And, remembering that, I began to figure out how they grew here.
* * * * *
This place was a little valley. No, a crater. Several feet deeper than
my height, with sloping sides. The birds apparently kept it warm with
their body heat, plus the heat the rocky sides would store. Since it
was a crater, the winds wouldn't reach it. The crater made a basin to
catch the snow which I could see beginning to melt at the edges and
ooze down the slope.
The birds provided more than ample fertilizer and Uncle Izzy had
apparently trained at least one of them to cultivate the soil under the
trees.
I climbed out of the crater to see that I was indeed in the regions
of snow. To the north were huge drifts, and far off loomed towering
glaciers.
To the south, the hills tapered off from white to spotted brown.
That was the reason for Uncle Izzy's crazy setup. Rene and I would
never have come across this crater in an ordinary search. Of course,
the setup needn't have been _quite_ so crazy. That was the personal
equation of which Uncle Izzy was so fond.
The trees would, I assumed, poke their heads up over the crater as they
grew, reaching toward the cold, and finally getting the frostbite to
fill their pods properly.
At two thousand dollars an ounce.
I had neglected to ask Rene how many pods a tree could be expected to
produce or how big the pods were. But, say, half an ounce in each pod
and a conservative fifty pods on each tree.
A hundred thousand dollars.
I slid back into the crater, sat leaning against a somnolent dodo and
ate a lunch package with a cupful of melted snow.
All sorts of thoughts were jostling my brain.
But I was bone-weary. I hadn't slept since we hit Alvarla and the ride
last night had been a tremendous strain, because I wasn't in the habit
of getting any exercise at all.
Therefore, I fell asleep in mid-thought.
It was the noon sun that woke me. I wasn't just warm. I was _hot_.
And I was very reluctant to let go of my dream; I kept grabbing at the
tag ends of it with both hands. It was the most exciting dream I'd had
since the one about succeeding Mr. Picks. Only _very_ different.
I'd made a fortune cultivating perfume trees. My dream was full of
perfume. Some of it came from the exotic plants of my African estate.
Some of it was from a long-legged, pink-haired girl, the kind African
millionaires have.
It was the sort of dream, I mused, unable to keep it in mood any
longer, as large-minded men have. Men like--Uncle Isadore!
I sat up suddenly. Uncle Isadore--large-minded? Why hadn't he had the
avuncular decency to leave me his fortune the usual way?
Why?
* * * * *
Because then he wouldn't be able to play penny-ante psychology and get
me dreaming about wild schemes with perfume trees and African estates.
That's why.
Or maybe there wasn't any fortune! Suddenly I understood why people
smoke. It gives them something to do when they feel helpless.
If there wasn't any fortune, then I was hopelessly tied to the perfume
trees. If Uncle Izzy had lost his last cent, it would be very like him
to borrow enough from friends to finance a perfume tree scheme. And if
he didn't make it to the planet he had in mind--why, he'd make the
planet he'd crashed on do.
Anyone else would have shot the birds for fresh meat. Anyone else would
have seen immediately that Alvarla was the last planet in the Galaxy
where perfume trees would grow.
Anyone else would have seen immediately that I was one of the minor,
comfortable people in the world who likes the happy regularities of a
little job and an assured, if limited, future. Anyone else would have
seen I had the sort of personality that could not be changed.
But Uncle Izzy wasn't anyone else.
_Why_ did I keep smelling the perfume from my dream?
I followed my nose out of the crater and found the snow melting around
a water tank about four feet long and two feet in diameter--part of the
ruined fuel system from Uncle Izzy's ship.
I dislodged it from the ice beneath and shook it. The perfume was so
strong, as it unfroze, that it made me dizzy. And all that smell was
coming from a pinhole.
There seemed to be half a gallon in it. Enough to pay off Mother's
bonds and whatever I owed Rene, with a handsome sum left over for me.
I could go home and forget about perfume trees and Alvarla and Uncle
Isadore.
But that dream of the African estate kept irritating the back of my
mind. And the large, free sky of Alvarla was soothing to the eye, when
compared to the little squares of blue I noted occasionally when riding
the slidewalks of Brooklyn.
What _did_ I want out of life, anyway? _Damn_ Uncle Isadore. I'd never
test 10:9 on job adjustment again.
I was still thinking when evening swept in fast, as it does in dry
climates, and the birds began to wake up and climb out of the crater,
presumably to forage for food.
"Wait!" I cried. "Isadore!"
* * * * *
I drew out a lunch package and spread it to attract him. It attracted
all of them.