The Venus Trap

robins in her hair.' Bythe way, Jim, ever since reading that poem, I've been meaning to ask youprecisely what are robins and do you think they'd look well in my hair,by which, I suppose the bard refers, in a somewhat pedestrian flight offancy, to leaves?"

  "They're a kind of bird," he said drearily.

  "Birds--nesting in my hair! I wouldn't think of allowing it. But then Isuppose Terrestrial birds are quite different from ours? Morehousebroken, shall we say?"

  "Everything's different," James said and, for an irrational moment, hehated everything that was blue that should have been green, everythingsweet that should have been vicious, everything intelligent that shouldhave been mindless.

  * * * * *

  Since matters could not grow much worse, they improved to a degree.After a day or two had passed, Phyllis, being a conscientious girl, cameto realize how wrong it had been for her as a Terrestrial immigrant toshow overt hostility toward a native of the planet that had welcomedher.

  "But how can she be a--a person?" Phyllis wanted to know, when they wereinside the cottage, for she had learned to hold her tongue when theywere near Magnolia or any of her sisters, who, though they could notspeak the language as fluently as she, understood it very well andeavesdropped at every possible opportunity in order, they said, toimprove their accents. "She's a tree. A plant. And plants are justvegetables." She stabbed her needle energetically through the tableclothshe was embroidering.

  "You mustn't project Terrestrial attitudes upon Elysian ones," Jamessaid, patiently looking up from his book. "And don't underestimateMagnolia's capabilities. She has sense organs, and motor organs, too.She can't move from where she is, because she's rooted to the ground,but she's capable of turgor movements, like certain Terrestrial forms ofvegetation--for example, the sensitive plant or blue grass."

  "Blue grass," Phyllis exclaimed. "I'm sick of blue grass. I want greengrass."

  "However, these trees have conscious control of their _pulvini_, whereasthe Earth's plants don't, and so they can do a lot of things that Earthplants can't."

  "It sounds like a dirty word to me."

  "_Pulvini_ merely means motor organs."

  "Oh."

  * * * * *

  He closed his book, which was a more advanced botany text, covered withthe jacket of a French novel in order to spare Phyllis's feelings."Darling, can't you get it through your pretty head that they'reintelligent life-forms? If it'll make it easier for you to think of themas human beings who happen to look like trees, then do that."

  "That's exactly what I _am_ doing. And I'm quite sure she thinks of youas a tree who happens to look like a human being."

  "Phyllis, sometimes I think you're being deliberately difficult. Do youknow one of the reasons why I took such pains to teach Magnolia English?It was that I hoped she would be a companion for you, that you couldtalk to each other when I had to be away from home."

  "Why do you call her Magnolia? She isn't a lot like one."

  "Isn't she? I thought she was. You see, I don't know so much botany,after all." Actually, he had picked that name for the tree because itexpressed both the arboreal and the feminine at the same time--and alsobecause it was one of the loveliest names he knew. But he couldn't tellPhyllis that; there would be further misunderstanding. "Of course shehas a name in her own language, but I can't pronounce it."

  "They _do_ have a language of their own then?"

  "Naturally, though they don't get much chance to speak it, since they'vegrown so few and far apart that verbal communication has becomedifficult. They communicate by a network of roots that they'vedeveloped."

  "I don't think that's so clever."

  "I merely said ... oh, what's the use of trying to explain everything toyou? You just don't want to understand."

  * * * * *

  Phyllis put down her needlework and closed her eyes. "James," she said,opening them again, "it's no use pretending. I've been trying to besympathetic and understanding, but I can't do it. That tree--I've forcedmyself to be nice to her, but the more I see of her, the more convincedI am that she's trying to steal you from me."

  Phyllis was beginning to poison his mind, he thought, because it hadseemed to him also, in his last conversation with Magnolia, that he haddiscerned more than ordinary warmth in her attitude toward him ... andperhaps a trace of spite toward his wife?

  Preposterous! The tree had only been trying to cheer him up as anyfriend might reasonably do. After all, a tree and a man.... Nonsense!One had an anabolic metabolism, one a catabolic.

  But this was a different kind of tree. She spoke, she read, she wascapable of conscious turgor movements. And he, he had often thoughtsecretly, was a different kind of man. Whereas Phyllis....

  But that was disloyalty--to the type as well as the individual. The treecould be a companion to him, but she could not give him sons to work hisland; she could not give him daughters to populate his planet; moreover,she did not, could not possibly know what human love meant, whilePhyllis could at least learn.

  "Look, dear," he said, sitting down beside his wife on the couch andtaking her hand in his. She didn't draw away this time. "Suppose thatwhat you say is true--not that it is, of course. Just because the treehas a crush on me doesn't mean I necessarily have a crush on her, doesit?"

  His wife looked up at him, her rose-red lips parted, her moss-gray eyesshining. "Oh, if only I could believe that, James!"

  "Anyhow, she doesn't know what the whole thing's about, poor kid!"

  "Poor _kid_!"

  "Phyllis, you know you're prettier than any tree." That was notliterally true, but reason was useless; he had to make his point interms she could understand. "And, remember, she's got a lot ofrings--she must be centuries old--while you are only nineteen."

  "Twenty," Phyllis corrected. "I had a birthday on the ship."

  "Well, you certainly must allow me to wish you a happy birthday,darling."

  She was in his arms at last; he was about to kiss her, and the treeseemed very remote, when she drew back. "But are you sure shedoesn't--she isn't--she can't be watching us?"

  "Darling, I swear it!" "_Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear, that tipswith silver all these fruit-tree tops_".... But he had sense enough notto say it, and Elysium had not one blessed moon, but three, andeverything was all right.

  For a while anyway.

  * * * * *

  "I see your wife is developing a corm," the tree remarked, as Jamespaused for a chat. He hadn't much time to be sociable those days, forthere was such a lot of work to be done, so many preparations to bemade, so many things to be requisitioned from Earth. The supply shipswere beginning to come now, bringing necessities and an occasionalluxury for those who could afford it.

  "She's pregnant," James explained. "Happened before I left Earth."

  "How do you mean?"

  "She's about to fruit. Didn't I read that zoology book to you?"

  "Yes, but--oh, James, it all seems so vulgar! To fruit without everhaving bloomed--how squalid!"

  "It all depends on how you look at it," he said. "I--that is, we hadhoped that when the baby came, you would be godmother to it. You knowwhat that is, don't you?"

  "Of course I do. You read _Cinderella_ to me. I know it's a great honor.But I'm afraid I must decline."

  "Why? I thought you were my--our friend."

  "Jim, there is something I must confess: my feelings toward you are notmerely those of a friend. Although Phyllis doesn't have too many ringsof intellect, she is a female, so she knew all along." Magnolia's leavesrustled diffidently. "I feel toward you the way I never felt toward anyintelligent life-form, but only toward the sun, the soil, the rain. Isense a tropism that seems to incline me toward you. In fact, I'mafraid, Jim, in your own terms, I love you."

  "But you're a tree! You can't love me in my own terms, because treescan't love in the way people can, and, of course, people can't love liketrees. We belon
g to two entirely different species, Maggie. You can'thave listened to that zoology book very attentively."

  "Our race is a singularly adaptable one or we wouldn't have survived solong, Jim, or gone so far in our particular direction. It's lack offertility, not lack of enterprise, that's responsible for our decline.And I think your species must be an adaptable one, too; you just haven'treally tried. Oh, James, let