by Jack Vance
“Either one of us!”
“Someone warned him away. Kathryn is the logical suspect; but you knew he was there.”
Berel swung on her heel, stalked back to the Beaudry .
IV
The gnats were countering the mites, apparently; the population of both first increased, then dwindled. After which the vetch grew taller and stronger. There was now oxygen in the air, and the botanists broadcast a dozen new species—broad-leaves, producers of oxygen; nitrogen-fixers, absorbing the ammonia; the methanophiles from the young me thane-rich worlds, combining oxygen with methane, and growing in magnificent white towers like carved ivory.
Bemisty’s feet were whole again, a size larger than his first ones and he was forced to discard his worn and comfortable boots for a new pair cut from stiff blue leather.
Kathryn was playfully helping him cram his feet into the hard vacancies. Casually, Bemisty said, “It’s been bothering me, Kathryn: tell me, how did you call to the Kay?”
She started, gave him an instant piteous wide-eyed stare, like a trapped rabbit, then she laughed. “The same way you do—with my mouth.”
“When?”
“Oh, every day about this time.”
“I’d be glad to watch you.”
“Very well.” She looked up at the window, spoke in the ringing Kay tongue.
“What did you say?” asked Bemisty politely.
“I said that the mites were a failure; that there was good morale here aboard the Beaudry; that you were a great leader, a wonderful man.”
“But you recommended no further steps.”
She smiled demurely. “I am ecologist—neither constructive, nor destructive.”
“Very well,” said Bemisty, standing into his boots. “We shall see.”
Next day the radar-tapes showed the presence of two ships; they had made fleeting visits—“long enough to dump their villainous cargo,” so Bufco reported to Bemisty.
The cargo proved to be eggs of a ferocious blue wasp, which preyed on the gnats. The gnats perished; the mites prospered; the vetch began to wilt under the countless sucking tubes. To counter the wasp, Bemisty released a swarm of feathery blue flying-ribbons. The wasps bred inside a peculiar, small brown puff-ball fungus (the spores for which had been released with the wasp larva). The flying-ribbons ate these puff-balls. With no shelter for their larva, the wasps died; the gnats revived in numbers, gorging on mites till their thoraxes split.
The Kay assaulted on a grander scale. Three large ships passed by night, disgorging a witches-cauldron of reptiles, insects, arachnids, land crabs, a dozen phyla without formal classification. The human resources of the Beaudry were inadequate to the challenge; they began to fail, from insect stings; another botanist took a pulsing white-blue gangrene from the prick of a poisonous thorn.
New Earth was no longer a mild region of vetch, lichen, and dusty wind; New Earth was a fantastic jungle. Insects stalked each other through the leafy wildernesses; there were local specializations and improbable adaptations. There were spiders, and lizards the size of cats; scorpions which rang like bells when they walked; long-legged lobsters; poisonous butterflies; a species of giant moth, which, finding the environment congenial, grew ever more gigantic.
Within the Beaudry they was everywhere a sense of defeat. Bemisty walked limping along the promenade, the limp more of an unconscious attitude than a physical necessity. The problem was too complex for a single brain, he thought—or for a single team of human brains. The various life-forms on the planet, each evolving, mutating, expanding into vacant niches, selecting the range of their eventual destinies—they made a pattern too haphazard for an electronic computer, for a team of computers.
Blandwick, the meteorologist, came along the promenade with his daily atmospheric-report. Bemisty derived a certain melancholy pleasure to find that while there had been no great increase in oxygen and water-vapor, neither had there been any decrease. “In fact,” said
Blandwick, “there’s a tremendous amount of water tied up in all those bugs and parasites.”
Bemisty shook his head. “Nothing appreciable... .And they’re eating away the vetch faster than we can kill ’em off. New varieties appear faster than we can find them.”
Blandwick frowned. “The Kay are following no clear pattern.”
“No, they’re just dumping anything they hope might be destructive.”
“Why don’t we use the same technique? Instead of selective counteraction, we turn loose our entire biological program. Shotgun tactics.”
Bemisty limped on a few paces. “Well, why not? The total effect might be beneficial... .Certainly less destructive than what’s going on out there now.” He paused. “We deal in unpredictables of course—and this is contrary to my essential logic.”
Blandwick sniffed. “None of our gains to date have been the predictable ones.”
Bemisty grinned, after a momentary irritation, since Blandwick’s remark was inaccurate; had Blandwick been driving home a truth, then there would have been cause for irritation.
“Very well, Blandwick,” he said jovially. “We shoot the works. If it succeeds we’ll name the first settlement Blandwick.”
“Humph,” said the pessimistic Blandwick, and Bernisty went to give the necessary orders.
Now every vat, tub, culture tank, incubator, tray and rack in the laboratory was full; as soon as the contents achieved even a measure of acclimatization to the still nitrogenous atmosphere, they were discharged: pods, plants, molds, bacteria, crawling things, insects, annelids, crustaceans, land ganoids, even a few elementary mammals—life-forms from well over three dozen different worlds. Where New Earth had previously been a battleground, now it was a madhouse.
One variety of palms achieved instant success; inside of two months they towered everywhere over the landscape. Between them hung veils of a peculiar air-floating web, subsisting on flying things. Under the branches, the brambles, there was much killing; much breeding; much eating; growing; fighting; fluttering; dying. Aboard the Beaudry , Bemisty was well-pleased and once more jovial.
He clapped Blandwick on the back. “Not only do we call the city after you, we prefix your name to an entire system of philosophy, the Blandwick method.”
Blandwick was unmoved by the tribute. “Regardless of the success of ‘the Blandwick method,’ as you call it, the Kay still have a word to say.”
“What can they do?” argued Bemisty. “They can liberate creatures no more unique or ravenous than those we ourselves have loosed. Anything the Kay send to New Earth now is in the nature of anti-climax.”
Blandwick smiled sourly. “Do you think they’ll give up quite so easily?”
Bemisty became uneasy, and went off in search of Berel. “Well, play-girl,” he demanded, “what does your intuition tell you now?”
“It tells me,” she snapped, “that whenever you are the most optimistic, the Kay are on the verge of their most devastating attacks.”
Bemisty put on a facetious front. “And when will these attacks take place?”
“Ask your spy-woman; she communicates secrets freely to anyone.”
“Very well,“ said Bemisty. “Find her, if you please, and send her to
Kathryn appeared, “Yes, Bemisty?”
“I am curious,” said Bemisty, “as to what you communicate to the
Kay.”
Kathryn said, “I tell them that Bemisty is defeating them, that he has countered their worst threats.”
“And what do they tell you?”
“They tell me nothing.”
“And what do you recommend?”
“I recommend that they either win at a massive single stroke, or give up.
“How do you tell them this?”
Kathryn laughed, showing her pretty white teeth. “I talk to them just as now I talk to you.”
“And when do you think they will strike?”
“I don’t know....It seems that certainly they are long overdue. Would you not think
so?”
“Yes,” admitted Bemisty, and turned his head to find Bufco the radioman approaching.
“Kay ships,” said Bufco. “A round dozen—mountainous barrels! They made one circuit—departed!”
“Well,” said Bemisty, “this is it.” He turned upon Kathryn the level look of cold speculation, and she returned the expression of smiling demureness which both of them had come to find familiar.
V
In three days, every living thing on New Earth was dead. Not merely died, but dissolved into a viscous gray syrup which sank into the plain, trickled like sputum down the crags, evaporated into the wind. The effect was miraculous. Where the jungle had thronged the plain—now only plain existed, and already the wind was blowing up dust-devils.
There was one exception to the universal dissolution—the monstrous
moths, which by some unknown method, or chemical make-up, had managed to survive. Across the wind they soared; frail fluttering shapes, seeking their former sustenance and finding nothing now but desert.
Aboard the Beaudry there was bewilderment; then dejection; then dull rage which could find no overt outlet, until at last Bemisty fell into a sleep.
He awoke with a sense of vague uneasiness, of trouble: the collapse of the New Earth ecology? No. Something deeper, more immediate. He jumped into his clothes, hastened to the saloon. It was nearly full, and gave off a sense of grim malice.
Kathryn sat pale, tense in a chair; behind her stood Banta with a garrote. He was clearly preparing to strangle her, with the rest of the crew as collaborators.
Bemisty stepped across the saloon, broke Banta’s jaw and broke the fingers of his clenched fist. Kathryn sat looking up silently.
“Well, you miserable renegades,” Bemisty began; but looking around the wardroom, he found no sheepishness, only growing anger, defiance. “What goes on here?” roared Bemisty.
“She is a traitor,” said Berel; “we execute her.”
“How can she be a traitor? She never promised us faith!”
“She is certainly a spy!”
Bemisty laughed. “She has never dissembled the fact that she communicates with the Kay. How can she then be a spy?”
No one made reply, there was uneasy shifting of eyes.
Bemisty kicked Banta who was rising to his feet. “Get away, you cur... .I’ll have no murderers, no lynchers in my crew!”
Berel cried, “She betrayed us!”
“How could she betray us? She never asked us to give her trust. Quite the reverse; she came to us frankly as a Kay; frankly she tells me she reports to the Kay.”
“But how?” sneered Berel. “She claims to talk to them—to make you believe she jokes!”
Bemisty regarded Kathryn with the speculative glance. “If I read her character right, Kathryn tells no untruths. It is her single defense. If she says she talks to the Kay, so she does....” He turned to the medic, “Bring an infrascope.”
The inffascope revealed strange black shadows inside Kathryn’s body. A small button beside her larynx; two slim boxes flat against her diaphragm; wires running down under the skin of each leg.
“What is this?” gasped the medic.
“Internal radio,” said Bufco. “The button takes her voice, the antenna are the leg-wires. What better equipment for a spy?”
“She is no spy, I tell you!” Bemisty bellowed. “The fault lies not with her—it lies with me! She told me! If I had asked her how her voice got to
the Kay, she would have told me—candidly, frankly. I never asked her; I chose to regard the entire affair as a game! If you must garrote someone— garrote me! I am the betrayer—not she!”
Berel turned, walked from the wardroom, others followed. Bemisty turned to Kathryn. “Now—now what will you do? Your venture is a success.”
“Yes,” said Kathryn, “a success.” She likewise left the wardroom. Bemisty followed curiously. She went to the outdoor locker, put on her head-dome, opened the double-lock, stepped out upon the dead plain.
Bemisty watched her from a window. Where would she walk to? Nowhere... .She walked to death, like one walking into the surf and swimming straight out to sea. Overhead the giant moths fluttered, flickered down on the wind. Kathryn looked up; Bemisty saw her cringe. A moth flapped close, strove to seize her. She ducked; the wind caught the frail wings, and the moth wheeled away.
Bernisty chewed his lip; then laughed. “Devil take all; devil take the Kay; devil take all_” He jammed on his own head-dome.
Bufco caught his arm. “Bemisty, where do you go?”
“She is brave, she is steadfast; why should she die?”
“She is our enemy!“
“I prefer a brave enemy to cowardly friends.” He ran from the ship, across the soft loess now crusted with dried slime.
The moths fluttered, plunged. One clung to Kathryn’s shoulders with barbed legs; she struggled, beat with futile hands at the great soft shape.
Shadows fell over Bemisty; he saw the purple-red glinting of big eyes, the impersonal visage. He swung a fist, felt the chitin crunch. Sick pangs of pain reminded him that the hand had already been broken on Banta’s jaw. With the moth flapping on the ground he ran off down the wind. Kathryn lay supine, a moth probing her with a tube ill-adapted to cutting plastics and cloth.
Bemisty called out encouragement; a shape swooped on his back, bore him to the ground. He rolled over, kicked; arose, jumped to his feet, tackled the moth on Kathryn, tore off the wings, snapped the head up.
He turned to fight the other swooping shapes but now from the ship came Bufco, with a needle-beam puncturing moths from the sky, and others behind him.
Bernisty carried Kathryn back to the ship. He took her to the surgery, laid her on the pallet. “Cut that radio out of her,” he told the medic. “Make her normal, and then if she gets information to the Kay, they’ll deserve it.”
He found Berel in his quarters, lounging in garments of seductive diaphane. He swept her with an indifferent glance.
Conquering her perturbation she asked, “Well, what now, Bemisty?”
“We start again!”
“Again? When the Kay can sweep the world of life so easy?”
“This time we work differently.”
“So?”
“Do you know the ecology of Kerrykirk, the Kay capitol world?”
“No”
“In six months—you will find New Earth as close a duplicate as we are able.”
“But that is foolhardy! What other pests will the Kay know so well as those of their own world?”
“Those are my own views.”
Bemisty presently went to the surgery. The medic handed him the international radio. Bemisty stared. “What are these—these little spores?”
“They are persuaders,” said the medic. “They can be easily triggered to red-heat—”
Bemisty said abruptly, “Is she awake?”
“Yes.”
Bemisty looked down into the pale face. “You have no more radio.”
“I know.”
“Will you spy any longer?”
“No. I give you my loyalty, my love.”
Bemisty nodded, touched her face, turned, left the room, went to give his orders for a new planet.
Bemisty ordered stocks from Blue Star: Kerrykirk flora and fauna exclusively and set them out as conditions justified. Three months passed uneventfully. The plants of Kerrykirk throve; the air became rich; New Earth felt its first rains.
Kerrykirk trees and cycads sprouted, grew high, forced by growth hormones; the plains grew knee-deep with Kerrykirk grasses.
Then once again came the Kay ships; and now it was as if they played a sly game, conscious of power. The first infestations were only mild harassments.
Bemisty grinned, and released Kerrykirk amphibians into the new puddles. Now the Kay ships came at almost regular intervals, and each vessel brought pests more virulent or voracious; and the Beaudry technicians worked incessantly countering the successive invasions
.
There was grumbling; Bemisty sent those who wished to go home to Blue Star. Berel departed; her time as a play-girl was finished. Bemisty felt a trace of guilt as she bade him dignified farewell. When he returned to his quarters and found Kathryn there, the guilt disappeared.
The Kay ships came; a new horde of hungry creatures to devastate the land.
Some of the crew cried defeat, “Where will it end? It is incessant; let us give up this thankless task!”
Others spoke of war. “Is not New Earth already a battleground?”
Bemisty waved a careless hand. “Patience, patience; just one more month”
“Why one more month?”
“Do you not understand? The Kay ecologists are straining their laboratories breeding these pests!”
“Ah!”
One more month, one more Kay visitation, a new rain of violent life, eager to combat the life of New Earth.
“Now!” said Bemisty.
The Beaudry technicians collected the latest arrivals, the most effective of the previous cargoes; they were bred; the seeds, spores, eggs, prepared carefully stored, packed.
One day a ship left New Earth and flew to Kerrykirk, the holds bulging with the most desperately violent enemies of Kerrykirk life that Kerrykirk scientists could find. The ship returned to New Earth with its holds empty. Not till six months later did news of the greatest plagues in history seep out past Kay censorship.
During this time there were no Kay visits to New Earth. “And if they are discreet,” Bemisty told the serious man from Blue Star who had come to replace him, “they will never come again. They are too vulnerable to their own pests—so long as we maintain a Kerrykirk ecology.”
“Protective coloration, you might say,” remarked the new governor of New Earth with a thin-lipped smile.
“Yes, you might say so.”
“And what do you do, Bemisty?”
Bemisty listened. A far-off hum came to their ears. “That,” said Bemisty, “is the Blauelm , arriving from Blue Star. And it’s mine for another flight, another exploration.”
“You seek another New Earth?” And the thin-lipped smile became broader, with the unconscious superiority the settled man feels for the wanderer.
