Tree, Spare that Woodman Read online

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  Illustrated by FRIES]

  Tree, Spare That Woodman

  By DAVE DRYFOOS

  _The single thing to fear was fear--ghastly, walking fear!_

  Stiff with shock, Naomi Heckscher stood just inside the door to Cappy'sone-room cabin, where she'd happened to be when her husband discoveredthe old man's body.

  Her nearest neighbor--old Cappy--dead. After all his wire-pulling to getinto the First Group, and his slaving to make a farm on this alienplanet, dead in bed!

  Naomi's mind circled frantically, contrasting her happy anticipationswith this shocking actuality. She'd come to call on a friend, shereminded herself, a beloved friend--round, white-haired, rosy-cheeked;lonely because he'd recently become a widower. To her little boy, Cappywas a combination Grandpa and Santa Claus; to herself, a sort of newlymet Old Beau.

  Her mouth had been set for a sip of his home brew, her eyes had picturedthe delight he'd take in and give to her little boy.

  She'd walked over with son and husband, expecting nothing more shockingthan an ostentatiously stolen kiss. She'd found a corpse. And to havelet Cappy die alone, in this strange world ...

  She and Ted could at least have been with him, if they'd known.

  But they'd been laughing and singing in their own cabin only a mileaway, celebrating Richard's fifth birthday. She'd been annoyed whenCappy failed to show up with the present he'd promised Richard.Annoyed--while the old man pulled a blanket over his head, turned hisround face to the wall, and died.

  Watching compassionately, Naomi was suddenly struck by thematter-of-fact way Ted examined the body. Ted wasn't surprised.

  "Why did you tell Richard to stay outside, just now?" she demanded. "Howdid you know what we'd find here? And why didn't you tell me, so I couldkeep Richard at home?"

  She saw Ted start, scalded by the splash of her self-directed anger, sawhim try to convert his wince into a shrug.

  "You insisted on coming," he reminded her gently. "I couldn't have keptyou home without--without saying too much, worrying you--with theEarth-ship still a year away. Besides, I didn't know for sure, till wesaw the tree-things around the cabin."

  The tree-things. The trees-that-were-not. Gnarled blue trunks,half-hidden by yellow leaf-needles stretching twenty feet into the sky.Something like the hoary mountain hemlocks she and Ted had been foreverphotographing on their Sierra honeymoon, seven life-long years ago.

  Three of those tree-things had swayed over Cappy's spring for a farlonger time than Man had occupied this dreadful planet. Until justnow ...

  The three of them had topped the rise that hid Cappy's farm from theirown. Richard was running ahead like a happily inquisitive puppy.Suddenly he'd stopped, pointing with a finger she distinctly recalled asneeding thorough soapy scrubbing.

  "Look, Mommie!" he'd said. "Cappy's trees have moved. They're around thecabin, now."

  He'd been interested, not surprised. In the past year, Mazda had becomeRichard's home; only Earth could surprise him.

  But, Ted, come to think of it, had seemed withdrawn, his face a carefulblank. And she?

  "Very pretty," she'd said, and stuffed the tag-end of fear back into thejammed, untidy mental pigeon-hole she used for all unpleasant thoughts."Don't run too far ahead, dear."

  But now she had to know what Ted knew.

  "Tell me!" she said.

  "These tree-things--"

  "There've been _other_ deaths! How many?"

  "Sixteen. But I didn't want to tell you. Orders were to leave women andchildren home when we had that last Meeting, remember."

  "What did they say at the Meeting? Out with it, Ted!"

  "That--that the tree-things think!"

  "But that's ridiculous!"

  "Well, unfortunately, no. Look, I'm not trying to tell you thatterrestrial trees think, too, nor even that they have a nervous system.They don't. But--well, on Earth, if you've ever touched a lighted matchto the leaf of a sensitive plant like the mimosa, say--and Ihave--you've been struck by the speed with which _other_ leaves close upand droop. I mean, sure, we know that the leaves droop because certaincells exude water and nearby leaves feel the heat of the match. But theothers don't, yet they droop, too. Nobody knows how it works ..."

  "But _that's_ just defensive!"

  "Sure. But _that's_ just on Earth!"

  "All right, dear. I won't argue any more. But I still don't understand.Go on about the Meeting."

  "Well, they said these tree-things both create and respond to thepatterned electrical impulses of the mind. It's something like the way adoctor creates fantasies by applying a mild electric current to theright places on a patient's brain. In the year we've been here, thetrees--or some of them--have learned to read from and transmit to ourminds. The range, they say, is around fifty feet. But you have to bereceptive--"

  "Receptive?"

  "Fearful. That's the condition. So I didn't want to tell you because you_must not_ let yourself become afraid, Naomi. We're clearing trees fromthe land, in certain areas. And it's their planet, after all. Fear istheir weapon and fear can kill!"

  "You still--all you men--should have let us women know! What do youthink we are? Besides, I don't really believe you. How can fear kill?"

  "Haven't you ever heard of a savage who gets in bad with hiswitch-doctor and is killed by magic? The savage is convinced, havingseen or heard of other cases, that he _can_ be killed. The witch-doctorsees to it he's told he _will_ be killed. And sometimes the savageactually dies--"

  "From poison, I've always thought."

  "The poison of fear. The physical changes that accompany fear, magnifiedbeyond belief by belief itself."

  "But how in the world could all this have affected Cappy? He wasn't asavage. And he was elderly, Ted. A bad heart, maybe. A stroke.Anything."

  "He passed his pre-flight physical only a year ago. And--well, he livedall alone. He was careful not to let you see it, but I know he worriedabout these three trees on his place. And I know he got back from theMeeting in a worried state of mind. Then, obviously, the treesmoved--grouped themselves around his cabin within easy range. But don'tbe afraid of them, Naomi. So long as you're not, they can't hurt you.They're not bothering us now."

  "No. But where's Richard?"

  Naomi's eyes swept past Ted, encompassing the cabin. No Richard! He'dbeen left outside ...

  Glass tinkled and crashed as she flung back the cabin door. "Richard!Richard!"

  Her child was not in sight. Nor within earshot, it seemed.

  "Richard Heckscher! Where are you?" Sanity returned with theconventional primness. And it brought her answer.

  "Here I am, Mommie! Look-at!"

  He was in a tree! He was fifteen feet off the ground, high in thebranches of a tree-thing, swaying--

  For an instant, dread flowed through Naomi as if in her bloodstream andsomething was cutting off her breath. Then, as the hands over mouth andthroat withdrew, she saw they were Ted's. She let him drag her into thecabin and close the broken door.

  "Better not scare Richard," he said quietly, shoving her gently into achair. "He might fall."

  Dumbly she caught her breath, waiting for the bawling out she'd earned.

  But Ted said, "Richard keeps us safe. So long as we fear for him, andnot ourselves--"

  That was easy to do. Outside, she heard a piping call: "Look at me now,Mommie!"

  "Showing off!" she gasped. In a flashing vision, Richard was half boy,half vulture, flapping to the ground with a broken wing.

  "Here," said Ted, picking up a notebook that had been on the table."Here's Cappy's present. A homemade picture book. Bait."

 
; "Let _me_ use it!" she said. "Richard may have seen I was scared justnow."

  Outside again, under the tree, she called, "Here's Cappy's present,Richard. He's gone away and left it for you."

  Would he notice how her voice had gone up half an octave, become flatand shrill?

  "I'm coming down," Richard said. "Let me down, tree."

  He seemed to be struggling. The branches were cagelike. He was caught!

  Naomi's struggle was with her voice. "How did you _ever_ get up there?"she called.

  "The tree let