"Oh, thank you," she said."Won't you come in?"
"Sure. Maybe you'd like to put those on a plate and eat 'em now."
Penelope got out a plate, dumped the fruits out on it and ate one."My, these are delicious. I've never tasted anything like them. Won't you have one?"
'Thanks," said Converse, "but I've had all I can hold."
BACK at the Converse party, guests, stuffed with fruit, were sitting and standing about lethargically, wiping the juice of the fruits off their hands and sipping martinis. The only fruit yet uneaten were a few on the highest parts of the tree, which could not be reached by the stepladder.
Two men walked slowly up the walk, peering about. One was lean and hatchet-faced; the other short and stout with thick-lensed glasses. While all the male guests were in sport-shirts, the newcomers wore coats.
The shorter one said: "There's the house and that's one of the plants."
The two drifted quietly up to the crowd around the tree of Eden and the taller asked Mr. Zanziger: "Excuse me, but which is Mr. Converse?"
Zanziger answered: "Bill isn't here just now. He went over to the Vanderhoff house."
"Are Mr. Vanderhoff or Mr. Devore here?"
"Mr. Vanderhoff isn't, but I think Mr. Devore—yeah, that's him." Zanziger pointed to the square-jawed, gray-haired figure with the pipe.
Mary Converse said: "I'm Mrs. Converse. What can I do for you?"
The hatchet-faced man said: "I have here a warrant for your husband's arrest. Also for Mr. Vanderhoff and Mr. Devore. Here are my credentials." The man produced the badge of a United States deputy marshal, and added: "My name is Jacobson, and this is H. Breckenridge Bing of the Department of Agriculture. Where—"
Devore stepped up."Did somebody say I was wanted?"
"I'm sorry to say you are," said Jacobson, producing more papers from his inside coat pocket."Here's the warrant for your arrest on the charge of buying articles whose importation is forbidden by the Plant Import Control Act of 1963, as amended 1989. Now if—"
"Why, I don't know what you're talking about," said Devore with an exaggerated expression of innocent astonishment.
"Ahem," said the short stout man."He means that Amphorius tentatius—" Bing indicated the tree of Eden—"as well as several specimens of Faucifrons mordax and Cantodumus mimicus. Our investigations show—"
Devore broke in."Are you the H. Breckenridge Bing who wrote in the Botanical Gazette on the reclassification of the Pteridophyta in the light of recent paleobotanical evidence?"
"Why—uh—yes."
Devore shook the man's hand."That was a swell piece, but I never thought I'd be arrested by the author."
"Well—er—I assure you I would have preferred not to be a party to your arrest, but they sent me along to identify the contraband plants."
JACOBSON said: "If you'll show me where Mr. Converse and Mr. Vanderhoff are, I'll run you down to the Federal Building in my car and you'll be out on bail in a few minutes."
"What will they do to Mr. Converse and the others?" asked Mary Converse.
"Probably just a fine," said Jacobson.
"Oh," said Mary Converse in a disappointed tone.
The deputy marshal continued: "It depends partly on whether they're cooperative witnesses in the prosecution of Grant Oakley, who sold them the seeds. He's the one who we'll really throw the book at. He's under arrest now."
"My brother in jail!" cried Mrs. Hort, but nobody heeded her.
Devore asked: "I suppose the Department of Agriculture will send a truck around to gather up our Venerian plants?"
Bing's eyes blinked behind their spectacles."That's right. It's bad enough to bring in an exotic plant from some place on Earth when its properties aren't fully known, and a hundred times more risky to bring in one from another planet. You never know what might happen. It—uh—might spread all over, like the prickly-pear cactus in Australia. Or it might have a disease that would get loose and wipe out the wheat crop."
"Urn," said Devore."I hadn't thought of that."
"Come on, Breck," said Jacob-son."Show me the Vanderhoff house."
A guest named Dietz, who had had several martinis too many, muttered: "Don't worry, you beautiful plant, we won't let these guys take you away from us."
H. Breckenridge Bing continued: "Now this Amphorius, for instance, has a strange property. I suppose you know that the biochemistry of the higher Venerian organisms turned out to be almost the same as that of terrestrial vertebrates?"
Devore nodded vigorously; the other hearers in more tentative fashion.
"Well, you remember that in the 1970s, 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. 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 steinlike 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, will you?"
"Now look here—" said Jacob-son.
"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 hastily toward 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. Mosely, expected to be Penn'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 heard it.
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 in. He marched up to his front door, entered and dropped the briefcase 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.