by Jack Vance
“No. It is Kay.”
“How do you know?”
Out of the boat stumbled the form of a young woman. Even at this distance it could be seen she was very beautiful—something in the confidence of movement, the easy grace_She wore a head-dome, but little
Ecological Onslaught
else. Bemisty felt Berel stiffening. Jealousy? She felt none when he amused himself with other play-girls; did she sense here a deeper threat?
Berel said in a throaty voice, “She’s a spy—a Kay spy. Send her
i y>
away!
Bemisty was pulling on his own dome; a few minutes later, he walked across the dusty plain to meet the young woman, who was pushing her way slowly against the wind.
Bemisty paused, sized her up. She was slight, more delicate in build than most of the Blue Star women; she had a thick cap of black elf-locks; pale skin with the luminous look of old vellum; wide dark eyes.
Bemisty felt a peculiar lump rising in his throat; a feeling of awe and protectiveness such as Berel nor any other woman had ever aroused. Berel was behind him. Berel was antagonistic; both Bemisty and the strange woman felt it.
Berel said, “She’s a spy—clearly! Send her away!”
Bemisty said, “Ask her what she wants.”
The woman said, “I speak your Blue Star language, Bemisty; you can ask me yourself.”
“Very well. Who are you? What do you do here?”
“My name is Kathryn—”
“She is a Kay!” said Berel.
“-—I am a criminal. I escaped my punishment, and fled in this direction.”
“Come,” said Bemisty. “I would examine you more closely.”
In the Beaudry wardroom, crowded with interested watchers, she told her story. She claimed to be the daughter of a Kirkassian freeholder—
“What is that?” asked Berel in a skeptical voice.
Kathryn responded mildly. “A few of the Kirkassians still keep their strongholds in the Keviot Mountains—a tribe descended from ancient brigands.”
“So you are the daughter of a brigand?”
“I am more; I am a criminal in my own right,” replied Kathryn mildly.
Bemisty could contain his curiosity no more. “What did you do, girl; what did you do?”
“I committed the act of—” here she used a Kay word which Bemisty was unable to understand. Berel’s knitted brows indicated that she likewise was puzzled. “After that,” went on Kathryn, “I upset a brazier of incense on the head of priest. Had I felt remorse, I would have remained to be punished; since I did not I fled here in the space-boat.”
“Incredible!” said Berel in disgust.
Bemisty sat watching in amusement. “Apparently, girl, you are believed to be a Kay spy. What do you say to that?”
“If I were or if I were not—in either case I would deny it.”
“You deny it then?”
Kathryn’s face creased; she broke out into a laugh of sheer delight. “No. I admit it. I am a Kay spy.”
“I knew it, I knew it—
“Hush, woman,” said Bemisty. He turned to Kathryn, his brow creased in puzzlement. “You admit you are a spy?”
“Do you believe me?”
“By the Bulls of Bashan-—I hardly know what I believe!”
“She’s a clever trickster—cunning!” stormed Berel. “She’s pulling her artful silk around your eyes.”
“ Quiet J” roared Bemisty. “Give me some credit for normal percept tiveness!” He turned to Kathryn. “Only a madwoman would admit to being a spy.”
“Perhaps I am a madwoman,” she said with grave simplicity.
Bemisty threw up his hands. “Very well, what is the difference? There are no secrets here in the first place. If you wish to spy, do so—as overtly or as stealthily as you please, whichever suits you. If you merely seek refuge, that is yours too, for you are on Blue Star soil.”
“My thanks to you, Bemisty.”
Ill
Bemisty flew out with Broderick, the cartographer, mapping, photographing, exploring and generally inspecting New Earth. The landscape was everywhere similar—a bleak scarred surface like the inside of a burned out kiln. Everywhere loess plains of wind-spread dust abutted harsh crags.
Broderick nudged Bemisty. “Observe.”
Bemisty, following the gesture, saw three faintly-marked but unmistakable squares on the desert below—vast areas of crumbled stone, strewed over by wind-driven sand.
“Those are either the most gigantic crystals the universe has ever known,” said Bemisty, “or—we are not the first intelligent race to set foot on this planet.”
“Shall we land?”
Bemisty surveyed the squares through his telescope. “There is little
to see_Leave it for the archaeologists; I’ll call some out from Blue
Star.”
Returning toward the Beaudry , Bemisty suddenly called, “Stop!”
They set down the survey-boat; Bemisty alighted, and with vast satisfaction inspected a patch of green-brown vegetation: Basic 6-D vetch, podded over with the symbiotic lichens which fed it oxygen and water.
“Another six weeks,” said Bemisty, “the world will froth with this
stuff.”
Broderick peered closely at a leaf. “What is that red blotch?”
“Red blotch?” Bemisty peered, frowned. “It looks like a rust, a fungus.”
“Is that good?”
“No—of course not! It’s—bad!...I can’t quite understand it. This planet was sterile when we arrived.”
“Spores drop in from space,” suggested Broderick.
Bemisty nodded. “And space-boats likewise. Come, let’s get back to the Beaudry. You have the position of this spot?”
“To the centimeter.”
“Never mind. I’ll kill this colony.” And Bemisty seared the ground clean of the patch of vetch he had been so proud of. They returned to the Beaudry in silence, flying in over the plain which now grew thick with mottled foliage. Alighting from the boat, Bemisty ran not to the Beaudry but to the nearest shrub, and inspected the leaves. “None here.. .None here—nor here...”
“Bemisty!”
Bemisty looked around. Baron the botanist approached, his face stem. Bemisty’s heart sank. “Yes?”
“There has been inexcusable negligence.”
“Rust?”
“Rust. It’s destroying the vetch.”
Bemisty swung on is heel. “You’ve got a sample?”
“We’re already working out a counter-agent in the lab.”
“Good....”
But the rust was a hardy growth; finding an agency to destroy the rust and still leave the vetch and the lichens unharmed proved a task of enormous difficulty. Sample after sample of virus, germ, blot, wort and fungus failed to satisfy the conditions and were destroyed in the furnace. Meanwhile, the color of the vetch changed from brown-green to red-green to iodine-color; and the proud growth began to slump and rot.
Bemisty walked sleeplessly, exhorting, cursing his technicians. “You call yourselves ecologists? A simple affair of separating a rust from the vetch—you fail, you flounder! Here—give me that culture!” And Bemisty seized the culture-disk from Baron, himself red-eyed and irritable.
The desired agent was at last found in a culture of slime-molds; and another two days passed before the pure strain was isolated and set out in a culture. Now the vetch was rotting, and the lichens lay scattered like autumn leaves.
Aboard the Beaudry there was feverish activity. Cauldrons full of culture crowded the laboratory, the corridors; trays of spores dried in the saloon, in the engine-room, in the library.
Here Bernisty once more became aware of Kathryn, when he found her scraping dry spores into distribution boxes. He paused to
watch her; he felt the shift of her attention from the task to himself, but he was too tired to speak. He merely nodded, turned and returned to the laboratory.
The slime-molds were
broadcast, but clearly it was too late. “Very well,” said Bemisty, “we broadcast another setting of seed—Basic 6-D vetch. This time we know our danger and we already have the means to protect ourselves.”
The new vetch grew; much of the old vetch revived. The slime-mold, when it found no more rust, perished—except for one or two mutant varieties which attacked the lichen. For a time, it appeared as if these spores would prove as dangerous as the rust; but the Beaudry catalogue listed a virus selectively attacking slime-molds; this was broadcast, and the molds disappeared.
Bemisty was yet disgruntled. At an assembly of the entire crew he said, “Instead of three agencies—the vetch and the two lichens—there is now extant six, counting the rust, the slime-mold, the virus. The more life—the harder to control. I emphasize most strongly the need for care and absolute antisepsis.”
In spite of the precautions, rust appeared again—this time a black variety. But Bemisty was ready; inside of two days, he disseminated counter-agent. The rust disappeared; the vetch flourished. Everywhere, now, across the planet lay the brown-green carpet. In spots it rioted forty feet thick, climbing and wrestling, stalk against stalk, leaf lapping leaf. It climbed up the granite crags; it hung festooned over precipices. And each day, countless tons of C02 became oxygen, methane became water and more CO 2.
Bemisty watched the atmospheric-analyses closely; and one day the percentage of oxygen in the air rose from the ‘imperceptible’ to the ‘minute trace’ category. On this day, he ordered a general holiday and banquet. It was Blue Star formal custom for men and women to eat separately, the sight of open mouths being deemed as immodest as the act of elimination. The occasion however was one of high comradeship and festivity, and Bemisty, who was neither modest nor sensitive, ordered the custom ignored; so it was in an atmosphere of gay abandon that the banquet began.
As the banquet progressed, as the ichors and alcohols took effect, the hilarity and abandon became more pronounced. At Bemisty’s side sat Berel, and though she had shared his couch during the feverish weeks previously she had felt that his attentions were completely impersonal; that she was no more than play-girl. When she noticed his eyes almost of themselves on Kathryn’s wine-flushed face, she felt emotions rising inside her that almost brought tears to her eyes.
“This must not be,” she muttered to herself. “In a few months I am
play-girl no more; I am student. I mate whom I choose; I do not choose this bushy egotistical brute, this philandering Bemisty!”
In Bemisty’s mind there were strange stirrings, too. “Berel is pleasant and kind,” he thought. “But Kathryn! The flair! The spirit!” And feeling her eyes on him he thrilled like a schoolboy.
Broderick the cartographer, his head spinning and fuzzy, at this moment seized Kathryn’s shoulders and drew her back to kiss her. She pulled aside, cast a whimsical glance at Bemisty. It was enough. Bemisty was by her side; he lifted her, carried her back to his chair, still hobbling on his burnt feet. Her perfume intoxicated him as much as the wine; he hardly noticed Berel’s furious face.
This must not be, thought Berel desperately. And now inspiration came to her. “Bemisty! Bemisty!” She tugged at his arm.
Bemisty turned his head. “Yes?”
“The rusts—I know how they appeared on the vetch!”
“They drifted down as spores—from space.”
“They drifted down in Kathryn’s space-boat! She’s not a spy—she’s a saboteur!” Even in her fury Berel had to admire the limpid innocence of Kathryn’s face. “She’s a Kay agent—an enemy.”
“Oh, bah,” muttered Bemisty, sheepishly. “This is woman-talk.”
“Woman-talk, is it?” screamed Berel. “What do you think is happening now, while you feast and fondle?—” she pointed a finger on which the metal foil flower blossom quivered—“that—that besom!”
“Why—I don’t understand you,” said Bemisty, looking in puzzlement from girl to girl.
“While you sit lording it, the Kay spread blight and ruin!”
“Eh? What’s this?” Bemisty continued to look from Berel to Kathryn, feeling suddenly clumsy and rather foolish. Kathryn moved on his lap. Her voice was easy, but now her body was stiff. “If you believe so, check on your radars and viewscopes.”
Bemisty relaxed. “Oh—nonsense.”
“No, no no!” shrilled Berel. “She tries to seduce your reason!”
Bemisty growled to Bufco, “Check the radar.” Then he, too, rose to his feet. “I’ll come with you.”
“Surely you don’t believe —” began Kathryn.
“I believe nothing till I see the radar tapes.”
Bufco flung switches, focussed his viewer. A small pip of light appeared. “A ship!”
“Coming or going?”
“Right now it’s going!”
“Where are the tapes?”
Bufco reeled out the records. Bemisty bent over them, his eyebrows bristling. “Humph.”
Bufco looked at him questioningly.
“This is very strange.”
“How so?”
“The ship had only just arrived—almost at once it turned aside, fled out, away from New Earth.”
Bufco studied the tapes. “This occurred precisely four minutes and thirty seconds ago.”
“Precisely when we left the saloon.”
“Do you think—”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“It’s almost as if they received a message—a warning ”
“But how? From where?” Bemisty hesitated. “The natural object of suspicion,” he said slowly, “is Kathryn.”
Bufco looked up with a curious glint in his eyes. “What will you do with her?”
“I didn’t say she was guilty; I remarked that she was the logical object of suspicion....” He pushed the tape magazine back under the scanner. “Let’s go see what’s been done... .What new mischief....”
No mischief was apparent. The skies were clear and yellowish-green; the vetch grew well.
Bemisty returned inside the Beaudry , gave certain instructions to Blandwick, who took off in the survey-boat and returned an hour later with a small silk bag held carefully. “I don’t know what they are,” said Blandwick.
“They’re bound to be bad.” Bemisty took the small silk bag to the laboratory and watched while the two botanists, the two mycologists, the four entomologists studied the contents of the bag.
The entomologists identified the material. “These are eggs of some small insect—from the gene-count and diffraction-pattern one or another of the mites.”
Bemisty nodded. He looked sourly at the waiting men. “Need I tell you what to do?”
“No.”
Bemisty returned to his private office and presently sent for Berel. He asked, without preliminary, “How did you know a Kay ship was in the sky?”
Berel stood staring defiantly down at him. “I did not know; I guessed.”
Bemisty studied for a moment. “Yes—you spoke of your intuitive abilities.”
“This was not intuition,” said Berel scornfully. “This was plain common sense.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“It’s perfectly clear. A Kay woman-spy appears. The ecology went bad right away; red rust and black rust. You beat the rust, you celebrate; you’re keyed to a sense of relief. What better time to start a new plague?”
Bemisty nodded slowly. “What better time, indeed_”
“Incidentally—what kind of plague is it going to be?”
“Plant-lice—mites. I think we can beat it before it gets started.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know....”
“It looks as if the Kay can’t scare us off, they mean to work us to death.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Can they do it?”
“I don’t see how we can stop them from trying. It’s easy to breed pests; hard to kill them.”
Banta, the head entomologist, came in with
a glass tube. “Here’s some of them—hatched.”
“Already?”
“We hurried it up a little.”
“Can they live in this atmosphere? There’s not much oxygen—lots of ammonia.”
“They thrive on it; it’s what they’re breathing now.”
Bemisty ruefully inspected the bottle. “And that’s our good vetch they’re eating, too.”
Berel looked over his shoulder. “What can we do about them?”
Banta looked properly dubious. “The natural enemies are certain parasites, viruses, dragonflies, and a kind of a small armored gnat that breeds very quickly; and which I think we’d do best to concentrate on. In fact we’re already engaging in large-scale selective breeding, trying to find a strain to live in this atmosphere.”
“Good work, Banta.” Bemisty rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?” asked Berel.
“Out to check on the vetch.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Out on the plain, Bemisty seemed intent not so much on the vetch as on the sky.
“What are you looking for?” Berel asked.
Bemisty pointed. “See that wisp up there?”
“A cloud?“
“Just a bit of frost—a few sprinkles of ice crystals... .But it’s a start! Our first rainstorm—that’ll be an event!”
“Provided the methane and oxygen don’t explode—and send us all to kingdom come!”
“Yes, yes,” muttered Bemisty. “We’ll have to set out some new methanophiles.”
“And how will you get rid of all this ammonia?”
“There’s a marsh-plant from Salsiberry that under proper conditions performs the equation: 12 NH3+9 02 = 18 H20+6 N2.”
“Rather a waste of time for it, I should say,” remarked Berel. “What does it gain?”
“A freak, only a freak. What do we gain by laughing? Another freak.”
“A pleasant uselessness.”
Be misty was examining the vetch. “There, here. Look. Under this leaf.” He displayed the mites; slow yellow aphid-creatures.
“When will your gnats be ready?”
“Banta is letting half his stock free; maybe they’ll feed faster on their own than in the laboratory.”
“Does—does Kathryn know about the gnats?”
“You’re still gunning for her, eh?”
Bemisty said mildly, “I can’t think of a way that either one of you could have communicated with that Kay ship.”
