All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Those pictures were a bunch of lulus. We used the best of them on page one — a solid page of them — and ran two more pages of the rest inside. The AP got hold of them, transmitted them, and a number of other member papers used them before someone at the Pentagon heard about it and promptly blew his stack. But no matter what the Pentagon might say, the pictures had been run and whatever harm — or good — they might have done could not be recalled.

  I suppose that if the colonel had known about them, he'd have warned us not to use them and might have confiscated them. But no one knew the pictures had been taken until the colonel was out of town, and probably back in Washington. Charlie got waylaid somehow — at a beer joint most likely — and didn't get back to the office until the middle of the afternoon.

  When he heard about it, J. H. paced up and down and tore his hair and threatened to fire Charlie; but some of the rest of us got him calmed down and back into his office. We caught the pictures in our final street edition, picked the pages up for the early runs next day, and the circulation boys were pop-eyed for days at the way those papers sold.

  The next day, after the worst of the excitement had subsided, the Barnacle and I went down to the corner to have ourselves a couple. I had never cared too much for the Barnacle before, but the fact that we'd been fired together established a sort of bond between us; and he didn't seem to be such a bad sort, after all,

  Joe was as sad as ever. "It's them brownies," he told us, and he described them in a manner no one should ever use when talking of a brownie. "They've gone and made everyone so happy they don't need to drink no more."

  "Both you and me, Joe," said the Barnacle; "they ain't done nothing for me, either."

  "You got your job back," I told him.

  "Mark," he said, solemnly, pouring out another. "I'm not so sure if that is good or not."

  It might have developed into a grade-A crying session if Lighthing, our most up-and-coming copy boy, had not come shuffling in at that very moment.

  "Mr. Lathrop," he said, "there's a phone call for you."

  "Well, that's just fine."

  "But it's from New York," said the kid.

  That did it. It's the first time in my life I ever left a place so fast that I forgot my drink.

  The call was from one of the papers to which I had applied, and the man at the New York end told me there was a job opening in the London staff and that he'd like to talk with me about it. In itself, it probably wasn't any better than the job I had, he said, but it would give me a chance to break in on the kind of work I wanted.

  When could I come in? he asked, and I said tomorrow morning.

  I hung up and sat back and the world all at once looked rosy. I knew right then and there those brownies still were working for me.

  I had a lot of time to think on the plane trip to New York; and while I spent some of it thinking about the new job and London, I spent a lot of it thinking about the brownies, too.

  They'd come to Earth before, that much at least was clear. And the world had not been ready for them. It had muffled them in a fog of folklore and superstition, and had lacked the capacity to use what they had offered it. Now, they tried again. This time we must not fail them, for there might not be a third time.

  Perhaps one of the reasons they had failed before — although not the only reason — had been the lack of a media of mass communications. The story of them, and of their deeds and doings, had gone by word of mouth and had been distorted in the telling. The fantasy of the age attached itself to the story of the brownies until they became no more than a magic little people who were very droll, and on occasion helpful, but in the same category as the ogre, or the dragon, and others of their ilk.

  Today it had been different. Today there was a better chance the brownies would be objectively reported. And while the entire story could not be told immediately, the people could still guess.

  And that was important — the publicity they got. People must know they were back again, and must believe in them and trust them.

  And why, I wondered, had one medium-sized city in the midwest of America been chosen as the place where they would make known their presence and demonstrate their worth? I puzzled a lot about that one, but I never did get it figured out, not even to this day.

  Jo Ann was waiting for me at the airport when I came back from New York with the job tucked in my pocket. I was looking for her when I came down the ramp and I saw that she'd got past the gate and was running toward the plane. I raced out to meet her and I scooped her up and kissed her and some damn fool popped a flash bulb at us. I wanted to mop up on him, but Jo Ann wouldn't let me.

  It was early evening and you could see some stars shining in the sky, despite the blinding floodlights; from way up, you could hear another plane that had just taken off; and up at the far end of the field, another one was warming up. There were the buildings and the lights and the people and the great machines and it seemed, for a long moment, like a table built to represent the strength and swiftness, the competence and assurance of this world of ours.

  Jo Ann must have felt it, too, for she said suddenly:

  "It's nice, Mark. I wonder if they'll change it." I knew who she meant without even asking.

  "I think I know what they are," I told her; "I think I got it figured out. You know that Community Chest drive that's going on right now. Well, that's what they are doing, too — a sort of Galactic Chest. Except that they aren't spending money on the poor and needy; their kind of charity is a different sort. Instead of spending money on us, they're spending love and kindness, neighborliness and brotherhood. And I guess that it's all right. I wouldn't wonder but that, of all the people in the universe, we are the ones who need it most. They didn't come to solve all our problems for us — just to help clear away some of the little problems that somehow keep us from turning our full power on the important jobs, or keep us from looking at them in the right way."

  That was more years ago than I like to think about, but I still can remember just as if it were yesterday.

  Something happened yesterday that brought it all to mind again.

  I happened to be in Downing Street, not too far from No. 10, when I saw a little fellow I first took to be some sort of dwarf. When I turned to look at him, I saw that he was watching me; he raised one hand in an emphatic gesture, with the thumb and first finger made into a circle — the good, solid American signal that everything's okay.

  Then he disappeared. He probably ducked into an alley, although I can't say for a fact I actually saw him…

  But he was right. Everything's okay.

  The world is bright, and the cold war is all but over. We may be entering upon the first true peace the human race has ever known.

  Jo Ann is packing, and crying as she packs, because she has to leave so many things behind. But the kids are goggle-eyed about the great adventure just ahead. Tomorrow morning we leave for Peking, where I'll be the first accredited American correspondent for almost thirty years.

  And I can't help but wonder if, perhaps, somewhere in that ancient city — perhaps in a crowded, dirty street; perhaps along the imperial highway; maybe some day out in the country beside the Great Wall, built so fearsomely so many years ago — I may not see another little man.

  The Golden Bugs

  Original copyright year: 1960

  It started as a lousy day.

  Arthur Belsen, across the alley, turned on his orchestra at six o'clock and brought me sitting up in bed.

  I'm telling you, Belsen makes his living as an engineer, but music is his passion. And since he is an engineer, he's not content to leave well enough alone. He had to mess around.

  A year or two before he'd had the idea of a robotic symphony, and the man has talent, you have to give him that. He went to work on this idea and designed machines that could read—not only play, but read—music from a tape, and he built a machine to transcribe the tapes. Then he built a lot of these music machines in his basement workshop.
<
br />   And he tried them out!

  It was experimental work, quite understandably, and there was redesigning and adjusting to be done, and Belsen was finicky about the performance that each machine turned out. So he tried them out a lot—and loudly—not being satisfied until he had the instrumentation just the way he thought it should be.

  There had been some idle talk in the neighborhood about a lynching party, but nothing came of it. That's the trouble, one of the troubles, with this neighborhood of ours—they'll talk an arm off you, but never do a thing.

  As yet no one could see an end to all the Belsen racket. It had taken him better than a year to work up the percussion section and that was bad enough. But now he'd started on the strings and that was even worse.

  Helen sat up in bed beside me and put her hands up to her ears, but she couldn't keep from hearing. Belsen had it turned up loud, to get, as he would tell you, the feel of it.

  By this time, I figured, he probably had the entire neighborhood awake.

  "Well, that's it," I said, starting to get up.

  "You want me to get breakfast?"

  "You might as well," I said. "No one's going to get any sleep with that thing turned on."

  While she started breakfast, I headed for the garden back of the garage to see how the dahlias might be faring. I don't mind telling you I was delighted with those dahlias. It was nearly fair time and there were some of them that would be at bloom perfection just in time for showing.

  I started for the garden, but I never got there. That's the way it is in this neighborhood. A man will start to do something and never get it done because someone always catches him and wants to talk a while.

  This time it was Dobby. Dobby is Dr. Darby Wells, a venerable old codger with white chin whiskers, and he lives next door. We all call him Dobby and he doesn't mind a bit, for in a way it's a badge of tribute to the man. At one time Dobby had been an entomologist of some repute at the university and it had been his students who had hung the name on him. It was no corruption of his regular name, but stemmed rather from his one-time interest in mud-dauber wasps.

  But now Dobby was retired, with nothing in the world to do except hold long and aimless conversations with anyone he could manage to nail down.

  As soon as I caught sight of him, I knew I was sunk.

  "I think it's admirable," said Dobby, leaning on his fence and launching into full-length discussion as soon as I was in voice distance, "for a man to have a hobby. But I submit it's inconsiderate of him to practice it so noisily at the crack of dawn."

  "You mean that," I said, making a thumb at the Belsen house, from which the screeching and the caterwauling still issued in full force.

  "Exactly," said Dobby, combing his white chin whiskers with an air of grave deliberation. "Now, mind me, not for a moment would I refuse the man the utmost admiration—"

  "Admiration?" I demanded. There are occasions when I have a hard time understanding Dobby. Not so much because of the pontifical way in which be talks as because of the way he thinks.

  "Precisely;" Debby told me. "Not for his machines, although they are electronic marvels, but for the way in which he engineers his tapes. The machine that he rigged up to turn out those tapes is a most versatile contraption. Sometimes it seems to be almost human."

  "When I was a boy," I said, "we had player pianos and the pianos ran on tapes."

  "Yes, Randall, you are right," admitted Dobby; "the principle was there, but the execution—think of the execution. All those old pianos had to do was tinkle merrily along, but Belsen has worked into his tapes the most delicate nuances."

  "I must have missed them nuances," I told him, without any charity at all. "All I've heard is racket."

  We talked about Belsen and his orchestra until Helen called me in for breakfast.

  I had no sooner sat down than she dragged out her grievance list.

  "Randall," she said, with determination, "the kitchen is positively crawling with grease ants again. They're so small you can hardly see them and all at once they're into everything."

  "I thought you got rid of them," I said.

  "I did. I tracked them to their nest and poured boiling water into it. But this time it's up to you."

  "Sure thing," I promised. "I'll do it right away."

  "That's what you said last time."

  "I was ready to," I told her, "but you beat me to it."

  "And that isn't all," she said. "There are those wasps up in the attic louvers. They stung the little Montgomery girl the other day."

  She was getting ready to say more, but just then Billy, our eleven year old, came stumbling down the stairs.

  "Look, Dad," he cried excitedly, holding out a small-size plastic box. "I have one here I've never seen before."

  I didn't have to ask one what. I knew it was another insect. Last year it had been stamp collecting and this year it was insects—and that's another thing about having an idle entomologist for a next door neighbor.

  I took the box without enthusiasm.

  "A ladybug," I said.

  "No, it's not," said Billy. "It's too big to be a ladybug. And the spots are different and the color is all wrong. This one is gold and a ladybug is orange."

  "Well, look it up," I said, impatiently. The kid will do anything to keep away from reading.

  "I did," said Billy. "I looked all through the book and I couldn't find it."

  "Oh, for goodness sakes," snapped Helen, "sit down and eat your breakfast. It's bad enough to be overrun with ants and wasps without you spending all your time catching other bugs."

  "But, Mom, it's educational," protested Billy. "That's what Dr. Wells says. He says there are seven hundred thousand known families of insects…"

  "Where did you find it, son?" I asked, a bit ashamed of how we both were jumping on him.

  "Right in my room," said Billy.

  "In the house!" screamed Helen. "Ants aren't bad enough…"

  "Soon as I get through eating, I'll show it to Dr. Wells."

  "Now, don't you pester Dobby."

  "I hope he pesters him a lot," Helen said, tight-lipped. "It was Dobby who got him started on this foolishness."

  I handed back the box and Billy put it down beside his plate and started in on breakfast.

  "Randall," Helen said, taking up her third point of complaint. "I don't know what I'm going to do with Nora."

  Nora was the cleaning woman. She came in twice a week.

  "What did she do this time?"

  "It's what she doesn't do. She simply will not dust. She just waves a cloth around and that's all there is to it. She won't move a lamp or vase."

  "Well, get someone else," I said.

  "Randall, you don't know what you're talking about. Cleaning women are hard to find and you can't depend on them. I was talking to Amy…"

  I listened and made the appropriate replies. I've heard it all before.

  As soon as I finished breakfast, I took off for the office. It was too early to see any prospects, but I had some policies to write up and some other work to do and I could use the extra hour or two.

  Helen phoned me shortly after noon and she was exasperated.

  "Randall," she said, without preamble, "someone has dumped a boulder in the middle of the garden."

  "Come again?" I said.

  "You know. A big rock. It squashed down all the dahlias."

  "Dahlias!" I yipped.

  "And the funny thing about it is there aren't any tracks. It would take a truck to move a rock that big and…"

  "Now, let's take this easy. How big, exactly, is this boulder?"

  "It's almost as tall as I am."

  "It's impossible!" I stormed. Then I tried to calm myself, "It's a joke," I said. "Someone played a joke."

  I searched my mind for someone who might have done it and I couldn't think of anyone who'd go to all the trouble involved in that sort of joke. There was George Montgomery, but George was a sobersides. And Belsen, but Belsen was too wrapped up in mus
ic to be playing any jokes. And Dobby—it was inconceivable he'd ever play a joke.

  "Some joke!" said Helen.

  Nobody in the neighborhood, I told myself, would have done a trick like that, Everyone knew I was counting on those dahlias to win me some more ribbons.

  "I'll knock off early," I told her, "and see what can be done about it."

  Although I knew there was precious little that could be done about it—just haul the thing away.

  "I'll be over at Amy" s," Helen said. "I'll try to get home early."

  I went out and saw another prospect, but I didn't do too well. All the time I was thinking of the dahlias.

  I knocked off work in the middle of the afternoon and bought a spray-can of insecticide at a drugstore. The label claimed it was effective against ants, roaches, wasps, aphids and a host of other pests.

  At home, Billy was sitting on the steps.

  "Hello, son. Nothing much to do?"

  "Me and Tommy Henderson played soldier for a while, but we got tired of it."

  I put the insecticide on the kitchen table, then headed for the garden. Billy trailed listlessly behind me.

  The boulder was there, squarely in the middle of the dahlia patch, and every bit as big as Helen said it was. It was a funny looking thing, not just a big slab-sided piece of rock, but a freckled looking job. It was a washed out red and almost a perfect globe.

  I walked around it, assessing the damage. There were a few of the dahlias left, but the better ones were gone. There were no tracks, no indication of how the rock might have gotten where it was. It lay a good thirty feet from the alleyway and someone might have used a crane to hoist it off a truck bed, but that seemed most unlikely, for a heavy nest of utility wires ran along the alley.

  I went up to the boulder and had a good, close look at it. The whole face of it was pitted with small, irregular holes, none of them much deeper than half an inch, and there were occasional smooth patches, with the darker luster showing, as if some part of the original surface had been knocked off, The darker, smoother patches had the shine of highly polished wax, and I remembered something from very long ago—when a onetime pal of mine had been a momentary rock collector.