There was a moment of intolerable tension. George realized that he was so keyed up that the smallest unexpected noise would have sent him charging into the two sliver guns. Then the taller of Louey’s emissaries put down his hand. “Par don, lalania,” he said to Blixa. “—Come along, Mnint.”
“B-b-u-ut L-l-lou-ey s-sa—”
“Bird Louey! He’s got hardly any groot. Let’s go have fun with him.” A glance of understanding passed between the two. Then they slouched away.
Blixa leaned back against the wall of the warehouse. She was looking quite white. “Pharol,” she said weakly, “but I was afraid! I hope I never have to do that again.”
George put out an arm to steady her. He was feeling a little shaky himself. “What did you tell them?” he ask ed after a moment.
“Why, that I—here comes an abrotanon car! We’d better hide!”
She whirled about, but the driver of the car had already seen them. The car circled, returned, and hovered. Its passenger peered intently down at them through the lucitra ns bubble that formed the underside of the car. Then the port opened, the stair shot out, and the passenger hopped down.
“Is that you, George?” he said. “I thought I recognized the top of your head. Yes, it is. Where the devil have you been? They let me out of the hospital last night, and I’ve been looking for you ever since. I’ve been worried sick. Did you deliver the Pig?”
George looked at his cousin Bill for a moment before answering. “Not exacdy,” he said at last.
“Not exactly? What do you mean by that?”
George indicated Blixa, who was standing beside him. “This lady took charge of it,” he answered.
Bill regarded Blixa dubiously for a moment. Then his face cleared. “Why, that’s perfectly all right,” he said happily. “She’s the Idris of the cult—I recognize the marks on her forehead. Legally, she can sign anything. Why didn’t you tell me you knew her? It would have saved a lot of trouble.”
George said nothing. Bill produced a receipt book from an inner tunic pocket and extended it and a brush toward Blixa. “If you don’t mind signing here, lalania,” he murmured. “An acknowledgement of the delivery of the pig…”
“Not at all.” Blixa took the brush from him and drew her name quickly in the proper place. She handed the book back to him.
Bill examined the receipt carefully before he thrust the book back in his pocket. He gave a satisfied nod. “That’s fine,” he said, “just fine. Thanks a lot for helping out, George. Don’t forget, I’ll give you half my bonus when it comes. You’ve really earned it by delivering the pig. And then you can marry Darleen.”
He slapped George on the shoulder, nodded with more formal politeness to Blixa, and hopped into the abrotanon car. It drove away.
There was a silence. Bill’s last words, “marry Darleen,” seemed to be floating in the air. Blixa looked at George and George, alternately, looked at her and then down at the ground. What was the matter with him? Why wasn’t he happy, now that he could marry Darleen?
“Who’s Darleen?” Blixa asked at last in a colorless voice.
“I… Girl I know on Earth,” George mumbled.
There was an even longer silence. It was still quiet beside the canal, but all around came the thousand noises of a great city waking to life. The polar mail went arching through the sky with a long scream of rockets. George kept looking down at the ground.
“Was that why you helped me get the pig?” Blixa said finally. Her voice was even more impersonal than it had been. “So you could have enough money to marry this Darleen?”
“…I… I… guess so.”
“Are you quite sure?” Blixa asked. Her voice was as toneless as ever, but something in it made George look up quickly. Blixa’s eyes were still fixed on him, but she had begun to smile. “Are you quite sure?” she said again.
Something in the words ran down George’s spine like a drizzle of melted honey. It reached the base of his vertebral column and stayed there, circling in a warm, sweet flood. For a moment he looked at Blixa unbelievingly. Th en he advanced on her with the determination of a male rhyoorg in spring.
Blixa gave a slight scream. “Be reasonable!” she said. “Ooooh, oooh! Not here, George! It’s too public! Be reasonable!”
THE GARDENER
Traffic cops have been known to disregard “No Parking” signs. Policemen filch apples from fruit stands under the proprietor’s very eye. Even a little authority makes its possessor feel that the rules don’t apply to him. Thus it was that Tig lath Hobbs, acting chief of the Bureau of Extra-Systemic Plant Conservation, cut down a sacred Butandra tree.
It must have been sheer bravado which impelled him to the act. Certainly the grove where the Butandra trees grow (there are only fifty trees on all Cassid, which means that there are only fifty in the universe) is well protected by signs.
Besides warnings in the principal planetary tongues, there is a full set of the realistic and expressive Cassidan pictographs. These announce, in shapes which even the dullest intellect could not misunderstand, that cutting or mutilating the trees is a crime of the gravest nature. That persons committing it will be punished. And that after punishment full atonement must be made.
All the pictographs in the announcement have a frowning look, and the one for “Atonement” in particular is a threatening thing. The pictographs are all painted in pale leaf green.
But Hobbs had the vinegary insolence of the promoted bureaucrat. He saw that he had shocked Reinald, the little Cassidan major who had been delegated his escort, by even entering the sacred grove. He felt a coldly exhibitionistic wish to shock him further.
Down the aisle of trees Hobbs stalked while the tender green leaves murmured above his head. Then he took hold of the trunk of the youngest of the Butandras, a slender white-barked thing, hardly more than a sapling.
“Too close to the others,” Hobbs said sharply. “Needs thinning.” While Reinald watched helplessly, he got out the little hand axe which hung suspended by his side. Chop—chop—chop. With a gush of sap the little tree was severed. Hobbs held it in his hand.
“It will make me a nice walking stick,” he said.
Reinald’s coffee-colored skin turned a wretched nephrite green but he said nothing at all. Rather shakily he scrambled back into the ‘copter and waited while Hobbs completed his inspection of the grove. It was not until they had flown almost back to Genlis that he made a remark.
“You should not have done that, sir,” he said. He ran a finger around his tunic collar uneasily.
Hobbs snorted. He looked down at the lopped-off stem of the Butandra, resting between his knees. “Why not?” he demanded. “I have full authority to order plantations thinned or pruned.”
“Yes, sir. But that was a Butandra tree.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“There have always been fifty Butandra trees on Cassid. Always, for all our history. We call them ‘Cassid’s Luck’.”
Reinald licked his lips. “The tree you cut down will not grow again. I do not know what will happen if there are only forty-nine.
“Besides that, what you did is dangerous. Dangerous, I mean, sir, to you.”
Hobbs laughed harshly. “You’re forgetting my position,” he answered. “Even if they wanted to, the civil authorities couldn’t do anything to me.”
Reinald gave a very faint smile. “Oh, I don’t mean the civil authorities, sir,” he said in a gentle voice. “They wouldn’t be the ones.” He seemed, somehow, to have recovered his spirits.