Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol IX

by Various

  * * * * *

  "And will her--people let you farm?"

  Now he could show her how cogently and comprehensively he could answer a logical question. "That aspect of the situation will be all right, dear, because only the trees are an intelligent species and, even of them, some aren't so bright. They won't have any more objection to our eating the other fruit and vegetables than we would have to an extraterrestrial's eating our eggs and chickens, for example. We're going to try to introduce some Earth plants here, though, as the higher forms of vegetation are dying out and we're afraid the lower might follow. Pity it's too late for a sound conservation program."

  * * * * *

  Phyllis said grimly, "She doesn't think it's too late for a sound conservation program. She still has hopes--far-fetched, maybe, and I'm not so sure they are. Mark my words, James, she's got designs on you."

  "Don't be idiotic," he protested. "That would be--" he attempted to introduce a light note--"it would be miscegenation."

  "These foreigners can't be expected to have our standards." And she burst into tears again. "A fine thing to go through that miserable five-month trip only to find out a tree has alienated my husband's affections."

  "Oh, come on, Phyl!" He still was trying for a smile. "What would a tree see in me?"

  "I'm beginning to wonder what I saw in you. You never loved me; you just wanted a wife to come out and colonize with you and b-b-breed."

  What could he say? It was almost true. Phyllis was a beautiful girl and he loved her, but, if he had planned to remain as an instructor with the Romance Languages Department instead of joining the scout mission, he knew he would never have asked her to be his wife ... for her sake, of course, as well as his own. He should say something to reassure her, but the words wouldn't come.

  "I don't like it here," Phyllis sobbed. "I don't like blue leaves. I don't like blue grass. I like them green, the way they're supposed to be. I hate this nasty planet. It's all wrong. I want to go home."

  She was very young--less than eight years younger than he, true, but he was mature for his age. They didn't know each other very well. And, finally, there were more men than women on the planet and he had noticed that the bachelors had seemed readily disposed, upon her arrival the day before, to overlook the fact that she had no college degree. So he must be patient with her.

  "There's nothing wrong about it, dear. The plants here synthesize cyanophyll instead of chlorophyll; that's why the leaves are blue instead of green. And, of course, there are different mineral constituents of the soil--more aluminum and copper, for instance, than on Earth, and some elements we haven't quite isolated yet. So, you see, they're bound to be a little different from Terrestrial trees."

  "A little different I wouldn't mind," she said sulkily, "but they're a lot different without being nearly alien enough."

  "Look, Phyllis--dear--those trees have been very hospitable, very kind. We owe them a lot. They themselves suggested that we come here and live with them in, so to speak, symbiosis."

  "That's a fine idea!"

  * * * * *

  He beamed. "I knew you'd understand after I had explained it to you."

  "We provide the brains and they provide the furniture."

  "Phyllis! What a thing to say!"

  "I've heard of man-eating trees before. I suppose there could be man-loving ones, too."

  "Phyllis, these trees are as gentle and sweet as--as--" He didn't know how he could explain it to her. No one who had never been friends with a tree could appreciate the true beauty of the xylemic character. "Why, we even offered to go over to the other side of the planet and fetch some pollen for them, but they wouldn't hear of it. Unfortunately, they'd rather die than be mated to anyone they had never met."

  "What a perfectly disgusting idea!"

  "I don't think so. Trees can be idealistic--"

  "You fetching pollen for her, I mean. Naturally she wouldn't want pollen from a tree on the other side of the planet. She wants you!"

  "Don't be silly. Incompatibility usually exists between the pollen of one species and the stigmata of another. Besides," he added patiently, "I haven't got pollen."

  "You'd better not, or it won't be her who'll have the stigmata."

  "Phyllis--" he sat down on the arm of her chair and tried to embrace her--"you know that you're the only life-form I love."

  "Please, James." She pushed him away. "I guess I love you, too, in spite of everything ... but I don't want to make a public spectacle of myself."

  "What do you mean now?"

  "That tree would know everything that goes on. She's telepathic."

  "Where did you get a ridiculous idea like that? What kind of rubbish have you been reading?"

  "All right, tell me: how else did she learn to speak such good English?"

  "It's because she's of a very high order of intelligence. And I suppose--" he laughed modestly--"because I'm such a good teacher."

  "I don't care how good a teacher you are--a tree couldn't learn to speak a language so well in five months. She must be telepathic. It's the only explanation."

  * * * * *

  "Give her time," the tree advised later, as James came out on the lawn to talk to his only friend on the planet.

  He hadn't seen much of the other scouts since the house-building frenzy had started, and visits among the men had decreased. The base camp, where the bachelors and the older married couples lived, was located a good distance away from his land, for he had raised his honeymoon cottage far from the rest; he had wanted to have his Phyllis all to himself. In the idyll he had visualized for the two of them, she would need no company but his. Little had he imagined that, within twenty-four hours of her arrival, he would be looking for company himself.

  "I suppose so," he said, kicking at a root. "Oh, I'm sorry, Maggie; I didn't think."

  "That's all right," Magnolia said bravely. "It didn't really hurt. That female has got you all upset, you poor boy."

  James muttered a feeble defense of his wife.

  "Jim, forgive me if I speak frankly," the tree went on in a low rustle, "but do you think she's really worthy of you?"

  "Of course she is!"

  "Surely on your planet you could have found a mate more admirable, high-minded, exemplary--more, in short, like yourself. Or are all the human females inferior specimens like Phyllis?"

  "They're--she suits me," James said doggedly.

  "Of course, of course. It's very noble of you to defend her; you would have disappointed me if you had said anything else, and I honor you for it, James."

  He kicked at one of the pebbles. The tree meant well, he knew, yet, like so many well-meaning friends, she succeeded only in dispiriting him. It was almost like being back at the faculty club.

  "I don't suppose a clod like her would have brought any more books along," the tree changed the subject. James's own library had been insufficient to slake the tree's intellectual thirst, so he had gone all over the planet to borrow books for Magnolia. Dr. Lakin, at Base, who had formerly taught English literature, possessed a fine collection which he had been reluctant to lend until he had learned that they were not for James but for a tree. At that, he had fetched the books himself, since he was anxious to meet her.

  "A lot of the trees here have learned the English language," he had told James, "but none seems to have developed a taste for its literature. Your Magnolia is undoubtedly a superior specimen. Excellent natural taste, too--perhaps a little unformed when it comes to poetry and the more sophisticated aspects of life, but she'll learn, she'll learn."

  * * * * *

  Unfortunately, the same, James knew, could hardly be said of his wife. "Phyllis did bring some books," he told Magnolia.

  "For you, no doubt. That was kind of her. I'm sure she has many good qualities which will unfold one by one, as her meristems start differentiating. I hope you don't feel I've been too--well, personal, Jim. I was only trying to help. If I've gone too far...."

  "Of course not, Maggie. A
fter all--" he laughed bitterly--"I do know you better than I know her."

  "We have been good friends, haven't we, Jim? It was rather nice--these five months we spent alone together. For the first time in my life, I have never regretted being so far from my sisters. 'And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.'"

  Her blue leaves shone violet in the scarlet rays of the setting sun; the gold of her trunk was lit with red radiance. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen ... but she was a tree, not a woman.

  "I'm sure she'll fit in after a while," Magnolia continued. "Perhaps she isn't well. She seems to guttate an awful lot. Do you suppose she's been overwatered?"

  "That wasn't guttation," James said heavily. "It was tears. It means she's unhappy."

  "Unhappy? Perhaps she won't fit in on this planet, in which case she should by all means go back to Earth. It's cruel and unfair to keep an intelligent--loosely speaking--life-form anywhere against her will, don't you think?"

  "She'll be happy here," James vowed. "I'll make her happy."

  "Well, I certainly hope you can manage it! By the way, do you suppose you'll have a chance to read me the books she brought, or will she be keeping you too busy?"

  "I'll never be too busy to read to you, Magnolia."

  "That's very nitrogenous of you, Jim. Our--intellectual communions have meant a lot to me. I'd hate to have to give them up."

  "So would I," he said. "But there won't be any need to. Phyllis will understand."

  "I certainly hope so. I so admire your English literature. It's so deeply cognizant of the really meaningful things in life. And if your coming to this planet has served only to add poetry to our cultural heritage, it would be reason enough to welcome you with open limbs. For it was a truly perceptive versifier who wrote the immortally simple lines: 'Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.'

  "And such a charming tune to go with it, too," Magnolia went on. "We have always sung the music that the wind and the rain have taught us, but, until you came, we never thought of putting words and melody together to form one glorious whole. 'A tree that may in summer wear,'" she caroled in a pleasing contralto, "'a nest of robins in her hair.' By the way, Jim, ever since reading that poem, I've been meaning to ask you precisely what are robins and do you think they'd look well in my hair, by which, I suppose the bard refers, in a somewhat pedestrian flight of fancy, to leaves?"

  "They're a kind of bird," he said drearily.

  "Birds--nesting in my hair! I wouldn't think of allowing it. But then I suppose Terrestrial birds are quite different from ours? More housebroken, shall we say?"

  "Everything's different," James said and, for an irrational moment, he hated everything that was blue that should have been green, everything sweet that should have been vicious, everything intelligent that should have been mindless.

  * * * * *

  Since matters could not grow much worse, they improved to a degree. After a day or two had passed, Phyllis, being a conscientious girl, came to realize how wrong it had been for her as a Terrestrial immigrant to show overt hostility toward a native of the planet that had welcomed her.

  "But how can she be a--a person?" Phyllis wanted to know, when they were inside the cottage, for she had learned to hold her tongue when they were near Magnolia or any of her sisters, who, though they could not speak the language as fluently as she, understood it very well and eavesdropped at every possible opportunity in order, they said, to improve their accents. "She's a tree. A plant. And plants are just vegetables." She stabbed her needle energetically through the tablecloth she was embroidering.

  "You mustn't project Terrestrial attitudes upon Elysian ones," James said, patiently looking up from his book. "And don't underestimate Magnolia's capabilities. She has sense organs, and motor organs, too. She can't move from where she is, because she's rooted to the ground, but she's capable of turgor movements, like certain Terrestrial forms of vegetation--for example, the sensitive plant or blue grass."

  "Blue grass," Phyllis exclaimed. "I'm sick of blue grass. I want green grass."

  "However, these trees have conscious control of their pulvini, whereas the Earth's plants don't, and so they can do a lot of things that Earth plants can't."

  "It sounds like a dirty word to me."

  "Pulvini merely means motor organs."

  "Oh."

  * * * * *

  He closed his book, which was a more advanced botany text, covered with the jacket of a French novel in order to spare Phyllis's feelings. "Darling, can't you get it through your pretty head that they're intelligent life-forms? If it'll make it easier for you to think of them as human beings who happen to look like trees, then do that."

  "That's exactly what I am doing. And I'm quite sure she thinks of you as a tree who happens to look like a human being."

  "Phyllis, sometimes I think you're being deliberately difficult. Do you know one of the reasons why I took such pains to teach Magnolia English? It was that I hoped she would be a companion for you, that you could talk to each other when I had to be away from home."

  "Why do you call her Magnolia? She isn't a lot like one."

  "Isn't she? I thought she was. You see, I don't know so much botany, after all." Actually, he had picked that name for the tree because it expressed both the arboreal and the feminine at the same time--and also because it was one of the loveliest names he knew. But he couldn't tell Phyllis that; there would be further misunderstanding. "Of course she has a name in her own language, but I can't pronounce it."

  "They do have a language of their own then?"

  "Naturally, though they don't get much chance to speak it, since they've grown so few and far apart that verbal communication has become difficult. They communicate by a network of roots that they've developed."

  "I don't think that's so clever."

  "I merely said ... oh, what's the use of trying to explain everything to you? You just don't want to understand."

  * * * * *

  Phyllis put down her needlework and closed her eyes. "James," she said, opening them again, "it's no use pretending. I've been trying to be sympathetic and understanding, but I can't do it. That tree--I've forced myself to be nice to her, but the more I see of her, the more convinced I am that she's trying to steal you from me."

  Phyllis was beginning to poison his mind, he thought, because it had seemed to him also, in his last conversation with Magnolia, that he had discerned more than ordinary warmth in her attitude toward him ... and perhaps a trace of spite toward his wife?

  Preposterous! The tree had only been trying to cheer him up as any friend might reasonably do. After all, a tree and a man.... Nonsense! One had an anabolic metabolism, one a catabolic.

  But this was a different kind of tree. She spoke, she read, she was capable of conscious turgor movements. And he, he had often thought secretly, was a different kind of man. Whereas Phyllis....

  But that was disloyalty--to the type as well as the individual. The tree could be a companion to him, but she could not give him sons to work his land; she could not give him daughters to populate his planet; moreover, she did not, could not possibly know what human love meant, while Phyllis could at least learn.

  "Look, dear," he said, sitting down beside his wife on the couch and taking her hand in his. She didn't draw away this time. "Suppose that what you say is true--not that it is, of course. Just because the tree has a crush on me doesn't mean I necessarily have a crush on her, does it?"

  His wife looked up at him, her rose-red lips parted, her moss-gray eyes shining. "Oh, if only I could believe that, James!"

  "Anyhow, she doesn't know what the whole thing's about, poor kid!"

  "Poor kid!"

  "Phyllis, you know you're prettier than any tree." That was not literally true, but reason was useless; he had to make his point in terms she could understand. "And, remember, she's got a lot of rings--she must
be centuries old--while you are only nineteen."

  "Twenty," Phyllis corrected. "I had a birthday on the ship."

  "Well, you certainly must allow me to wish you a happy birthday, darling."

  She was in his arms at last; he was about to kiss her, and the tree seemed very remote, when she drew back. "But are you sure she doesn't--she isn't--she can't be watching us?"

  "Darling, I swear it!" "Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, that tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops".... But he had sense enough not to say it, and Elysium had not one blessed moon, but three, and everything was all right.

  For a while anyway.

  * * * * *

  "I see your wife is developing a corm," the tree remarked, as James paused for a chat. He hadn't much time to be sociable those days, for there was such a lot of work to be done, so many preparations to be made, so many things to be requisitioned from Earth. The supply ships were beginning to come now, bringing necessities and an occasional luxury for those who could afford it.

  "She's pregnant," James explained. "Happened before I left Earth."

  "How do you mean?"

  "She's about to fruit. Didn't I read that zoology book to you?"

  "Yes, but--oh, James, it all seems so vulgar! To fruit without ever having bloomed--how squalid!"

  "It all depends on how you look at it," he said. "I--that is, we had hoped that when the baby came, you would be godmother to it. You know what that is, don't you?"

  "Of course I do. You read Cinderella to me. I know it's a great honor. But I'm afraid I must decline."

  "Why? I thought you were my--our friend."

  "Jim, there is something I must confess: my feelings toward you are not merely those of a friend. Although Phyllis doesn't have too many rings of intellect, she is a female, so she knew all along." Magnolia's leaves rustled diffidently. "I feel toward you the way I never felt toward any intelligent life-form, but only toward the sun, the soil, the rain. I sense a tropism that seems to incline me toward you. In fact, I'm afraid, Jim, in your own terms, I love you."

  "But you're a tree! You can't love me in my own terms, because trees can't love in the way people can, and, of course, people can't love like trees. We belong to two entirely different species, Maggie. You can't have listened to that zoology book very attentively."