Selected Stories by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

into four completely different plants. One is a mushroom just like this. Here are the other three.”
    Tod looked at the box of plants. “Are they really all from the mushroom spores?”
    “Don’t blame you,” said Teague, and actually chuckled. “I didn’t believe it myself at first. A sort of pitcher plant, half full of liquid. A thing like a cactus. And this one. It’s practically all underground, like a truffle, although it has these cilia. You wouldn’t think it was anything but a few horsehairs stuck in the ground.”
    “And they’re all sterile,” Tod recalled.
    “They’re not,” said Teague, “and that’s what I called you in here to tell you. They’ll yield if they are fertilized.”
    “Fertilized how?”
    Instead of answering, Teague asked April, “Do you remember how far back we traced the evolution of Viridian life?”
    “Of course. We got the arthropods all the way back to a simple segmented worm. The insects seemed to come from another worm, with pseudopods and a hard carapace.”
    “A caterpillar,” Tod interpolated.
    “Almost,” said April, with a scientist’s nicety. “And the most primitive reptile we could find was a little gymnoderm you could barely see without a glass.”
    “Where did we find it?”
    “Swimming around in—oh! In those pitcher plant things!”
    “If you won’t take my word for this,” said Teague, a huge enjoyment glinting between his words, “you’ll just have to breed these things yourself. It’s a lot of work, but this is what you’ll discover.
    “An adult gymnoderm—a male—finds this pitcher and falls in. There’s plenty of nutriment for him, you know, and he’s a true amphibian. He fertilizes the pitcher. Nodules grow under the surface of the liquid inside there—” he pointed “—and bud off. The buds are mobile. They grow into wrigglers, miniature tadpoles. Then into lizards. They climb out and go about the business of being—well, lizards.”
    “All males?” asked Tod.
    “No,” said Teague, “and that’s an angle I haven’t yet investigated. But apparently some males breed with females, which lay eggs, which hatch into lizards, and some find plants to fertilize. Anyway, it looks as if this plant is actually the progenitor of all the reptiles here; you know how clear the evolutionary lines are to all the species.”
    “What about the truffle with the horsehairs?” asked Tod.
    “A pupa,” said Teague, and to the incredulous expression on April’s face, he insisted, “Really—a pupa. After nine weeks or so of dormance, it hatches out into what you almost called a caterpillar.”
    “And then into all the insects here,” said April, and shook her head in wonderment. “And I suppose that cactus-thing hatches out the nematodes, the segmented ones that evolve into arthropods?”
    Teague nodded. “You’re welcome to experiment,” he said again, “but believe me—you’ll only find out I’m right: it really happens.”
    “Then this scarlet mushroom is the beginning of everything here.”
    “I can’t find another theory,” said Teague.
    “I can,” said Tod.
    They looked at him questioningly, and he rose and laughed. “Not yet. I have to think it through.” He scooped up the baby and then helped April to her feet. “How do you like our Sol, Teague?”
    “Fine,” said Teague. “A fine boy.” Tod knew he was seeing the heavy occipital ridges, the early teeth, and saying nothing. Tod was aware of a faint inward surprise as the baby reached toward April and he handed him over. He should have resented what might be in Teague’s mind, but he did not. The beginnings of an important insight welcomed criticism of the child, recognized its hairiness, its savagery, and found these things good. But as yet the thought was too nebulous to express, except by a smile. He smiled, took April’s hand, and left.
    “That was a funny thing you said to Teague,” April told him as they walked toward their quarters.
    “Remember,