“We’ve nicknamed it Strangleweed. We have four varieties to cope with most climates you might need them for. They’re bagged and ready.”
“Excellent,” he said, pumping my hand and grinning. “I have a couple of terrorist training camps I want to try them out on.”
“If you drop them during a rainstorm, they’ll never know what hit them.”
“Perfect,” he said.
~~~
“You must admit,” I told the tribunal, “our products worked exactly the way we said they would, with remarkable success.”
~~~
It was raining the night the general seeded the two training camps, and by morning both camps were knee-deep in the thorny, tangling vines. By the next day the vines where taller than the tents. In three days, the vines were impenetrable, and most of the tents had collapsed.
Then the sun baked the vines, reducing them to dust.
The perfect weapon.
When another batch of terrorists occupied the camps, they were amused by how fast weeds grew any place they drained their bladders.
Then it rained.
Did I mention the advanced root system?
The terrorists tried to fight their way out with machetes and flamethrowers, but were buried alive under the vegetation.
~~~
The poppy growers were located in the same region. Poppy farmers looked out their windows in horror as our kudzu engulfed their fields.
Ever resourceful, the farmers sprayed the vines with petrol and set them ablaze. Once the vines were burned down to the ground, they reseeded their fields.
The next morning they were horrified to see new vines poking up through the soil.
They sprayed the vines with potent weed killers and plowed them under.
The kudzu kept growing.
World prices for heroin skyrocketed due to the shrinking supply.
The cocaine and marijuana cartels were just as strangled by our kudzu vines.
And neighboring narcotics growers were dismayed to see the kudzu seeds floating into their fields like giant dandelion puffs.
~~~
“Terrorist camps and training bases have been pretty much eradicated,” I pointed out. “Same with almost every drug-producing region around the world.”
Our judges were impassive.
“China’s planned invasion of Taiwan was forestalled indefinitely due to our kudzu.”
The air force had seeded the Chinese Army’s marshaling areas with a mix of leftover seed.
Taiwan remained free.
The tribunal remained sullen.
“We informed both the DEA and the air force about the advanced root system and seed propagation,” I said. “There was full disclosure on our part.”
No response.
“We only delivered the seeds.” My voice crept up an octave. “They were the ones who used them.”
The problem developed from the vine’s extraordinary root system and how easily the seeds drifted on the slightest breeze. The various strains of kudzu had cross-pollinated, and the hybrids were even nastier than our original batches. The roots were quite adept at finding underground sources of water. Natural aquifers, modern freshwater and sewer systems were sucked dry.
“They only spread the seed three months ago,” I said, sweat beading on my forehead. “We could still find a solution.”
Kudzu had no known predators. Animals and insects did not feed on it, nor bacteria. Weed killers were impotent; even Agent Orange was useless.
As a result, the stuff was spreading — fast. We had, after all, engineered the rapid growth rate. Most of Asia, from the Middle East to the Pacific, now lay buried under a heaving mass of the thorny vines, nearly thirty feet thick.
Ditto South and Central Americas.
The only continent free of the kudzu was Antarctica. However, our kudzu had shown its ability to adapt to various climates and was already being battled in Siberia and Alaska.
“It isn’t our fault,” I repeated.
~~~
The judges conferred.
One spoke.
“You have thirty days to find a way to kill this stuff. Failing that, we’ll put you in a helicopter ourselves and throw you nude into the nearest mass of vines available.”
It wasn’t our fault.
It wasn’t.
And thirty days to save the world, and our own butts, wasn’t much time.
~~~
RORY STEVES is just an old has-been who never was.
Capturing mammoths was all in a day’s work for Deke Atwood. A saber-tooth tiger, on the other hand, was a problem that would require a solution bigger than an elephant gun…
INVOICE H10901: 3 WOOLY MAMMOTHS
by Robert J. Sullivan
Every now and then it’s a good idea to review your career choices. Sitting in a Model T Ford at midnight guarding a baby wooly mammoth from a saber-tooth tiger is a better time than most.
I’m Deke Atwood and I run the Inter-World Trading Company in Manhattan. That’s on Delta Earth. Here, it’s 1921, and in some respects it’s only a little different from the one in your history books. President Cox is in office and Roosevelt is his vice president. Two weeks ago I saw Babe Ruth hit two home runs against the Washington Senators and I’ve got tickets to see Dempsey fight Charpentier in Jersey City in a few weeks, if I live that long. The work isn’t hard, I set my own hours, I meet interesting people, and there are always new challenges. Like collecting wooly mammoths.From other worlds.
My boss called me a week ago and asked if I’d like to pick up a few extra bucks. He had a client who wanted three wooly mammoths and would I mind a side trip to one of the worlds where they’re still alive, pick them out, pack them up, and send them to him? I agreed.
There was a circus playing at Madison Square Garden. I headed that way, asked a few questions and recruited some cowboys who had been wrangling elephants, figuring that was as close to an expert as I was likely to find. With Steve Bremmer’s help, I bought camping supplies, cages, chains, rope, guns, food and transportation. We made the transfer and there we were.
“There” was Zeta Earth. Jumping between parallel worlds is more like time travel since the worlds don’t run at the same speed. On Zeta Earth, for instance, there are no people – at least I never saw any — and critters that died out after the Ice Age on Earth Prime are still running around.
Like wooly mammoths.
And the beasts that eat them.
There was a noise
