“You sound just slightly outraged over it,” said Defense.
“I am outraged,” Allen told him. “Any scientist would be outraged. We talk about gravity waves, the implication being that they would somehow be akin to electromagnetic waves. And we’ve looked for them. For a long time, no one could even figure out how to look for them. We’re not even sure, right now, that we are using correct methods in our attempt to detect them. So far, none has been detected. At one time many scientists said, and some still say, that there aren’t such things as gravity waves. As things stand now, even were we able to detect them, it would be only on a theoretical basis. No one has even the slightest idea of how they might be put to work.”
“Your men are still hard at work on the visitors, I suppose,” said Defense. “There still is hope that you will be coming up with something. After all, it’s been only a couple of days.”
“Not only our own men,” said Allen, “but every qualified worker I can lure into the study. I’ve contacted a number of universities and institutes. In a few days, we’ll have a large force in the field. The trouble is that we haven’t much to work with. All we can do is observe. Stand off to one side and look at them. If we could trap one of them somehow so we could really work on it, we might find something of significance. But, at the moment, that is unthinkable. It probably would be highly dangerous. There has been a suggestion that we try to work on some of the young the Minnesota visitors spawned. But I shy away from that. If the baby started squalling that it was being hurt, adult visitors probably would come in force to its rescue. I can’t be sure of this, but I hate to take a chance.”
“You say universities and institutes,” said White. “In this country only, I assume. Might there not be some scientists from other countries . . .”
“Marcus,” said the President, sharply, “let’s not get into that again. For the moment, this is our show. The visitors have helped to keep it our show by landing here exclusively.”
“There are a few in Canada,” said White.
“We can work with Canada. We’ve always been able to. I know the Russians want in, but I’m opposed . . .”
“A small, token Russian representation might not be a bad thing,” said Defense. “If we push them too far, if we shut them out.
“I hope, Winston,” said the President, “that you’re not thinking what I’m afraid you are.”
“The thought had flitted across my mind,” said Mallory. “If it seems we are finding something that could tip the balance . . .”
“And if we did find something to tip the balance, as you say, and shared it with them, that would only mean further escalation. How many others feel the same way?”
“I didn’t say share,” said Mallory. “I said a token inclusion. That is all. Something to save their national pride.”
“I think with Winston,” said White, “that we can afford to do something to make these friends of ours look a little better.”
Hammond, who until now had been sitting silently, spoke up, “What you’re talking about is patronizing them. They’d sense that and resent it. It would be worse than nothing. They can understand nothing because that’s what they’d give us if the situation were reversed. We either go whole hog with them or keep it for ourselves. One thing we must realize is that there may be nothing to share. With all due respect to Dr. Allen, we may not find out one damn thing that will be useful to us.”
“In which case,” said White, “there would be no harm in letting them in. It would improve relationships greatly and if we found nothing, it would cost us nothing.”
“Marcus,” said the President, “you are talking about playing the odds and that could be dangerous.”
“Let’s forget it,” said Mallory. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. It just came off the top of my head.”
“The embarrassing thing about all this,” said White, “is that we are receiving offers of assistance from good allies and friends to help us in any way they can. They seem to be sincere . . .”
“I just bet they are,” said Hammond.
“The only thing I can tell them,” said White, ignoring Hammond, “is that later on we may call on them, but that, at the moment, we don’t know what we face.”
“I think, for the moment,” said the President, “we had best leave it at that. Let’s forget other countries for the moment and look to our own. There have been a few minor flareups. Small riots, some looting and burning in such places as Chicago, New York, St. Louis. Is there anything new on all of this, Dave?”
“Nothing big,” said Porter. “And in this we have been lucky. We should have prepared the country. We should have called in the press when we first found the swarm was beginning to break up. We could have forewarned the country.”
“You’re still smarting over that?”
“You’re damned right I am, Mr. President. We botched it. To let NASA issue that skimpy little announcement was a sneaky thing to do.”
“Dave, we talked it over.”
“Yes, I know. And you were wrong,” Porter said firmly.
“You went along with it.”
“I didn’t go along. I protested and there were a few who sided with me.”
“But only a few.”
“Sir, you can’t run a news operation on a majority vote. The rest of you know your business, but I know mine. Right now we’ve been lucky. I hope we can say the same thing at this time tomorrow. The thing I’m afraid of is the cult outbreak. Every crackpot in the country is up on the stump and shouting. All the evangelists are calling big prayer meetings. Every little backwoods church is filled with clapping, stomping, singing people. Out in Minneapolis, a group of second generation flower people tried to rush police lines. They wanted to squat down on an airport runway and give the visitor that landed there a demonstration of their love.”
“I don’t think we need to worry too much about things like that,” said Hammond.
“There’s a lot of emotion boiling around,” Porter told him, “a lot of it still beneath the surface. I hope it can be kept from boiling over. Mixed emotions of all sorts. Latent fears that can easily boil up to the surface. Hallelujah emotions that can get out of hand. We’re on the edge of something that could produce violent street encounters. Let a bunch of beer drinking hardhats get fed up with the antics of the millenium-has-come dancers in the streets . . .”
“I think you’re exaggerating,” said Hammond.
“I hope I am,” said Porter.
“I don’t like this watchful waiting,” said Sullivan. “I think we should act in some positive manner. Something to let the people know we are involved, that we, at least, are taking some action.”
“We’ve called out the National Guard,” said the President. “We have investigators in the field.”
“That’s passive action,” said Sullivan.
“The trouble is,” said the President, “that anything we did probably would be wrong.”
25. THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Dr. Albert Barr said to Jerry Conklin, “Miss Foster phoned to say that you wanted to talk with me, but she wasn’t too specific. She indicated it had something to do with the visitors.” He said to Kathy, “You assured me this is not an interview for an article in your paper.”
“It’s not an interview,” said Kathy, “and I was not specific because I think that Jerry should tell you what happened.”
“I’ve been worried about it,” said Jerry, “ever since it happened . . .”
“Please tell me what happened,” said Barr. “Start at the beginning.” He lounged behind his desk, regarding his two callers with a quizzical expression. He was a sandy-haired man, much younger than Kathy had expected him to be, with the build of a football player. Through the open window of his office came the sounds of a late afternoon on campus, the shrill laughter of a girl, students shouting back and forth, the deep humming of a started car and the scream of tires on pavement as it was gunned to a sudden take-off. Golden spangles of light f
lecked the windows as the westering sun shone through a birch tree decked in bright autumnal color.
“You may have read about the car that was smashed when the first visitor landed at Lone Pine,” said Jerry.
“Could it have been your car?” asked Barr.
“It could have been. It was. I had parked at the end of the bridge to get in some fishing. I had been told there were some big rainbow in the pool below the bridge.”
Barr did not interrupt as Jerry told his story. A couple of times he seemed to be on the verge of asking questions, but he did not ask them.
When Jerry had finished, the exobiologist said, “There are a number of points I would like to raise and discuss with you, but tell me first, why have you come to me? What do you want of me?”
“There are two things,” said Jerry. “This business of home. The visitor thought of home, or made me think of home. I’ve mulled it over and over and there seems to be no sense to it. I am convinced that it induced the thought I had of home. In a situation such as that, I would not have thought of home. And the thought was real enough—not just a brief impression, but something that continued. As if the visitor or whatever was inside the visitor wanted me to think of home, kept on pressuring me to think of home.”
“Are you trying to say that telepathy was involved?”
“I don’t know what was involved. If by telepathy you mean that it was talking with me, or trying to talk with me, no, that was not the case. I tried to talk with it, which might have been a foolish thing to do, but something, that under the circumstances, I imagine might have come quite naturally. There I was, trapped in a place that I did not understand and I was reaching out for information, for any kind of information that would help to explain what was going on. So I tried to talk with it, to establish any kind of contact, to seek some answers. Probably I was fairly well aware that it would be impossible to establish contact, but . . .”
“Do you consider yourself in any way telepathic?”
“No, I do not. I have no telepathic ability that I am aware of. The simple fact is that it is something I had never thought about. I would say I’m not a telepath.”
“And yet it talked to you. Or you think it talked to you.”
“Dr. Barr, that’s not what I said,” said Jerry. “At no time did I think the visitor was talking to me. No conscious communication, no words forming in my mind, no pictures, nothing like that at all. There was just this feeling of home, this overpowering sense of home.”
“You are convinced the feeling came for the creature?”
“Where else could it have come from? I am convinced the thought of home would not have occurred independently to me. There was no reason for it to. There were a lot of other things that were more important for me to think about.”
“You said two things. What was the other thing?”
“It seemed to me,” said Jerry, “that the visitor was a tree or very like a tree.”
“You mean after you learned about the cellulose?”
“No. I’m convinced the cellulose had nothing to do with it. I don’t think that was the case. I imagine there must have been some underlying question of what it was and there seemed to be some familiarity and . . .”
“You’re in graduate work in forestry. You must know a lot about trees.”
“He’s in love with trees,” said Kathy. “Sometimes I get the impression that he talks with them.”
“She’s exaggerating,” Jerry told Barr. “But, yes, I do know a fair amount about them and I guess I could say I have a fair degree of empathy with them. There are people who are gone on animals, those who are flower enthusiasts, devoted bird watchers. Maybe you could say I’m a tree watcher.”
“You used the word ‘familiarity’ back there a ways. What made you use that word?”
“Perhaps because I think I could have felt some familiarity with it, not being aware of it at the time. To start with, when I found myself inside it, I was frightened—deep-down, deadly, screaming frightened, although I didn’t scream. But in a little time, a far shorter time than one would think, I wasn’t frightened, at least not frightened in that way. I got all tense and cold, but I wasn’t garden-variety scared any longer. I was even getting interested before it threw me out.” Barr said, “You must realize that an exobiologist is a strange sort of animal. Really, there is no such thing. Rather, they are men in other disciplines, mostly the biological field, although physics and chemistry also could enter into the picture, who because of personal interest have branched out into a study of what might be expected under extraterrestrial conditions. So you understand, of course, that there is no real, precise science of exobiology.”
“Yes, of course,” said Jerry. “But at least the exobiologist would be thinking about what might be found in space and on other planets.”
“So, with such a disclaimer duly noted,” said Barr, “I must agree that your idea of an intelligent treelike organism need not be too far off the mark. In the last twenty years or so, there have been botanists who have contended that on occasion plant life may show some capacity for sentience, possessing powers of sense or sense perception, experiencing sensations and feeling. For years, we have known that certain people seem to have green thumbs, under their care plants will flourish while under the care of others who do not have this capability, they fade and die. There are those who advocate that plant owners talk sympathetically to their plants. If plants, in fact, do have such sensitivity, then it is only a couple of long steps until we arrive at a true intelligence and full sentience. Could you explain a little more fully how you arrived at the realization the visitors could be plantlike, akin to trees?”
“I’m not sure I can,” said Jerry. “I get a certain feeling when I look at a tree, or when I work with trees. A sort of kinship to them, which may sound strange. . .”
“And you think you may have felt the same kinship to the visitor?”
“No, not kinship. The visitor was too alien to feel anything like kinship. Perhaps a realization that some of the qualities I feel in trees were also in the visitor. But skewed around. Not like a tree of Earth, but a tree of somewhere else.”
“I think I understand,” said Barr. “Have you told anyone else of this?”
“No. Someone else would have laughed at me. You didn’t and I thank you for that.”
“The government would like to know. The federal observers and other scientists who are investigating the visitors would be grateful for any kind of data.”
“I have no data,” said Jerry. “Lacking data, they would try to dig it out of me, feeling that I must have some hidden information that I might not be aware of. Either that or they would think I was another UFO crackpot trying to cash in on the visitors.”
“I see your point,” said Barr. “If I were in your place, I would have the same reservation.”
“You sound as if you believe me.”
“Why not? Why should I have reason to disbelieve you? There is no reason in the world you should have made up such a story. You felt a need to tell someone who might just possibly understand and take what you have to say at face value. I’m glad you came to me. I haven’t been much help, but I’m glad you came. And on this business of thinking about home . . . I’ve been thinking. Could it be possible you misinterpreted what was going on?”
“I know there was a powerful compulsion to think of home.”
“I don’t mean that. Maybe the visitor was not talking to you at all, not trying to convey anything at all. You might have cued in on its thoughts. You may be just a little telepathic, whether you know it or not, or the signal, the emotions of the visitor might have been so strong that no human could have avoided reacting to it. The thought comes to me that it may not have been broadcasting any thought of your home, but of its home.”
Kathy gulped. “You mean here, the Earth? That it was thinking of Earth as home?”
“Consider this,” said Barr. “It had come from God knows where, over no one can imagine how
great a distance, looking for a planet where it could settle down, looking for a new home to replace the one that somehow had been lost. Maybe the Earth is that kind of planet—where it could bud and reproduce its young, find food for them, live the sort of life it perhaps had despaired of ever living again. Saying to itself, ‘Home! Home! I’ve finally found a home!’ ”
26. THE UNITED STATES
The visitors observed. Some of them having set down, stayed where they were. Others, after a time, floated into the air and set about their observations. They cruised back and forth over industrial plants, they circled and re-circled cities, they made sweeps of vast stretches of farmland. They escorted planes, maintaining their distance and position, never interfering; they flew up and down long stretches of highways, selecting those areas where the traffic flowed the heaviest; they followed the winding courses of rivers, keeping watch of the boats and other craft that plied the watercourses.
Others of them sought out forests and settled down to eat. They gobbled up a number of lumberyards. In the St. Louis area, three of them landed in a used car parking lot, ingested a dozen or so cars, then took off. But aside from ingesting trees and the cars and gulping down forty or fifty lumberyards, they did little harm. Most people with whom they came in contact were only marginally inconvenienced; no one was killed. Pilots flying planes became jumpy at being shadowed by the visitors. The highway accidents, few of them more than fender benders, fell off as motorists became accustomed to the sight of the great black boxes floating up and down the highways, coming at last to pay but slight attention to them.
The visitors qualified as first class nuisances. They tied up the National Guard, various highway patrols, and other law and order personnel, in the process costing considerable money.
A few riots flared in some of the larger cities where social and economic situations were such that anything at all became an excuse for rioting. In the process of the rioting, there was some looting and burning. A number of persons were injured, a few died. On some college campuses, students mounted good-natured demonstrations, various groups joining in to advance the causes of their special hang-ups, but none of the demonstrations really amounted to too much. Religious fanatics and other fanatics who were not religious held forth at street corners, parks, churches and halls. In certain areas, cult enthusiasms ran high. Newspaper columnists and TV commentators threw out a hundred different points of view, few of which, under any sort of scrutiny, made any sort of sense.
The Complete Serials Page 168