Margaret St. Clair (8 page)

Thorwald, found in a state of collapse in his cabin by second off icer Joseph McPherson (see page two for pictures), was unable to give details of the attack on him. He told police he had been robbed of exactly one thousand I.U.‘s Other currency in Thorwald’s wallet was untouched.

Thorwald’s finger, according to medical officer Dingbv of the local police, appears to have been amputated with the help of a chisel or some similar instrument. No trace of the missing digit has been found.

Thorwald himself, after receiving several transfusions, is in Mercy Hospital, where h is condition is reported serious. Police are operating on the theory that the attack was the work of some fiend whose hobby is collecting human fingers. A thorough search is being made and they expect an arrest soon.

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Hobbs put the newsprint down. His hands were trembling. His florid cheeks had turned white. What he suspected, he told himself, was sheer lunacy.

Hadn’t he himself seen the —thing which had rapped at his viewing pane reduced to a blackened cinder by the ravening fires of the force field ? But Thorwald had been robbed of exactly one thousand I.U.‘s. And he had picked up Hobbs’ bribe with his right hand.

Hobbs pushed his plate away and asked the robot for his check. In the lobby he video’d Mercy Hospital and inquired for news of Thorwald. He was told that Thorwald’s condition was serious and that he could not possibly see anyone.

Hobbs sat in the lobby for an hour or so and tried to think. At the end of that time he had come to a decision. Tiglath Hobbs was a stubborn man.

He called a ‘copter and had it take him to the local office of the Bureau of Extra-Systemic Plant Conservation. Scott, the young man in charge of the office, was out and Hobbs had to wait for him.

It was nearly noon when Scott came in, very brown and erect in his cl othing of forest green. He had been supervising the weeding of a plantation of young Tillya trees and there was mud on the knees of his trousers from kneeling beside the seedlings. The knees of his trousers were always a little muddy. He had the green hea r t of the true forester.

Hobbs came to the point at once. “Scott,” he said, “I want you to go to Cassid and supervise the uprooting of the plantation of Butandra trees there.”

Scott looked at him for a moment incredulously. “I beg your pardo n, sir?” he said at last in a neutral tone.

“I said, I want you to go to Cassid and supervise the uprooting of the plantation of Butandra trees there.”

“I — sir, what is the reason for this order?”

“Because I say so.”

“But, Mr. Hobbs, the Butandra trees are unique. As you of course know, there is nothing like them anywhere else in the universe. Scientifically it would be criminal to destroy those trees.

“Further than that, they play a considerable role in Cassi dan planetary life. To the inhabitant s the trees have a large emotional significance. I must ask you, sir, to reconsider your decision.”

“You have your orders. Carry them out.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I decline to do so.”

Hobbs thick neck had turned red. “I’ll have your job for this,” he said chokingly.

Scott permitted himself a thin smile. “I have civil service tenure, sir,” he said.

“You can be removed for cause. Insubordination, in this case.”

Scott’s smile vanished, but he did not retreat. “Very well,” he said. “If it comes to a public hearing we’ll see. In any case I can’t carry out that order. And I very much doubt, Mr. Hobbs, that you’ll find anyone who will. It’s not the kind of thing you can ask of a forester.”

Hobbs raised his stick of Butandra wood. His expression was murderous. Then his common sense reasserted itself. He gave Scott a nod and left.

He called the travel bureau, canceled his Earthward passage and made reservations for a cabin on the next ship back to Cassid. If he could not find anyone to carry out his orders to destroy the plantation of Butandra trees he would do it himself. Tiglath Hobbs, as has been said before, was a stubborn man.

The trip back to Cassid was unexceptional. Nothing came to rap at Hobbs’ viewing pane or to peer in at him. It was so quiet, in fact, that Hobbs had fits of wondering whether he was doing the right thing.

The Butandra trees were, as Scott had said, of considerable scien tific interest and Hobbs might be letting himself in for a good deal of unfavorable criticism by destroying them. And the attack on Thorwald might have been only a coincidence.

But by now Hobbs bitterly hated the Butandra trees. Guilt, anxiety, and self—righteousness had coalesced in him to form an emotion of overwhelming intensity. He hated the Butandra trees. How could there be any question about destroying them?

With their repulsive staring white bark and the nasty whispering rustle their long green leaves made they deserved —yes, they positively deserved —to be killed. How could a decent-minded man let the Butandra trees live?

Usually, by the time he got to this point in his thoughts, Hobbs began to pant. He had to make a conscious effort to calm himself.

Hobbs’ ship docked at Genlis spaceport late at night. Hobbs was too excited to try to sleep. He paced up and down in the waiting room until day came.

Then he rented a ‘copter from a Fly-It-Yourself hangarage and flew to a supply house which s pecialized in compact power saws. He had decided to fell the trees first and afterwards make arrangements for having the stumps pulled up.

It was still early when he got to the sacred grove. In the tender light of morning the straight, white-barked, gree n-leaved trees made a pretty, peaceful sight. Hobbs hesitated, though not from any qualms about his contemplated arboricide. What was bothering him was a feeling that entering the grove to cut down the trees, even in daylight, might be dangerous.

On the other hand the best defense was always attack. What had happened to Thorwald had been almost certainly a coincidence. But if it hadn’t —Hobbs swallowed —the best way of insuring himself against a similar experience was to cut down the grove.

The grove was, he had decided on Llewellyn, the —the thing’s base of operations. It drew power from the grove as surely as the trees of the grove drew nourishment from the soil. Once the grove was destroyed the tiling, whether or not the force field had killed it, would have no more power.

Hobbs took the portable saw from the ‘copter and slung it over his shoulder. He hesitated a fraction of a second longer. A sudden gust of wind set the long leaves of the Butandras to rustling mockingly. Hobbs felt a nearly blind ing surge of hate. His jaw set. He opened the gate and entered the grove.

The power saw was not heavy and he decided to begin his felling operations beside the sapling he had first cut down. He found the stump without difficulty and was pleased to see that it had not put up any shoots. But somebody had dug a deep hole in the ground beside it, and Hobbs frowned over this.

He set the saw down on the turf and knelt to adjust it. He co uld find out about the hole later. He touched a switch. The saw’s motor began to purr.

The Gardener came out from behind a tree and smiled at him.

Hobbs gave a strangled, inarticulate shriek. He scrambled to his knees and started to run. The Gardener s tretched out its lanky arms and caught him easily.

With its little pink mole hands it stripped his clothing away. His shoes came off. With ten separate chops of its strong white teeth the Gardener bit away his toes. While Hobbs struggled and shrieked and shrieked and shrieked, the Gardener peeled away the skin on the inner surfaces of his legs and thighs and bound these members together with a length of vine.

It drew scratches all over the surface of his body with its long sharp mole claws and rubbed a gritty grayish powder carefully into each gash. Then it carried Hobbs over to the hole it had made and, still smiling, planted him.

When the Gardener came back an hour or so later from its tasks of cultivation in another part of the grove, a thin crust o f bark had already begun to form over Hobbs’ human frame. It would not be long, the Gardener knew, before Hobbs would become a quite satisfactory Butandra tree.

The Gardener smiled benignly. It looked with approval at the graft on the trunk of the tree t o the right, where what had once been Eins Thorwald’s index finger was burgeoning luxuriantly.

The Gardener nodded. “A leaf for a leaf,” it said.

1949.
Thrilling Wonder Stories

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Child Of Void

Ischeenar is his name, and he lives in the big toe of my left foot. He’s fairly quiet during the day, except that now and then he makes my foot twitch. But at night he comes out and sits on my knee and says all sorts of hateful things. Once he suggested-But I didn’t mean to tell about Ischeenar yet. I suppose I got off on him thinking about the fire and all that. It was after the fire that he got into my foot. But I want to tell this in order, the way it happened, and I ought to begin at the beginning. I suppose that means telling about how we happened to go to Hidden Valley to live.

Uncle Albert killed himself and left Hidden Valley to Mom in his will. I didn’t want to go there. We had visited Hidden Valley once or twice when I was little, and I hated it. It gave me the creeps. It was the kind of place you see articles about in the Sunday supplement —a place where water flows uphill and half the time the laws of gravity don’t work, a place where sometimes a rubber ball will weigh three or four pounds a nd you can look out the upstairs window and see a big blue lake where the vegetable garden ought to be. You never could depend on things being normal and right.

But Mom wanted to go. She said there was a nice little house we could live in, an artesian we ll with the best water in the world, and good rich soil for growing our own vegetables. There were even a cow and some chickens. Mom said we could be a lot more comfortable there than in the city, and live better. She said we’d get used to the funny thing s and they wouldn’t bother us. And though she didn’t say so, I knew she thought I’d be happier away from people, on a farm.

Mom’s been awfully good to me. She kept on with the massage and exercises for my back for years after the doctors said it was no us e. I wish I could do more for her. Her ideas are usually pretty good, and when I’ve gone against them I’ve been sorry. When you think about it, Mom is generally right.

So we went to Hidden Valley, Mom and Donnie (that’s my younger brother) and I. It was worse than I had thought it was going to be. The place was still queer enough to scare you purple, but besides that there was something new, a kind of heavy depression in the air.

It was terrible. At first it made you feel like you’d like to put your hea d up and howl the way a dog does; then you felt too worn out and miserable and unhappy to have energy left for howling.

It got worse with every hour we stayed there. By the time we’d been in Hidden Valley for two days, Mom and I were looking at each othe r and wondering which of us would be the first to suggest going back to the city. I kept thinking about how sensible Uncle Albert had been to blow himself up with the dynamite. Even Donnie and his kitten felt the depression; they sat huddled up together i n a corner and looked miserable.

Finally Mom said, in a kind of desperate way, “Eddie, why don’t you see what you can get on your radio set? It might cheer you up.” Mom doesn’t give up easily.

I thought it was a silly idea. I’ve been a ham operator ever since I was fifteen, and it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy it more than anything. But when you’re feeling as bad as I was then, you don’t want to talk to anyone. You just want to sit and wonder about d y ing and things like that.

My stuff had been dumped down all in a corner of the little beaver-boarded living room. I hadn’t felt chipper enough to do anything about getting it set up, though Uncle Albert had put in a private power system and there was ele ctricity in the house. After Mom asked me for the second time, though, I got up and hobbled over to my equipment. And here a funny thing happened. I’d hardly started hunting around for a table to put my stuff on when my depression began to lift.

It was wonderful. It was like being lost in the middle of a dark, choking fog and then having the fog blow away and the bright sun shine out.

The others were affected the same way. Donnie got a piece of string and began playing with the kitten, and the k itten sat back “and batted at the string with its paws the way cats do when they’re playful. Mom stood watching me for a while, smiling, and then she went out in the kitchen and began to get supper. I could smell the bacon frying and hear her whistling “On ward Christian Soldiers.” Mom whistles that way when she’s feeling good.

We didn’t go back to feeling depressed again, either. The funny things about Hidden Valley stopped bothering us, and we all enjoyed ourselves. We had fresh eggs, and milk so rich yo u could hardly drink it, and lettuce and peas and tomatoes and everything. It was a dry year, but we had plenty of water for irrigation. We lived off the fat of the land; you’d have to have a hundred dollars a week to live like that in the city.

Donnie liked school (he walked about a mile to the school bus) better than he had in the city because the kids were more friendly, and Mom got a big bang out of taking care of the cow and the chickens. I was outside all day long, working in the garden, and I got a fine tan and put on some weight. Mom said I never looked so well. She went into town in the jalopy twice a month to get me books from the county library, and I had all kinds of interesting things to read.

The only thing that bothered me —and it didn’t really bother me, at that —was that I couldn’t contact any other hams with my station. I never got a single signal from anyone. I don’t know what the trouble was, really —what it looked like was that radio waves couldn’t get into or out of the valley. I did everything I could to soup up my equipment. I had Mom get me a dozen books from the county library, and I stayed up half the night studying them. I tore my equipment down and built it up again eight or ten times and put in all sorts of fancy stuff. No t hing helped. I might as well have held a rock to my ear and listened to it.