The Fangs of the Trees

“There’s got to be some other way. You let those other men panic you, didn’t you, Zen? They’re afraid the infection will spread, so they told you to burn the trees fast, and you aren’t even stopping to think, to get other opinions, you’re just coming in here with your gun and killing intelligent, sensitive, lovable—”

“Trees,” he said. “This is incredible, Naomi. For the last time—”

Her reply was to leap up on the truck and press herself to the snout of the fusion gun, breasts close against the metal. “If you fire, you’ll have to shoot through me!”

Nothing he could say would make her come down. She was lost in some romantic fantasy, Joan of Arc of the juice-trees, defending the grove against his barbaric assault. Once more he tried to reason with her; once more she denied the need to extirpate the trees. He explained with all the force he could summon the total impossibility of saving these trees; she replied with the power of sheer irrationality that there must be some way. He cursed. He called her a stupid hysterical adolescent. He begged. He wheedled. He commanded. She clung to the gun.

“I can’t waste any more time,” he said finally. “This has to be done in a matter of hours or the whole plantation will go.” Drawing his needier from its holster, he dislodged the safety and gestured at her with the weapon. “Get down from there,” he said icily.

She laughed. “You expect me to think you’d shoot me?”

Of course, she was right. He stood there sputtering impotently, red-faced, baffled. The lunacy was spreading: his threat had been completely empty, as she had seen at once. Holbrook vaulted up beside her on the truck, seized her, tried to pull her down.

She was strong, and his perch was precarious. He succeeded in pulling her away from the gun but had surprisingly little luck in getting her off the truck itself. He didn’t want to hurt her, and in his solicitousness he found himself getting second best in the struggle. A kind of hysterical strength was at her command; she was all elbows, knees, clawing fingers. He got a grip on her at one point, found with horror that he was clutching her breasts, and let go in embarrassment and confusion. She hopped away from him. He came after her, seized her again, and this time was able to push her to the edge of the truck. She leaped off, landed easily, turned, ran into the grove.

So she was still outthinking him. He followed her in; it took him a moment to discover where she was. He found her hugging Caesar’s base and staring in shock at the charred places where Socrates and Hector had been.

“Go on,” she said. “Burn up the whole grove! But you’ll burn me with it!”

Holbrook lunged at her. She stepped to one side and began to dart past him, across to Alcibiades. He pivoted and tried to grab her, lost his balance, and went sprawling, clutching at the air for purchase. He started to fall.

Something wiry and tough and long slammed around his shoulders.

“Zen!” Naomi yelled. The tree—Alcibiades—”

He was off the ground now. Alcibiades had snared him with a grasping tendril and was lifting him toward his crown. The tree was struggling with the burden; but then a second tendril gripped him too and Alcibiades had an easier time. Holbrook thrashed about a dozen feet off the ground.

Cases of trees attacking humans were rare. It had happened perhaps five times altogether, in the generations that men had been cultivating juice-trees here. In each instance the victim had been doing something that the grove regarded as hostile—such as removing a diseased tree.

A man was a big mouthful for a juice-tree. But not beyond its appetite.

Naomi screamed and Alcibiades continued to lift. Holbrook could hear the clashing of fangs above; the tree’s mouth was getting ready to receive him. Alcibiades the vain, Alcibiades the mercurial, Alcibiades the unpredictable—well named, indeed. But was it treachery to act in self-defense? Alcibiades had a strong will to survive. He had seen the fates of Hector and Socrates. Holbrook looked up at the ever closer fangs. So this is how it happens, he thought. Eaten by one of my own trees. My friends. My pets. Serves me right for sentimentalizing them. They’re carnivores. Tigers with roots.

Alcibiades screamed.