Banned From Argo -- Chapter 8
8.
Our helmsman loves exotic plants. The plants all love him too.
He took some down on leave with him, and we wondered what they’d do,
‘Til the planetary governor called and swore upon his life
That a gang of plants entwined his house – and then seduced his wife.
“Fumigation, fumigation…” Lieutenant Sulu muttered to himself as he trudged back to his cabin for the third time. “All crew quarters too, and no more room in the arboretum. What am I going to do?”
As his door closed behind him he paused to gaze fondly at the last flowerpot and its contents, standing placidly under the carefully calibrated growing-lamp. It was a big pot, and a big plant: a mature Argelian Blue Velvet bush-orchid, nearly a meter tall, its delicate fronds spread out like dark-turquoise lace. It was a prize specimen of an exquisite ornamental, valued all over the galaxy for its ethereal beauty, lovely even when not flowering, and devilishly hard to grow. It was the centerpiece of his collection, and there was absolutely no room for it in the ship’s arboretum.
“Sylvia,” he sighed to the adorable thing, “There’s no other solution. I’ll have to take you with me.”
That settled, his next problem was transportation. He turned around, went back into the corridor and trotted off to ship’s supplies. He came back ten minutes later with a small grav-cart, just big enough to carry the loaded flowerpot. Sulu eyed the flowerpot and calculated that maybe five minutes’ careful work would get the pot onto the cart. Then he could tow it to the transporter room and beam down…
And what then?
He imagined himself beaming into the lobby of the Argo Stilton or some such, with Sylvia in tow, everyone noticing and remarking on her beauty: then the inevitable envy, then greed, then hordes of bureaucrats descending on him with tons of regulations about importing alien lifeforms, confiscation with no repayment, and Sylvia winding up in some greedy official’s home or office. He’d seen such officious thievery before.
The obvious solution was to beam into a wilderness area, leave Sylvia there…
No, that wouldn’t work. Argo lifeforms just might find Sylvia edible, and delicious. He’d have to take her somewhere safe, cultivated – yet someplace where she wouldn’t draw attention. Someplace like…
Well, why not a botanical garden?
The more he thought about it, the better the idea looked. No one would question the presence of a rare and valuable plant in a place designed for rare and valuable plants. If the caretakers noticed her, they’d just assume that some official had brought her there without properly informing them. They’d take good care of her, probably even have the proper food for her symbiotes, the pale green Elf-Moss that grew at her roots… No, one couldn’t count on that much. He’d best feed them before he took Sylvia down.
While he was dusting the moss-food around Sylvia’s roots, Sulu had another thought; what if the caretakers took her out of the pot and planted her? He’d have the devil’s own time getting her back.
Wait, there was a solution for that, too. Another quick trip down to supplies brought him a small homing beacon and a soil-sampling probe. With meticulous care, he inserted the beacon deep among Sylvia’s roots. Now he could always find her again and beam her up, symbiotes and all.
When he pictured beaming Sylvia out of her pot, then back in, he knew he was going to need expert help.
* * *
“Psst! Janice, do you have a moment to spare?”
“I have hours to spare. I’m going to be stuck up here for days. What’s on your mind?”
“A tricky piece of transporter work. Are you interested?”
“I’m interested in anything interesting, right now. What’s the problem?”
“See this map? Here, where it says Anslinger Gardens: first, I have to find just the right spot in those gardens to hide Sylvia. Then we have to beam her out of her pot and into just the right depth in the ground. Once the ship-wide fumigation is over, we have to beam her back into her pot without damaging her roots. Can you do it? Is it even possible?”
“Sulu, the latest development in transporter technology is applying it to microsurgery. Yes, it’s possible, and yes, I can do it. Now tell me why you’re going to all this trouble to keep your pet orchid from going through Customs?”
“Thieves, Janice. I don’t want to risk losing her to some greedy bureaucrat with convenient fine print in the regulations.”
“Hmm, and according to what I’ve picked up from the local chat-lines, Argo bureaucrats are famous for that. All right, I see your point. Let’s have a look at that map.”
“Here: these gardens in the fanciest part of town, right between all these big mansions.”
“We’ll have to get a closer look. Get over to Sensor Control, and I’ll meet you there in five minutes.”
* * *
Three hours before sundown, a small patch of slightly-swampy soil near the easternmost wall of Anslinger Gardens was briefly lit by the blue glow of a transporter beam. When the glow faded, the ground was more compacted and less swampy – thanks to the sudden addition of one cubic meter of finest-grade potting soil, which just happened to contain the roots of an Argelian Blue Velvet bush-orchid and its Elf-Moss symbiotes. Although the transport was perfect, soil-surfaces matching exactly, Sylvia was shaken by the experience. Her lacey fronds quivered, curled into tight little velvet fists, and waited several minutes before they uncurled again. No one but a few resident birds saw the event, and in another moment the garden returned to its usual tranquility.
What Rand hadn’t noticed, she not being a botanist, was that the surrounding soil was unusually high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and metal-salt content.
What Sulu hadn’t noticed, he being distracted with other problems, was that the tight little knots at the tips of Sylvia’s main branches were not leaf or flower buds. They were not buds at all, since Sylvia had passed her flowering stage.
They were seedpods.
* * *
Sulu, delighted at the successful piece of work, soundly kissed Yeoman Rand and then beamed down to a modestly-priced hotel. Once there, he checked out the local listings of officially-sanctioned entertainments -- and was lucky enough to find an Ancient French-style fencing tournament.
While attending the tournament, he had the even better luck to meet an adventurous Argo girl named Doris, who liked spacers. She invited him to an Underground party afterwards, where he completely lost track of time. He certainly didn’t notice that a light rain fell on Argo Port Citybetween midnight and dawn.
* * *
The rain filled the slight hollow by the wall, carrying the nitrogen, phosphorus and mineral-salt compounds to Sylvia’s roots, and up to the roots of her symbiotes. The Elf-Moss feasted on the new food until it became as close to drunk as a plant could manage. The merry Elf-Moss secreted new chemicals, complex and arcane, a part of its metabolic cycle which the botanists of Argelius had never noticed.
Sylvia too gloried in the rich food, drawing it up and processing it hungrily. In the tropical river-valleys of her original home, summer floods had brought these chemicals down from the hills every breeding-season, to be used up before the cool dry winter began, a phenomenon the local scientists hadn’t yet discovered, which explained why none had ever had much luck getting the bush-orchid to seed in captivity. The sudden abundance of chemicals and water had come at just the right time; Sylvia had seedpods waiting for them.
* * *
Next morning, Sulu and Doris awoke and ordered breakfast. While munching on assorted fruits and crescent rolls, they turned on the vid-screen to look for anything interesting.
What they got was an eyeful: news reporters, talk-show hosts and various officials – all carefully shown from the neck up – reporting on, commenting on, or denouncing the Present Transmission Problem. It took them less than five minutes to determine just what that euphemism meant. After that, they laughed until their sides were sore. Doris came up for air long enough to whoop: “What a glorious joke! I wonder who could have done it.”
“I can’t imagine,” Sulu chuckled – and then stopped. A sudden suspicion sneaked into a corner of his mind. He knew what amazing things Uhura could do with any kind of communications gear. Could she possibly…? No, of course not! Why should she bother? How would she get into the system, anyway? This had to be an inside job. Some local must have done it. Sure.
But still…
The thought nagged him at odd moments all morning.
* * *
The rising heat of day sent the Elf-Moss into full enzyme production. The subtle chemicals worked through the soil to Sylvia’s roots. She acknowledged the chemical signal, drew water up from the ground and even from her leaves, and sent it into the swelling seedpods. The pods expanded with amazing, almost visible, speed. The seeds ripened and the chamber at the base of each pod began to fill with water. Minute by minute, the membrane dividing the lower chambers and the seed-chambers stretched, and the pod walls thinned.
* * *
Sulu could never understand the passion some girls had for shopping. Yes, it was interesting to see what the markets displayed, and it might be profitable to compare prices on things one really needed, but looking at goods and spending money had never struck him as a pleasure. He waited politely, itchy with boredom, while Doris oohed and cooed over clothes and decorations that looked no different, really, from what she was already wearing.
The fourth time that Doris asked him: “Which do you think would look better on me, this one or this one?” he simply pointed to the one on the right, excused himself to go check out the shop across the street, and made his escape.
The shop specialized in cameras, video equipment, commercial-grade tricorders, and the like. Much to his surprise, Sulu found a digital recorder that covered the full range of a tricorder and vid-camera besides. It had remarkable storage and charge capacity, and the price was ridiculously low. On examining it, he was delighted to see that the frequency selector could be adjusted to study any detail of any lifeform: as good as any of the portable tricorders in the Enterprise’s Biolab, except that the sensing distance was less than a hundred meters. Hey, with this he could study plants right down to their molecules! He paid for it fast, and didn’t bother to have it wrapped.
A moment later, when Doris came trotting in with an armload of bags and bundles, he cheerfully waved the camera at her and told her to pose. Dorisrefused, but she didn’t ask him to carry any of her bundles, either. She took her purchases home in a ground-taxi, promising to meet him for dinner at “the infamous Baxter’s” that evening.
At loose ends for the next few hours, Sulu strolled off to play with his new toy. He tried it on buildings, busy streets, passing pedestrians and their pets, and finally thought of going to Anslinger Gardens to check on Sylvia.
* * *
The morning sun soaked her in energy, and Sylvia’s branches strained under the weight of their burdens. Her seed-pods were swollen to the size of fists: the seeds ready, their coats almost fizzing with growth chemicals waiting to be loosed, the lower chambers stretched and beginning to strain with built-up water pressure. Her roots sucked more water out of the soil, digging so fiercely that the whole structure began to tilt toward the wall. The hour of her release was near, and Sylvia’s normally hypersensitive leaves were too limp from their labors even to quiver at the sound of approaching footsteps.
* * *
Sulu stared at Sylvia for a long moment, struggling to believe what his eyes told him. Yesterday he hadn’t even seen the seedpods on her branches, but today they were bared, gleaming, enormous, and clearly ripe. He’d always heard that Argelian Blue Velvet pods were small, and took forever to form…
His first thought was that something was terribly wrong. His second thought was to remember the multicorder in his hands. He worked the frequency selector in a desperate hurry, turned it wide open, and pointed it at Sylvia.
The multicorder whistled for half a minute before he felt that he had readings enough. He reset the switch and pored over the readout on the screen. Then he looked at Sylvia. Then he looked at the screen again. Then he let out a whoop that startled the birds off their perches. Then he kissed the multicorder. Then he almost kissed Sylvia.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” he announced to the surrounding plants, birds and sky. “Nobody’s ever seen this before! Nobody’s even guessed. Sylvia, you’ll make me famous!”
The dutiful little machine explained it all: massive doses of nitrated minerals and phosphorus, the growth hormones from the symbiotes, the true natural breeding cycle revealed at last. Sulu had it all, the complete data, everything explained. He knew of half a dozen journals that would happily publish his findings. Even Commander Spock would be impressed.
“Got to get all this back to the ship,” he whispered to himself – looking around quickly to make sure that nobody else was near, nobody had heard or seen… Did he dare leave Sylvia here, where someone else might see? Yes, dammit: the fumigation. But if he could publish first—
Sulu all but ran out of Anslinger Gardens, looking for a communications center from which he could contact the Enterprise’s computer.
Behind him, Sylvia continued to pump water into the lower chambers of her seedpods. The pressure steadily grew.
* * *
A frustrating half-hour later, Sulu gave up trying to upload his multicorder directly to the Enterprise, and simply asked Yeoman Rand to beam him up. Ten hurried minutes after that; he had the data safely stored in the computer under his personal code. It took him another hour to write his report on the true optimum breeding conditions of Argelian Blue Velvet and transmit it off to the Federation Journal of Botanical Sciences.
After that he realized that he had skipped lunch, and was ravenously hungry. Dinner with Doriswouldn’t be for hours, and the ship’s replicators were offline for inspection. There was no help for it but to beam back down to the city. Remembering to bring his wonderfully helpful little multicorder, Sulu strolled back to the transporter room to share his good news with Rand and ask for a beam-down to the nearest halfway decent restaurant.
“Don’t ask me what’s a good place,” Randreplied. “I’m not the Argo veteran in the crew.
You might ask Commander Scott; he’s holed up at the Hotel Avalon right now. Hmm, for that matter, so is Lt. Uhura…”
Sulu sighed, and tapped up the city map. The guide index showed a respectable eatery in the city, almost directly below, near the groundside spaceport. “This’ll do,” he said. “I’d invite you along with me to celebrate, but—“
“But I’m stuck here. Enjoy lunch.”
Two minutes after that, Sulu walked in the door of the Starburst Bar and Grill and asked for a seat by the window. The only available table there was small and cramped, but he didn’t care. He could aim his delightful little multicorder out the window and play with the readings while he waited for his order.
“You and Sylvia, darlings,” he murmured to his toy, “You’re going to make me famous.”
The diner was crowded, the waitresses hard-worked, and Sulu had gained no more than a cup of admittedly very good coffee when he noticed something odd in the street outside. There was a cloud of dust – no, a large crowd of people – coming up the street, carrying signs and apparently chanting.
Some kind of religious parade? he wondered, even as he lifted the multicorder and aimed it.
As the crowd drew closer, he saw that there was nothing religious about it. The words of the chant, as the multicorder faithfully analyzed them, were: “No More Raids!”. The signs had more to say, and none of that was religious either. This was a classic political protest, such as he hadn’t seen in years. They’d no doubt parade through half the city advertising their grievance, gather at some socially significant spot to make long speeches detailing their grievance, hand around a petition for everyone to sign, then publicly present it to some government official. The pattern was almost as formal as a classic Noh play, and would make for some interesting vids. If he weren’t waiting for his lunch, he’d be tempted to follow them with the multicorder.
Wait a minute. There was something outside the classic pattern: a large group of armored ground-police coming up, forming a line across the street in the path of the marchers. What in the worlds were they doing there? Sulu turned the multicorder and aimed it at them.
The next second, the police began firing stunguns into the crowd.
Sulu stared, his forgotten multicorder still running, as the bodies began falling. He saw the second line of marchers try to stop or turn and run away, but the sheer mass and momentum of the crowd behind pushed them forward.
Can’t the police see that? Sulu raged silently. Can’t they understand that those people can’t stop fast no matter what they do?
Now the thrown bottles began flying, water splashing everywhere, one of the stunguns shorting out and taking its wielder with it. More water sprayed from somewhere on the opposite side of the street – the fire-extinguishing system, Sulu guessed – making the stunguns useless. The police line was backing up; surely now they’d have the sense to back off and let the parade through.
But no: they pulled out long metallized clubs and began striking at the marchers. Sulu saw them lashing, hard, at people’s heads – and winced as he thought of what that kind of blow could do to a Human skull. More marchers fell, but now the main mass of the crowd fell upon the police line, an avalanche of bodies pressing on the shields. The first of the badgemen fell over, and was swallowed in the mass of flesh. The rest turned and ran. The crowd ran after them.
Not quite believing this, Sulu swept his eyes – and his multicorder – over the litter of bodies left behind. This was impossible. The officials couldn’t just leave bodies lying in the street! Somebody had to come and help them, someone—
Then he saw a very old woman in a flower-patterned caftan picking her way among the bodies. She was shaking her fists and, according to the multicorder, swearing a blue streak. She raised one hand, which held a small bottle of some emerald-green fluid, and shouted after the departed police: “I’ll get you good! I know where your water-distribution plant is!”
Just then, the sound of sirens approached. Thank all the gods of every species: that must be the ambulances coming.
The old woman swore again and scampered off, quick as a cat, down a side street.
A fleet of bulky groundcars came up the street and stopped at the intersection. Strange, but the vehicles didn’t look like ambulances…
They weren’t, and the troops jumping out of them weren’t medical personnel. Sulu watched, multicorder running, as the police grabbed up bodies and threw them – actually threw them, like so many logs – into the gaping backs of the groundcars. They showed no concern at all for how the victims landed. Sulu wondered how many would have broken skulls, limbs or backs from this action alone.
Gods and ancestors, one of those bodies looked exactly like Dr. McCoy!
Sulu watched, trying to be sure, getting the odd impression that the victim was looking straight at him while the cops hauled his body to the groundcar. The multicorder kept humming.
It wasn’t until the last body was picked up, the vehicles closed, their police crews back on board, that Sulu realized his multicorder was still running. He’d caught it all.
Someone had to see this!! Someone had to know. Sulu thought of taking the news to the Captain, but had no idea where he was. Rand might know; she knew where Scott and Uhura were, anyway…
“May I take your order, sir?” a voice sounded in his ear.
Sulu turned to see the waitress hovering by the table, stylus poised over her order-pad. He realized that his appetite had utterly vanished.
Just the coffee,” he said, fumbling at his belt for a cred-chip. He handed her a fiver and headed for the door, looking for a clear space from which to call Randand beam out, forgetting everything else.
He had completely forgotten Sylvia, too.
* * *
Sylvia was ready. The tips of her seedpods split and gaped open, revealing the waiting seeds. Spores from the flowering Elf-Moss below drifted up on the slight convection currents and settled on the exposed seeds. The water-chambers of the pods bulged, the thin membranes straining to their limits. Her leaves curled tight in expectation.
A light breeze swept through the garden, barely enough to ruffle leaves, but enough to add the last needed stress. The separating membrane between the seeds and the water-chamber of the topmost pod tore through.
With a sound that older civilizations would have called gunfire, the seeds shot into the sky on a spray of water. They shot high, higher than the garden wall, flew over it – then lost momentum and began to drop. They landed on the fine-trimmed lawn of the yard beyond the wall, the grounds of a huge and well-kept mansion.
The stress of that first shot was enough to rupture the membranes of the other pods. In a rippling fusillade, much like an ancient machine-gun, Sylvia’s seeds flew to freedom – into the sky, over the wall, finally down into the welcoming topsoil—
--onto the lawn in the back yard of the Argo governor’s mansion.
* * *
Five minutes later, Sulu knocked on the door of room 612 at the Hotel Avalon. The door opened to reveal Commander Montgomery Scott in an interesting state of civilian dress, or rather, undress.
“Sulu, lad!” His breath smelled noticeably of Scotch, but his eyes were keen as ever. “Come on in. Whot brings ye here?”
For answer, Sulu walked in and held out his multicorder. “This, sir,” he said. “I think you should see this. And I think Dr. McCoy may be in danger.”
* * *
In the central Argelian jungles, life was wildly abundant and always hungry; nothing vulnerable would live long. Through ages of high-pressure evolution, the seeds of the Blue Velvet bush-orchid had learned not to be vulnerable. The moment they impacted with the soil, the shock of landing shook loose the row of folded leglets along their sides and stirred them to action.
The leglets began to push, aiming blindly downward, toward the welcoming soil – and the spores of the Elf-Moss came along for the ride. There were blades of grass in the way, but that didn’t matter; the seeds’ sharp noses pushed them aside. Now a mat of grass roots blocked the downward path, but the seeds’ needle-noses pushed them aside too. The leglets shoved harder. Reluctantly, the roots parted or tore before that ruthless determination. The seeds’ noses touched the blessed moist topsoil.
At the signal of that touch, the seeds’ noses opened and folded back to reveal a different set of leglets. These were sharp, sturdy, set in a ring, and designed for digging. They burrowed into the ground like tiny drill-bits, tossing up little mounds of loosened dirt. As the seeds buried themselves, the almost-microscopic spores of the Elf-Moss were stripped from the seeds’ skins, finding a home for themselves in the loose soil at the surface, while the burrowing bush-orchid seeds sank out of sight.
Once the last of the seeds was buried, once air no longer touched them, the leglets withered and fell off, their duty done. The seed coats absorbed water and minerals from the rich soil, softened and fell apart, releasing growth hormone into the dirt immediately around the seeds. The liberated seeds thrust down their first roots and took firm hold of their new territory. Devouring water and nutrients and growth hormone with almost animal speed, the roots pumped water into the seeds’ leaf-heads.
The leaf-heads uncoiled, thrust upward, broke the surface again and raised themselves into the open air. There they encountered the sweet blanketing sunlight. The leaf-heads split apart and spread wide, stretching to catch every last photon.
The tiny plant was still vulnerable, but not nearly so much as the seed. Now the whole system was in place: roots, stalk, leaves and symbiotes. Now the infant plants could eat, grow, put on thick bark, put out predator-sensitive leaves, and hold their own in a hungry jungle world.
* * *
Governor Kingrich was locked in his office, yelling at his viewscreen. His kids were supposedly off in school – but his wife Nargina knew that the boys had called in sick and then taken off, probably to go trawl for girls in the nearest shopping mall. None of her family needed her, not for anything worthwhile, which meant that she had nothing worthwhile to do – again.
Nargina was disgusted with the lot of them, disgusted with her life, disgusted with the world. She sauntered through the mansion’s overstuffed clubroom in her Tourmaline spider-silk morning gown and considered opening up the wet-bar, pouring herself several tall cool drinks, and getting placidly drunk. With Kingy busy on some crisis or other – or possibly talking some other maid into the coat-closet – the boys off skirt-chasing and the servants staying carefully out of the way, it was unlikely that anyone would bother her until dinnertime. She could stay mildly plastered for that long.
A passing glance around the room swept her eyes across the windows, giving her a view of the back yard. It was a lovely day, and she might as well enjoy the weather. She strolled out the back door and gazed aimlessly around the yard. There was the wall that divided the yard from Anslinger Gardens – which she hadn’t visited in years. There were the Earth rosebushes that she’d planted years ago – now sadly neglected. There were the forgotten fruit-trees – whose fruit nobody bothered to pick and eat anymore. Maybe she should get back into her gardening; she had enjoyed that, once. There was nothing Politically Significant about gardening. Kingy’s only objection to it had been the time it took, time which he thought could be better spent on her accompanying him to various public functions, being a good little ornament…
Wait, what was that patch of spotty roughness near the wall, marring the perfection of the lawn? Annoyed, she came down the steps and strode to the offending patch of strange vegetable color, bent down and looked closer.
She stared for a minute, her brain trying to make sense of what her eyes saw. Then she jumped up with a screech that could have made dogs howl. She recognized those seedlings; any gardener, professional or amateur, in this entire quadrant would know what they were.
“Argelian Blue Velvets, complete with Elf-Moss!” she dithered. “Dozens of them! Hundreds! Oh my gods!”
She turned around and ran for the gardening shed. Ten minutes later, totally ignoring the now sad state of her dress, she came hurrying back with a shovel, a trowel, and as many flowerpots and bags of potting soil as her wheelbarrow could carry.
* * *
There was no way to move the party, so the conspirators gathered in Uhura’s room down on the fourth floor. Uhura had her communications gear spread out all over the desk, and was listening intently to her communicator. Nurse Chapel was sitting on the couch, looking alternately amused and furious. Chekov was hovering nearby, looking worried. Sulu was holding his own communicator to his ear and arguing in whispers with Scott’s voice.
“Nay, we doan’t call the Captain,” Scott hissed from the speaker. “Dinna force th’ mon ta refuse or deny. We handle it oorselves, so he can reprimand us later, if he must.”
“You think he’ll want to stay ignorant about this?” Sulu whispered back. “What if we can’t get Bones out? The captain will have to know.”
“No’ ‘til then-- Wait, Rand’s got a fix on him. Hold… There he is! Scott oot.”
“They’ve got him!” Sulu announced gleefully. “Dr. McCoy’s back on board!”
“He’s sefe!” whooped Chekov. “Eh, in det case, I cen go beck to de party – or meybe to de interesting Bolt-Hole.”
“Go ahead,” said Chapel. “Just be verycareful not to lose your communicator. Hmm, and Heziah doesn’t seem to be in the hotel just now…”
“I’ll call you if anything else happens,” Uhura promised, not taking her eyes off her screens.
Whistling happily, Chekov trotted out the door. Sulu started to follow him, then stopped and looked back at Uhura.
Uhura, he saw, was looking from her minicomp screen to her laptop screen, comparing the news-camera versions of the Nude Riot with the readouts from Sulu’s multicorder. “Interesting difference,” he noted. “Somebody really had fun with Argo’s communication system.”
Uhura gave him barely a glance, only went on looking at her screens.
“You know,” Sulu went on, “Whoever did it knew a lot about communications hardware – and the odd uses of a tricorder.”
Now Uhura gave him a full-faced look. “The technology’s available right here in town,” she said, pointing significantly to Sulu’s new multicorder. “If you had set the frequency on that thing just a little higher…”
“Yes, I suppose a local could have done it. I mean, what motive would an offworlder have for playing a prank like that?”
“What indeed?” Uhura smiled.
Sulu gave the laptop’s viewscreen a long, significant look. It showed what was unmistakably Dr. McCoy being thrown into a paddy wagon. “Right,” Sulu smiled. “Well, I’d best be off. I have a dinner-date.”
“Good luck, then,” Uhura called after him, “D’Artagnan.”
Sulu caught that, and laughed. He waved her a knowing salute as he strolled out the door.
He was halfway down the corridor before he remembered Sylvia.
* * *
Nargina’s morning gown was muddy up to the shoulders, and the skirt was hopelessly shredded. Her slippers had long since disappeared in one of the mud-holes now dotting the lawn. Sweat gleamed on her skin, under splotches of dirt, and her hair had come loose and was clinging to her neck. She looked like a classic Shakespearean madwoman, and didn’t notice.
She had a good three dozen of the precious little Velvets potted and stacked in the greenhouse, and she was filling the wheelbarrow with another half-dozen filled pots. She glanced at the sinking sun and shoveled faster; at this rate she’d get the last of them safely into the greenhouse by twilight, and she didn’t want to miss any of them in the dark.
“Faster, faster,” she muttered, jabbing her spade into the soil.
“Nargina!” yelled a familiar voice from the back door. “Nargeeeeeena!”
She flinched automatically – but only for an instant. Forget him, she decided fiercely. This is important!
“Nargina,” snapped Governor Kingrich, marching up to her. “What the bupfrack do you think you’re doing?”
“Shoveling,” she snapped back, not bothering to look at him.
“Shoveling what?” her husband yelped, his voice climbing an octave higher.
“My fortune!” she roared. “Credits by the shovel full! My future by the wheelbarrow-load! Now get out of my light!”
* * *
Sulu stared at Sylvia, not quite believing what his eyes and the multicorder showed him. Seedpod to seeded out, in less than 24 hours: the Journal would have a conniption fit. Sylvia drooped, exhausted, almost visibly panting like a tired dog. Every seedpod was shriveled, empty, falling away.
And where were the seeds?
There wasn’t seed nor seedling to be found, and Blue Velvet seeds were famed galaxy-wide for their sprouting-speed. Something should have showed above the ground by now, somewhere nearby, unless…
Sulu looked closer at the angle of Sylvia’s trunk. Wasn’t it just a few degrees out of line? If those seedpods had discharged with enough force send the seeds flying – and flying far enough – they would have gone clean over the wall.
“Into somebody’s back yard, I’ll bet,” Sulu groaned, slinging the multicorder back on his shoulder.
The wall had originally been rough stone, and years of weathering had worn handholds in it that an experienced Starfleet explorer could use. Besides, there was a nice thick Barnard’s Ivy growing all the way to the top. Sulu gritted his teeth and climbed.
He was nearly at the top of the wall when he heard the voices below.
* * *
“No, I am not going to stand in the background while you make another grzekking speech! This is a thousand times more important!” Nargina hadn’t yelled this loud in years, and it felt surprisingly good. “You caused that riot, you and your heavy-handed Respectability laws: you go deal with it.”
“This is a Major Political Crisis, and all you care about is a bunch of plants?!” Kingrich was actually hopping up and down, like a small child in a tantrum. “Have you gone out of your mind?”
“No, I’ve finally found it – and watch your feet!”
“I’ll—I’ll have the Surgeon General examine you!”
“I’ll tell his wife first. She’s a gardener too.”
“I’ll divorce you!”
“Fine! You can keep the children!”
Sulu, looking down from the wall, had no idea whom this squabbling couple could be, but he recognized the gardening tools. He could see, from the carefully packed flowerpots, that the lady with the shovel was another plant-lover who knew the value of Argelian Blue Velvet. At least Sylvia’s children would have good homes.
He could also see that the red-faced bouncing man was about to step on one of the seedlings.
“Hey, you oaf!” he yelled down. “Watch your feet! You’re about to trample that seedling!”
Startled, the battling pair turned to look at him. The man’s foot was still dangerously close to the seedling.
“That’s an Argelian Blue Velvet, you idiot!” Sulu howled. “Don’t you know what they’re worth?”
The woman grinned, recognizing another gardening fanatic.
Governor Kingrich stared at the interloper, and recognized the uniform. He remembered that those damned plants came from another planet. Suspicions clicked. With the sure instinct of a politician, he pointed a thick finger at the stranger and yelled: “You! It’s all your fault!”
He stamped his foot for emphasis.
It came down on the seedling.
Nargina screeched like a banshee and charged at him, swinging the shovel.
Kingrich did what any sensible politician would do. He ran for his office.
Nargina followed him, shovel at the ready.
“Oops,” said Sulu, watching the chase. It occurred to him that now would be a good time to get out of here.
He scrambled back down the wall, realizing that his sudden appearance just might cause people to come searching the garden. That meant somebody might find Sylvia. It was time to get both of them out of here.
He hit the ground and grabbed his communicator.
47 seconds later, Sulu and Sylvia materialized in the Enterprise’s transporter room, both looking the worse for wear.
Yeoman Rand took in Sylvia’s drooping fronds, Sulu’s rumpled uniform and the stray ivy leaves in his hair. For a moment a really wild speculation played through her imagination.
“I really don’t want to know,” she said, “What you two did on shore leave.”
Sulu puzzled over that, then let it go. “Let’s just say it was lively,” he admitted. “Can you find me another botanical garden, in another city? Better yet: on another continent.”
It took a good half hour to find a suitable spot in a small city at the other end of the main continent. Randhad just finished beaming Sulu and Sylvia away when the urgent/civilian-channel/ground-to-ship message came in.
At first Rand thought it was a joke. Then she realized that this really was the planetary governor screaming hysterical accusations. The man was so furious that he’d forgotten about the Communications Decency Problem, and was visible from the knees up.
Rand took care to record the message, in full detail.
