Flowering Evil

                         by MARGARET ST. CLAIR

                Like all her other plants from far-off
              worlds, Aunt Amy hoped the Venusian Rambler
                  would win a prize. It hoped so too.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Summer 1950.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Captain Bjornson shook a grizzled head. "I never saw a plant I liked
the looks of less," he said. "I don't know how he got it through the
planetary plant quarantine. You take my advice, Amy, and watch out for
it." He took another of the little geela nut cookies from the quaint
old lucite platter, and bit into it appreciatively.

Mrs. Dinsmore sniffed, "I don't know what you're driving at," she said
coldly, "or why you're so prejudiced against my poor little Rambler.
You know perfectly well that Robert would never send me anything the
least bit dangerous."

Captain Bjornson paused with another cookie half-way to his lips and
looked at her. "Wouldn't send you anything dangerous!" he exclaimed.
"Why, Amy, have you forgotten how your face was swelled up for two
weeks from that tree cutting he sent you? The doctor said it was a
contact poison worse than sumach, and he tried to get you to go to the
hospital. What about the time that cactus from the Blue Desert went
to seed, and I spent thirty-six hours picking spines out of you? What
about--" Mrs. Dinsmore gave a warning sniff.

"Well, all right," Bjornson said. "I know how fond you are of Bob, and
I know you don't like me to mention his mistakes. I'll grant you he
means well. So what? He's flighty, scatter-brained, and brash. To use
an expression that was current when I was a boy, Bob is a twerp."

Mrs. Dinsmore pulled the lucite platter so far over to her own side
of the table that Bjornson couldn't get another cookie from it
without getting up and stretching out along the table cloth. "I don't
agree with you," she said distantly. "Robert is a splendid fellow,
so thoughtful and considerate. He takes a real interest in my soap
carvings, and how many young men with an important position like his,
third mate on a space freighter with a regularly scheduled run, would
remember to send back plants from every port of call to an aunt on
earth? I shouldn't be surprised if I won a blue ribbon at the flower
show again this year; my Golden Rain plant is about to bloom. Robert
tells me it's a lovely thing."

The captain cast a wistful look at the cookie plate. "Well, don't say I
didn't warn you," he replied. "When's Bob due in port?"

Mrs. Dinsmore's face relaxed. "Around the twenty-fifth," she said, "he
sent me a 'gram. Here, have another cookie. I must think up some little
thing to cook for him as a surprise."

The captain snaffled a handful of cookies from the plate and stood up
to go. "Your ordinary cooking's good enough for me," he declared, "but,
if you mean something like those little shrimps fried in batter you
had the last time he was here, go ahead. And watch for that plant." He
stalked off across the lawn.

He's getting old, thought Amy Dinsmore, watching the gruff old codger
limp around a flower bed (Bjornson had had prosthetic surgery after he
lost his foot and, though it had been successful, grafts were never
as flexible as natural members), positively old. He ought to see a
geriatrician right away. She'd tell him so the next time he came to see
her. Talking about Robert that way!

She set the dial on the robot gardener on the front lawn to "Weeding:
dandelions" and started along the path that led to the little hothouse
where most of the plants Robert had sent her were growing; even in
the deep tropics Terra was, with few exceptions, too cold and dry for
them. The Martian subjects, on the other hand, were in a psychroplex
lean-to, with hygro-scopes and a battery of infra-red lamps to keep the
temperature up during the day.

The heavy moist air of the hothouse made Amy Dinsmore pant a little as
she entered it--but how _interesting_ it was! Even the leaves of her
Venusian plants were fascinating, thick and leatherlike, thin and dry
and hard like parchment, hanging in heavy serpentine coils or bristling
pointed and sharp as so many spears. And their coloring ranged from
cerise through a silky taupe and indigo around to an angry bright
metallic blue. As for their flowers--oh, my. Amy Dinsmore had never
seen anything like them. All you could do was stand in front of them
with your mouth open and stare. When she wasn't looking at her Martian
succulents, they were her favorites of anything she grew.

She halted in front of the plant Robert had sent her last. Yes, Hjalmar
Bjornson was getting definitely senile. How could anybody think that
this poor little dried-up thing could be harmful? It was a mere bundle
of desiccated stems, with only a tiny new leaf or two to indicate that
it was alive. It looked a little better than it had yesterday, though;
the colchine solution must have been good for it. Amy brushed a few
dead flies from the ledge behind it into her hand and threw them into
the composter. She liked to have things neat.

Now, what should she cook as a surprise for Robert? He was fond of
sweet things, of course, but it always seemed to her that he praised
her meat dishes and entrees most. He liked her cooking so much
because her roast turkeys and grilled steaks had a crust on them;
electronically cooked food was quick to prepare and it might be as good
for you as they said it was, but the outside looked like the inside,
and it all tasted flavorless and grey. What was the use of saving time
in cooking if you ended up with food that wasn't any fun to eat?

       *       *       *       *       *

"You aren't looking well, Amy," Captain Bjornson said three or four
weeks later. He looked at her with the critical attention of an old
friend. "You've got on a lot of cosmi-lac, but you still look peaked.
What's the matter, worried about Bob? Ships don't get hurt in meteor
swarms any more." He looked down at his grafted foot reminiscently.
"Not like it was when _I_ was a third mate."

Amy Dinsmore shook her head. She picked up one of the brightly-colored
hexagons--they had been playing a desultory game of Maroola in the airy
coolness of the side stoa--and fiddled with it.

"I haven't been sleeping well," she confessed at last. "I've had such
unpleasant dreams. Horrid things."

"What about?" Bjornson asked. "That blasted plant? Honestly, Amy, it
looks like some kind of spider to me."

"No! I don't know why you can't leave my Venusian Rambler alone! Robert
told me it was a very valuable plant, rare even in its own habitat.
It's doing so nicely, too. A spider! I wish you'd stop trying to spoil
it for me."

"I'm sorry," Bjornson apologized. "Forget it. Go on, tell me about your
dreams."

"Well, on Tuesday--or was it Wednesday?--no, it must have been Tuesday
because that was the day after I flew over to Hartford--I was down by
the hothouse and I found the most unpleasant thing beside the path."
She shuddered. "I've been dreaming about it ever since."

"What was it?" Bjornson urged.

"Oh, a--I guess it must have been a rabbit once. One of the wild ones.
Only it was nothing except some fur and some bones. Not decayed,
Hjalmar, you understand, just gone. I can't imagine what had happened
to it."

"Better see a mental hygienist," the Captain advised after a pause.
"Nightmares can be very serious."

"I suppose so. I really dread going to sleep."

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning, very early, Amy turned on the fluor with unsteady
fingers. What a horrid dream it had been! She could hardly believe that
it hadn't been real and that she was safe and sound in her own bedroom
after all.

Outside, the noise that had wakened her--the jagged, unearthly
caterwauling of a couple of tomcats promenading in the moonlight--came
again. Ordinarily it was a noise Amy disliked very much--the poor
things always sounded as if they were in deadly agony--but now she
was glad to hear it. Heavens, if it hadn't been for those cats crying
and waking her up, she might still be asleep and dreaming. Dreaming
about--about--_blood_....

She turned the ceiling selector to "summer sky," lay back on her
pillow, and tried to relax. It was her favorite of all the ceilings
her bedroom had, so lovely and calm and blue, and right now she needed
something lovely and calm. One thing was sure, she wasn't going to
stand this much longer. She didn't believe in pampering herself, but,
if she had that dream once more she was going to take Bjornson's advice
and see a mental hygienist.

She'd think about something pleasant. Amy tried to fix her mind on her
gardening, on how well her plants were doing, but it wasn't a success.
When she tried to keep her thoughts on her Venusian Rambler (why did
they call it a Rambler?--it was turning into a large, stocky, compact
bush more like an outsized Camellia than anything else Amy Dinsmore
could think of), they kept veering back to her dream and all that--all
that--

Well, then she'd think about Robert. She was a lucky woman to have
a nephew like him. She'd worked out several menus, all the things
he liked best, but she wished she could think of something a little
different. There were so few kinds of meat, when everything was said
and done. Lamb and beef and musk ox and bollo and pork. And she always
thought bollo was stringy and tough.

Gradually Amy's nerves began to quiet. The cats had grown quiet too,
except for an occasional outburst that sounded like lightning made
audible. Her thoughts drifted lazily from Robert to her soap carving.
After a while she went to sleep....

The morning was sunny and bright, and she felt almost ashamed of
herself for having let a dream affect her so seriously. She had
finished her matutinal inspection of the hothouse and the succulent
growing-shed and had started back to the house when she came on a
bundle lying by the hothouse wall. At first she didn't recognize it for
what it was, and stooped over it, poking at it with a stick.

After an instant she straightened, nauseated, remembering where she had
last seen that ginger-colored fur. The bundle was the not very bulky
remains--bones, and some patches of hide--of a cat. Hadn't there been
some pieces of white fur too?--of two cats.

She'd better call Hjalmar. It might be dangerous. There must be some
wild animal living near her hothouse, a lynx or ferret or wildcat or
stoat. Mrs. Dinsmore wasn't strong on zoology, but she knew exactly
what sort of an animal she had in mind--something lithe and dark and
blood-thirsty. Goodness. It was quite frightening.

On the other hand, Robert would be in port in a couple of days. If
she asked Hjalmar to help her, he'd either make an enormous masculine
fuss over it (she still remembered the time she'd asked him to put up
a towel rack for her and he'd arrived with a set of socket wrenches, a
hand electric drill, four pairs of pliers, and a portable arc welding
outfit) or he'd pooh-pooh and pish-tush her into silence. Either way,
it wouldn't be satisfactory. She'd wait for Robert; Robert was so
comforting. If only she didn't have more of those dreams!

       *       *       *       *       *

Despite her apprehensions, her next night's slumber was profound and
sweet. She hadn't felt so rested and refreshed in weeks. She put the
somni-spray (maybe if she'd thought to use it before she wouldn't have
had those horrid nightmares) back in the closet and decided that she'd
do some soap carving after breakfast. She felt in the mood for it, and
Robert would be disappointed if she didn't have something new to show
him that she'd carved since he had last been in port. Besides, she
might be able to think of the special dish she wanted to make for him
while she was working: she'd found from experience that some of her
best culinary ideas came to her while she was making a statuette or
plaque out of soap.

The meal concluded, she got out her set of modeling knives and a couple
of cakes of soap. Soap was rather hard to get, since most people used
synthetic detergents nowadays, but she knew a little store in Perth
Amboy that carried it. This last batch had a lovely texture.

Amy rotated the living room on its axis until the light was exactly
right, and then sat down in front of her carving desk. What should she
make? A statuette? A plaque? A plaque in low relief, a plaque of a
flower. Somehow, she didn't want to think about animals right now.

She had sketched in the conventionalized Hermodactylus and was
beginning to pick it out carefully from the background when it occurred
to her that she hadn't been down to the hothouse this morning to see
her plants.

Why, that would never do, she mustn't neglect them, it was terribly
important. Important. (Her head hurt; how dizzy she felt!) She'd better
go at once, she'd better ... go.... Cake of soap in one hand, knife
in the other, panting a little, Amy set out toward her plants in a
stumbling run.

She was half-way to the hothouse before it occurred to her to question
the impulse which had taken her incontinently from her carving and
set her in blind motion toward the hothouse, and by then it was too
late. She was no longer a free agent in any sense of the term. The
mental grip which had taken the rabbit and the cats to their death
had tightened on her inescapably. Remote from her body, in a glassy
paralysis of fear and impotence, Amy watched her feet moving briskly
down the path.

Oh, if she could only cry out, call Hjalmar! She felt the muscles of
her throat straining, but no sound came. And now she was standing
before the hothouse, and her hand had opened the door.

The Rambler was waiting for her. Very slowly, like a man flexing his
arm, it reached out one of the stocky branches toward her. Amy saw that
at the end of the branch, well hidden under the dark green, glossy
leaves, was a slender, translucent, hollow thorn. It was about the size
of the hypodermic needle the doctor had used when, in her last year's
physical examination, he'd taken a sample of blood.

Amy knew exactly what was going to happen. First the hollow thorn,
until her veins were dry, and then the slowly opening maw, gaping above
the big, swollen, meter-wide base the thick leaves of the Rambler had
served to conceal. It would take a long time, but Hjalmar would never
miss her before it was too late.

[Illustration: _She knew exactly what was going to happen._]

The Rambler's branch moved delicately over the surface of Amy's right
wrist, the one with the modeling knife. The other branches were
drooping limply away from the purple-pink of its swollen base, waiting,
while it hunted the exact spot. It hesitated for an instant and
then--Amy's mouth drew into a soundless Oh of pain--struck home.

A dark fluid began to stain the hollow thorn. For just a fraction
of a second the Rambler's mental grip on Amy Dinsmore relaxed; she
could feel its blind concentration on its own black enjoyment. And in
that fraction of a second Amy threw the cake of soap in her left hand
straight into the Rambler's fleshy maw.

The Rambler gripped at her mind again, but it was a disturbed and
feeble grip. Its branches began to move around the fleshy bole they
had shielded, slowly, and then in a furious heaving. The thorn which
had entered her wrist was jaggedly withdrawn. Amy, her wrist streaming
blood, stared at the Rambler for a moment and then lunged at it with
the menacing knife.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sitting outside on the ground beside the hothouse afterward, her
forehead on her hands, feeling sick and faint, Amy had an idea. At
first she pushed it from her; it was far-fetched, silly, even a little
repulsive.

But was it so silly after all? And as to being unpleasant, well, bollo
meat commanded enormous prices in the market and, from everything she'd
ever heard, the bollo was the very reverse of a fastidious feeder. Even
pigs certainly weren't dainty in their eating habits. If she parboiled
it in several waters and then braised it slowly, with a hint of ginger
in the sauce.... Well, after all, why not?

Amy, the modeling knife in her hand, went into the hothouse again....

... "Gee, Aunt Amy, this meat's good," Robert said. He was talking with
his mouth full. "I've eaten indigenous chow on three planets--four, if
you call the stuff they serve you on Uranus food--and it's my opinion
that there isn't a better cook anywhere in the system than you. Fact.
How do you do it, anyhow?"

Amy Dinsmore lowered her eyes. She could feel herself blushing through
her cosmi-lac. "Oh ... thank you, Robert."

"She sure is, Bob," Hjalmar Bjornson said expansively. "That gravy!
She's the best cook on Terra all the time, but when you're in port she
gets sort of inspired."

"What kind of meat is this, though, Amy? And could I have some more?"

"Of course," Amy said. She refilled Hjamar's plate. "It's something new
I found in the big auto-market in the city," she said vaguely.

"By the way, Aunt Amy," Bob said, laying down his fork, "after I sent
you that plant I heard it was supposed to be carnivorous. I forgot to
mention it in my last 'gram. You didn't get into any trouble with it,
did you?"

"No, it died," Amy said smoothly. "I had to throw it out. Too bad." She
brightened. "Pass your plate, Robert dear," she said.