The Pollinators of Eden (7 page)

“What does Paul think of this?” Freda asked.

“Paul never commits himself,” Hal said, sipping his drink, “but he’s not fooled by appearances. You’re proof of that.”

Over her delicately poised teacup Freda asked, “Are you saying he doesn’t find me attractive?”

“I’d be a maple-loving Florian to imply that!” He was beginning to gesticulate. “But a man doesn’t marry a woman for the shape of her earlobes. Beauty vanishes, passion flees, and ardor can die within an hour. Give me fifteen minutes with Mona Lisa and she would be out the door, smile and shoes.”

This boy was truly upset, she decided.

“A man likes to dip a spoon, now and then, into deep-dish apple pie,” Hal continued, “but he marries for meat and potatoes.”

“Are you complimenting me?”

“Yes, and Paul knows there’s something rotten on Flora. He told me the blooms were originally to attract insects, but there are no insects. What happened to the insects? The flowers ate them!”

He paused, and his voice sank. “That tree was probing my weakness. It had found my libido. I would have died in that maple grove, a horrible death, in a way you can’t imagine… But they won’t get Paul! They’ve found the wrong weakness—his pure, aseptic, scientific curiosity. They figure
that’s
a weakness, so they aren’t superplants. Yet, how many Paul Theastons are there compared to the Hal Polinos. Paul has no weakness.”

Fascinated, Freda listened. Paul had said the orchids were concealing secrets. Hal’s ideas were incoherent, but he was groping toward a theory which supported Paul. Paul had said that Hal was brilliant, but he wasn’t too brilliant. She could certainly imagine what death awaited this semideranged lover in the maple grove.

He had finished his second martini and was waving for another. “Take animal life,” he said. “All the substructure for an animal kingdom exists on Flora, particularly for herbivorous animals, and after the grass eaters come meat eaters. What happened to the meat eaters?”

He left the question unanswered, waving his glass. “There’s a dolphin in the oceans of Flora, and the big fish eat the little fish… But I can’t be too optimistic, even there. If the sun doesn’t die too soon, the seaweed will be eating the fish.”

“Are you suggesting the plants are carnivores?”

“No, because the grass is cagey. It would poison grazing animals. When a seed falls in that grass, it just melts away. And the grass is right! Any plant on Flora is dangerous, because it has won all its evolutionary wars. Any plant you see on Flora is a victor, a hero, a champion killer.”

He paused and cast a glance behind him. “I tell you, Freda, the plants are waiting. The flowers are watching. The trees are probing. Far back in their racial memories are recollections of a biped who swung from their limbs, ate their berries and nuts, pulled up their tender shoots. The memory of a biped whom they conquered once, and destroyed, and who has returned, is still with them, and they will strike again.”

He paused over the remnants of his martini. “Yet, your chief and mine, the good Doctor Gaynor, ninety percent water and ten percent hot air, for the sake of perpetuating a meaningless name, wants to station human beings on that planet. That stupid ass! That administrator!”

He was teetering on the edge, and she snapped, “Polino, I can’t permit you to discuss the chief of the Bureau in such terms, not in my presence.”

Haki had come again with another martini. “Haki-san, do you know a pompous old ass by the name of Doctor Charles Gaynor who would low-bridge his grandmother for a political advantage?”

“He throw spit barrs, sir?”

“Right, Haki-san! He’s the grandfather of all spit ballers.”

“Hal, I insist! Pay the girl and let’s go.”

As submissive as a child, he struggled to his feet, totaled the check with one eye closed, and crumpled a handful of bills onto the table. He turned and held out his hand to Freda, who led him from the pavilion. When they reached the car, she took the driver’s seat, and Hal spoke one sentence, sounding hollow in his throat, “Don’t help Gaynor, Freda.”

Freda had no intention of not helping Doctor Gaynor, and she likewise had no intention of not helping Hal Polino. Monday morning she arranged with Mrs. Weatherwax for an immediate appointment with Doctor Gaynor.

Although she deferred to him as Bureau Chief, she enjoyed talking to Doctor Gaynor. His manners that Hal had called pompous were courtly, almost majestic, and he, more than anyone else, was responsible for Freda’s promotion to higher levels. He wrote her fitness reports. For that reason she dropped by his office less often than she would have liked, because some executives would grade an administrator down for currying favor.

However, Gaynor appreciated flattery insinuated unobtrusively into the conversation. Freda had detected his pleasure from his habit of blinking his eyes slowly and nodding slightly when a compliment was concealed in the conversation. Also, he was handsome, and he seemed to like her.

“How was your weekend?” he asked as a polite prelude when she entered.

“Interesting in more ways than one,” she answered, “and that’s why I called. I appreciate you working me into your busy schedule so promptly.”

With an imperceptible nod and a slow blink, he said, “My door is always open.”

“Saturday I visited a bonsai exhibit in Bakersfield in the company of Hal Polino, Paul’s graduate-student assistant.”

“Ah, I see.” There was an implied rebuke in his remark. “You accompanied Mr. Polino?”

“Yes. He was basically my reason for going. As a student, I felt his interest would be stimulated by specific examples of applied plant science. But more, when Mr. Polino originally reported to me of Paul’s progress on Tropica, I thought I detected in his remarks an attitude toward the Planet of Flowers quite different from the nostalgia of beginning earth-alienation which Doctor Berkeley mentioned.”

“Ah, I see.” Doctor Gaynor’s eyes were beginning to glow. “Doctor Berkeley, I think, was overimpressed by a nostalgia that will pass, like the memory of a pleasant country we visited when we were young.”

“Student Polino and I discussed the alienation effect, as Doctor Berkeley calls it, and as you just expressed more poetically and accurately.” Freda was rewarded by another blink and nod. “But Mr. Polino’s reaction was entirely different. He thinks the planet is malevolent, that there is evil beneath its beauty. He described it in terms which turned my concern away from the planet and toward him. He is so distraught that he considers the planet a menace to human life. I thought it might be advisable to place him under covert psychiatric observation, for the good of the Bureau as well as his own. If the Senate Committee were to conduct an in-depth investigation of your petition, a field interviewer might approach the young man. If he were under psychiatric observation, of course, any testimony given by him would be voided. Possibly a bonus vacation might be arranged.”

“No. That would be too obvious. If I sent him off the base, and an in-depth investigation were held, he would be the first the field investigator would interview… Polino, Hal… Let me see.”

He swiveled in his chair, his silver-gray smock rustling with starch, and pulled a file from his desk drawer. “Polino, Harold,” he said again, looking at a file card he had selected. “Harold Michelangelo Polino, to be exact.” He inserted the card into a computer typewriter, pressed a button, and the typewriter began to hum with the flick of its type ball. A sheet of paper slowly emerged from the typewriter.

Leaning sideways, intent on the record of Harold Michelangelo Polino, in his silver hair and his silver smock with his dead white face immobile, Doctor Gaynor reminded her of a bust cast from platinum as he scanned the record. Suddenly he looked over and smiled. “As you know, Doctor Caron, these reports are confidential, but since I repose special trust and confidence in you as a department head, and since this report was turned in by Paul Theaston, I will read you an excerpt: ‘Subject student has wide-ranging imagination which permits him to observe phenomena from varying points of view. In pure research, this faculty might be valuable. Certainly it adds to his intrinsic interest as a person, but it detracts from his ability to focus on details. His responses are more weighted toward the emotional rather than the intellectual side of his nature—an artistic rather than scientific response. Barring difficulties of adjustment, he is overqualified as a zoologist, although he would probably be more happy and stable in that branch of the plant sciences. In line with his present studies, I have recommended that he apply for a degree in cystology preparatory to a further degree in cell biology. His greatest handicap in this schedule would be his weakness in methodology. He is impatient with a step-by-step analysis of phenomena and reluctant to maintain precise records, but if his training could be extended to eliminate these tendencies, his potential contribution to the plant sciences is immeasurable.’ ”

“I’m somewhat confused,” Freda admitted. “Is Paul damning him with faint praise, or praising him with faint damns.”

“Basically, Paul’s saying he’s a brilliant student, if his nose can be kept to the grindstone. That he bears watching.”

Gaynor turned and strummed his fingers across the polished top of his desk, lost for a moment in speculation. “Keeping his nose to the grindstone, I suspect, would anchor his flights of fancy… Since I’ve taken you this far into my confidence, Doctor Caron, permit me to take you a little farther. You have met with favorable response in many circles because of your precise methodology. Your record-keeping is both precise and comprehensive.”

Suddenly Freda Caron felt herself beneath an alpine overhang with a thaw setting in. Ominously, Doctor Gaynor continued. “You are concerned about the student, and your concern augments the official record. I commend your perspicacity… Now, I see by your work projection for February that you intend to hand-pollinate the Caron tulips. This is a happy juxtaposition of events. I’m not infringing on your prerogatives as department head, but I couldn’t think of a more painstaking and detailed task than the hand-pollinating of… er… sixty-three tulips, twice to the thirty-second power. Your student-rotation memorandum has been approved by the Suggestion Box Committee, and I’m going to assign Hal Polino to you, not only to maintain a covert psychiatric watch but also to apply the therapy of painstaking work to a student who needs training in methodology.”

She was crushed by the avalanche triggered by her own memorandum: to save Paul, she had sacrificed herself. Polino was hers. One never objected to assignments given personally by Doctor Gaynor. On the contrary, one was supposed to show restrained enthusiasm.

“Why, Doctor, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said truthfully. “Hand-pollination will keep him so busy he won’t have time to brood.”

That, too, was a true statement. Hal Polino would not have time to focus his antagonisms on the planet Flora. They would all be focused on his taskmistress. The prophecy in graffiti had been prematurely fulfilled: they hadn’t started for Washington, and Charlie had already “done it” to Freda.

Polino’s reaction was precisely as she assumed it would be—chagrin and disappointment; but she had prepared a face to meet the glower that confronted her. “This was an administrative decision, Mr. Polino, and you have no choice but to follow through. I grant you it’s tedious work, but it’s necessary, and you’ll be working alone for the next two weeks. All thirty seeds you picked from the floor, plus the thirty-two which Paul sent, are flourishing. The tulip I removed from the pot seems to accept outside conditions, so I’m confident you can transplant the seedlings outside within the next day or two. If they can adapt to earth conditions and temperature changes, your work within the next two weeks will be vastly increased but likewise more meaningful.”

“Increased is absolutely correct, Doctor. I’ll be overwhelmed.”

“Your attitude is wrong!” she snapped. “You will be adding to the beauty of earth’s flora if those plants adapt.”

“Then, Doctor, you’d better correct my attitudes now.” He was almost truculent. “If those beasts adapt, I won’t have time to have any attitudes corrected.”

“Number one, I want a log recording every fact relative to the Caron tulips, the time of each observation, and a record of barometric pressures, thermometer readings, or any climatic change that affects the flowers.” He was gazing down on her with his hurt fawn eyes, and she relented slightly. “And I don’t want the entries recorded in blank verse!”

He grinned at her sally and whirled away, singing:

He’s as busy as a bee!

Who’s as busy as a bee?

That little old pollinator, me!

To handle him, she thought, would take firmness and authority. And she would not tolerate any familiarity from a student who had twice been drunk in her presence.

“One other item, Mr. Polino,” she said, and he turned. “This telephone is for business use only.”

“Aye, aye, ma am.”

Freda’s visit to Washington began on a pleasant note, principally because Doctor Hans Clayborg joined the group at Bakersfield for the flight to Washington. He was a dynamic little man with a brain so charged with wit and ideas that his hair stuck out at right angles from the static electricity his brain generated. It was his Swedish-Watusi hairstyle, he told her, immediately after introductions, worn to distract attention from his beautiful teeth. When she commented on the perfection of his teeth, he took them out to give her a closer view. She was reassured and amused by his gesture: he wasn’t stuffy, and he was too old to be a menace to her health and welfare.

She was pleased also that Doctor Berkeley had recanted from his previous position, despite the fact that he had filed only a neutral report on Flora’s psychological effects on human beings. “I have reservations about the planet,” he said to her during the flight, “but little stronger than my reservations about earth. Young Doctor Youngblood filed such an enthusiastic opinion in the other direction that he convinced me. Far from decrying the danger of earth-alienation on the planet, he said that the gorgeous scenery—his words, not mine—might straighten out the kinks in the necks of the stargazers. As a matter of fact, he recommended Flora as a sanatorium for neck-snappers… I’ll let you read his report.”