Pauline Ashwell - Boneheads

Something crept into his line of sight. A shadow. The Sun was preparing to go down.

Reluctantly Craile started to rise, or tried to. His legs seemed to have seized up, and the tree-trunk to have gotten lower. After a couple of tries he managed to rock forward on to his feet, whereupon the ball, bristling with roots, rose and got him under the chin. He staggered backwards and sat down again.

Wiping mud from his neck with a handy frond, Craile began to feel that nature was out to get him. A broken root had poked him in the larynx; just a bit longer and sharper and he could be dead. He swallowed painfully, and became aware of renewed bitterness in his mouth. Bits of pith must have lodged in his cheek or somewhere and the alkaloid was still dissolving in his saliva…

This time there was no sudden revelation; just a series of facts that took a couple of minutes to assemble themselves.

Alkaloids were soluble in water; some more so, some less, but all to some extent.

A number of foodstuffs were naturally toxic—cassava, for instance, especially the high-yielding strains—but were rendered safely edible by soaking in water.

To make sago, the starch had to be washed out of the pith.

Craile took a deep breath; let it out. He got out his knife again, excavated about half a pound of cycad pith and wrapped it in the leaf that had held the fern roots. Wash out the starch of this sample; Displace some for laboratory testing; if necessary wash the remainder again and retest. Or the lab could Displace a do-it-yourself test kit. That would be better. Test every batch on the spot and make sure it was safe to eat…

Damn it, if the people of remote tropical villages could learn to eat cycad starch and survive, so could those on Indication One.

He put the leaf-wrapped parcel in his pouch. Once again, but with entirely different feelings, he started on the journey home.

Editor’s Note: This story has the same background as “Wings of a Bat,” published in Analog in May 1966.