Ian Creasey - The Hastillan Weed

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The Hastillan Weed by Ian Creasey

Ian Creasey was born in 1969 and lives in Yorkshire, England. His fiction has appeared in various

venues including Oceans of the Mind, Gothic.net, On Spec, and The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers.

His spare time interests include hiking, conservation, and gardening--anything to get him outdoors and

away from the computer screen. He puts his knowledge of these activities to very good use in his first

story for Asimov's.

* * * *

"Since we have so many new faces," I said to the half-dozen volunteers, "I'll start with a tools talk. Safety

points for the spade--the most important is that when you're digging, you push with the ball of your foot."

I picked up a spade from the pile, and demonstrated by digging up a bluebell growing by the hedge.

From the large bells all round the stem, I knew it was a Spanish bluebell, a garden escapee that if left

unchecked would hybridize with the natives. Too late now, though. You can tell the British bluebell

because the flowers are smaller, deeper blue, and they're usually on one side of the stem, so the plant

droops under their weight as if bowing down before its foreign conqueror. There's hardly a wood left in

England where you'll see only native bluebells.

"Or you can use your heel on the spade." I heaved the invader out of the earth and tossed it aside,

knowing it would safely rot. "But you should never press down with the middle of your foot. The bones in

the arch are delicate, and you can injure yourself."

I turned to the alien. "Of course, that may not apply to you. I guess you know where your weak points

are, if you have any."

The Hastillan picked up a spade with her grey, double-thumbed hand. "Your lawyers made me pledge

not to blame you for any accidents. But I know how to dig. I have a Most Adept Shoveler ring I can

show you." Her translator spoke with the neutral tone of a BBC newsreader, so I couldn't tell whether

she was joking.

"That won't be necessary," I reassured her. "I'm sorry about the lawyers, but everyone has to sign to say

they understood the safety talk. Liability insurance costs a fortune these days." I handed out a pile of

forms to the human contingent. Head office had already cleared the alien. What was her name again?

Holly and brown rice ... Olibrys.

"When you're carrying a spade, you keep it down by your legs, parallel to the ground, holding it at the

point of balance." I demonstrated, balancing the spade on one finger before an arthritic tremor made me

hastily clutch the shaft with a full grip. "This is so that if you fall, the spade goes harmlessly off to the side.

You don't swing it around, or carry it over your shoulders, because if you tripped you could chop

someone's head off. And then we'd lose our no-claims bonus."

As I mentioned each incorrect use of the spade, a hologram made comic pratfalls to illustrate the dreadful

consequences. "When you're not digging with it, you don't hang it on a branch, or lean it against a tree, or

leave it in a trench with the handle sticking up. You place the tool flat on the ground, in an out-of-the-way

spot, with the blade pointing downward--so that if anyone does tread on it, they don't have a Tom and

Jerry moment." Holographic cartoon characters chased each other round the flitter park, tripping over

spades and treading on rakes that sprang up to whack them in the face.

"Any questions on the spade? No? We also have mattocks and bow-saws in the flitter, and I'll instruct

you on those if we need them. But for now, if you've all signed your waivers, we can get on and attack

some weeds."

I counted the forms to make sure everyone had signed. Six volunteers--it was the biggest Sunday group

I'd run for years. Maybe I could entice some of these newcomers into coming along regularly. It would

be good to chat with new people. When you live alone and all your old friends have died or emigrated,

it's hard to get any conversation except with voice-activated appliances.

Everyone picked up a spade, and we headed down toward the river. It was a beautiful day to be

outdoors. The sun blazed through fleecy clouds gambolling across the sky, and the whirling wind turbines

atop the valley showed there was plenty of breeze to cool us while we worked. Yellow flowers of lesser

celandine shone in drifts under the trees. Lower down, the trees gave way to brambles and great swathes

of ramsons, their small white spikes just beginning to bloom. I tore off a leaf and crushed it under my

nose, inhaling the scent of wild garlic.

The path turned left by the riverside. Small patches of darkness began to appear among the bluebells, like

drops of poison spilt in the undergrowth. The blotches grew bigger, along with the plants that made them.

Tall dark fronds sucked in light like succulents drinking every drop of desert dew, not wasting a single

red, blue, or green photon. The shadowy fern swallowed the color of the spring countryside, leaving only

darkness growing by the river.

I clutched my spade tighter. "Here we are," I said. "This is Hastillan blackweed."

One of the new volunteers stared at the weed as if it were Satan wearing a Manchester United scarf.

"The alien plot to conquer the Earth," he said, delivering the line as though he'd been saving it up all

morning.

At my age I don't recall names so well as I used to. We'd had a round of introductions before the tools

talk, but the effort of memorizing one alien had squeezed out all the humans. Yet his "Save the Memes"

T-shirt jogged something in my brain. Tim, was it? Jim?

Whoever he was, he turned to Olibrys with a menacing expression. "What does it do?" he demanded.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. The translator's neutral tone made it sound as if she didn't care.

"Will it poison the atmosphere? Or infect us with a fatal disease?"

"Kim," I said, "there's no need for that attitude. We're all here today for the same reason: to get rid of the

blackweed. Olibrys has come to help, so if you can't be friendly, be polite. And if you can't be polite,

shut up."

"It's Keith. And this stuff must be evil, or we wouldn't be cutting it down."

I sighed. "No plant is evil. It's just disruptive in the wrong place, which in this case happens to be the

Earth. As for what it does--you can see what it's doing. It grows faster than the native plants, so it shades

them out. And here it has no enemies or parasites, so nothing keeps it in check. Most wildlife won't eat it,

which is just as well because it's poisonous.

"But none of that's unique to blackweed. Introduced plants have been causing havoc for centuries.

Rhododendrons look lovely in the garden, but out here they poison sheep. We battled Japanese

knotweed for decades before we finally got rid of it. On the other hand"--I walked a few paces to a

small bamboo-like stem--"with Himalayan balsam, we eventually had to give in. Bee-keepers like it,

because bees love Himalayan balsam, but conservationists hate it because it promotes erosion, and

crowds out other plants, and doesn't support water voles or other mammals. Yet it's so well established,

there's nothing we can do.

"That's the key point. The quicker we tackle the blackweed, the more chance we have of stopping it. So

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