The Venus Trap Part 2

He beamed. "I knew you'd understand after I had explained it to you."

"We provide the brains and they provide the furniture."

"Phyllis! What a thing to say!"

"I've heard of man-eating trees before. I suppose there could be man-loving ones, too."

"Phyllis, these trees are as gentle and sweet as--as--" He didn't know how he could explain it to her. No one who had never been friends with a tree could appreciate the true beauty of the xylemic character. "Why, we even offered to go over to the other side of the planet and fetch some pollen for them, but they wouldn't hear of it. Unfortunately, they'd rather die than be mated to anyone they had never met."

"What a perfectly disgusting idea!"

"I don't think so. Trees can be idealistic--"

"You fetching pollen for her, I mean. Naturally she wouldn't want pollen from a tree on the other side of the planet. She wants _you_!"

"Don't be silly. Incompatibility usually exists between the pollen of one species and the stigmata of another. Besides," he added patiently, "I haven't got pollen."

"You'd better not, or it won't be her who'll have the stigmata."

"Phyllis--" he sat down on the arm of her chair and tried to embrace her--"you know that you're the only life-form I love."

"Please, James." She pushed him away. "I guess I love you, too, in spite of everything ... but I don't want to make a public spectacle of myself."

"What do you mean now?"

"That tree would know everything that goes on. She's telepathic."

"Where did you get a ridiculous idea like that? What kind of rubbish have you been reading?"

"All right, tell me: how else did she learn to speak such good English?"

"It's because she's of a very high order of intelligence. And I suppose--" he laughed modestly--"because I'm such a good teacher."

"I don't care how good a teacher you are--a tree couldn't learn to speak a language so well in five months. She must be telepathic. It's the only explanation."

"Give her time," the tree advised later, as James came out on the lawn to talk to his only friend on the planet.

He hadn't seen much of the other scouts since the house-building frenzy had started, and visits among the men had decreased. The base camp, where the bachelors and the older married couples lived, was located a good distance away from his land, for he had raised his honeymoon cottage far from the rest; he had wanted to have his Phyllis all to himself. In the idyll he had visualized for the two of them, she would need no company but his. Little had he imagined that, within twenty-four hours of her arrival, he would be looking for company himself.

"I suppose so," he said, kicking at a root. "Oh, I'm sorry, Maggie; I didn't think."

"That's all right," Magnolia said bravely. "It didn't really hurt. That female has got you all upset, you poor boy."

James muttered a feeble defense of his wife.

"Jim, forgive me if I speak frankly," the tree went on in a low rustle, "but do you think she's really worthy of you?"

"Of course she is!"

"Surely on your planet you could have found a mate more admirable, high-minded, exemplary--more, in short, like yourself. Or are all the human females inferior specimens like Phyllis?"

"They're--she suits me," James said doggedly.

"Of course, of course. It's very n.o.ble of you to defend her; you would have disappointed me if you had said anything else, and I honor you for it, James."

He kicked at one of the pebbles. The tree meant well, he knew, yet, like so many well-meaning friends, she succeeded only in dispiriting him. It was almost like being back at the faculty club.

"I don't suppose a clod like her would have brought any more books along," the tree changed the subject. James's own library had been insufficient to slake the tree's intellectual thirst, so he had gone all over the planet to borrow books for Magnolia. Dr. Lakin, at Base, who had formerly taught English literature, possessed a fine collection which he had been reluctant to lend until he had learned that they were not for James but for a tree. At that, he had fetched the books himself, since he was anxious to meet her.

"A lot of the trees here have learned the English language," he had told James, "but none seems to have developed a taste for its literature.

Your Magnolia is undoubtedly a superior specimen. Excellent natural taste, too--perhaps a little unformed when it comes to poetry and the more sophisticated aspects of life, but she'll learn, she'll learn."

Unfortunately, the same, James knew, could hardly be said of his wife.

"Phyllis did bring some books," he told Magnolia.

"For you, no doubt. That was kind of her. I'm sure she has many good qualities which will unfold one by one, as her meristems start differentiating. I hope you don't feel I've been too--well, personal, Jim. I was only trying to help. If I've gone too far...."

"Of course not, Maggie. After all--" he laughed bitterly--"I do know you better than I know her."

"We _have_ been good friends, haven't we, Jim? It was rather nice--these five months we spent alone together. For the first time in my life, I have never regretted being so far from my sisters. 'And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.'"

Her blue leaves shone violet in the scarlet rays of the setting sun; the gold of her trunk was lit with red radiance. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen ... but she was a tree, not a woman.

"I'm sure she'll fit in after a while," Magnolia continued. "Perhaps she isn't well. She seems to guttate an awful lot. Do you suppose she's been overwatered?"

"That wasn't guttation," James said heavily. "It was tears. It means she's unhappy."

"Unhappy? Perhaps she won't fit in on this planet, in which case she should by all means go back to Earth. It's cruel and unfair to keep an intelligent--loosely speaking--life-form anywhere against her will, don't you think?"

"She'll be happy here," James vowed. "I'll _make_ her happy."

"Well, I certainly hope you can manage it! By the way, do you suppose you'll have a chance to read me the books she brought, or will she be keeping you too busy?"

"I'll never be too busy to read to you, Magnolia."

"That's very nitrogenous of you, Jim. Our--intellectual communions have meant a lot to me. I'd hate to have to give them up."

"So would I," he said. "But there won't be any need to. Phyllis will understand."

"I certainly hope so. I so admire your English literature. It's so deeply cognizant of the really meaningful things in life. And if your coming to this planet has served only to add poetry to our cultural heritage, it would be reason enough to welcome you with open limbs. For it was a truly perceptive versifier who wrote the immortally simple lines: 'Poems are made by fools like me, but only G.o.d can make a tree.'

"And such a charming tune to go with it, too," Magnolia went on. "We have always sung the music that the wind and the rain have taught us, but, until you came, we never thought of putting words and melody together to form one glorious whole. 'A tree that may in summer wear,'"

she caroled in a pleasing contralto, "'a nest of robins in her hair.' By the way, Jim, ever since reading that poem, I've been meaning to ask you precisely 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 of fancy, to leaves?"