The Sinners of Erspia

He had expected her to choose a nearby orchid but no, she went deeper into the forest, stepping soundlessly on the soft pile underfoot. He caught up with her and tried to take her hand. Her skin was cool; but she drew the hand away and kept her distance. Several times he spoke to her but she made no reply, merely gave him a sidelong glance and a heart-stirring smile of promise.

Pleasurably aware of the female motions of her rolling hips as she walked, he allowed her to lead him.

The jungle surrounded them, the variegated shapes of the towering orchids offering endless vistas, the entrancing colours filtering the sunlight and filling the air with their hues.

He was unsure how long they walked; perhaps fifteen minutes. But suddenly she stopped and turned to him.

He was surprised that she still had not selected an orchid. He had thought to himself that perhaps she knew of a special one and that he was in for a rare treat. Instead she reached out her arms for him, and to his puzzlement seemed to want to make love on the ground.

Her lily-cool skin touched him; her arms went around his neck. She sank down, drawing him with her.

Her arms tightened more firmly around his neck. Her legs went around his upper thighs and clamped there.

And then the nightmare unfolded. The girl's skin was not human skin. Her flesh was not human flesh. It was composed of pulpy vegetable matter, and now it split down the middle, both body and head, to form a pod into which her arms and legs proceeded to press him.

Inside the pod he glimpsed pale finger-like extrusions, limp fronds, lumpy transparent growths which reminded him of jellyfish. He felt a stinging sensation as some of these fingers touched his skin. He yelled in fear and tried to push himself away, but the arms and legs were too strong; they were steadily squeezing him deeper into the pod, which with a creaking sound adjusted and extended itself to accommodate him. With a shock of panic he realized that it meant to close up again with him inside—after which he would no doubt be slowly digested.

He exerted himself to prise apart the lips of the almost imperceptibly closing pod. It was like trying to move an oak tree. Of course! he thought with bitter despair. Its only prey were human beings—naturally it was stronger than they were! His struggles became desperate and violent. He was gasping with fright.

Then he heard a hiss and felt a wave of heated air by his cheek. The head section of the pod blackened, shrivelled and peeled back. Suddenly the whole thing sprang open, pod agape, arms and legs akimbo.

He sprang to his feet, breathing heavily. His rescuer was Histrina. She had crept up unseen, his gun in her hand. A grimace of delight was on her features as, now, she directed the beam of the gun at the pod again, playing it up and down the horrible predator. Blackened and crackling, it squirmed and popped. It banged and hissed as fluid sacs within it exploded. Then it was a stinking mass which did no more than curl and uncurl slightly, giving off wisps of black smoke.

How had she got the gun back? He thought he had it well hidden.

Clever Histrina. She had done it again.

And this time he could not help but be emphatically glad of it. He looked down at his body. It bore a dozen or more red weals where the pod's stings had touched him, but he could no longer feel them. He brushed his chest and belly with his hand. He was numb.

Much longer, and he would no doubt have been completely paralysed.

So Erspia-2 wasn't a complete paradise after all, he thought dully. Predatory mimicry. A motile predator plant that used sexual enticement to trap its victims. What an apt variation on the orchid theme! And the pod had looked so perfectly like a woman!

Probably there were man-mimicking plants too. How did the biology of it work, he wondered? Plants generally did not collect enough energy to work a muscular system, but that did not necessarily apply to predator plants, of course. The disguised pod could gain enough energy from a human body to enable it to walk about for a while. Probably there were fat reservoirs where the energy was stored.

Then why hadn't these fat reserves flamed up in the heat of the gun's beam? Because, he reasoned, they were nearly exhausted. It had been time for the pod to claim another victim.

But why hadn't the Erspians warned him and Histrina about these predators? Perhaps they didn't even know about them. Perhaps they were just too simple-minded to draw the obvious conclusion when people went missing and skeletons were then found in the flower forest ... if the pods left skeletons. Like animals that had lived long periods in safe environments, they had had all sense of danger bred out of them.

He wondered if the predators had been created along with the garden planetoid, or if they had evolved subsequently. The process of natural evolution might have been accelerated; a hangover of whatever process had been used to produce the orchids...