John D. MacDonald

The White Fruit of Banaldar

Ever since the first of our arboreal ancestors studied and understood the function of a pitcher plant, or E, perhaps a Venus fly-trap, the idea of a vegetable growth which could and would entrap and absorb a human has been one of the well-springs of nightmare. For some reason the thought of becoming breakfast food for an outrageous orchid or perhaps an overbloated sweet potato holds more intrinsic horror than the fangs of the tiger or the tentacles of the kraaken.

Since such plants are uncommon, if indeed they exist at all, upon Earth, it is perhaps natural for imaginative authors to envision them as existing upon alien planets. Furthermore, the mere removal of such growths across a few parsecs of space does nothing to remove the immediacy of their terror, a fact which Mr. MacDonald makes extremely evident. —The Editor

The auctioning of the five planets took place in the quiet main lounge of the Transgalactic Development in the corporation’s new and glistening building at the corner of Reforma and Insurgentes in Mexico City, capital of the world.

For Timothy Trench, ex-employee of Transgalactic, sitting tense and expectant in a back row seat waiting for the auction to begin, it was the end of one part of life, the beginning of a new. He touched his pocket and felt the reassuring bulge of the wallet.

In the wallet, crisp as a celery kiss, was the cashier’s check. It was the hour that marked the end of five long years of planning. That check for two thousand mil-pesos was the result of pleading, begging, demanding — arguing the others down.

Five years before Timothy Trench had been a member of the habilitation crew which Transgalactic had put on the surface of the third of the five planets. At that time it had been known by a number. Now its name was Banaldar. In the hot harsh winds, in the drifting sand, in the salt-crusted seas, Timothy saw what he had been looking for.

Only a visionary’s mind could have worked that way. Through the long months of building the power source, of starting the long slow process of oxygenation that would bring to Banaldar a cycle of seasons, a climate fit for man, Timothy had pictured the rolling hills clad in green, the river beds filled once more, the breezes gentle and full of the smell of growing things.

During the last month, after all the soil tests were in, they had brought down the torrential rains and then, low and fleeting, the aircraft had spread billions of seeds in thousands of varieties in the long-dead soil of Banaldar. The small animals were released and the habilitation crew left, taking Timothy along — leaving his dreams behind.

The lounge was filling up. He looked around, saw the agents of overpopulated areas, the buying agents of the industrial combines, the agents of the speculators who clawed into the crust of far places. They would be due for a surprise.

He remembered the look of Banaldar when he had last seen it. The only trace of the life that had once been there were the enormous trees — long dead. They dwarfed the redwoods of Earth and their bark was like wrought iron, so grooved and striated that a bold man could climb three hundred feet to the lowest limbs. Timothy had climbed and looked out over the world that he vowed would once be his.

It had taken five years to make certain that it would be his. He knew that one day Transgalactic would put the five planets up for auction. Two thousand young people were behind the crisp check in Timothy’s billfold. Slowly and relentlessly he had sold them his dreams.

A world to call your own — a beautiful Earth-size planet with rolling seas and gentle green hills — a place to become home, to raise children in, to set up the sort of society that Earth had long lacked and sadly needed. Maybe — maybe — it was the chance mankind had been waiting for. A thousand years would tell.

Some of those who had pleaded to join the group Timothy had turned down, regretfully but firmly. Others had been so desirable that, even though they could contribute next to nothing, he had spent months convincing them they should come.

It is no small thing to ask a man to move across space to a new world. But some dreams cannot be denied.

The auctioneer moved quietly to the front of the lounge and all conversation stopped.

Even with the amplifiers his voice was so low as to be difficult to hear. “Today, gentlemen, we are auctioning off the five planets of Epsilon Aurigae, a convenient fifty-two light years from Earth.

“Those of you who have attended other auctions are familiar with our system. All bidding must open at our stated figure, which is just sufficient to cover our development expense plus a reasonable profit percentage. These five planets are the most desirable offered in recent months, all of them close enough to Earth-size to obviate gravitational difficulties, all of them quickly adjusting to our habitational procedures.

“There are three other planets circling the sun in question, two of them too close to be made livable and one too far out. The five will be offered for sale in the order of their distance from the sun. You have all had an opportunity to look over the charts, specifications and space photographs.

“The first planet has been named, in our literature, Caenaral. The minimum bid is eight hundred and eight mil-pesos. I am bid nine hundred. Nine hundred is the bid. Nine twenty-five is the bid.

“Worlds for sale, gentlemen. You will make no mistake on any one of these planets. Mineral concentrations are high. Nine hundred and fifty, fifty, fifty, seventy-five, one thousand. I hear one thousand...”

The bidding went on. Timothy Trench slouched in his chair and the auctioneer’s voice faded from his consciousness. He thought of other things. The first city, not really a city, must be where the great river emptied into the largest sea. They must not permit ugliness. For a long time the ship they traveled in must be their base.

The first planet was knocked down for one thousand seven hundred and sixty mil-pesos. The second one, less desirable, went for thirteen hundred milpesos. Timothy came quickly out of his dreams as he heard the man speak at last of Banaldar.

His strategy was firm in his mind. Leave the bidding alone — let it climb to where the bidding began to slow down — wait until the last moment and then put in a bid a full hundred mil-pesos higher.

He sat with his fingernails biting into his palms. He was a tall man of thirty with coarse ginger-colored hair, with eyes used to probing vast distances. The bidding soared quickly to thirteen hundred and fifty, then began to slow down. As he was getting ready to put in his bid it gathered new momentum and went rapidly up to sixteen hundred and twenty-five. One of the chemical outfits made it sixteen thirty.

“I have been bid sixteen hundred and thirty. Do I hear forty? Sixteen hundred and thirty. Going for sixteen hundred and thirty. Going for—”

“Seventeen hundred and fifty!” Timothy shouted.

The auctioneer peered at Timothy, recovered his aplumb. “The young man has made a bid of seventeen hundred and fifty. Going for—”

“I bid nineteen hundred,” a thick voice said. Timothy gasped and turned quickly. A heavily bearded man had bid the new figure. His clothes were rumpled and soiled.

“Two thousand!” Timothy said with a thin note of panic in his voice.

“Twenty-one hundred,” the man said, his voice the slow and measured note of doom.

“Going for twenty-one hundred. Going, going, GONE to Mr... uh—”

“I am Leader Morgan of the Free Lives,” the rumpled heavy man said proudly.

“Oh? Yes, of course — the Free Lives,” the auctioneer said. “You have the funds with you, of course.”

“Hah!” Morgan said. “I notice you don’t ask these others. But you ask me. Ruth! Harriet! Take him the money.”

Two women came from the back. They staggered under the weight of heavy suitcases. They were drab worn-looking females with tight thin-lipped mouths, narrow eyes, long gray tubular dresses of a style utterly outmoded.

The auctioneer laughed in an embarrassed way. “It will take a long time to count all this.”

Morgan stood up. “Count it when you have time. There are twenty-five hundred mil-pesos there. Count it and send me my change.” He walked out.

Timothy caught the man in the main lobby. The man would have continued on if Timothy hadn’t planted himself squarely in front of him. Morgan had a heavy animal smell about him. His small eyes were red-rimmed.

“Well?” he said.

“You bought Banaldar!”

“I seem to remember doing something of the sort, young fellow.”

“This is serious to me. I—”

“Serious to you? Twenty-one hundred mil-pesos isn’t a joke, my young friend.”

“For five years I’ve been working and planning to buy Banaldar.”

“So?”

“You can’t take it this way. Look, give me some time. I’ll see that you make a profit. Let me have some time and I’ll buy it from you. I promise.”

Morgan sucked at his teeth. He laughed. “No. We want it. It is a good place for the Free Lives. We go there now. We live there from now on. Not for five thousand mil-pesos can you have it. You know our group. We do not buy or sell for profit.”

“You’re some sort of a sect, aren’t you?”

“Sect? No. We are men and women. We live the way men and women were meant to live.”

He pushed by Timothy and walked toward the door, the two women followed him meekly. “What are you going to do on Banaldar?” Timothy asked hopelessly.

Morgan turned. “Do? We live naked and eat berries and hunt with stones and clubs. What do you think men are meant to do? Live like this?” He included in an expressive gesture all of the glitter and bustle of the capital. “No. We live in caves and we fill our bellies and breed our children and sleep well at night. Good day to you. I have a lot to do. We all leave soon, seven hundred of us.”

When the auction was over Timothy sought out the representative of Transgalactic Development. The man said, “That was quite a surprise, wasn’t it? I mean that bunch of crazy-heads buying themselves a planet. They’ve been chased out of the most respectable areas. Nudity and inability to accept moral codes have made them undesirable.”

“How did they get that much money?”

The auctioneer shrugged. “I understand they’ve taken wealthy widows into the tribe with the understanding that they sign everything over to the Leader. There have been law suits but the Free Lives seem to be able to afford pretty good legal talent.”

“I want to ask about something,” Timothy said. “I’ve gone over the laws pretty carefully. If, for any reason, at the end of three years, the purchased planet has not been developed in any way and is not populated the sale can revert to the second highest bidder. Is that right?”

“Yes,” the man said dubiously. “But only if the second bid money is left on deposit with Transgalactic as a guarantee of good faith. And I frankly don’t see much point in such a move. Those Free Lives aren’t going to vacate in a hurry. We have a lot of attractive planets in various stages of preparation for sale. Wouldn’t it be better...”

Timothy Trench wrapped his big hand in the front of the auctioneer’s jacket and shook him gently. “I want Banaldar,” he said.

The man, who had started to be friendly, pushed Timothy’s hand away coldly. “Suit yourself. The auction seems overcrowded with crazy people today. Come with me and we’ll prepare the papers.”

The two thousand, infected by Timothy’s dream, had impatiently awaited word of the purchase. Many of them had burned bridges behind them. Their immediate disappointment at losing out on the legendary Banaldar was submerged in a mighty and towering anger when they found that Timothy, in a moment of amazingly poor judgment, had put the fund out of their reach for a three-year period.

They cursed themselves for fools, cursed Timothy for a charlatan. Eyes which had looked to the stars turned regretfully back to Earth and to the construction of bridges to replace the burned ones.

Timothy, after getting word to all his followers, haunted the Free Lives. He could not believe that they would actually embark for Banaldar. But at last, one cool morning, he stood on Take-off Mesa in the state of Hidalgo and watched the unwashed sleazy women, the whining brawling children, the heavy-bodied men, all carrying bundles of personal effects, file aboard the chartered converted freighter. Leader Morgan stood off to one side and watched them file aboard, scratching himself ruminatively.

Then there was the ballooning antigrav lift, the straightening by means of the gyroscopes. At the warning gun Timothy, the only spectator, turned away as did the port crews. The flash lit the countryside like a vast photobulb. When he looked again the freighter was gone. Timothy took the shuttle back to Mexico City and got thoroughly and completely drunk on a combination of mescal and pulque.

Two weeks later he awoke in a rancid hotel room in Rio, broke, dirty and with a bad case of the shakes. He presented himself at the nearest Reclaim Office, signed the agreement and was forthwith cleaned, fed and given employment. He worked mechanically and well and did not permit himself to think. To think meant Banaldar and thoughts of Banaldar hurt. It wasn’t good to think of his virgin world infested with the Free Lives.

He could picture them, hunkered around their fires in the evening, strong teeth ripping meat from small animal bones, chanting gutturally for their crude dances — a scene from the dawn of man — whereas Timothy had planned that Banaldar would be the high noon of mankind. To think of Banaldar given over to brute orgy was like thinking of a lovely mistress assaulted in the dark alleys of an evil city.

And so Timothy Trench avoided thought as much as possible.

At the end of a full year he found that he had saved a respectable sum, two cien-pesos. For a time the money meant nothing to him. He was too far sunk in gloom. And then he began to wonder how Banaldar looked at the end of a year. It was, he guessed, a form of masochism.

He wondered and slowly wonder turned to determination. Maybe Leader Morgan didn’t like Banaldar any more. Maybe he could be talked into leaving or selling. Determination strengthened into an iron resolve. Timothy began to haunt the spaceports, to read the classified advertising.

And at last he found the two-man launch he wanted. It was six years old but the hull was sound. It had logged only thirty-one months and the agency man said that it had belonged to an elderly couple who always brought it in like a feather.

Finally the agency man said, “Okay, okay. So we take a loss on it. I’ll let you have it for two and a half cien-pesos. Nobody ever made a better buy. You’ll never regret it, fella.”

Within two weeks, Timothy had got his license renewal, his space permit and his astrogation pattern. He took off for Banaldar.

As the launch bucked and shuddered and trembled its way out of hyper-flight, Timothy gagged and retched and shook his head until his vision cleared. It took a half hour to pick up his points of manual reference and plot his position. And then, with deep excitement in him, he saw the pin-head of light slowly growing larger, centered on the cross-hairs of the landing screen.

Within two hours continental land masses appeared, cloud formations like tiny white scatter rugs against them. He set the launch in orbit, braking it into concentric circles, watching the skin gauges as he hit the atmosphere. At ten thousand feet he nullified his own gravity to the equivalent of a five pound mass, peeled back the direct vision port and cruised slowly across the smiling sunlit face of the planet.

It was as he had imagined it would be. Around the tropical waist of Banaldar the vegetation was lush. Vast temperate plains were covered with grasses and he could see the waves that went across them as the winds blew. The seas were deep blue, rimmed with white surf. He found a desert and frowned, making plans as to how to correct it, then remembered with empty heart that this planet was not his.

He felt no need of sleep. He cruised on the edge of night, adjusting his speed to the planet rotation so that for many hours he was in perpetual dawn, the sun behind him.

At last he remembered that he was looking for the Free Lives. He had seen no sign of habitation but then he hadn’t been searching diligently. Remembering their penchant for nudity he limited his search to the semi-tropical regions. The dense tropics would be too alive with the insects which had been released, the more temperate regions would be too cool.

He dropped to two thousand feet for his search. Exhaustion came before success. He fell asleep at his task and the launch settled slowly, landing with a gentle jar that did not awaken him.

After many hours he awoke refreshed, ate with new hunger and continued the search. And at last he found them. It angered him to see where they had settled. Right on the spot that he had once picked as potentially the finest on the planet. His judgment had proved to be right. The wide green-tinted river emptied down into the blue sea. The grasses were high. Dotted here and there were the scars of their fires and a haphazard arrangement of several hundred brush huts.

Timothy set the launch in the middle of the crude village. The little motor chattered busily as it unwound the port. He restored full gravity and felt the launch sink a few inches into the ground.

Timothy took a deep breath and stepped out onto the planet, stepped out onto his broken dream, stepped out to feel the sun warmth on his face, to smell growing things, to taste the spiced breeze against his lips. He turned quickly toward the launch and for a few moments he wept. Then, squaring his shoulders, he turned back and walked toward the nearest hut.

“Hallo!” he called. “Hallo there!”

No answer. He frowned and walked to the hut, noting that the grasses seemed to be recapturing the paths that wound through them. The crude doorway was low and the hut was windowless but tiny spots of sunshine slipped through holes in the brush and made yellow coins on the packed dirt floor.

Grass was beginning to sprout from the floor itself. A wide bed of grasses in the corner was parched and dry.

He called again and again, going from hut to hut, his voice loud in the great silence. At last he admitted to himself that the village, for some reason, was deserted. He found eight crude graves, a hundred small piles of sun-whitened animal bones, a listless attempt at the cultivation of wild grains, a broken bow.

In four days he had covered all of the rest of the planet and a new wild hope began to fill him. The Free Lives seemed to have disappeared from the surface of Banaldar. The impossible and improbable had happened. He whistled and sang as he searched. He made little poems about the personal habits of the Free Lives, admiring himself when they scanned.

And, finding nothing, he returned to the village to look for clues as to what might have happened.

Trees have leaves. That is a normal thing and thus a thing which is not noticed. Timothy had not noticed the leaves during his first look at the village. He noticed them the second time. He looked casually at the trees and looked away, then swiveled back. The trees had leaves! Those five hundred foot monsters had leafed!

He realized at once what had happened. Throughout the long dead years before Transgalactic had arrived to give the planet life again a thin feeble germ of life had remained in those monster trees, the root system reaching far enough down to tap the limited moisture. And now, with the new atmosphere and the warmth it brought, with the rains started again, with the whole planet stirring with life, the trees had come back.

It made him feel humble to think of the remarkable tenacity those aged giants had displayed. The mere idea of computing their age dizzied him.

For a little time his thoughts of the Free Lives were forgotten. Timothy walked through the waist-high grass toward the row of trees. Of twenty-one huge trees, only three had failed to come back.

They had leafed densely, making blots of shadow so dark that the grass was failing around the trunks. The wind had torn a leaf loose. He picked it up by the edge. It was a full yard across, colored a deep satin green. The stem of the leaf was as big around as his thumb.

He stood in the tree shadows and a curious feeling of peace came over him. It made him feel as though he had come home after a long, wearying journey.

He stood and tilted his head back and his glance ran up the trunk, up to the dark and secret places under the umbrella of overlapping leaves. Up there was rest and surcease and the soft happy end of striving and wanting and trying. In the gloom he could make out the clusters of fruit, pale fruit, swaying heavily, and he heard a warm sighing that was pleasant to his ears.

He yawned so deeply that he shuddered and, without conscious thought, he walked to the trunk of the tree, found the places to put his hands and feet and began climbing methodically up the trunk, not looking back, his eyes on the heavy darknesses above him. There was a happy song in him.

Not much longer now. This is where I belong. This place has been waiting in the back of my heart. Climb a bit faster and then it will come sooner. Climb faster. It’s been waiting a long time. There’s the first limb, just overhead. Move over to the side now and climb up even with it, beyond it, up and up and up into the darkness and the beauty and the perfection...

He went higher, climbing as though with long practice, his hands finding the holds before his eyes saw them. He realized he was waiting for something.

When he saw it he seemed to recognize it. It was a long flexible green-ribbed stalk, as big around as his wrist, the blunt end of it cupped and damp. He stopped climbing and clung to the bark. He smiled at the stalk. It brushed his shoulder, nuzzled like a puppy at his neck. He saw the pale fruit.

They hung in clusters, the Free Lives. They hung white and fat and soft, the green stalks entering the backs of their necks. They swayed a little in the breeze as they hung there. Their eyes were almost closed and their faces wore a look of utter and ineffable content.

Their fat-ringed arms and legs hung limp and their pallor was of a whiteness faintly tinged with green. From their parted lips came the soft minor-key sighing that he had heard from the ground, a sighing of ecstasy. Somehow the children were the worst. And all of them were incredibly bloated.

Horror broke the spell. The thing that nuzzled at the back of his neck had begun to nibble with a million little needle-teeth. Clinging with one hand Timothy struck it away, felt the tearing pain, felt the wetness run down between his shoulder blades. In his haste he nearly fell as he clambered down. The stalk reached down and hit him a bruising blow across the shoulders.

Timothy, gasping and sweating in panic, climbed down and down. He had lost the ease with which he had climbed up. When he was well out of the reach of the stalk, the feeling of peace and well-being suddenly became intensified. It was a siren song. He clung motionless, wanting to climb back up. But he looked up at the white fruit, shut his teeth hard, continued descending.

Fifteen feet from the ground his hold slipped. He fell heavily, rolled to his feet and ran in panic away from the trees. A hundred yards away he dropped and lay panting, half-sobbing.

Back in the launch he dressed the circular wound in his neck and then stretched out on the bunk.

It would be so easy. Return to Transgalactic and claim that the planet had been vacated and demand the right to take possession. They might not give immediate approval but within a year and four months the three year period would be up and they would have to approve. Transgalactic might insist on a search of the planet but the odds were against their finding the Free Lives. Then he could warn the two thousand about the trees. “What do I owe those Free Lives?” he thought. “Dirty, primitive little bunch of misfits!”

But he thought of the children. The trees emitted some sort of hypnotic control. The specialists could find out what band the waves were on and shield themselves against it. Then the Free Lives could be cut down. Maybe the physiological changes had been so severe that to cut them down would mean killing them. Why take the chance? But he realized that he was rationalizing. The chance had to be taken. Humans deserved better than to be enlisted into the life cycle of a plant.

His mind made up, the loss of the planet a sickness within him, Timothy took off and drifted outside the atmospheric envelope that insulated space-casts. With a fifty-two-minute transmission time he made his emergency report to Central Communications on Earth’s moon. He waited and at last the answer came, promising a rescue ship within fourteen days.

When the rescue mission arrived the neuro-surgeons immediately took charge of Timothy Trench and it took them eleven days to bring him back from the brink of nearly hopeless insanity.

They found then that, during the fourteen days of waiting, the fruit had ripened, fallen, burst and its seed had taken root in the damp soil under the trees. Great care was taken to eliminate all the pale green shoots as well as the massive trees.

Transgalactic decided to make an exception to the waiting time in Timothy’s case.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The White Fruit of Banaldar