"You messed up your coat," said Tupper, "carrying that thing."
I said, "It wasn't much to start with." And then I remembered that envelope with the fifteen hundred dollars in it. It had been in the breast pocket of the jacket and I could have lost it in the wild running I had done or when I used the jacket to wrap up the time contraption.
What a damn fool thing to do, I thought. What a chance to take. I should have pinned it in my pocket or put it in my shoe or something of the sort. It wasn't every day a man got fifteen hundred dollars.
I bent over and put my hand into the pocket and the envelope was there and I felt a great relief as my fingers touched it. But almost immediately I knew there was something wrong.
My groping fingers told me the envelope was thin and it should have been bulging with thirty fifty-dollar bills.
I jerked it from my pocket and flipped up the flap. The envelope was empty.
I didn't have to ask. I didn't have to wonder. I knew just what had happened. That dirty, slobbering, finger-counting bum — I'd choke it out of him, I'd beat him to a pulp, I'd make him cough it up!
I was halfway up to nail him when he spoke to me and the voice that he spoke with was that of the TV glamour gal.
"This is Tupper speaking for the Flowers," the voice said. "And you sit back down and behave yourself."
"Don't give me that," I snarled. "You can't sneak out of this by pretending…"
"But this is the Flowers," the voice insisted sharply and even as it said the words, I saw that Tupper's face had taken on that wall-eyed, vacant look.
"But he took my roll," I said. "He sneaked it out of the envelope when I was asleep."
"Keep quiet," said the honeyed voice. "Just keep quiet and listen."
"Not until I get my fifteen hundred back."
"You'll get it back. You'll get much more than your fifteen hundred back."
"You can guarantee that?"
"We'll guarantee it." I sat down again.
"Look," I said, "you don't know what that money meant to me. It's part my fault, of course. I should have waited until the bank was open or I should have found a good safe place to hide it. But there was so much going on…"
"Don't worry for a moment," said the Flowers. "We'll get it back to you."
"OK," I said, "and does he have to use that voice?"
"What's the matter with the voice?"
"Oh, hell," I said, "go ahead and use it. I want to talk to you, maybe even argue with you, and it's unfair, but I'll remember who is speaking."
"We'll use another voice, then," said the Flowers, changing in the middle of the sentence to the voice of the businessman.
"Thanks very much," I said.
"You remember," said the Flowers, "the time we spoke to you on the phone and suggested that you might represent us?
"Certainly I remember. But as for representing you…"
"We need someone very badly. Someone we can trust."
"But you can't be certain I'm the man to trust."
"Yes, we can," they said. "Because we know you love us."
"Now, look here," I said. "I don't know what gives you that idea. I don't know if…"
"Your father found those of us who languished in your world. He took us home and cared for us. He protected us and tended us and he loved us and we flourished."
"Yes, I know all that."
"You're an extension of your father."
"Well, not necessarily. Not the way you mean."
"Yes," they insisted. "We have knowledge of your biology. We know about inherited characteristics. Like father, like son is a saying that you have." It was no use, I saw. You couldn't argue with them. From the logic of their race, from the half-assimilated, half-digested facts they had obtained in some manner in their contact with our Earth, they had it figured out. And it probably made good sense in their plant world, for an offspring plant would differ very little from the parents. It would be, I suspected, a fruitless battle to try to make them see that an assumption that was valid in their case need not extend its validity into the human race.
"All right," I said, "we'll let you have it your way. You're sure that you can trust me and probably you can. But in all fairness I must tell you I can't do the job."
"Can't?" they asked.
"You want me to represent you back on Earth. To be your ambassador. Your negotiator."
"That was the thought we had in mind."
"I have no training for a job of that sort. I'm not qualified. I wouldn't know how to do it. I wouldn't even know how to make a start."
"You have started," said the Flowers. "We are very pleased with the start you've made."
I stiffened and jerked upright. "The start I've made?" I asked.
"Why, yes, of course," they told me. "Surely you remember. You asked that Gerald Sherwood get in touch with someone. Someone, you stressed, in high authority."
"I wasn't representing you."
"But you could," they said. "We want someone to explain us."
"Let's be honest," I told them. "How can I explain you? I know scarcely anything about you."
"We would tell you anything you want to know."
"For openers," I said, "this is not your native world."
"No, it's not. We've advanced through many worlds."
"And the people — no, not the people, the intelligences — what happened to the intelligences of those other worlds?"
"We do not understand."
"When you get into a world, what do you do with the intelligence you find there?
"It is not often we find intelligence — not meaningful intelligence, not cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence does not develop on all worlds. When it does, we co-operate. We work with it. That is, when we can."
"There are times when you can't?"
"Please do not misunderstand," they pleaded. "There has been a case or two where we could not contact a world's intelligence. It would not become aware of us. We were just another life form, another — what do you call it? Another weed, perhaps."
"What do you do, then?"
"What can we do?" they asked.
It was not, it seemed to me, an entirely honest answer. There were a lot of things that they could do.
"And you keep on going."
"Keep on going?"
"From world to world," I said.
"From one world to another."
"When do you intend to stop?
"We do not know," they said.
"What is your goal? What are you aiming at?"
"We do not know," they said.
"Now, just wait a minute. That's the second time you've said that. You must know…"
"Sir," they asked, "does your race have a goal — a conscious goal?"
"I guess we don't," I said.
"So that would make us even."
"I suppose it would."
"You have on your world things you call computers."
"Yes," I said, "but very recently."
"And the function of computers is the storage of data and the correlation of that data and making it available whenever it is needed."
"There still are a lot of problems. The retrieval of the data…"
"That is beside the point. What would you say is the goal of your computers?
"Our computers have no purpose. They are not alive."
"But if they were alive?"
"Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the storage of a universal data and its correlation."
"That perhaps is right," they said. "We are living computers."
"Then there is no end for you. You'll keep on forever."
"We are not sure," they said.
"But…"
"Data," they told me, pontifically, "is the means to one end only arrival at the truth. Perhaps we do not need a universal data to arrive at truth."
"How do you know when you have arrived?"
"We will know," they said.
I gave up. We were getting nowh
ere. "So you want our Earth," I said.
"You state it awkwardly and unfairly. We do not want your Earth. We want to be let in, we want some living space, we want to work with you. You give us your knowledge and we will give you ours."
"We'd make quite a team," I said.
"We would, indeed," they said.
"And then?"
"What do you mean?" they asked.
"After we've swapped knowledge, what do we do then?"
"Why, we go on," they said. "Into other worlds. The two of us together."
"Seeking other cultures? After other knowledge?"
"That is right," they said.
They made it sound so simple. And it wasn't simple; it couldn't be that simple. There was nothing ever simple.
A man could talk with them for days and still be asking questions, getting no more than a bare outline of the situation.
"There is one thing you must realize," I said. "The people of my Earth will not accept you on blind faith alone. They must know what you expect of us and what we can expect of you. They must have some assurance that we can work together."
"We can help," they said, "in many different ways. We need not be as you see us now. We can turn ourselves into any kind of plant you need. We can provide a great reservoir of economic resources. We can be the old things that you have relied upon for years, but better than the old things ever were. We can be better foodstuff and better building material; better fibre. Name anything you need from plants and we can be that thing."
"You mean you'd let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you into cloth? And you would not mind?"
They came very close to sighing. "How can we make you understand? Eat one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life of us is one life — you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers. We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping."
"And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of trees — ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs. Let your chemists tell us what you want and we'll be that for you. We'll be made-to-order plants."
"All this," I said, "and your knowledge, too."
"That is right," they said.
"And in return, what do we do?"
"You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase boundaries into other worlds."
"And the time dome that you put over Millville — why did you do that?
"To gain your world's attention. To let you know that we were here and waiting."
"But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for instance."
"Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too."
"They could have told the world."
"Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as how do you say it — crackpots?"
"Yes, I know," I said. "No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy said. But surely there were others."
"Only certain types of minds," they told me, "can make contact with us. We can reach many minds, but they can't reach back to us. And to believe in us, to know us, you must reach back to us."
"You mean only the screwballs…"
"We're afraid that's what we mean," they said.
It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with Stuffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid citizen.
I sat there for a moment, wondering why they'd contacted me and Gerald Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They'd contacted Sherwood because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me?
Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it was.
"So, OK," I said. "I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?"
"We planted a demonstration plot," they told me. "So your people could realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are." You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.
I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to get back to Millville.
And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren't any Flowers. Maybe it was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it rehearsed so he could pull it off.
But, I argued with myself it couldn't be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn't bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn't dream it up and he couldn't pull it off. And besides, there was the matter of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would not explain.
I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.
The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out again, although I still knew that it was there.
There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat about the campfire and yarn the night away.
Ready? asked the Presence.
A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain — something born of the purpleness and moonlight?
"Yes," I said, "I'm ready. I will do the best I can." I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine.
It was fear, perhaps, but it didn't feel like fear.
I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.
"I am not afraid of you," I told it.
It didn't say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse and garden were.
A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me, and then go straight ahead.
I turned a little to my left and then went straight ahead.
A few more feet, it said.
I stopped and turned my head to face it and there was nothing there. If there had been anything, it was gone from there.
The moon was a golden gargoyle in the west. The world was lone and empty; the silvered slope had a hungry look. The blue-black sky was filled with many little eyes with a hard sharp glitter to them, a predatory glitter and the remoteness of uncaring.
Beyond the ridge a man of my own race drowsed beside a dying campfire, and it was all right for him, for he had a talent that I did not have, that I knew now I did not have — the talent for reaching out to grasp an alien hand (or paw or claw or pad) and being able in his twisted mind to translate that alien touch into a commonplace.
I shuddered a
t the gargoyle moon and took two steps forward and walked out of that hungry world straight into my garden.
15
Ragged clouds still raced across the sky, blotting out the moon. A faint lighting in the east gave notice of the dawn. The windows of my house were filled with lamplight and I knew that Gerald Sherwood and the rest of them were waiting there for me. And just to my left the greenhouse with the tree growing at its corner loomed ghostly against the rise of ground behind it.
I started to walk forward and fingers were scratching at my trouser leg. Startled, I looked down and saw that I had walked into a bush.
There had been no bush in the garden the last time I had seen it; there had been only the purple flowers. But I think I guessed what might have happened even before I stooped to have a look.
Squatting there, I squinted along the ground and in the first grey light of the coming day, I saw there were no flowers. Instead of a patch of flowers there was a patch of little bushes, perhaps a little larger, but not much larger than the flowers.
I hunkered there, with a coldness growing in me — for there was no explanation other than the fact that the bushes were the flowers, that somehow the Flowers had changed the flowers that once had grown there into little bushes. And, I wondered wildly, what could their purpose be?
Even here, I thought — even here they reach out for us. Even here they play their tricks on us and lay their traps for us. And they could do anything they wanted, I supposed, for if they did not own, at least they manipulated this corner of the Earth entrapped beneath the dome.
I put out a hand and felt along a branch and the branch had soft-swelling buds all along its length. Springtime buds, that in a day or so would be breaking into leaf. Springtime buds in the depth of summer!
I had believed in them, I thought. In that little space of time toward the very end, when Tupper had ceased his talking and had dozed before the fire and there had been something on the hillside that had spoken to me and had walked me home, I had believed in them.
Had there been something on that hillside? Had something walked with me? I sweated, thinking of it.
I felt the bulk of the wrapped time contraption underneath my arm, and that, I realized, was a talisman of the actuality of that other world. With that, I must believe.
All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories Page 16