"Well, you remember that in the 1970's, Petchnikov isolated gratisone, the gratitude hormone, which is secreted by the pineal gland. It occurs in such minute amounts that it had been overlooked, but it controls animal behavior somewhat as prolactin stimulates mother-love. It's one of the things that makes community and family life possible. Now, the fruit of Amphorius contains significant amounts of gratisone, or a substance almost identical with it. The result is that anybody who eats an Amphorius fruit is soon seized by an irresistible desire to please the thing or person from whom the fruit was received. If you eat it off the tree, you want to please the tree."
"Hey, Breck!" said Jacobson, tugging at Bing's sleeve. But H. Breckenridge Bing was no man to relinquish an audience for anything less than a convulsion of nature. He continued:
"Now, Amphorius is a carnivorous plant, like Faucifrons, but instead of snatching its prey, it persuades the prey to feed itself to the plant. Small vertebrates who eat the fruit climb into the amphora" (Bing indicated the stein-like structure) "and are digested. The highest form of Venerian life, the yellow gibbon-like Sauropithecus xanthoderma, is too intelligent to thrust itself into the amphora. Instead, the tribe seizes the weakest member as a sacrifice to the plant and thrusts him into the vessel.
"If on the other hand you receive the fruit from another person, you —"
"My gosh!" cried Mary Converse. "That no-good husband of mine took a bag of the things over to Penny Vanderhoff! Three guesses what he's up to!"
Dietz, the drunken guest, said: "And that's what we ought to do to Mr. Bing and Mr. Jacobson here. Nothing's too good for our tree, not even a federal dick."
Bing gave a forced smile. "I don't think human beings would go to the extremes of the Venerian lizard-monkey —"
"Oh, wouldn't we?" said another guest. "Tear up our plant and take it away, forsooth!"
"Now look here —"said Jacobson.
"Into the jug with them!" yelled a guest, and the cry was taken up. The circle began to close in on the federal men, who backed towards the street. Deputy Marshal Jacobson drew a pistol from under his armpit, saying: "You're all under ar —"
Standing on his right was young John S. Moseley, expected to be Perm's star halfback during the coming football season. Moseley let fly a kick that sent the pistol thirty feet into the air, to fall among Converse's pachysandra. The guests closed in, clutching. There was a crash of glass from the Vanderhoff house, but nobody heeded that.
Carl Vanderhoff returned home Saturday evening instead of Sunday as he had planned. He delivered his paper Saturday morning; he saw everybody he really wanted to see by the end of Saturday's lunch; he discovered that the meetings and papers scheduled for Sunday were of little interest; finally, Professor Junius White of the University of Virginia offered him a lift home if he would leave Saturday afternoon. The thought of saving both train fare and a night's hotel bill, and of getting home in time for the tail-end of the Converse party, decided Vanderhoff to leave early.
He walked the half-block from where he was dropped by White, who had declined an invitation to stop. He marched up to his front door, went in, and dropped the brief case containing his notes, pajamas, and other equipment for the conference. He almost tripped over young Daniel's lightweight baseball bat, clucked with annoyance, leaned the bat against the corner, and made a mental note to fine Daniel.
Then he filled his lungs to shout: "Hello, family!" But he closed his mouth and let his breath out as muffled sounds of human activity came from the living room.
Frowning, Vanderhoff took three steps to the threshold of the living room. On the sofa his wife sat in hot embrace with his neighbor Converse.
Converse looked up at the sound of Vanderhoff s entrance. Vanderhoff stared blankly. Then the habits of a lifetime started to curl his lips into a cordial smile of greeting, while at the same time a rising fury distorted this automatic smile into something else — an expression at which Converse looked with visible horror.
Vanderhoff took a step forward. Converse, though he outweighed the professor of French Literature by twenty pounds, tore himself loose from Penelope, looked furtively around, and dove through the picture window. Crash!
There was a scrambling in the shrubbery outside. At the same instant, from the other direction came the cries and footfalls of a crowd pursuing something along the street.
Vanderhoff did not notice. His attention was drawn by a loud cry from beyond the window, followed by the yelclass="underline" "Ow! Help! It's got me!"
Vanderhoff hurried to the window. Converse had fallen among the bulldog bushes, which had instantly seized him. Two of the jaws had grips on each of his legs, or at least on the trousers that clothed them, while a fifth held a fold of his sport-shirt.
Converse, on hands and knees, had crawled as far out of the clump as he could and was trying to get farther, while the other jaws of the bushes lunged and snapped at him like the heads of snakes. He had knocked over a couple of the wire guards that Vanderhoff had set up in front of the bushes. His right hand had blood on it, apparently from a cut sustained when he broke the window. Fragments of glass, reflecting the golden sunset, gleamed on the ground among the bushes.
Vanderhoff stood with pursed lips, contemplating various kinds of assault. He did not want to kill Converse, just half kill him, so he dismissed the notion of using a carving knife. If he merely used his fists, Converse would grab him and probably give him a worse beating than he inflicted. Then he remembered Dan's bat. He strode into the hall, picked up the bat, went out the back door, and came around to where Converse sprawled in the grip of the bushes.
"Hey!" cried Converse. "Don't do that, Carl! Let's be civilized about this! I didn't mean any harm! I was just —"
The sound of a blunt instrument on a human skull ended his explanation. For most of a minute Vanderhoff stood spraddle-legged, swinging the bat with both hands like Roland wielding Durandal against the paynim. Converse yelped and moaned, but could not crawl back among the bushes lest worse befall him. After the bat had broken his nose he covered his face and head as best he could with his arms and let the blows land where they might
As Vanderhoff stepped back to catch his breath, sounds from the street attracted his attention. He stepped around the corner of his house and saw a strange procession winding towards the Converse home.
First came Sydney Devore beating his Indian drum. Then came four neighbors, each holding one limb of a short fat man who struggled.
Then came the other neighbors, male and female, doing a kind of snake dance. As the line passed Devore's place, his singing-shrubs burst into:
Vanderhoff found these sights and sounds so strange that, forgoing further revenge for the nonce, he followed the procession with the bat on his shoulder.
The marchers danced up to the Converse house. One guest raised the lid of the pitcher of the tree-of-Eden, while the four who held the little man prepared to thrust him in. Vanderhoff caught up with the head of the procession and asked Devore:
"Hey, Sydney, what's going on? Are you all crazy?"
"No-o, we're just going to reward the tree for its lovely fruit."
"You mean they're going to sacrifice this man — who is he, anyway?"
Devore explained about H. Breckenridge Bing. "The other one got away. He could run faster."