Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Three Envelopment

 

 

Appear weak when you are strong,
and strong when you are weak.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Aisle 5 was a foreign land, containing an array of products I’d never heard of, much less imagined ever having to use. I knew that my mother had menstruated, because my father would make crude jokes about it, and it was a regular topic of conversation amongst the Horticulturists, who were all of them men, of course, but I had no clue about exactly what it entailed, other than that women did it, and that it was something ‘dirty,’ or at least my father thought so.

Faced with the reality, it all seemed rather commonplace. I wound up opening packages, because the wrappers rarely showed what the contents actually looked like, and quite often featured flowers — which seemed ironic, given that my condition was evidently spread by the plants — but the interior leaflets were much more explicit, so I was quickly able to figure out the basics, even by flashlight, and decided that I needed to use tampons, since pads would never work, even pads with ‘wings.’

I quickly selected quite a few large packages, one in each size and style they had on offer, because I didn’t want to try them out in the middle of the supermarket, nor in the dark.

At the last minute, I swept up a selection of almost everything else in the aisle, just in case I’d forgotten something I might need eventually, since I was an amateur at this sort of thing, having never actually seen a woman unclothed, much less touched one, and had certainly never sat down with my mother for the talk.

When I got back upstairs, I took my stuff up to the women’s room on the floor above, since I knew they had a much nicer facility, including floor-to-ceiling mirror walls in one corner, opposite the windows on the eastern wall, which were translucent, so you couldn’t actually see through them, but they supplied abundant light during the daylight hours. For tonight, I simply arranged my stuff on the long counter opposite the stalls, where they had three sinks — inoperable, of course — but plenty of counter space and shelving the appeared to be designed to hold a supply of toiletries, which seemed a perfect place to keep things in a central location.

Before I left, I stripped off my clothes to take a close look at my body in the large mirrors.

It was a surprise; I knew that I’d been gaining weight, but hadn’t paid much attention to how I was gaining weight, which — now that I was paying attention — seemed preferentially-distributed around my hips and thighs, with minor increase on my chest. If all this had happened in a little bit more than a month, I’d have to re-think my clothing choices again, because it was obvious that I’d need one of those brassiere things, and probably clothes made to accommodate the peculiarities of women’s bodies, except for the obvious difference, of course.

Luckily, I’d already found a big flat-top building that had all sorts of clothes, so I could easily try on different sizes, but I probably couldn’t bring them here for the long run. Though cozy, my tower was way too visible and utterly indefensible, so I’d have to find a new home eventually.

My mind went first to those square burrower holes I’d seen when I’d first entered the village, since I doubted that anyone would dare to crawl down one who’d seen what the big burrowers could do. I’d have to see if my trick with the cheese could win me any friends on that front, but it seemed well worth a try, since I got on well with the smaller versions I was calling bandersnatches. Unlike the dandelions — who had seemed rather stupid — the one burrower I’d encountered was pretty darned clever, so I could easily imagine that he was Gumball grown up, but with a bad attitude undoubtedly aggravated by living in an environment in which people were perpetually trying to kill it. I could sympathize, since my own condition was an instant death sentence in any fortress controlled by the Horticulturists, so I felt no particular loyalty to them. Call me callous, but I can take a hint. Anyone who fires high explosive missiles at me isn’t destined to be my friend, and when that’s coupled with immutable laws which declare me an abomination to be instantly extirpated by any citizen who happens to see me, well, let’s just say I’m not terribly sentimental.

 

 

Very early the next day, while it was still dark and the bandersnatches were grumpy about being rousted from their usual nighttime torpor, I began my move. First I cheered up my friends with a ration of cheese each, and then I used my ropes and pulley things, together with my firehose straps, to lower my possessions to the bottom of the stairwell, then strung together all my carts to load as much as possible in one train. I left behind most of the food — other than the cheese of course, the key to bandersnatchish hearts and minds, and hopefully equally persuasive for burrowers — because food was easily replaceable. In fact, I’d spent the last month or so establishing caches of the stuff all around this half of the village, so all that really remained to do was to take down the signs that I’d provided for the benefit of those who were now my mortal enemies. I took the tools, my cache of weapons, and everything else that seemed immediately handy, then locked the door behind me, although it hadn’t been locked before.

There was a U-shaped desk in the main hall of the tower where someone had thoughtfully left a set of keys to the front doors in one of the drawers. I’d discovered this quite some time ago, but it was only a curiosity then; now it was part of my disguise. Most of the buildings I’d found had been locked, but this one had not, so I hoped to disguise my exact habits for at least a little while longer, in case the Horticulturists from the Citadel came looking for me.

Soon enough, I was running through the dark, followed by my train of carts and flanked by my leafy friends, who loved to race ahead and to the side of me, somehow able to anticipate even sudden changes in direction. Above us was a thin sliver of moon, just waxing, I think, although I wasn’t keeping careful track. Its light did little to chase the darkness, hardly more than did the stars twinkling in the clear night sky. To the east, where the most immediate dangers lurked, there was a faint looming increase of light near the horizon, yet not nearly enough to properly be dawn.

Soon, the house I’d used as my first storehouse appeared to my left, and I ran up upon the porch to snatch down my sign and ensure that it looked as uninhabited as its fellows. I took the sign with me, because — in my folly — I’d signed it with my name, at the time still proud of what I’d done for those who now planned to kill me for my pains. To be perfectly fair, though, they didn’t actually realize that this was their intention… yet. I knew better. I’d seen my father throw my screaming mother and her newborn baby from the wall, so I didn’t look for mercy there.

Then I ran off to the west, where I’d located my second storehouse, because it too was on a main road into the village, and so only slightly less likely to be discovered than the particular way I’d stumbled upon. I still didn’t know where the ‘town’ that Lieutenant Forge had described was, but imagined that there must be a road somewhere that connected it to my village.

Soon enough, I had another sign as prize, and had tidied up around the house to make it as nondescript as the first. The rest would have to wait, because it was getting on toward true dawn, and I wanted to visit my flat-topped building full of household items and clothes before it became light enough for anyone to notice us as we raced through the darkness. I had a plan.

 

 

In the back of the building, there was a large machine evidently used for the storage of trash, and it was there that I stored the top and bottom halves of my protective suit, retaining only the helmet, and that only for its radio, since it might be useful to be able to listen in upon the communications of my enemies. At the rate my body was changing, the suit itself seemed unlikely to be of any further use in the very near future, although I didn’t discount the possibility of highjacking a larger protective suit sometime, one with more room for my growing chest and butt, but this didn’t seem at all likely, since the Horticulturist Command didn’t allow women outside the walls, unless they’d thrown them over. Say what you will, though, the suits were a sovereign protection against any but the most concerted flamethrower attacks, although not much help at all against well-aimed HE missiles, as the late and very much unlamented Six and his crew from the Citadel had discovered to his cost.

That task accomplished, I returned to the interior of the store, where I studied the displays very carefully. They had plastic imitation people dressed up in some of the clothes, evidently so people could see roughly what they’d look like wearing them. I wanted to look as little like a Horticulturist as possible, in case any word of the faux ‘Lieutenant Forge’ had gotten back to the Citadel. Luckily, my new ‘developments’ had made this almost a foregone conclusion, so I decided to dress as much like the imitation women in the displays as possible, reasoning that this would certainly confuse any pursuers, since it sure confused me.

In the castle, men and women had rigidly separate rôles and manners of dress, and it was a matter of pride among the Horticulturists especially to ignore their comings and goings, since they were regarded either as mere servants to the military class, and so beneath notice, or as the exclusive property of one particular man, in which case it was dangerous to pay attention to her, because her husband might call you out or — if that man was an officer — simply order you to take your ‘turn’ at foraging.

Unfortunately, female clothing had changed since these particular clothes were made, so most of it was much more brightly colored and more delicate than was usually the case in the keep, and the skirts and dresses tended to be much shorter. On the other hand, they were much more practical as well, since I had no idea how wide my hips and thighs would wind up, and full skirts draped over almost anything. I wasn’t fully developed up top either, but evidently this was a problem I shared with many real women, since there were several sections devoted to ‘padded’ bras and to ‘bust enhancers,’ obviously designed to eke out less than stellar ‘assets’ with artifice.

It didn’t take too long to outfit myself with several outfits that would be at least marginally acceptable in the keeps and simultaneously disguised my shortcomings, but then I found the jewelry displays and instantly changed my plans.

One of the indications of status among the women was the amount and value of the jewelry they wore, and there were buckets of the stuff in the cabinets in one section of the store. I decided to pose as an officer’s wife — let’s say a Major — from somewhere out west. I could be vague about this, since no one expected women to be clever. In the castle, at least, they weren’t even allowed to go to school. The only problem was that almost all the nicest earrings were designed to hang in holes pierced in one’s earlobes.

Well, least said, soonest done, as my mother used to say. After searching behind the counter, I found a drawer astutely labeled ‘Piercing Supplies’ and promptly pierced my own ears, judging the placement by carefully studying my magnified reflection in a special mirror they had right on the counter. I wound up with three holes in a row down the length of each earlobe, which was the current fashion amongst the officer’s wives, since it allowed them to wear more jewelry without being ostentatious. It hurt just a bit, but I was a soldier, and fairly tough, despite my size, and as bloody-minded as the roughest soldier. Show me something to defy — even pain — and I’d thumb my nose at it and laugh for scorn.

The ‘operation’ done, with what they called a ‘piercing gun,’ and with ‘starter posts’ encumbering my ears, I simply cleaned out the entirety of the fine jewelry counter, from silver, to gold, to pearls and precious stones. My haul quite filled up a rather capacious purse, and joined the matching leather luggage on the first of my carts, which also held the HE missiles as well as my clothes and furs. Did I mention the fur department? Never mind. The incongruity of my dainty underthings, elegant clothing, and ready supply of high-tech weaponry amused me, none-the-less. It was getting on toward winter, and I sure as Harry’s Hell wasn’t planning to freeze my new ass off. I liked that mirror so much that — after only a second’s hesitation, because it was both large and delicate, I added it to my growing pile of ‘beauty products’ as well.

On the way out, I passed the cosmetics and perfume counters and cursed, “Holy Harry!” I’d completely forgotten, of course, being an amateur at all this, but one of the many clues that distinguished the wives of officers from the ordinary women of the keep was their habitual use of cosmetics and scents.

Sighing, I went behind the counter and started first on perfume, since that seemed easiest, finding several that smelled nice, I thought, and were also very expensive, so I added another purse filled with exotic bottles in fancy cardboard boxes to my load, then walked over to the cosmetics counter with something approaching trepidation. Clothes were one thing, everybody needs clothes, and these clothes were designed for bodies shaped like mine, but this was one more baby step beyond my former comfort zone.

Harry was smiling down from Heaven on me, obviously, because there laying right on the counter were a number of dusty pamphlets entitled, ‘Your Color Signature,’ which I promptly fell to reading.

I was a ‘Light Spring,’ I decided, or maybe a Cool Summer, since I had light blue eyes and a very fair complexion, so I simply dumped a lot of stuff in the recommended colors into another very expensive handbag, together with the pamphlet, a vast number of recommended brushes and special tools for enhancing one’s eyes, nails, and what-have-you, as well as a much more extensive hardbound book on beauty I found behind the counter. I’d never actually seen a book that wasn’t one volume or another of Harrison’s Holy Scriptures, so it was almost shocking to see an entire book devoted to just one aspect of women’s fashions. On a hunch, I ran back to the luggage department and found that there were, in fact, special cosmetics and jewelry cases, which I promptly added to my matching set of leather luggage. I decided then and there that my imaginary husband was a General, at least, since I knew that there wasn’t a single woman in the castle who had anything even remotely like my trousseau. The very idea of using leather to make luggage instead of soup was so incredibly extravagant that it would take a General Officer to pull it off, and I knew from talking with my Dad that the various keeps were extremely isolated from each other, so the names and ranks of officers more than a hundred miles away were matters of almost pure conjecture, or were based upon rumors passed down through so many widely varying accounts and channels that almost anything would be believed with sufficient evidence to back it up, and great wealth was the surest indication of very high status. My greatest danger, I thought, should I be ‘rescued’ from my bereft abandonment, would be from a conspiracy of my fellow wives to murder me for my jewelry and ‘modern’ fashions, so I wanted to make very sure that they were overawed from the start. With that thought in mind, I went back to the perfume and cosmetics counters and simply swept everything they had into a large selection of handbags and cases, and piled the lot into another of my carts with a view toward presenting them as gifts to those among the wives who treated me well. I had piles of jewelry, so I could easily afford to give some of it away as well. Popularity is always nice, and it’s nice to be nice.

Of course, I had no immediate intention of being ‘rescued’ at all, but it was my ultimate fall-back plan if it looked like I might be captured instead. For high-ranking women in the castle, there was no better defense than being offensive towards one’s social inferiors, and I’d noticed that particular groups of them had formed their own centers of power, even within a social system that officially denied that women could have any legitimate power at all.

 

 

It took me seven tries before I managed a decent manicure, and my nails were still a bit on the short side, but they were growing apace, somehow relating to the growth of my hair, which was ridiculously rapid. It was already down to my shoulders, and I bitterly regretted not stocking up on fancy shampoo and conditioner, because long hair, I’d discovered, was a major pain-in-the-ass, so I’d taken to wearing a shawl, just to have something to protect my hair against the wind and sun, lest it become hopelessly snarled and tangled. There was shampoo on offer in the fancy hotel in which I was living now, in tiny bottles, but it was cheap stuff, not up to the job at all.

My fantasy of giant ‘burrower tunnels’ had proven to be a major disappointment as well, because they were clearly made by humans, and had pairs of strange metal stairs on either side of yet another set of stairs leading down to two huge tunnels at the bottom of them. The only real difference between the stairs was that the center set had landings, and were made of that curiously smooth stone, except for what looked like brass edges on the outer portion of the tread. The outer sets were entirely made of metal, and were narrower, but had no landings at all. I theorized that they were provided for servants, so that they didn’t impinge upon the stately progress of their betters, but what it was that people did down there was a complete mystery, because there was nothing there worth seeing, and nowhere in particular to do anything.

I was seriously considering another foray back to my clothing store, where I’d actually seen the exact sort of conditioner and shampoo I really needed, and there were other things that I was reading about in my book that seemed like they’d be awfully nice to have as well. I’d never realized, for example, the critical rôle that exfoliation played in any serious beauty regimen, and that proper ‘moisturizing’ each and every night before going to sleep was absolutely necessary. The heart-healthy and skin-healthy habit of eating plenty of fresh vegetables, though, was sadly beyond my reach. I’d never even seen a fresh vegetable — unless you counted the wheatgrass in the fields, which one really couldn’t, because wheat was a ‘carbohydrate,’ decidedly inferior —and canned goods were somewhat deleterious to skin tone and optimal health and beauty, according to my beauty book. Drat!

 

 

I still kept up a regular schedule of patrols in the early morning, toward the east, before foragers would be likely to have crossed the distance from the citadel, trying to discover whether any more foragers had made it into this portion of our village, and had managed to retrieve all my signs in the south and west as well, over the course of one long week, as well as making certain that any remaining evidence of my activities was hidden, or at least obscured. I took the time to bury Six and his companions as well, although I couldn’t be certain that no one had escaped, but I doubted that anyone had survived, since their supply of missiles was simply lying in the road, so I thriftily took them. Better, I thought, to have them simply disappear without a trace than to show up bearing signs of combat, which would raise questions, of course, at some level I might not like to have notice me yet. It was very good practice in coping with skirts as well, although I wore a style just below the knee for burial duty, and my normal attire these days was what they called a ‘maxi,’ the closest they had in the way of what women in the castle wore on a day-to-day basis. I wasn’t bothered, since my skirts and dresses were clearly superior to anything I’d seen back there, and I’d been practicing my arched eyebrow look of sympathetic condescension to handle any adverse comment. I had the book to back me up, after all.

I was fairly convinced, on the other hand, that I’d missed the town Lieutenant Forge had told us of entirely, because I saw no signs at all of foraging in the neighborhoods toward the west.

C’est la vie, as my mother told me once upon a time. You pays your money and you takes your chance. I don’t know where she came up with all that stuff.

 

 

There came a day, of course, when I heard the faint sound of HE missiles exploding off to the east, first two in quick succession, and then another two, so I knew that another foraging party was coming to try their luck, just now breaking through their kill ring of hostile plants. No wonder they were hostile, considering the collective bad attitude of the denizens of these armed enclaves of human purity in a world that was much more flexible.

Well, we’d see what hospitality we could show them, here in the big village.

I’d been preparing for this day for a long time, and had laid my plans with care. I’d been carefully cultivating the plants, taking cuttings from the dandelions, and feeding my seven bandersnatches with enough food to let them reach their full potential. I had plenty of food to spare, so they were feeling pretty frisky as we walked out on the beaten path that previous scavenging expeditions had made, following the traces of previous foragers, as was usual amongst the inmates of the two keeps I’d seen, and I had no reason to think that any of them would be even slightly more creative, since their perpetual warlike hostility towards what they perceived as an encroaching enemy discouraged any but the most instinctive conservatism.

I called to my bandersnatches as we neared my small plot of dandelions. “Gumball! Guys! Go hide!” and they cheerfully trotted off, finding exactly the right position of concealment on their own before wriggling their way beneath the surface of the ground, each of them near a dandelion, with its associated entourage of reapers. Careful observation had taught me that the reapers, which the Horticulturists foolishly called ‘pseudosharks,’ were specialized to harvest the grass nearby for grain, which the dandelion used to nurture its own developing seeds. It was a tradeoff, as usual among the plants. The dandelion provided protection and nutrients for the grass by means of its deep taproot, and the grass sacrificed some of its seeds to help the dandelions propagate themselves, thus extending both their ranges, and guaranteeing long life for future generations. The bandersnatches, of course were the plant equivalents of gophers, which useful animals the Horticulturists had exterminated as ‘nuisances’ almost fifty years ago. The decisive Horticulturist ‘victory’ over the gophers was still being taught to the troops as an example of what progress might be made in their war against the weeds. They’d failed to note, of course, that gophers were excellent ærators of the soil, which plants needed, and also served to bring up valuable minerals and manure to the surface, where it was available for germinating seeds.

At some point in their history, the Horticulturists had obviously forgotten the very meaning of their name, which succinctly described their original rôle as caretakers and nurturers of plants, because plants were necessary for human survival and, in very fact, some plants were — or at least they used to be — entirely dependent on humans for their growth and propagation. Lately, of course, the plants had been adapting to both the loss of support and the active hostility of homo sap. Back in the olden days in the USA, there was an early horticulturist who said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately,” which I think presents the point rather well. We’re all of us social creatures, like almost every living thing, with sometimes hidden links and relationships that connect us to the entirety of life and everything living. We actually couldn’t even live without a healthy microbiome of bacteria, archaea, and fungi living inside and on our bodies, and in fact the cells of our bodies are outnumbered by bacterial cells by ten to one, although they make up a fairly small percentage of our weight, because their cells tend to be tiny in comparison to our own. In some ways, we were simply handy hosts for other creatures, to whom we offered valuable services, like walking around and gathering food, in return for which they helped us to digest them, as well as protecting us against other forms of microscopic life. Of particular interest to me were the various species of lactobacillus that helped to keep my new vagina healthy by producing hydrogen peroxide, a type of natural antiseptic that’s also very handy — in concentrated form — for removing bloodstains from clothing. Wheels within wheels, an unbounded and gossamer web of necessary relationships that permeated the real world, as opposed to the fantasy kingdom of the Horticulturists in which mankind — with an emphasis on man — ruled supreme and solitary as the one and only ‘crown of creation.’

How do I know this? You might well ask, but it was actually easy; I found a ‘library.’

You’d be surprised what you can find out in a decent library, and I’d found a great library. It filled a building almost as big as the entire castle, six floors of books, books, books, and more books in a basement level that must have been for storage, since the aisles were narrow and appeared little used. Of course, I figured out a lot of this stuff on my own as well, extrapolating from what I already knew when combined with new knowledge I’d gleaned from the library, and I’d just barely scratched the surface of the scope of what people used to know, but our current situation isn’t nearly as unique as you might think.

But back to business. My first task was to retake this part of the ‘city’ — that’s another thing I’d learned in the library; this is a city, not a village — for the ‘good guys,’ namely me and my new pals. I couldn’t allow a bunch of hooligans wearing ‘uniforms’ to terrorize our neighbors and the neighborhoods, no matter how free they’d been to do so in the past.

 

 

They were coming. I could hear them on the helmet radio, cursing at the disgusting notion of actually walking through green grass that brushed their legs as they passed. One of them kept up an undercurrent of muttered curses as he approached, “This really gives me the creeps!” he said, then “Watch it! Was that a burr?” only to finally be commanded by their officer to keep silent and alert as they approached their target.

It seemed to be a typical crew, so I assumed that they hadn’t been sent especially to seek me out. From my own limited experience — foragers didn’t tend to survive multiple missions, which was probably why the ‘volunteers’ were most often social misfits or soldiers caught in one infraction of the rules or another, so it was comforting to realize that these were ordinary sad sacks and goofballs — When they reached the outer edge of the tall wheatgrass, they fanned out in the approved skirmishing formation, too widely-spaced to be taken two or three at a time by a well-timed assault, yet close enough to support each other with flamethrowers if one of them became trapped in any one of a number of clever snares the plants had come up with lately.

As expected, they became wary when they saw my plot of dandelions, but greedy as well.

“Wow!” one said, “There’s a whole bunch of napalm, just waiting for us to take it.”

“Right!” said number One, obviously in charge and pointing as he spoke. “Six and Seven, deploy your net over here. Eight, you’re up for playing ‘bait.’ Nine and Ten, you do the same for that one, with Twelve as your decoy. Move!”

From my place of concealment inside a partially-ruined house, I could see the whole deployment, and I had to admire the efficiency with which they worked. My own former comrades had been much less organized. Despite that, I couldn’t help but sympathize with the guys who’d been assigned as ‘bait,’ since I knew well that the slightest misstep could result in death, once the dandelions had become aware of their hostile intentions.

The so-called ‘napalm’ the reapers used was actually concentrated hydrocarbons distilled by the dandelions to furnish the necessary ‘fuel’ for their activities, since mere hydraulics couldn’t manage the level of speed and dexterity that the reapers required. It was a different system than the muscular contractions usual in humans and other animals, but it was extremely effective, as anyone could see, since the reapers were easily capable of very rapid movement within the scope of their tethers — which one might think of as external arteries and veins — that connected them to their main bodies, the dandelions themselves, which performed the photosynthesis and sexual reproduction that held the whole system together. But the Horticulturist procedure in these situations was to take all the reapers, or ‘pseudosharks,’ as they called them, which of course led to the eventual death of the plant, since without the reapers to bring in seed, the dandelion couldn’t ferment and distill more hydrocarbons to replace them and so eventually starved.

Ever since human beings had essentially abandoned the world, shutting themselves away in the equivalent of military monasteries which functioned as cancers on the Earth and parasites on the past, the plants had been expanding their reach to take over rôles formerly performed by humans, specifically cultivation and pest control, and humans had been pests — at least as far as the vast majority of life on Earth was concerned — for a good number of years by now, especially to the plants, preferring to loot abandoned food cultivated and preserved by humans who’d still worked for a living.

‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,’ as one of those books had said, obviously recognizing that the green plants, which transformed energy from the Sun into the very stuff of life, were the true foundation of creation, to whom we all of us owe our very lives.

Speaking of which, the two teams of Horticulturists, six young men in all, were in position, and it was about time these boys gave something back. ‘Now, Gumball!’ I thought.

With a pleasing level of coördination, gaping pits opened up beneath both teams and they were gone in a heartbeat, then the pits almost instantly closed up again, filled in from below to forestall any possible counterattack on my bandersnatches, although they were big boys now, and probably well able to take care of themselves, since I’d been telling them bedtime stories about Horticulturist tactics.

With commendable courage, One, and the two men remaining from his former command, retreated only slightly, then made a break for it, avoiding the dandelions completely and making an end run around the ruined houses, gaining the relative safety of the street, where I’d left one of my lovely carts piled high with food, and a few mementos from the last gang to penetrate the city.

I could almost hear the wheels grinding in One’s mind, as he calculated the risks of going forward with a greatly-reduced scavenging force — with the clear evidence of danger right before his eyes —versus their chances of getting back through the plant wall besieging The Citadel with a large cache of food. Luckily for his men, he chose the prudent course, took my cart, and turned tail and ran off with his figurative tail between his legs. But he took my poisoned apple as well, because the great majority of the food I’d left for him — or whomever had shown up in his stead — were very many bottles of that very flavorful ‘cheese.’

Not to worry, though, I had plenty, having discovered through the magic of the local business directory — a reference copy of which useful tool was in my library — a milk bottling plant, where there was a lifetime supply.

 

 

I whistled up Gumball and his pals, who were still hiding beneath the earth, “Gumball! You guys! Up and at’em! Let’s get moving!”

With a roiling of the splodgy dirt, the Bandersnatches rose up from deep underground, carrying the inert bodies of the six Horticulturists, hopefully unconscious merely, but one took one’s chances, burying people alive, even people in protective suits.

Quickly, I moved amongst them stripping off their helmets and suits as quickly as I could, which was pretty darned quick, and throwing them into a handy pile. Two were only winded and weak, three more were unconscious, but looked healthy enough, whilst one was cyanotic, so I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as quickly as I could manage, then checked his pulse at his carotid artery. No joy. I gave him a couple of good thwacks with my fist, and started chest compressions instead, but took the time to force a little chewed up cheese between his lips to boot. It couldn’t hurt, and it would do him a world of good if he managed to get it down.

After a few minutes, the cyanosis began to clear up, and then he took a shuddering breath. ‘Oh, good,’ I thought. ‘I’d hate to lose one after going to all this trouble to complete my set.’

All solicitude, I brought a cooling drink from the other wagon I’d brought with me, commiserating with them about their difficulties with the bandersnatches. “I’m so sorry that you were frightened, but my pets tend to be rambunctious around strangers, and they have a proprietary interest in my dandelion garden, so of course when you tried to steal a reaper, they were annoyed.” I went on in that general vein.

“Reaper?” one of the more clever finally asked, bewildered.

“I believe that you may know them as ‘pseudosharks,’ but I assure you that they’re ‘reapers,’ and I should know, bcause they’re mine. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s not nice to steal from other people? especially when they’re looking?”

“But… But you can’t own one of those vicious monsters!”

I take it back. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer after all.

I curled my lip in exquisite contempt — I knew that it was both intimidating and enticing, because I’d practiced in my mirror — and said, “I can and do. If you persist in being dense, perhaps another visit to the root zone might convince you. Of course, since I’ve confiscated your little suits, you might wind up somewhat the worse for wear, but it’s entirely up to you.”

“But you can’t do that!” one of them yelled. “They’re our property!”

“I see you have a twisted sense of who owns what, my dear. They belonged to the Horticultural Corps, and you had them on loan, as it were. You may have thought that they belonged to you before you invaded my city and disturbed its perfectly innocent flora, but they’ve been confiscated to partially offset the fine.”

“Fine!? What fine!?” another expostulated, likewise somewhat dim.

I sighed, to let him know that he was being obtuse, and that it annoyed me. “The fine levied against criminals, of course, and wanton vandals, or do you deny that the burned out houses and plants in this area are the work either of you, or of your former comrades? Would you prefer that I simply kill you? As I said, I could arrange that very easily, and it would be wondrously beneficial for my garden.”

“I’d like to see you try! There are six of us, and only one of you!” said one beligerently. He made as if to attack me.

This was going a bit too far, though, so I leapt to meet him and threw him to the ground with a bit more force than strictly necessary, although I was only using one hand. “Listen to me, crêtin,” I said with considerable menace. “This is my city, and I make the rules. If you don’t like it, you can waltz yourself right back to your so-called ‘Citadel,’ where you’ll either promptly die in the attempt to reach it, or will manage to get in long enough for them to throw you back over the wall because you’ve been infected by intimate contact with the plants. You’ll notice that they didn’t bother trying to dig you up; I did, and if this was a mistake, I can easily rectify it.” I gestured in the general direction of my bandersnatches, “Look around you. All six of you together couldn’t even muss my hair if you’d like to fight me, although I’d be very angry if you made me chip a nail. How far do you think you’d get arm-wrestling with an angry bandersnatch?” Here I turned to address Gumball directly, “Sweetie, would you mind terribly showing these men your teeth?”

Gumball promptly rose up to his full height, almost forty feet by now, and smiled. Well, I knew that he was smiling, but I doubt my prisoners found it at all comforting, since the difference between a bandersnatch’s happy face and his angry face is rather subtle.

“That’s my good boy,” I cooed as I moved to stroke his vines the way I knew he liked me to. Gumball was still my very most favorite, and well he knew it. “I’ll let you know, however, if any of them turn out to be surplus to requirements.” I said this for their benefit, of course, not Gumball’s, since our rapport was far more visceral and instinctive than mere words.

“Well, ladies?” I said. “What’s it going to be? The easy way, or the hard way?”

“But what about our… the suits? We can’t walk around without some form of protection.”

“Of course you can’t, my dears. You’ll find that my lovely bandersnatches and I are the very best protection imaginable, whereas those filthy suits of yours are an open invitation to revenge in the form of a murderous assault. Believe me, you’re far safer walking around in your underwear with me than you would be in those silly suits. There’s a marvelous clothing store not far from here where we can get you outfitted in more practical clothing, since it’s a little chilly. We’ll get just the basics for now, I think, and we can always go back when we see how you’re shaping up.”

“What do you mean by ‘shaping up’ exactly?” the belligerent one said, a little more diffident now,

“Didn’t you listen? You’ve been ‘infected’ by the natural world, which has always been contagious, but that process has been accelerated of late, prompted — as I understand it — by a general acceleration of both plant and human evolution by strong ‘selection pressures,’ a concept you’re going to have to take on faith for now, until I introduce you to the library, but I’m sure that you’re all familiar with the nearly instant executions of infected individuals as soon as the symptoms of infection are discovered.”

There was a general shuffling of feet, as well as stricken expressions on the faces of the few who hadn’t figured it out by now. “Does that mean that…?”

“It does.” I cut him off. “Within the hour, you’ll begin to feel ‘out of sorts,’ and within a day you’ll be visibly ‘sorted,’ although the full transformation takes several months. About a month from now, you’ll experience your first menstruation, unless you manage to get yourself knocked up by then.” I let that sink in for a bit, then added, “I wouldn’t actually advise that, since your internal organs will still be developing, so it doesn’t seem like it would be entirely safe, although no pregnancy is without hazard. I’d recommend waiting for at least six months for everything to settle down to regularity, but then I’m naturally cautious.”

“But how could that happen?” one asked, another of the stupid ones.

“You could,” I said as patiently as I could manage, “have an ‘accident,’ as they say — either through careless masturbation or through nocturnal emission in your dreams — or any one of your future ‘sisters’ could do the job properly in a trice, so I recommend that you avoid sleeping flat on your back, if possible, stay out of other peopole's beds, and wash your hands quite often — which is always a good idea in any case — and you should try to resist the urge to ‘fool around.’ Both males and females have been designed by millions of years of evolution to enjoy sexual activities, to seek them out — especially during periods of maximum fertility — and to be easily persuaded to completely ignore the higher wisdom offered by their brains once their basic instincts are involved. You’ll have the best and the worst of both worlds, maximum libido, maximum pleasure, and maximum vulnerability to very long-term consequences.”

“Pardon me, Ma’am, but how do you know all this?” That was the clever one again. I was starting to like him.

“Because I’ve gone through the same infection,” I said, “and know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“But Ma’am,” he said, “you’re beautiful!”

“Thank you, soldier, but I’m fairly sure that you’ll turn out looking very pretty as well. I think it’s designed into the genetic package we’ve been given. Survival of the fittest, you know, and we’ve been designed to be very ‘fit’ indeed.”

“But…! You were a man!? I don’t believe it!”

I laughed. “Actually, I still am, in at least one minor detail, so take a good look, boys, because you’re looking at your future.”

“So what are we supposed to do then?”

I smiled impishly, another thing I’d practiced in my fancy mirror. “It’s simple, really. We’re going to conquer the world.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved