“Take us the earthmen,” Strong said, “the fat little earthmen, that spoil the vineyard; for our vineyards are in blossom—”
“Tom!” Wright said.
“May I take this opportunity to tender my resignation, Mr. Wright? I shall never murder another tree. I am finished with your putrescent profession!”
“Why, Tom?”
Strong did not answer. He looked down at his hands. Some of his bourbon had spilled on the bar and his fingers were wet and sticky. He raised his eyes to the backbar. The backbar was the rear wall of the reconverted native church and contained a number of exquisitely carved niches formerly used to display religious articles. The niches contained bottles of wine and whiskey now—all save one. That one contained a little doll.
Strong felt a throbbing in his temples. He pointed to the niche. “What—what kind of a doll is that, mayor?”
The mayor faced the backbar. “Oh, that. It’s one of the carved figurines which the early natives used to keep over their hearths to protect their houses.” He took the figurine out of the niche, carried it over to where Strong was standing, and set it on the bar. “Remarkable workmanship, don’t you think, Mr. Strong?… Mr. Strong?”
Strong was staring at the figurine—at its graceful arms and long slim legs; at its small breasts and slender throat; at its pixy-face and yellow hair; at the green garment of delicately carved leaves adorning it.
“The correct term is ‘fetish,’ I believe,” the mayor went on. “It was made in the image of their principal goddess. From the little we know of them, it appears that the early natives believed in her so fanatically that some of them even claimed to have seen her.”
“In the tree?”
“Sometimes.”
Strong reached out and touched the figurine. He picked it up tenderly. Its base was wet from the liquor he had spilled on the bar. “Then—then she must have been the Goddess of the Tree.”
“Oh, no, Mr. Strong. She was the Goddess of the Hearth. The Home. The Advance Team was wrong in assuming that the trees were religious symbols. We’ve lived here long enough to understand how the natives really felt. It was their houses that they worshipped, not the trees.”
“Goddess of the Hearth?” Strong said. “The Home?… Then what was she doing in the tree?”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Strong?”
“In the tree. I saw her in the tree.”
“You’re joking, Mr. Strong!”
“The hell I’m joking! She was the tree!” Strong brought his fist down on the bar as hard as he could. “She was the tree, and I killed her!”
“Get hold of yourself, Tom,” Wright said. “Everybody’s staring at you.”
“I killed her inch by inch, foot by foot. I cut her down arm by arm, leg by leg. I murdered her!” Strong paused. Something was wrong. Something that should have happened had failed to happen. Then he saw the mayor staring at his fist, and he realized what the wrongness was.
When his fist had struck the bar, he should have felt pain. He had not. He saw why: his fist had not rebounded from the wood—it had sunk into the wood. It was as though the wood were rotten.
He raised his fist slowly. A decayed smell arose from the ragged dent it had made. The wood was rotten.
Goddess of the Hearth. The Home. The Village.
He swung away from the bar and made his way across the table-crowded floor to the street-wall. He threw his fist as hard as he could at the polished, exquisitely grained wood. His fist went through the wall.
He gripped the lower edge of the hole he had made, and pulled. A whole section of the wall broke free, fell to the floor. The stench of decay filled the room.
The colonists were watching with horrified eyes. Strong faced them. “Your whole hotel is rotting away,” he said. “Your whole goddam village!”
He began to laugh. Wright came over and slapped his face. “Snap out of it, Tom!”
His laughter died. He took a deep breath, expelled it. “But don’t you see it, Wright? The tree? The village? What does a species of tree capable of growing to that size need to perpetuate its growth and to maintain itself after it has attained its growth? Nourishment. Tons and tons of nourishment. And what kind of soil! Soil enriched by the wastes and the dead bodies, and irrigated by the artificial lakes and reservoirs that only a large community of human beings can provide.
“So what does such species of tree do? Over a period of centuries, maybe even millenia, it learns how to lure human beings to its side. How? By growing houses. That’s right. By growing houses right out of its roots, lovely houses that human beings can’t resist living in. You see it now, don’t you, Wright? You see now, don’t you, why the crude sap carried more nutrients than the tree needed, why the elaborated sap was so rich in oxygen and carbohydrates. The tree was trying to sustain more than just itself; it was trying to sustain the village, too. But it couldn’t any longer—thanks to the eternal selfishness and the eternal stupidity of man.”
Wright looked stunned. Strong took his arm and they walked back to the bar together. The faces of the colonists were like gray clay. The mayor was still staring at the ragged dent in the bar. “Aren’t you going to buy the man who saved your beloved village another drink?” Strong asked.
The mayor did not move.
Wright said: “The ancients must have known about the ecological balance—and converted their knowledge to superstition. And it was the superstition, not the knowledge, that got handed down from generation to generation. When the race matured, they did the same thing all races do when they grow up too fast: they completely disregarded superstition. And when they eventually learned how to use metals, they built sewage disposal systems and incinerators and crematories. They spurned whatever systems the trees had provided and they turned the ancient burial grounds at the trees’ bases into community squares. They upset the ecological balance.”
Strong said: “Without knowing it. And when they finally found out, it was too late to restore it. The trees had already begun to die, and when the first tree did die and the first village started to rot away, they were appalled. Probably the love of their houses had been inbred in them so strongly that without their houses they were lost. And apparently they couldn’t even bear to see their houses die. That’s why they migrated to the northern barrens. That’s why they either starved or froze to death in the death-caves or committed mass-suicide…”
Blueskies said: “Fifty million of them there were, the great, shaggy, magnificent beasts, dwelling on the fertile plains where now the Great North American Desert lies. And the grass that sustained them was green, and they returned the grass to the earth in their dung, and the grass grew green again. Fifty million! And when the white men finished the slaughter, five hundred remained.”
Wright said: “This must have been one of the last villages to go ‘modern.’ Even so, the tree must have been dying for years before the colonists came. That’s why the village is rotting away so fast now.”
Strong said: “The tree’s death accelerated the deterioration-process. There probably won’t be a house standing in another month… But the tree might have lived another hundred years if they hadn’t been so anxious to preserve their damned real estate. It takes a long time for a tree the size of that one to die… And the color of the sap—I think I understand that now, too. Our consciences provided the pigment… In a way, though, I think she… I think it wanted to die.”
Wright said: “The colonists will still exploit the land. But they’ll have to live in mud huts while they’re doing it.” Strong said: “Perhaps I performed an act of mercy—” Suhre said: “What’re you two talking about?”