The Pollinators of Eden Read Online Free PDF

plant dye,” Hal said sadly as he picked up the seeds, “after less than a day on earth. I always said this was a tough world.”
    Freda removed the roll of prints from the camera and took them to her desk. The last pictures, taken before the plant collapsed, showed a network veinal system outlined by the fluoro screen. The lines were not osmotic channels, because they had resisted the stain. The system rose upward from the base, spread outward along the branches, and joined in a cloudy nexus beneath the air chamber, diverged again, and rose upward.
    “I counted thirty seeds,” Hal said, placing them in a humidor on her desk.
    “There should be thirty-two. But I’ll find the missing pair in the morning. Put the corpse in the freezer; I’ll take it over to the lab tomorrow.”
    Behind her, Hal lifted the pot and bore it toward the refrigerator, moving with stateliness, softly chanting a Te Deum.
    “Quit the clowning,” she said. “You make me feel like a murderess.”
    Hal slammed the refrigerator door and turned back to her. “What’s your theory, Doctor? Plant stain shouldn’t kill a flower.”
    “I have no theory, but the likely place to look is in the tulip’s cellular structure. It has a network, here, that resembles veins.”
    He looked down. “Or a nervous system with a ganglion… Let’s go, Doctor. We might lose our reservation.”
    As they turned to go, Freda looked at the male tulip for a long moment before she switched off the light. “If there’s any way this flower can be adapted to earth, I’m going to find it. The Caron tulip will be the heritage I leave for future Theastons.”
    “Sometimes, Doctor Caron, you sound as much like a woman in love as a plant scientist.”
    When they passed through the gateway onto the parking lot, Hal said, “Now, Freda, you’re technically off base.”
    “I’ll concede the parking lot—But look at all the cars. After four months away, you’d think the bachelors of Section Able would be on the town.”
    “After a man has said good-bye forever to a woman he has loved, it takes him at least a week to get back into the mood for chasing flippers.”
    “What’s a flipper?”
    “It’s a twentieth-century term for girls who flirt. Derives from the word ‘flippertogibbet,’ meaning fool around with a flipper and she’ll have you hanging from the gibbet of marriage.”
    “Don’t you find it a waste of time, digging up all these oddities?”
    “Now you’re being Doctor Caron… Freda would only be pleased that she’s being taken out despite her escort’s memories of Flora.”
    “Thanks for the compliment, then, Hal,” she said as he held the car door open for her.
    After he seated her, he went around and got into the driver’s seat, arching back to reach into his pocket for the car keys. He should have taken the keys from his pocket before he got into the car, she thought, but she held her tongue. Tonight she was plain Freda.
    “Ordinarily,” he apologized, “when I get into a small car with a beautiful woman, I have the instincts of an octopus, but out of respect to the memory of my late friend and mentor and your fiancé, Paul Theaston, I intend to conduct myself with propriety. It’s my way of putting in my chit for the job of sideboy since Paul has defected to Flora.”
    “You aren’t really serious?”
    “He could be seduced. He’s a specialist, and they’re like monks, carrying a cross of innocence to the Calvary of womanhood. Flora’s a female planet. You heard Doctor Hector babbling. What’s a lady of sweet silences to an inexperienced man would be a dumb broad to me… I can speak freely around you, Freda. Your intelligence is attested by computers.”
    “Thanks, boy.”
    “Knowing females, I landed on Flora like a karate expert walks onto a mat. But, seriously, I think Paul’s safe. He has no weaknesses, and he has you.”
    “Thanks, boy.”
    His voice sank to a low, husky whisper as his arm snaked across the seat behind