The Garden - Melissa Scott [25]
"Oh, yes, they're edible." He stooped to pick up the
dropped piece, and turned it curiously. Where the creature had bitten into it, the pale ivory flesh was already darkening, and a glint of dark red showed at the core. A seed, he guessed, and touched the tricord-er's sampling wand to the exposed fruit. The results flashed back almost instantly high in ascorbic acid and in several B-complex vitamins, as well as containing several highly rated flavor esters. "Not only that, it should taste good."
"Did you try it?" Paris asked.
Kim shook his head. "That's according to the tricorder."
"That's hardly conclusive," Paris said. "I propose we test one of them now. And I'll make the ultimate sacrifice and go first." He reached up, searching for fruit among the golden leaves.
"Hold it," Janeway said.
Paris froze. "Why not, Captain? Harry says they're edible."
"They may be," Janeway answered, "but they're also growing in somebody's garden. We're not touching anything until we've either gotten the Kirse's permission, or found out what's happened to them."
Paris withdrew his hand as though he'd been stung. Out of the corner of his eye, Kim saw Torres nodding thoughtfully, and set the half-eaten fruit carefully on the ground. It was already several shades darker than it had been, and growing less appetizing with every second.
Janeway allowed herself a rather wry smile. "And since I'm sensible of the appeal, let's get a move on. I'd like to find the Kirse myself."
Kim waded carefully through the smaller garden plots, but as he reached the road, he glanced back wistfully at the tree. The golden leaves were stirring,
though he couldn't feel a breeze, and an instant later there was a flash of green light and a thin curl of smoke rose from the ground where he had left the fruit. "Captain!"
Janeway swung around, her eyebrows rising as she saw the smoke. "And I wonder what caused that, Mr. Kim?"
Kim was already examining his tricorder. "No information, Captain. When I examined the fruit, it registered traces of phosphorus, but they were literally traces. Not nearly enough to do something like that."
Janeway nodded. "So there's some other mechanism at work here."
"A cleaning system, maybe?" Torres asked. "To get rid of trash?"
"It seems something of a drastic remedy," Janeway said, "but I can't think of a better answer. I think we should stay away from the food plants from now on- stay on the road. We don't want to run into the equivalent of, say, a deer fence."
"What's a deer?" Renehan murmured. She had been talking to Paris, but Janeway heard.
"A large herbivore, noted for raiding gardens back on the part of Earth I come from. My point is, Ensign, we don't know what plants the Kirse particularly want to protect."
"Yes, Captain," Renehan said, and Kim could see color rising under her clear skin.
"So we stick to the road," Janeway went on. "Mr. Kim, you can scan from here."
"Yes, Captain." Kim adjusted his tricorder for a long-range scan, and started toward the citadel again.
The seamless stone ribbon led through another stand of trees-these taller, the smallest rising nearly
ten meters from the ground, with silver-gray trunks and tiny, tri-lobed leaves that clung close to the stubby branches-and then into a field of waving grasses that rose to shoulder height on either side. The slim stalks were topped with bright pink plumes that tossed with the slightest breeze, and Torres smiled.
"They look like circus flags, from when I was young -or cotton candy."
Kim aimed his tricorder at them, and was almost relieved when the readout appeared. "Not these. There's sugar in them, but not a kind we can eat."
"What about the vine?" Janeway asked.
Kim looked down, startled. The ground between the edge of the road and the first stands of grass was covered with a low-growing, dove-gray vine, interspersed with narrow, trumpet-shaped flowers so dark that it was hard to tell