George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

“Ugly looking weed,” opined Ratch Norren.

“I fail to understand why it was necessary to declare an armistice and travel all this way to behold some festering hothouse monstrosity,” said the man from Skrymir.

“The Azure Triune grows impatient,” whispered their envoy.

“There’s some puling motive in this madness,” Tolly Mune said to Tuf. “Get on with it. Manna, you said. So what?”

“It will feed the S’uthlamese,” said Tuf. Dax was purring.

“For how many days?” asked the woman from Henry’s World, in a sweet voice that dripped sarcasm.

“First Councillor, if you would be so kind as to break off one of the larger paps, you will find the flesh delectably succulent and quite nutritious,” Tuf said.

Tolly Mune leaned forward, grimacing. She wrapped her fingers around the largest fruit. It felt soft and pulpy to her touch. She tugged, and it came off the vine easily. She broke it apart with her fingers. The flesh tore like fresh bread. Deep within its secret center was a sac of dark, viscous liquid that flowed with seductive slowness. A marvelous smell filled her nostrils, and she began to salivate. She hesitated for an instant, but it smelled too good. Quickly, she took a bite. She chewed, swallowed, took another bite, and another. In four bites it was all gone, and she was licking the stickiness off her fingers.

“Milkbread,” she said, “and honey. Rich, but tasty.”

“Nor will the taste pall,” Tuf announced. “The secretions in the heart of each palp are mildly narcotic. They are individual with each specimen of the manna plant, its distinct and subtle flavors a factor of the chemical composition of the soil in which the plant has taken root and the genetic heritage of the plant itself. The range of tastes is quite broad, and can be further expanded through cross-breeding.”

“Hold on,” Ratch Norren said loudly. He tugged at his cheek and frowned. “So this damned bread-and-honey fruit tastes just swell, sure, sure. So what? So the Suthies have something tasty to snack on after they make some more little Suthies. A nice treat to relieve the tedium of conquering Vandeen and breeding all over it. Pardon, folks, but Ratch don’t feel like applauding right now.”

Tolly Mune frowned. “He’s rude,” she said, “but he’s right. You’ve given us miracle plants before, Tuf. Omni-grain, remember? Neptune’s shawl. Jersee-pods. How’s manna going to be any different?”

“In several respects,” said Haviland Tuf. “Firstly, my previous efforts have been directed at making your ecology more efficient, to increasing the caloric output from the finite areas of S’uthlam given over to agriculture, to getting more from less, as it were. Unfortunately, I did not adequately account for the perversity of the human species. As you yourself have reported, the S’uthlamese food chain is still far from maximum efficiency. Though you have meatbeasts to provide protein, you persist in raising and feeding wasteful herd animals, simply because some of your wealthier carnivores prefer the taste of such flesh to a slice of a meatbeast. Similarly, you continue to grow omni-grain and nanowheat for reasons of flavor and culinary variety, where jersee-pods would yield you more calories per square meter. Succinctly put, the S’uthlamese still persist in choosing hedonism over rationality. So be it. Manna’s addictive properties and flavors are unique. Once the S’uthlamese have eaten of it, you will enounter no resistance on the grounds of taste.”

“Maybe,” Tolly Mune said doubtfully, “but still—”

“Secondmost,” Tuf continued, “manna grows swiftly. Extreme difficulties demand extreme solutions. Manna represents such a solution. It is an artificial hybrid, a genetic quilt sewn together with DNA strands from a dozen worlds, its natural ancestors including the bread-bush of Hafeer, insinuating nightweed from Noctos, Gulliverian sugarsacs, and a specially enhanced variety of kudzu, from Old Earth itself. You will find it hardy and fast-spreading, in need of scant care, and capable of transforming an ecosystem with astonishing swiftness.”

“How astonishing?” Tolly Mune demanded bluntly.

Tuf’s finger moved slightly, pressed down on a glowing key set within the arm of his floater. Dax purred.

The lights came on.

Tolly Mune blinked in the sudden glare.

They sat in the center of a huge circular room a good half-kilometer across, its domed ceiling curving a hundred meters above their heads. Behind Tuf a dozen towering plasteel ecospheres emerged from the walls, each open at the top and full of soil. There were a dozen different types of soil, representing a dozen different habitats—powdery white sand, rich black loam, thick red clay, blue crystalline gravel, gray-green swamp mud, tundra frozen hard as ice. From each ecosphere a manna plant grew.

And grew.

And grew.

And grew.

The central plants were five meters high; their questing vines had long since crawled over the tops of their habitats. The tendrils snaked halfway across the floor, to within a half-meter of Tuf, winding together, branching and rebranching. Manna vines covered the walls three-quarters of the way around the room. Manna vines clung precariously to the smooth white plasteel ceiling, half-eclipsing the light panels, so the illumination drifted down to the floor in shadow patterns of incredible intricacy. The filtered light seemed greenish. Everywhere the manna fruit bloomed, white pods the size of a man’s head drooping from the vines overhead and pushing through the tangle of growth. As they watched, one pod fell to the floor with a soft liquid plop. Now she understood why the echoes had sounded so curiously muted.

“These particular specimens,” Haviland Tuf announced in an expressionless voice, “were begun from spores some fourteen days ago, shortly before my first meeting with the estimable First Councillor. A single spore in each habitat was all that was required; I have neither watered nor fertilized in the interim. Had I done so, the plants would not be nearly so small and stunted as these poor examples you see before you.”

Tolly Mune got to her feet. She had lived for years in zero gee, so it was a strain to stand under full gravity, but there was a tightness in her chest and a bad taste deep in the back of her mouth, and she felt she had to grasp for every psychological advantage, even one as small and obvious as standing when the rest of them were seated. Tuf had taken her breath away with his manna-from-the-hat trick, she was outnumbered, and Blackjack was life-knows-where while Dax sat by Tuf’s ear, purring complacently and regarding her with large golden eyes that saw right through every puling artice. “Very impressive,” she said.

“I am pleased you think so,” Tuf said, stroking Dax.

“Exactly what are you proposing?”

“My proposition is thus: we will immediately commence seeding S’uthlam with manna. Delivery may be effected through use of the Ark ’s shuttlecraft. I have already taken the liberty of stocking the shuttle bays with explosive air-pods, each containing manna spores. Released into the atmosphere in a certain predetermined pattern that I have devised, the spores will ride upon the winds and distribute themselves about S’uthlam. Growth will commence immediately. No further effort will be required from the S’uthlamese but that they pick and eat.” His long still face turned away from Tolly Mune, toward the envoys from the allied worlds. “Sirs,” he said, “I suspect that you are presently wondering as to your own part in this.”

Ratch Norren pinched his cheek and spoke for them all. “Right,” he said. He looked around uneasily. “Comes back to what I said before. So this weed feeds all the Suthies. So what, that’s nothing to us.”