Damon Knight - Orbit 14

“They look just alike.”

“Not to a really fine eye.”

Flambeau La Flesche took one of the offered pellets, plopped it in her mouth, chewed it and swallowed it. The Licorice Man dropped the other pellet into the tank of the Dusie and also poured the world’s last jug of Royal Licorice Youth Restorer and Clock Retarder in there.

“Thanks,” said the Dusie, setting its motor to going with the sweetest purr ever. “I needed that.”

“You gave Dusie the smart pill,” Flambeau said. “Then I ate the dung-beetle rolling.”

“I want a jug of that elixir!” Pitcher Cy Slocum swore, “or I’ll spill con-man brains and horse brains and wagon brains all over the road.” With his terrific speed he began to rifle fist-sized rocks at the contraption. They didn’t reach it. There seemed to be an airy but impermeable shield around horse and wagon and Licorice Man. They were a special case, and the rocks dropped back from them harmlessly.

“Fire on them, security men,” Candidate Johnson barked with his full golden voice. “Withholding the elixir is a warlike act against myself. Fire on them!”

Twenty-one security men raised service revolvers and fired all together in one grand volley. And twenty-one bits of long lead bounced back from the airy shield and rolled around in the roadway.

“Give me a jug or I’ll kick the three of you to pieces!” Red Licorice swore madly in horsy hate. And he began to let fly hoofs at the withholders.

“Watch it, horseface,” the Licorice Man said rather testily.

“Watch it, junior,” the paint-flaked medicine wagon said.

“Watch it, Buster,” the horse Peegosh neighed. “Two can play that kicking game, and I’ve never been bested.” Peegosh, it was now seen, had hoofs of flame, and they did not quite reach down to the roadway. Neither did the wheels of the wagon, or the feet of the Licorice Man.

Nobody ever heard such a display of shouting, bawling, snorting, neighing, and just plain bad manners as followed. It was enough to make one ashamed of being a man or horse. Slocum beat on the airy shield with now bloody fists and shouted vile obscenities. Pray that his youthful admirers never glimpse that side of the man! Johnson belched sulfur flame and gave that merchandising conglomerate very hell as he ordered volley after volley to be fired into it. And the ignoble Red Licorice was the worst of them all, cursing in man and horse talk, stomping, gnashing, making dirty noises. That horse should never have been given smart pills.

The only bright spot was the golden-haired Flambeau. “I kind of liked that rolled-up dung-beetle ball,” she laughed. “When I am next the socially prominent Mrs. Gladys Glenn Gaylord, I will obtain a quantity of them and serve them to my guests. So few of that set are country people, they won’t know what they’re getting. Now back to being the old character actress and doing the indomi-table-dame bit. Toodle, all.”

She zoomed away in the Dusie. She was a pleasant golden blob in the far distance. She had class. Who else ever had the finesse to grow old gracefully twice?

Recent irrigation projects in Rhodesia have increased the number of acres available for agriculture, and have also increased the aquatic snail population. The snails are an intermediate host for parasitic blood flukes which cause a debilitating disease, schistosomiasis. “In the early stages the patient experiences irritation of the skin which is later followed by a cough, headaches, loss of appetite, various aches and pains, and often difficulty in breathing. When the disease reaches a more advanced stage nausea is common, accompanied by dysentery, with bloody stools, in intestinal schistosomiasis; or by bloody urine (haematuria), in the urinary variety. The liver becomes enlarged, as does the spleen, and the abdomen often becomes bloated, while the body is emaciated. It is in the advanced stages that the patients often develop cancerous growths.” The disease is painful, and the treatment is more so.

Schistosomiasis is endemic in the Nile Delta, where perennial irrigation provides a favorable environment for the snails. The delta is described as “rotting with the disease”; life expectancy there is twenty-seven years for women and twenty-five for men.

The upper Nile valley has been relatively free of the disease throughout historic times because of its annual (“basin”) irrigation caused by the flooding of the river. Now, with the completion of the Aswan High Dam, the upper valley will have the benefits of perennial irrigation, and of massive infection with schistosomiasis.

Copper sulfate, widely used to keep down the snail population, also kills plants and fish, and contributes to the eutrophication of lakes. In Israel, near Tel Aviv, a small river was infested with snails which were hosts for schistosomiasis. “From the point of view of public health, it was hardly a problem because less than five cases a year occurred; people knew that it was forbidden to bathe in this river due to the danger of infection. Notwithstanding these facts, a large campaign was undertaken to eradicate Bulinus [the snail] which is a vector of Schistosoma haematobium in this river. Several applications of molluscicide were made. All aquatic life was effectively eradicated except Bulinus, because at least part of the population left the water to sit on the stems of reeds or dug into the soil along the banks only to return later after the molluscicide diminished. A year after this campaign the river contained almost nothing other than Bulinus. ”

These and the following quotations are taken from The Careless Technology, edited by M. Taghi Farvar and John P. Milton (The Natural History Press, 1972, $25). The book consists chiefly of the papers presented to the Conference on the Ecological Aspects of International Development, jointly sponsored by the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, and the Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C. Some other horror stories:

The introduction of grazing animals into the upper Rio Grande valley in the late nineteenth century upset the balance of vegetation and caused erosion followed by rapid silting of rivers and manmade reservoirs. In order to counteract the erosion, salt cedars were introduced. They grew so explosively that in twelve years they took over 24,000 acres of irrigable land and used up about 45 percent of the area’s available water. Damming of streams to irrigate more land has increased salinization so much that the river can no longer handle it. In the San Joaquin valley, salinization has reached the point where a master drain is required to carry off the saline and insecticide-laden water. It has been calculated that such a drain could be directed from San Francisco Bay into the Pacific at a cost of $100 million a year for at least fifty years.

These are not new and unique problems. “We now have good reason to believe that the decline of the ancient irrigated civilizations of Mesopotamia and Central Asia was due not to climatic change or to Atilla the Hun, but to soil depletion, waterlogging and salinity.” In more recent times, the same mistakes have been made over and over, often by those who should know better.

Why do we do it? One reason is ignorance. In a discussion Gilbert F. White 1 1 Professor of geography and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado. said, “I wonder whether anybody has any evidence of a systematic effort to canvass the total consequences of any one of these major interventions before it is undertaken. I don’t know of any really systematic venture in this direction.”

Another reason was suggested by Henry van der Schalie: 2 2 Professor of zoology and curator of mollusks in the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan. “Now, why can’t I get money in a place like Michigan to study swimmer’s itch [animal schistosomes]? The answer is very simple. We have a thing called tourism. On our license plates, you will see that Michigan is the great water wonderland. Don’t you mention swimmer’s itch. It is a naughty word.”