To the Dark Star: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Two by Silverberg Robert

Author:Silverberg, Robert [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2011-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

“They aren’t people. They’re trees. Sick trees that are going to die soon anyway. I want to save the others.”

“But why kill them? There’s got to be some kind of drug you can use, Zen. Some kind of spray. There’s a drug to cure everything now.”

“Not this.”

“There has to be.”

“Only the fire,” Holbrook said. Sweat rolled coldly down his chest, and he felt a quiver in a thigh muscle. It was hard enough doing this without her around. He said as calmly as he could manage it, “Naomi, this is something that must be done, and fast. There’s no choice about it. I love these trees as much as you do but I’ve got to burn them out. It’s like the little leggy thing with the sting in its tail: I couldn’t afford to be sentimental about it, simply because it looked cute. It was a menace. And right now Plato and Caesar and the others are menaces to everything I own. They’re plague-bearers. Go back to the house and lock yourself up somewhere until it’s over.”

“I won’t let you kill them!” Tearfully. Defiantly.

Exasperated, he grabbed her shoulders, shook her two or three times, pushed her from the truck cab. She tumbled backward but landed lithely. Jumping down beside her, Holbrook said, “Dammit, don’t make me hit you, Naomi. This is none of your business. I’ve got to burn out those trees, and if you don’t stop interfering—”

“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 needler 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, redfaced, baffled. The lunacy was spreading: his threat had been completely empty, as she had seen at once.

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