Cold War in a Country Garden

by Lindsay Gutteridge

Olsen put in his head and wrinkled his nose. “Smells like an Arab whore house.”

  Long stamen rods issued from the blossom’s interior and Henry cut them out with his machete. Pollen grains were shaken from the stamens and rolled out on to the sand like golden footballs. Olsen climbed up and they bent double to walk into the flower’s interior. Henry squatted and plunged his machete into the end wall. A thin, creamy substance ran on to the knife. Olsen reached over Henry’s shoulder and with his forefinger transferred some liquid from the blade to his mouth.

  “Good, good. Him plenty good, plenty sweet…” He rolled his eyes melodramatically, rubbed his belly with a clockwise motion, scooped the edge of his hand along the flat of the knife and licked his palm.

  They made camp in the shade and prepared a meal. While looking for fuel in the undergrowth they found and killed a many-legged creature; Henry roasted the legs over the fire. He cut thick slices from a length of stamen, wrapped them in a piece of leaf and buried them—together with a grain of pollen—in the heart of the fire. He twirled the legs on a stick until fluid oozed from them and spluttered in the flames.

  They cracked open the legs, split the burnt outer-casing of the ball of pollen and unfolded the leaf containing the steaming cooked slices.

  “Meat and two veg,” Olsen spoke with his mouth full. “My compliments to the chef.”

  He finished eating, threw the leg shells and pollen husks into the flames, wiped his greasy hands on the leaf, then lay back and belched.

  “That takes care of the washing up… now for brandy and cigars. Why the hell didn’t I bring some grog, Henry? You should have reminded me.”

  They lounged around camp for the rest of the afternoon. As night approached it grew colder and they sat draped in blankets close to the fire.

  “I think I’ll sleep in the flowerhead, Bill, it should be warm and dry in there.” Henry threw his bedding into the open flower and climbed in after it. He spread the blankets and settled down to sleep.

  “You’ll smell like a fairy in the morning,” called Olsen, then he built up the fire and lay beside it, his crossbow beside him under the blankets.

  They overslept.

  Olsen woke beside the grey ashes of the fire, his blankets soaked with dew. He stood and stretched, then pushed at Henry’s suspended flower house. It nodded on its stem and Henry climbed stiffly down, yawning audibly. They breakfasted off cold meat and fresh nectar.

  Olsen rubbed his nectar-sticky hand together and gestured to a distant sparkle of light through the tangle of creeper. “That looks like water, How about a wash down?” But Henry was feeling a delayed tiredness from their climb to the roof and he returned to the flower for an after-breakfast rest.

  Olsen spread his blankets in the sun then shouldered his bow and walked under the creeper towards the glint of water. He climbed down into the grass-filled gutter and travelled through the thicket till he came out to a narrow beach.

  Water filled the gutter for as far as he could see. He knelt at its edge and took some in his supped hands and raised it to his mouth. The water was bitter; he spat it out, then scrambled on to the rim of the rusting gutter. He had expected a lake in which he could bathe but this was like a disused canal, a yellow film of oxide floated in patches on its surface and distant dunes blocked its southern end. A motionless shoal of mosquito larvae was suspended head down beneath the surface of the water, below them a red, wormlike creature writhed sluggishly.

  A sudden movement in the deep, still water startled Olsen.

  A grey shape, trailing a cloud of mud behind it, burst out of the black sludge in the canal bottom. The water scorpion took the red worm in its jaws then swooped down and vanished in a silent explosion of mud. The whole incident was finished in seconds. Slowly the black cloud billowed to the surface and the mosquito larvae bobbed and jostled in the disturbed water.

  A pricking sensation crept up the back of Olsen’s neck. He hurried along the edge of the gutter towards the dunes, climbed them and left the repellant canal behind.

  A chain of little pools untainted by chemical deposits lay in a hollow and he splashed through them until he found one deep enough to swim in. He left his crossbow on the bank, waded in and washed, then floated with his eyes closed.

  He lay with arms and legs spread wide and relaxed. The sun glowed warm through his eyelids. Imperceptibly his body drifted across the pool, his hand touched the sandy bank and he woke from his sun-induced coma. He sat up abruptly, his head went under with a splash and he struggled to his knees.

  The water was quite drinkable, he gulped it down then waded out, picked up his bow and headed for camp.

  The camp was deserted; his blankets still lay around the ashes of last night’s fire. He walked towards the flower in which Henry had slept. The morning sun shone through the blossom. “Lazy young bastard.”

  Olsen stopped.

  Two dark shapes were discernible through the translucent wall of the flower: a small one at the end of the tube and a big one near its entrance. The larger shape moved stealthily forward.

  Olsen fired six bolts into the moving shadow. He fired like a machine, loading and shooting as he ran. At his first shot the thing stopped, At his second, a screeching buzz came from inside the flower. The creature within struggled with frantic violence and the flower jerked wildly. He pumped in the third, fourth and fifth bolts. The fabric bulged and stretched, he crouched beneath the curve of the flower and rammed the nose of the crossbow against it. He could feel the heavy vibrating body within. At his last shot the plant gave a final jerk, a black claw at the end of a bristling leg burst through one of the holes made by the crossbow then the whole mass swayed slowly to a stop.

  He looked into the mouth of the flower. A tangle of claws and wings blocked the passage. A drop of venom was slowly expelled from the sting of the dead wasp.

  “Henry!” he shouted. There was no reply.

  He ran under the flower and cut a V-shaped slit in its pale belly, he pulled the flap down and stood with his head inside the passage.

  Henry sat with his knees drawn up and his back to the end of the tunnel. His face was vacant, his wide eyes fixed on those of the insect.

  Olsen looked up. Even though the creature was dead, the glittering multi-celled eyes and terrible fangs seen so close made him shudder. He touched Henry’s ankle.

  “Come on out, lad,” he said gently. “It’s dead now.”

  Henry climbed awkwardly through the hole and walked stiffly from the flower. His face was white, his hands were cold. Olsen relit the fire and the younger man lay beside it beneath a blanket.

  Olsen squatted quietly by the fire and poked it with a stick. “It reminds me of a trip I made in ‘fifty-nine. I took out a Yank after elephant. Nothing would do but elephant! We had the bloody lot: three trucks, a dining tent, canvas baths, a ‘fridge, enough Bourbon and Coke to float a battleship.”

  Henry smiled wanly.

  “On the first night out a leopard came into camp after my dog. The little tyke hid under my bed and I woke up with the leopard on my chest. What with the dog howling, and me and the cat fighting it out, we woke up “Frank Buck”. He rolled out of bed, grabbed the first gun that came to hand—luckily it was a small-game shotgun— and let fly in our general direction.”

  Bill Olsen fell back, gasping with laughter. “He blew a hole in the tent and got the dog and me and the cat in one go—the leopard took off with a load of buckshot up his backside and I didn’t see Patch for three days.

  “My gun bearer did a rough job of sewing on me…” he ran a thumb along the puckered scar on his neck and chest “…but antibiotics and a case of Old Grand-Dad saw me right.”

  Henry laughed noiselessly.

  Olsen looked across the fire and saw behind his companion the flower with the stiff leg of the wasp thrust through it. Fluid from the insect’s body had gathered in the flower trumpet and was dripping through the hole which had been cut.

  He rose briskly. “We’ll shift camp b
efore we have a mob of ants paying respects to your deceased friend.”

  Henry collected the blankets, Olsen kicked out the fire and got together the rest of their gear. He handed over Henry’s bow. “Always keep it handy.” It was a rebuke.

  They crossed several valleys and made a second camp. While Henry built a fire Olsen left him, ostensibly to hunt for supper. In fact, he returned to the old camp and climbed into the open flower. The black wasp was as full of arrows as a Christian martyr. He retrieved and filled them from its poison sac, forcing venom through the sting by pressing on its tail. He emptied nettle poison from the bolts he carried and refilled them with venom. The blankets were tom, ripped by the brute’s struggles; he pulled one out but it was foul with blood and excrement and he flung it back.

  In Olsen’s absence, Henry had made a shelter under the curve of a fallen leaf, excluding the passage of air along one side by digging a trench into which the edge of the leaf sank. A fire burned at the hovel’s entrance, lighting and warming its interior.

  They ate, then shared out the depleted blankets and slept.

  Next day they lay again in a valley overlooking the garden. Olsen was on his belly, squinting over the edge of the roof, searching for tracks in the sunny landscape below.

  Henry lay back, his eyes closed. “Something in the insect seems to be alien to the habits, morals and psychology of this world, as if it has come from some other planet, more monstrous, more energetic, more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than our own.” He paused. “Yesterday, I really knew what Maeterlinck meant by that. The wasp you killed has an extraordinary way of reproducing itself. It builds a spherical jug of mud with a hole in the top. It finds a victim, paralyses it with a sting then drops it into the jug. When the bottom of the jug is filled with victims, it lays an egg which it suspends inside the jug on a thread, then it seals the entrance. When the egg hatches the grub drops on to the paralysed victims and eats them alive.”

  “Disgusting!” said Olsen.

  “Yet you must admire the incredible ingenuity,” defended Henry.

  “Bloody clever! I’ll kill every one I come across,” growled Olsen. He rolled over and stared at the sky. “There is something which seems miraculous to me: how they made us this size.”

  “To neolithic man a man on a bicycle would have been a miracle,” said Henry.

  “Do you know how it’s done?”

  “Probably with hormones. I talked to the doctor in charge, he was pretty secretive, but he dropped a hint. There are probably lots of ways it can be done; I think hormones are pretty crude and they may be researching other methods.”

  “What other methods?”

  Henry smiled. “Do you want a lecture?”

  “We’ve got all day and I can always sleep through it.”

  “A miracle would be the neatest way—you’d need a special dispensation. Or it could be mind over matter, like walking on the waters, or on hot coals. Mind over matter—think small and you’ll be small.”

  “I thought you were being serious.”

  “All right, Bill. Let’s look at it this way—The problem: how to make a man smaller.

  “Here’s an analogy: how to make a house smaller. First of all you could do it by subtraction—by deleting the less essential parts; garage, conservatory, bathroom, for instance. Or by reducing the number of bricks, thus making each part of the house smaller.

  “Or you could use contraction—reduce the size of the bricks, thus scaling down the whole house.”

  “To hell with analogies.”

  “The crudest form of subtraction would be to reduce the volume of a man surgically. Cut out his spare parts. He could manage with one lung and one kidney—a lot of people live without duplicate organs…”

  “Balls?” suggested Olsen.

  Henry smiled. “A girl in America who was excessively tall had twelve inches of bone removed from her legs. You’d have to repackage the body to get any benefit, of course, no point in leaving a vacuum. You could have a more compact trunk; perhaps move the brain into the lung cavity. Leave a little stub on the shoulders with a cluster of sense organs.”

  “You have got some gruesome ideas, Henry.”

  “However, this crude surgical subtraction would not make much difference in size, and you’d have a pretty utilitarian sort of chap at the end of it. But if you subtract from the number of body cells, reducing them to the minimum number needed by the body to function, that could make a big difference. A 50 per cent reduction in cells would reduce a man’s volume by the same percentage—like reducing the number of bricks in a house.”

  “But we’re three hundred times smaller.”

  “That’s why contraction is the solution. The whole structure must be reduced in proportion. And I’ll bet a lot of specialists are working on it now: chemists, biologists, geneticists, physicists, astronomers…”

  “Astronomers!”

  Henry sat up and thoughtfully lobbed a pebble up the side of the valley. It rattled up the curve then returned to his hand. “The biggest radio telescopes have revealed Black Stars—quasars—incredibly concentrated universes, so dense that they emit no light; their gravity has condensed billions of tons of matter into the size of this…” Henry dropped the pebble on to Bill Olsen’s chest “…an astronaut coming within a quasar’s influence might conceivably be condensed in size; or squashed flat! Another sort of space/time juggling would be to convert a man’s mass into energy—Einstein says it can be done— which would give you a man in the form of electromagnetic waves. Reduce the amplitude of the waves, then re-convert the waves to mass and you’d have a smaller man.”

  Olsen smiled sceptically.

  “Well, perhaps all that is a bit speculative; but one thing is certain, some part of a creature’s mechanism must govern its final size—isolate that part and you may have the means of controlling size. What causes the difference between midgets and giants? Or pigmies and Watusies? Or fleas and elephants? I think the stuff they dosed us with was probably a concentrate of some glandular substance which makes midgets and pigmies and fleas small.

  “But a more sophisticated way of miniaturizing would probably be to muck about with D.N.A.—deoxyribonucleic acid.

  “D.N.A. holds the mystery of the transmission of characteristics from parents to children.” Henry held up his hands, the curved palms and fingers facing. “It consists of two rods, one inherited from your father, the other from your mother. They act as a sort of blueprint for your basic physical and mental make-up and every cell in your body has a pair. Along the length of each rod are countless nodules, and each nodule controls some part of you: the size of your head, the colour of your eyes, your blood type, you proclivity to live a long or short time.

  “One of these tiny control points must regulate growth.” He frowned with concentration. “This is the area which I would explore. The tiniest creatures must also have their blueprints. If one could exchange an insect’s growth-control nodule with a man’s perhaps by micro-surgery at the moment of conception—then that man should inherit the size natural to the insect…”

  “And a right little monster you might get.”

  Henry turned in surprise at the disapproval in Olsen’s voice. “Carry on, Henry, I’m fascinated.”

  “Alternatively, if one had lots of time one could breed tiny people (enormous variation in size is possible with selective breeding: look at the difference between a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua). Breeding combined with diet might work very well. But it would take an eternity…” Henry brooded over this “…unless the metabolic rate increased as the generations grew smaller… fruit flies have such a short life cycle that you get fifty generations in a year. But what would be the use of a man who passed from childhood to senility in a week?” Henry lay back and stared interrogatingly at a small white cloud which hung in the otherwise empty sky. “We might monkey about with his genes, and increase his life span once we’d got him down to size?” He waited hopefully, as if for an affirmation.


  Olsen watched him.

  Now he lay, kneading his lower lip between thumb and finger, silently pursuing the problems of miniaturization along more and more complex labyrinths of theory. “Yes,” he said softly, “that might work…”

  Olsen raised himself on an elbow, the pebble slid off his chest on to the roof, and Henry glanced quickly up. “You’re very well up on all this medical stuff, Henry.”

  “A mine of useless information,” smiled Henry. “My Uncle George is a bio-chemist.”

  Olsen sent the pebble bouncing down the valley towards the distant camp. “We’d better be getting back. Come on, lad, let’s have the chef s special and an early night—we’ve got a long day tomorrow. It will be harder going down than climbing up.”

  Bill Olsen was right. It took them two more hours to descend to the ground than it had taken to climb to the roof. They started in the dim light of early morning, passed the great wasps’ nest of baked clay at midday and by the time they had reached the ground and climbed to the Kremlin platform Henry was ready for bed.

  Dilke had retired to his hammock. Olsen entered noisily and reported that it smelled like a bloody flower shop up on the roof. They celebrated the success of the expedition with the last of the whisky.

  When Henry and Dilke woke in the morning Bill Olsen had got the fire blazing and was out on the platform sawing two intersecting grooves in the lead crowns of his crossbow bolts.

  “We’ll see some fun today, my old son,” he greeted Henry.

  After breakfast they prepared for the day’s hunting, then descended to the shed floor and headed for the stream near the water butt.

  Mist lay on the water hole and they waited for the first insects to arrive. The sun had not yet risen and their breath steamed into the still air; Henry shivered.

  The first grasshoppers rattled out of the plantation and bent their heads to drink. Henry and Dilke picked out two insects and dropped them; the two hoppers died instantly and the rest of the mob panicked, shooting at all angles into the air.

  “Let’s find something bigger,” growled Olsen.