundew?” Bruce hesitated for a split-second, then jumped down off the brick. “It’s a plant that eats insects,” he shouted up at the others. “Give me your knife, Magruder.”
When they reached the green moss, Carr was still firing at the leaf. Khomich was almost hidden by pink fronds, still struggling violently. Bruce grabbed the machete from Magruder. “Keep your eyes covered,” he shouted, jumping between two of the broad, horizontal leaves into the circle under the tall flower stems. With a couple of savage cuts, he severed the stalk of the leaf on which Khomich was trapped. The hooked tip of the knife sliced through the tentacles clustering onto Khomich.
“Keep your eyes closed until we can wash them out,’’ he barked, turning to slash at the stalk of the leaf which had Carr trapped.
Khomich swayed back and forth on his knees. Bruce pulled the loose-hanging fronds off him. “Why the hell didn’t you realize they were caught in a sundew plant?’’ he snapped at Magruder. The young American made an apologetic shrug. “It all happened so fast—sorry.”
“Get something to wipe this stuff off their faces and hands—it’s a digestive juice, it’ll eat through the skin. Pour plenty of water on them. Here, Khomich—splash some water into your eyes—be careful, that stuff could blind you.”
Khomich said nothing until they had climbed onto the brick and were crossing an old cinder-path, using plantain leaves and patches of moss as stepping-stones over the yielding surface of abrasive ash.
“What did you say was the name of that— plant?” he asked stiffly.
“The sundew—it’s an insectivorous herb,” said Lena Davidson.
“What would it have done to me?”
“Waited until its digestive juices had absorbed your flesh and then just sucked you in.”
Khomich spat.
Magruder looked at his chronometer. It was noon. “If we’re going to make Station Three before dark, we’re going to have to move along.” They hurried toward the wall of bricks at the other side of the path, climbing down into a lush meadow of chickweed. Its bruised leaves and stalks gave off the sweet smell of fresh garden peas. They swatted at little black flies which Bruce said were chalcid wasps, hyper-parasites which layed their eggs in the living cocoons of other insects like the ichneumon fly. The ichneumon had already layed its eggs in the body of a caterpillar. While the ichneumon larva ate the living caterpillar, the chalcid larva prepared to eat the ichneumon larva.
“A man called Maeterlinck described this as a world
THE MICRONAUTS
more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than ours,” Bruce added wryly.
“Thoreau said, ‘Man is but a guest on the planet,’ ” Magruder chipped in, winking at Robinson behind Khomich’s back. ‘‘All this was going on millions of years before we arrived—it’s all part of nature’s great scheme.”
Khomich spat again. “Nature should be abolished,” he growled.
Ahead of them loomed the gigantic shapes of dark bushes, their topmost branches and leaves far above the range of their vision, towering mysteriously like skyscrapers in a fog.
Lena Davidson winced and stopped to massage her leg, holding onto Anne Richards’s shoulder. Robinson couldn’t hear her voice, but there was something suspicious about the way they were murmuring to each other.
“Can I help you?” he said loudly.
The Australian girl grimaced and tested her leg. “Just a touch of cramp,” she said. “It’s better now.”
Wading through the soft green chickweed, Bruce almost walked into something large and bulky. He waved at the others to stop, cautiously pushing green leaves aside with his prod. He was looking at a drab olive skin with rows of tough tubercles, all of it glistening with slime.
“What is it?” Magruder hissed.
“Great gray slug by the look of it.” He parted the chickweed until he saw the erect stalks of the eye- antennae tentatively probing the air; one touch of the prod and they instantly pulled back under the thicker skin of the mantle, the whale-like body freezing.
“Hey,” Magruder called cheerfully. “Anybody want a ride on a slug’s back?”
Khomich stared unbelievingly as the huge slimy body oozed soundlessly into the chickweed in a trail of white
mucus. Khomich had lived with fear all his life, from his hungry childhood in the famine years when marauders from the towns had slaughtered every man, woman, and child of the collective farm—missing only the boy who had climbed into the cesspit; he had wandered alone across a Europe where living skeletons chewed on roadside grass, a boy aged fourteen who had killed men for as little as a single potato and who had
eaten human flesh; Khomich had survived because, for the intelligent, fear is the great teacher—he took no step that was not calculated, he turned no corner blindly, he suspected all men at all times, he took precautions while braver men jeered—foolhardy men who now had not even gravestones to corroborate the vague rumor of their forgotten lives.
Now, for the first time in his years, he felt helpless and inadequate. How could a man fight a plant which behaved like an octopus?
Only the thought of jeering laughter kept him from screaming; it was more than just the memory of sticky tentacles feeling for a grip on his flesh, more than physical revulsion at the slimy skin of the slug; he heard an echo of taunting voices—deep inside himself he felt a stirring of madness and evil. He was near Robinson, yet he dared not look into the young Englishman’s eyes, fearing they would mirror a slime no bullet could penetrate.
They were resting in a patch of sunlight coming down through the tangled arches of a wild rose bush. The ground was covered with white petals large enough to use as blankets. Occasionally, other petals would come floating down in a seesaw dance through the vast canopy of spiked branches—soft, creamy petals no heavier than sheets of silk. Carr got under one as it slipped toward the ground, balancing it on his head like an oversized sombrero.
“Save your strength, you idiot,’’ Robinson said wearily, taking off his boots to shake out little bits of grit. Magruder opened up the aerial of the transceiver and
started to call Control for another bearing. Bruce took a long drink from his water-bottle. His hands felt cold. Carr sprawled full length on a bed of petals. “The perfume’s so strong you could get drunk on it,” he said.
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