Veils fell from his mind's eye. He suddenly saw that only a blind idiot would have blithely attributed to coincidence the Swede's grisly traffic death on the same night he'd snipped her stem at the neck. No, he must cherish the Taggart-plant in every way! My God, what if a blight suddenly struck the garden?— some horrid creeping purple mold ...
Or what if he went into a coma now? He'd no sooner thought that than he was blinking his eyes, taking deep breaths, slapping his cheeks hard, and rapidly stamping his right foot on the concrete. Clearly he'd almost gone into a coma a minute before, back at the secret panel. Probably only the high pitch of tension involved in putting Kittens to bed had saved him from blackout during the past several days.
The atmosphere of this damned place was soporific! Maybe he should flee to the Canadian North Woods with its clean bracing air?—yes, but it puts you to sleep, they say...
And if he were away, people could get at the garden—get at the Taggart-plant! Kidnap it, hold it for ransom, torture it, take great big shears and ... He'd never really trusted Anselmo!
Gradually sanity returned, especially when it struck him that his deep breathing, hyperventilating his lungs, was all by itself about to throw him into a faint.
He shifted his mind into gear and set it to work under a careful throttle. Dimly he could recall now tugging his beard in the moon-blue dark while the second mimic seed had still been in his fingers. Evidently he'd loosened a hair or two and then buried them along with the seed. His body bending over the pot and thereafter its close presence in the same building had been the equivalent of a picture or more. In any case, Great-aunt Veronica herself, according to her papers and notes, had never been certain whether the pictures or the exodermal tokens were the most important factors.
Thinking about the thing this way, scientifically, began to put it into perspective for him and he grew calmer, though it remained most disturbing to realize that he had been absent-minded enough (or conceivably hypnotically influenced?) to pull such a trick.
Still, the thing was done, and nothing now remained but to see the Taggart-plant through its relatively brief flowering span (that thought elicited from him a residual shiver) and then just let it whiter away normally. Reasonable care should easily do the job. After all, who in the world now Great-aunt Veronica was dead knew more about mimic-plants than he? He would be his own best caretaker. As for coma, many girls never seemed to suffer it, even during the blooming period. Why should a strong man?
And, what the devil, didn't all truly great research doctors and physiologists try their serums on themselves? He was one of their lion breed now!
He looked down at the Taggart-plant, which—all shouting anxiety gone—returned him such a brash Satan's grin that he felt greatly bucked up, positively exhilarated ... to such a degree that for an instant, but an instant only, he imagined himself down there smirking up at his own moon-big face.
What the dickens, if that brave little guy could keep up his spirits, so could he!
Whistling, he fetched a small red can and carefully watered himself—and as an afterthought, Erica. It occurred to him that he might try an experiment in cross-pollenization when the stems were fully opened. Normally he self-pollenized all his flowers to keep strains true—girl-girl crosses tended toward mediocrity beauty-wise, he'd discovered by repeated experiments. And of course he wouldn't want to produce any true seeds of himself—he'd never feel safe if any such were in existence, no matter how tightly locked up. But his pollen on Erica's gynoecium—it was a tantalizingly attractive thought!
In his bemused high spirits he even watered the nameless little plant growing in the pot between his and Erica's, but nearer his own.
There was a sharp bzzz! It was evidence of the amount of nervous apprehension still floating around in him under the camouflage of his high spirits, that he dropped the red watering can.
Damn that phone, he thought as he stooped and righted the trickling can. It had no right to sound so much like a bee coming in for the kill. He must have the tone altered at once—would have had it altered before, except he'd been reluctant to admit his fear of bees was so great.
But that was silly. Bees were his great ineradicable dread, and he might as well face up to it, just as he'd faced up now to the existence of the Taggart-plant. Why, if it weren't for his dread of bees, he'd have long ago tried experiments in insect pollenization. It was titillating to think of bees crawling all over his flower-girls, buzzing lazily from one to the next—except that he was himself so terrified of the six legged monsters with the built-in torture hypodermic.
But who the devil could be calling him here?—he asked himself as he reached for the phone. Better not any of his magazine-flunkies now Kittens was abed—he'd chew their ears off, or rather say them one poisonously sweet word and fire them tomorrow. Not more than a dozen people knew this number—the last person he'd given it to had been the President.
A charming voice said, “Erica Slyker here. Hello, Taggart-blaggart-waggert-haggert-sleep-sleep-sleep! Now that I've given you the cue we agreed on, you will answer any questions I put to you. You will do whatever I tell you. Can you hear me clearly?"
In his imagination Taggart slammed down the phone, rushed upstairs, called another secret number, and —using the latest underworld code—hired two reliable, conscienceless mobsters to beat up Erica Slyker, being sure to black both eyes and kick her in the stomach.
In actuality he said in a sing-song voice, “Yes, I can."
“Good. You're in the garden?"
“Yes, I am."
“Excellent. Place a chair by the table so you can watch both our plants. Then sit down in it."
He managed to face the chair away from the table, but it turned out this only meant he had to straddle it, resting his forearms and the phone on its back.
“You're sitting in the chair watching our plants? How's the vamp doing?"
Obediently Tag focused on the little plant next to his own, only now learning what it was. He'd planted two of those horrors six years ago and decided never again—the tendrils of the one of them had strangled a promising Gina, while those of the other had whipped out and caught a little finger he'd brought incautiously close, inflicting tiny but nasty wounds with their microscopic suckers. Even Great- aunt Veronica had been a little doubtful about the benefit to humanity of her vampire plants. She had suggested their use to protect tropical dwellers from scorpions, centipedes, giant spiders, and the like and —tentatively—in the conquest of Mars.
“It is doing quite well,” he reported into the phone. “The forehead is showing and I can count six ... no, seventeen pale red tendrils. They are about an inch long and have begun to wave a little."
“Bravo! Keep watching that plant too. Now hang up the phone and await further instructions."
Taggart Adams obeyed and then eternity set in for him. An eternity the passing of whose centuries were marked by calls from Erica only to repeat the “blag-wag-hag” formula, whose millennia were each signalized by an additional inch growth of the red tendrils of the vamp.
After about thirty-five hundred years the face of the vamp became fully visible. As he'd long since guessed from the color of the tendrils, it was that of the off-Broadway red head talent—evidently the picture and the three green nail parings had been able to do their work from the floor, as being the nearest picture-and-token available and otherwise unoccupied.
She had a great talent for the evil eye, Tag decided after a thousand years of being glared at. And for writhing her lips back from her tiny white fangs. And for waving suggestively close to the Taggart-plant those wire-worm tendrils that arched around her face like the hair of Medusa.
Meanwhile the Erica and the Taggart were developing their proper bulges and finally splitting their green stem-sheathes down the front: the slowest and least titillating strip-tease in the universe.
The Erica looked back at him with a contempt that only became more smiling as the ages passed.
The
Taggart, on the other hand, grimaced and grinned and winked its left eye at him unceasingly. Tag became dully infuriated with the little idiot's irrationally high spirits—and bored, horribly bored. If that was the way he'd looked all his life to other people ...
He felt the ache of thirst and the sickness of hunger, but they were dulled by a titanic listlessness.
A million times he told himself that a man couldn't be held hypnotized like this against his will, surely not after a one-session indoctrination into which he'd somehow been tricked by a mere abominable girl. Not one of the most powerful men in the world, not the sex-puppet master, not the publisher of Kittens, not Veronica's Grand-nephew, not the Lord of Kitten Kastle, not the girl-gardener ...
A million times a little voice from a dark high corner of his mind replied only, “Blag-wag-hag."
Thrice there were “nights” lasting for many centuries.
After twelve thousand years he heard the secret panel open and footsteps drag up the aisle. Someone
stopped and retrieved the red watering can. It was Anselmo, he could tell from the corner of his eye—no mistaking that hand like a bleached ham, that face big as that of a white horse, for in addition to being a submoronic deaf-mute, the ancient Sicilian had acromegaly.
Tag tried to shout, to whisper, to beckon with a finger, just to lift one—to no avail. Without even a single curious glance toward his employer, so far as Tag could tell, Anselmo went about his chores.
For decades and scores of years his big shoes scrapped the concrete and there came the periodic gush of the tap as he patiently watered and fertilized and sprayed. Twice the phone bzzd for a repetition of the inevitable formula, but there was no alteration in the sound of Anselmo's movements. Both times Tag tried to drop the phone on the floor—and only set it the more carefully back.
A third time the phone bzzd—much sooner than the once-a-century rhythm called for. A brisk grating voice said, “Tag George. All ready to pop those lions, boy? Rhodesia's waiting for us.” To Tag's horror all he could say was, “No, thanks,” and all he could do was hang up.
Finally Anselmo arrived at the potting table and began methodically to care for the three plants there, insensible to Tag's mental screams, even when Anselmo's sprinkling reawakened Tag's searing thirst and they became the inward shriek, “For the love of God, pour some of that in my mouth!"
Anselmo finished with the Erica, the vamp (a bit cautious with his huge hands there as they moved around the foot-long tendrils), and finally the Taggart. Only then did his behavior alter. He stood ox-still and stared an interminable time at the smirking walnut-head of the Taggart. Hope rekindled in Tag.
Then Anselmo turned and stared for almost an equally long period at his life-size employer. Tag's hope flamed. If only there were some readable expression in that white face big as a washbowl ...
Then Anselmo looked back at the walnut-head, puzzledly shook his own in three wide horse-like swings, shrugged his sloping shoulders, and dragged off down the aisle. The secret door opened, then closed behind him.
A trapdoor opened in the corridor and Anselmo plummeted into the hottest room in hell—in Tag's imagination.
A mere thousand years and ten phone-calls later, Erica added, “I know the garden's under the pool. How do I get in?"
Tag focused his will and thought, “Sooner than tell you, I'd see myself in Hell. I'd become a pauper. You're the evil woman my Great-aunt Veronica always warned me about. You're the Witch Queen. No."
What he said into the phone was, “Turn right at the foot of the main staircase. The seventh vertical molding to your right. The seventh rosette from the floor. Press three-one."
“Thanks. I won't be long. Incidentally, you are in Hell and there is no pauper alternative. Oh, by the way, it's about time you were getting out of your body—it wont’ live much longer, even with you in it. Don't look at my plant any more, don't look at the vamp, just look at the you-plant ... and project ... project ... project... "
Tag complied. After a century the walnut-head began to bob and smirk in exact time with his own blinking. Then suddenly it grew moon-huge. Looking down, Tag saw that he had grown a large green full ruff around his neck.
His first reaction to the realization that he was now in the Taggart-plant was to try and project himself back into his rightful body.
One glance at it changed his mind. That gray-faced elephantine hulk, that moon-tongued mountain, looked dead.
This tentative information didn't depress him perhaps as much as it should have. He felt a vivification, an unreasoning cockiness, a confidence in his own powers, although he could only move his head and wriggle his torso a bit. Perhaps it was because he was no longer thirsty—Anselmo had watered well and cool moisture pervaded his every tissue.
Also, time had speeded up for him again—minutes no longer dragged like years.
Or perhaps his exhilaration was due to his increased sensitivity. Air-eddies intangible before now rippled against his bare flesh like brook water. A drifting bit of lint bumped him like a paper boat. Colors were brighter—he could see with the fresh-washed vision of a child. Odors were a symphony, chiefly of girl- accents, which he realized he had never properly appreciated before; now he could pick out each instrument in the orchestra.
And he could hear with exquisite precision and clarity. Why, he could even hear what the flower-girls were saying!
“We hate you, Tag Adams, we loathe and despise you,” they were chanting, occasionally varying it with obscenities in several languages.
His chest swelled. Why, it was a kind of hymn. No wonder the little guy had acted so happy. Where was that little guy now anyhow? Absorbed in his own larger consciousness? No matter, just listen ... now what was that French girl calling him ...?
“Enjoy it while you can,” the Erica-plant cut in sweetly.
“Shut up!” he snapped, swiveling his head toward her. My, my, she certainly was as handsomely
constructed as he'd guessed she'd be when she first entered his office—he decided with an appreciative, quite involuntary whistle.
“How gallant,” the Erica-plant replied with a shrug. “Give him a hug for me, Red."
The vamp, far more supple-stemmed than the mimics, thrust forward between them. The Medusa-face mopped and mowed. The eyes glared white-circled. The white fangs clicked and shirred. And then the inch-thick living tendrils whipped around him until they were like a red-barred cage, their tips not quite touching him, until one slowly dipped and drew itself stingingly across his chest...
“Cut it short, Red,” the Erica-plant commanded.
There was a distant grating noise. The red tendrils whipped away. The grating noise continued.
The secret panel was opening. Then the tramp of giant footsteps—Tag could feel their almost painful vibrations coming up from the concrete through the table and his pot and his earth.
Erica Slyker had entered the room: a girl as tall as a pine tree, bigger than a dinosaur to Tag, a colossal Witch Queen.
She was wearing a platinum mink coat over her pearl-worked pearl-gray suit. To the left shoulder of her coat was pinned a big spray of white funeral lilies.
Under her left elbow she carried a small cubical white box, big as a piano crate to Tag. It hummed, as though there were several electric motors running inside it.
Halfway down the aisle she stopped to look at the three Alices.
“Save us, save us!” all the flower-girls called to her.
She slowly and rather sadly shook her head. Then she jerked the three Alices screaming out of their pots.
“Kill or cure, my dear,” she said in a voice that to Tag was like thunder. “Anything's better than the state you're in."
She stooped, swinging the three still-screaming Alices high in the air and smashed them against the concrete with a heavy thud, the vibrations from which made Tag wince, and left them there.
All the flower-girls grew alert. The pot-jarring footsteps resumed. Erica sat down the white box o
n the potting table and the electric motors added their different but painful vibrations to the others. Tag writhed. He was discovering why his flower-girls had never liked hi-fi the nights he'd played it to them
hour after hour, full blast.
Erica bent toward him. It was like a face leaning down out of Mt. Rushmore. He could look down her pores, see the powder grains, retch at her overpowering odors.
“It's not so much fun being a sensitive plant, is it, Mr. Adams?” she rumbled slowly.
“May my Great-aunt torture you in Hell!” Tag squeaked.
“You'll find Erica in Veronica,” she replied cryptically. Then she slowly unwound a long blue-black hair from around the ear of his corpse. She dangled it in front of him and said, “There are many variants of the hair formula, Mr. Adams—and more than one way of applying an exodermal token.”
Then she dug her fingers into the pot of her own plant, carefully loosened its roots, gently shook them out and wrapped them in a wet handkerchief, then tucked and fastened the she-flower in the center of her spray of lilies.
Then she looked at Tag across the white box.
“The Witch Gods do not love you, Mr. Adams,” she whispered in a voice like distant thunder.
She took the cover off the box. A black bee, yellow-striped and big as a half-grown kitten, crawled up on the rim.
“You signed your will and your death-warrant, you know, Mr. Adams,” she continued, “within an hour of our meeting in your office. Signed them in more senses than one."
With the bzzz of a power lawn mower the bees took off and came circling widely around Tag.
“After all, you've had a long life,” Erica went on. “About fourteen thousand years, wouldn't you say?— even if most of them were spent here during the last few days."
Tiny tears of horror trickled down Tag's face as he craned and craned his neck. He'd often wondered exactly what the drops of dew on the flower-girl's checks had meant.
“I'll be leaving soon, Mr. Adams,” Erica said. “You'll have the place to yourself. The lock will be jammed. Anselmo will assume you've set it against him. I'm going to leave the sunlight turned on full— it's the kindest thing I can do for the others.”
The Black Gondolier and Other Stories Page 33
