Benjamin had no idea what had gotten into his younger brother, but being the responsible elder brother he had always been, he took a pair of scissors to the thorny weed leaf at once.
What surprised him was that once he had cut away an entire layer, there was another layer underneath it. He cut that one away too, and underneath was yet another layer of leaf. Benjamin’s expression grew steadily more serious. He cut through layer after layer with the scissors, until the leaf that had started out half the size of a palm had shrunk to no bigger than a little finger.
Liam stopped him immediately, before he could cut whatever was inside into two halves. He took the core of the leaf and squeezed it gently. Compared with the hardness of the outside, the inside was extraordinarily soft. Liam said:
"It’s very soft. You don’t need the scissors anymore. Peel it with your hands."
Benjamin took it back and slowly peeled it open with his fingers. What lay inside was no longer leaf, but a thing the size of a little finger, white from end to end, plump and round, with rings running along its body. Benjamin’s expression changed and his pupils contracted.
He hurled the thing away from him, spun around and grabbed Liam’s hand, and ran for his life dragging him along. He did not forget to bellow at Isabella as he ran:
"Isabella! Run! The insectoid race is here!"
Liam looked back over his shoulder at the spot where Benjamin had thrown it, and could no longer see anything there. Isabella, hearing Benjamin’s shout, flung her pitchfork aside and bolted for the mobile home, turning her head as she ran to check whether her brothers were keeping up.
Once the three of them had made it inside, Benjamin and Isabella immediately barricaded every door and window with whatever came to hand, then checked every last corner until they were satisfied that not so much as a single insect could get in.
The two of them took out their personal defense weapons and handed one to Liam, then took up positions on either side of the door, staring tensely out.
Liam stood there with the electric gun in his hand, rather at a loss for words. He said quietly:
"Brother, sister, is there any chance... that larva is completely harmless?"
Isabella glared at him: "When has anything from the insectoid race ever been harmless? Those revolting things will gnaw us down to nothing."
Liam had not given up yet: "How about you two listen to my reasoning and tell me whether it makes sense?"
He pulled over a chair, sat down and began laying it out in detail.
"The way I see it, those larvae have been living inside these thorny weed leaves for a very long time. If there really were an insectoid attack, the military would have discovered it long ago. Wouldn’t you say that’s right?"
Isabella and Benjamin looked at each other blankly, feeling that this did seem to make sense. Even so, neither of them relaxed their guard in the slightest. Liam went on:
"I read in a book once that on a certain planet there’s a grass exactly like this thorny weed, called Bermuda grass. One of its characteristics is that it has a particular grass-eating worm that lives as a parasite on its leaves. Because of the parasite, the leaf sheaths roll up and stack over one another in many layers, so the tip of the stalk forms a swelling shaped rather like a chicken. That kind of worm is completely harmless."
Benjamin frowned: "Harmless? As far as I know, there has never been such a thing as a harmless insect."
Liam nodded and began setting out his conclusion: "I put that badly. It’s harmless to people, but it’s also the reason the thorny weeds can never be wiped out. Because the thorny weed’s seeds sit in the same place as the parasite. When you burn the weeds and use chemicals on them, the parasite and the seeds inside that pouch of leaves aren’t affected at all, which is why they can grow straight back afterward."
"Normally, once you’ve pulled the weeds and burned them, you use the ash as fertilizer, don’t you?" Liam looked at Isabella: "And when you spray, you spray directly on the field, correct?"
Isabella nodded: "That’s exactly how we do it."
Liam carried on: "Then it fits. The parent plant dies, its supply of nutrition is cut off, and the worm inside the leaf pouch secretes a fluid to make the seeds germinate. That’s why they can never be cleared for good."
The two of them looked at one another, half believing and half not. Isabella asked: "How do you know all this?"
Liam started spinning his story: "I read it in an old book in the Royal library and worked it out from there. Why don’t we go back out and verify it?"
All of this was Liam’s own deduction, built on what he knew about Bermuda grass and the parasite living inside it. A great many people confused this worm with Spodoptera frugiperda. Only he knew that the parasite living inside Bermuda grass was outstandingly good to eat.
It sounded bizarre, but back when he lived in the countryside he had often watched the children play the grass-fighting game with Bermuda grass, and afterward peel the leaves apart and eat the worm inside. Liam had wondered at the time how anyone could eat a worm at all.
The children had proved it to him on the spot. To this day Liam still remembered how rich and nutty that worm had tasted. The pity of it was that the worm was only as thick as a thread, and you had to eat a good many to get the flavor. There was only so much grass to go around, and Liam could hardly fight children for a share.
Afterward he had forgotten all about it. It was only now, looking at the structure of these thorny weeds, that it had come back to him.
Isabella and Benjamin agonized over it for a long while. Then, seeing that there really was no movement at all outside, they finally dared to open the door. The three of them went back to the foot of the tree. The husk of the thorny weed leaf was still lying there. The worm had vanished.
Liam bent down and picked the husk up, studied it carefully for a moment, then pointed out a spot on the inner face of the leaf where there were three black specks, and showed it to his brother and sister.
"Look at this, you two. These must be the thorny weed’s seeds."
Benjamin took the husk and carefully extracted the three seeds from inside. There was still a little clear, sticky fluid on their surfaces. Isabella leaned in close to look. She did not dare breathe hard, afraid that one breath would send all three seeds flying away. Benjamin put the seeds back into the husk and then asked anxiously: "So what do we do with this thing?"
Liam raised his index finger and wagged it: "We burn it, of course. Before, it had that outer layer protecting it, so it survived. Now that the protection has been peeled away, they won’t be able to stand up to the heat of a fire."
He glanced around: "But as I said, this is only my guess, so we need to verify it first. Let’s go and pull up all the weeds now, cut off every one of their leaves, and see whether they still grow back as fast as they used to."
Isabella picked up the pitchfork at once: "Leave that to me. You and Benjamin sit in the shade and cut the leaves."
With that she ran straight out into the field. Liam wanted to say that he could help as well, but Benjamin hauled him bodily back into the shade. Seeing that his brother was not going to let him out into the sun, Liam did not bother forcing the issue. From the original owner’s memories, he could see that Omegas really were extremely fragile. Until he had a proper grasp of where his body’s limits lay, Liam was not going to argue with his brother and sister.
As for Benjamin, he was a B-grade Alpha, a rank that was nothing to sneeze at. But an illness involving a pheromone disorder had left him terribly weak.
To hear Isabella tell it, Benjamin these days was as frail as an Omega.
The two brothers started with the weeds around their own feet. They cut off every thorny weed leaf and dropped them into a bio-plastic bucket. Liam was very curious about the worm he hadn’t had time to look at properly earlier, so he took the scissors himself and stripped away the leaf cocoon.
The instant he saw the worm, saliva came flooding into his mouth without his meaning it to. This one wobbled and quivered like a piece of coconut jelly, and it gave off the faint fragrance of fresh grass, which felt extraordinarily cool and clean.
Under Benjamin’s thoroughly wary gaze, Liam popped the worm into his mouth...