[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Since evils cancel out, avoid odd numbers of
them ... even if you have to get an odder one!
The September evening was hot and humid, and Helen Raymond, watching
her husband pace nervously about the living room, grew tenser by the
minute. Robert would walk up to an open window, sniff abstractedly,
move to the next window, and repeat the performance.
"For goodness' sakes, Robert, what _are_ you snuffling about?" she
finally demanded in exasperation. She had been on edge ever since her
cousin Dora had arrived that afternoon. Dora had lost another of a long
succession of short-lived jobs and, as usual, had descended on them
without warning for an indefinite visit. Wasn't it enough to have to
bear, that and the heat, too, without Robert's acting up?
"Smog's getting worse all the time," Robert complained.
Dora lifted her nose to sniff daintily. "It _is_ an odd smog. Now
in New York we don't--" Her voice trailed off and left the sentence
hanging as she drew in another sample of the night air.
Helen sniffed, too. "We look like a bunch of rabbits," she thought
irritably. But Dora was right. It was an odd smog, sort of sweet and
bitter at the same time. Not sulphuric like most of the smog they
were used to, or the spoiled-onions-frying-in-rancid-fat smell of oil
wells when the wind was off the land. This odor made her think of
rank tropical weeds, a jungle miasma, though she had never been near a
jungle.
* * * * *
There was something familiar about it, though, and then she remembered
that her hands had smelled like that the morning after she had weeded
the tiny garden alongside their house. The flowerbed had been cluttered
with weeds of a kind she had never seen before, horrible-looking
things. Could they be the cause of that awful smell? They had sprung
up everywhere lately, and, while she had pulled them out of their own
garden, they were growing all over, and she couldn't very well weed the
whole town, could she?
"I think--wait, I want to get something," she said, and ran outdoors.
She came back with a sample of the weed, one that she pulled from the
garden of the vacant house next door. The plant was about a foot high,
with a straight, stiff stem, of a bright metallic green, with a single
row of inch-wide rosettes of chartreuse leaves or petals down one side
of the stem. There could be no doubt about its being the cause of the
unpleasant odor, and Helen held it out at arm's length.
"What the heck is that?" Robert asked.
"Smell!" she said.
"Phew! So that's it. What is it, anyway?"
Helen shook her head. "Never saw anything like it until recently. I
pulled 'em out of our garden, but they're all over."
Helen carried the offending plant to the back door. When she came
back, Robert peered at her intently, shut his eyes and shook his head
quickly, and then stared at her again.
"Think you'll know me next time you see me?" she asked, annoyed.
"First good look I've had at you this evening. What kind of face powder
is that you're using? Don't tell me that peculiar shade is the latest
fashion?"
Puzzled, Helen put her hand to her face as if she should be able to
feel the color.
"Mom's green!" chortled eight-year-old Bobby. "You ought to see
yourself!"
"Green?" Helen asked worriedly.
"Green," Robert said. "You feel all right?"
"Anemia," Dora declared positively. "You don't eat properly. Not enough
vitamins. Now, while I'm here--"
A quick look in the mirror, and Helen told herself that she wasn't
really a _green_ green, just sort of greenish, if you looked at her in
the right light. By morning, the odd color ought to be all gone. There
was no sense in worrying. Anybody could look sort of off-color now and
then. Maybe Dora was right--she was anemic.
* * * * *
But she was stunned by the first sight of herself in the mirror the
next morning. There was no mistaking it this time. She was as green
as grass, and Dora, too, was beginning to show signs of becoming that
unbecoming color.
Reluctantly, Dora conceded that it might not be the diet, after all.
She hadn't been there long enough for it to have that much effect.
Robert and Bobby were still shockingly normal.
"What--whatever can it be?" Helen asked shakily, holding out her green
hands. The only answer was hysterical screaming that sent them all
racing to the front door.
The Raymonds lived in a typical California court, with four small
houses facing four other small houses across a central walk that ran at
right angles to the street. On this walk most of the tenants were now
gathered, and the Raymonds and Dora joined them.
Helen didn't know whether to feel relieved or more dismayed when she
saw that all the women and girls were as green as she, and just as
terrified.
Someone, of course, had called the police, and a prowl car hummed to a
stop at the curb. A harrassed, white-faced policeman leaned out of the
window.
"We're doing all we can," he called. "It's like this all over town.
Don't know yet what caused it, but we're investigating." The car sped
away.
It was soon apparent that only Mimosa Beach was affected. Why, no one
could guess. Some said it was all a publicity stunt of some kind,
advertising a movie or television show, or a chlorophyll product,
perhaps, but they couldn't explain how it worked, or why only women and
girls were affected. And how could it possibly help sell anything?
Overnight, Mimosa Beach became famous, and infested with reporters and
color photographers, all male. There would have been a mass exodus if
there had been any place to go. But other communities, fearing that
their womenfolk would "catch" the greenness, like measles, refused to
let them in. Besides, in Mimosa Beach they had the dubious comfort of
all being alike, while elsewhere they would have been freaks.
There was so little they could do to make themselves look attractive.
The cosmetics they had or that were available were all wrong. But they
did the best they could, though there was no hiding that ghastly green
complexion.
"What a shame your hair isn't red," Dora said one day to Helen. "Amy
Olson, now, her hair really goes with green skin." Cocking her head
to one side, she studied the younger woman intently. "Your hair--that
mousy brown--wonder if we couldn't touch it up just a _wee_ bit?"
Helen clenched her teeth against the coy, criticizing voice. "I'm not
the flamboyant type," she said.
Dora was as green as Helen by this time, and it certainly wasn't a bit
more becoming to her. She seemed to be enjoying the publicity, though.
Besides, it gave her a good excuse for not leaving.
If only the greenness had come before Dora--they might have been spared
_one_ calamity!
* * * * *
Four girls moved into the house next to the Raymonds, the last house in
the row.
Neither the Raymonds nor Dora noticed that they had moved in; they came
so quietly. The houses in the court were furnished and they must have
paid the rent, obtained the keys, and walked in, all settled as soon
as they closed the door behind them. It wasn't until they rang the
Raymonds' doorbell in the early evening that anyone in the household
was aware of them.
"We move next door," one of them said brightly to Helen when she
answered the door. "We come see you, get acquainted. We come in?"
"Of course," Helen said, and they trooped in. "We're the Raymonds, and
this is my cousin, Dora Hastings."
The new neighbor who had spoken first pointed to her companions, one
by one. "Patricia Pontiac," she said. "Clara Ford. Mary Maroon. Me,"
poking a thumb at her own midriff, "Jack Jones."
"Jack Jones?" Helen repeated. "That's a man's name."
"Man?" the girl asked blankly.
"Man!" Robert said impatiently. "Like me."
The four girls noticed him for the first time, and then they saw Bobby.
They stared at the two of them, their mouths slightly open, their eyes
wide with horror. They drew closer to each other, as if for protection,
and shivered.
Robert and Bobby looked at each other in bewildered embarrassment.
"My husband and son," Helen said tartly. Did these odd creatures think
all males were wolves, including eight-year-old Bobby?
"That--that color!" Mary Maroon quavered. "Not green!"
"Only dames are green," Bobby scornfully said.
"Imagine!" Dora tittered nervously. "Afraid of Robert and Bobby!"
"Won't you sit down?" Helen asked. This nonsense of being scared of her
menfolk had gone on long enough. She didn't want them to sit down. She
wanted them to go. But she could hardly ask them to do that.
Naturally, they sat down.
Bobby turned on the television for a space opera, and the four new
neighbors watched it avidly. When the spaceship landed on what was
supposed to be Venus, they giggled behind their hands and looked at
each other sidewise. Hadn't they ever seen a show like that before?
What was so unusually funny about this one?
When the commercial came on, Robert turned off the sound. Mary Maroon
looked at Bobby, and then at Helen, who was sitting with her arm around
her son.
"You--baby?" she asked.