All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  The Caphians had come to their feet and were looking at him. He could see that they were hoping he'd get his head bashed in.

  The proprietor hurled the camera with great violence to the floor. It came apart with an ugly, splintering sound. The film rolled free and snaked across the floor. The lens wobbled crazily. A spring came unloose from somewhere and went — zing-. It stood out at an angle, quivering.

  Hart gathered his feet beneath him, and leaped out from the table. The Caphians started moving in on him — not rushing him, not threatening him in any way. They just kept walking toward him and spreading out so that he couldn't make a dash for the door.

  He backed away, step by careful step, and the Caphians still continued their steady advance.

  Suddenly he leaped straight toward them in a direct assault on the center of the line. He yelled and lowered his head and caught Green Shirt squarely in the belly. He felt the Caphian stagger and lurch to one side, and for a split second he thought that he had broken free.

  But a hairy, muscular hand reached out and grabbed him and flung him to the floor. Someone kicked him. Someone stepped on his fingers. Someone else picked him up and threw him — straight through the open door into the street outside.

  He landed on his back and skidded, with the breath completely knocked out of him. He came to rest with a jolt against the curbing opposite the place from which he had been heaved.

  The Caphians, the full dozen of them, were grouped around the doorway, aroar with booming laughter. They slapped their thighs, and pounded one another on the back. They doubled over, shrieking. They shouted pleasantries and insults at him. Half of the jests he did not understand, but the ones that registered were enough to make his blood run cold.

  He got up cautiously, and tested himself, He was considerably bruised and battered and his clothes were torn. But seemingly he had escaped any broken bones. He tried a few steps, limping. He tried to run and was surprised to find that he could.

  Behind him the Caphians were still laughing. But there was no telling at what moment they might cease to think that his predicament was funny and start after him in earnest — for blood.

  He raced down the street and ducked into an alley that led to a tangled square. He crossed the square into another street without pausing for breath and went running on. Finally he became satisfied that he was safe and sat down on a doorstep in an alley to regain his breath and carefully review the situation.

  The situation, he realized, was bad. He not only had failed to get the character he needed; he had lost the camera, suffered a severe humiliation and barely escaped with his life.

  There wasn't a thing that he could do about it. Actually, he told himself, he had been extremely lucky. For he didn't have a legal leg to stand on. He'd been entirely in the wrong. To film a character without the permission of the character's original was against the law.

  It wasn't that he was a lawbreaker, he thought. It wasn't as if he'd deliberately set out to break the law. He'd been forced into it. Anyone who might have consented to serve as a character would have demanded money — more money than he was in a position to shell out.

  But he did desperately need a character! He simply had to have one, or face utter defeat.

  He saw that the sun had set, and that twilight was drifting in. The day, he thought, had been utterly wasted, and he had only himself to blame.

  A passing police officer stopped and looked into the alley.

  "You," he said to Hart. "What are you sitting there for?"

  "Resting," Hart told him.

  "All right. You're rested. Now get a move on."

  Hart got a move on.

  He was nearing home when he heard the crying in the areaway between an apartment house and a bindery. It was a funny sort of crying, a not-quite-human crying — perhaps not so much a crying as a sound of grief and loneliness.

  He halted abruptly and stared around him. The crying had cut off, but soon it began again. It was a low and empty crying, a hopeless crying, a crying to one's self.

  For a moment he stood undecided, then started to go on. But he had not gone three paces before he turned back. He stepped into the areaway and at the second step his foot touched something lying on the ground.

  He squatted and looked at the form that lay there, crying to itself. It was a bundle — that described it best — a huddled, limp, sad bundle that moaned heartbrokenly.

  He put a hand beneath it and lifted it and was surprised at how little weight it had. Holding it firmly with one hand, he searched with the other for his lighter. He flicked the lighter and the flame was feeble, but he saw enough to make his stomach flop. It was an old blanket with a face that once had started out to be humanoid and then, for some reason, had been forced to change its mind. And that was all there was — a blanket and a face.

  He thumbed the lighter down and crouched in the dark, his breath rasping in his throat. The creature was not only an alien. It was, even by alien standards, almost incredible. And how had an alien strayed so far from the spaceport? Aliens seldom wandered. They never had the time to wander, for the ships came in, freighted up with fiction, and almost immediately took off again. The crews stayed close to the rocket berths, seldom venturing farther than the dives along the riverfront.

  He rose, holding the creature bundled across his chest as one would hold a child — it was not as heavy as a child — and feeling the infant-like warmth of it against his body and a strange companionship. He stood in the areaway while his mind went groping back in an effort to unmask the faint recognition he had felt. Somewhere, somehow, it seemed he once had heard or read of an alien such as this. But surely that was ridiculous, for aliens did not come, even the most fantastic of them, as a living blanket with the semblance of a face.

  He stepped out into the street and looked down to examine the face again. But a portion of the creature's blanket-body had draped itself across its features and he could see only a waving blur.

  Within two blocks be reached the Bright Star bar, went around the corner to the side door and started up the stairs. Footsteps were descending and he squeezed himself against the railing to let the other person past.

  "Kemp," said Angela Maret. "Kemp, what have you there?"

  "I found it in the street," Hart told her.

  He shifted his arm a little and the blanket-body slipped and she saw the face. She moved back against the railing, her hand going to her mouth to choke off a scream.

  "Kemp! How awful!"

  "I think that it is sick. It —»

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I don't know," Hart said. "It was crying to itself. It was enough to break your heart. I couldn't leave it there."

  "I'll get Doc Julliard."

  Hart shook his head. "That wouldn't do any good. Doc doesn't know any alien medicine. Besides, he's probably drunk."

  "No one knows any alien medicine," Angela reminded him. "Maybe we could get one of the specialists uptown." Her face clouded. "Doc is resourceful, though. He has to be down here. Maybe he could tell us —»

  "All right," Hart said. "See if you can rout out Doc."

  In his room he laid the alien on the bed. It was no longer whimpering. Its eyes were closed and it seemed to be asleep, although he could not be sure.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and studied it and the more he looked at it the less sense it seemed to make. Now he could see how thin the blanket body was, how light and fragile. It amazed him that a thing so fragile could live at all, that it could contain in so inadequate a body the necessary physiological machinery to keep itself alive.

  He wondered if it might be hungry and if so what kind of food it required. If it were really ill how could he hope to take care of it when he didn't know the first basic thing about it?

  Maybe Doc — But no, Doc would know no more than he did. Doc was just like the rest of them, living hand to mouth, cadging drinks whenever he could get them, and practicing medicine without adequate equipment and with a kno
wledge that had stopped dead in its tracks forty years before.

  He heard footsteps coming up the stairs — light steps and trudging heavy ones. It had to be Angela with Doc. She had found him quickly and that probably meant he was sober enough to act and think with a reasonable degree of coordination.

  Doc came into the room, followed by Angela. He put down his bag and looked at the creature on the bed.

  "What have we here?" he asked and probably it was the first time in his entire career that the smug doctorish phrase made sense.

  "Kemp found it in the street," said Angela quickly. "It's stopped crying now."

  "Is this a joke?" Doc asked, half wrathfully. "If it is, young man, I consider it in the worst possible taste."

  Hart shook his head. "It's no joke. I thought that you might know —»

  "Well, I don't," said Doc, with aggressive bitterness.

  He let go of the blanket edge and it quickly flopped back upon the bed.

  He paced up and down the room for a turn or two. Then he whirled angrily on Angela and Hart.

  "I suppose you think that I should do something," he said. "I should at least go through the motions. I should act like a doctor. I'm sure that is what you're thinking. I should take its pulse and its temperature and look at its tongue and listen to its heart. Well, suppose you tell me how I do these things. Where do I find the pulse? If I could find it, what is its normal rate? And if I could figure out some way to take its temperature, what is the normal temperature for a monstrosity such as this? And if you would be so kind, would you tell me how — short of dissection — I could hope to locate the heart?"

  He picked up his bag and started for the door.

  "Anyone else, Doc?" Hart pleaded, in a conciliatory tone. "Anyone who'd know?"

  "I doubt it," Doc snapped.

  "You mean there's — no one- who can do a thing? Is that what you're trying to say?"

  "Look, son. Human doctors treat human beings, period. Why should we be expected to do more? How often are we called upon to treat an alien? We're not — expected- to treat aliens. Oh, possibly, once in a while some specialist or researcher may dabble in alien medicine. But that is the correct name for it — just plain dabbling. It takes years of a man's life to learn barely enough to qualify as a human doctor. How many lifetimes do you think we should devote to curing aliens?"

  "All right, Doc. All right."

  "And how can you even be sure there" s. something wrong with it?"

  "Why, it was crying and I quite naturally thought —»

  "It might have been lonesome or frightened or grieving. It might have been lost."

  Doc turned to the door again.

  "Thanks, Doc," Hart said.

  "Not at all." The old man hesitated at the door. "You don't happen to have a dollar, do you? Somehow, I ran a little short."

  "Here," said Hart, giving him a bill.

  "I'll return it tomorrow," Doc promised. He went clumping down the stairs.

  Angela frowned. "You shouldn't have done that, Kemp. Now he'll get drunk and you'll be responsible."

  "Not on a dollar," Hart said confidently. "That's all you know about it. The kind of stuff Doc drinks —»

  "Let him get drunk then. He deserves a little fun."

  "But — " Angela motioned to the thing upon the bed.

  "You heard what Doc said. He can't do anything. No one can do anything. When it wakes up — if it wakes up

  • it may be able to tell us what is wrong with it. But I'm not counting on that."

  He walked over to the bed and stared down at the creature. It was repulsive and abhorrent and not in the least humanoid. But there was about it a pitiful loneliness and an incongruity that made a catch come to his

  throat.

  "Maybe I should have left it in the areaway," he said. "I started to walk on. But when it began to cry again I went back to it. Maybe I did wrong bothering with it at all. I haven't helped it any. If I'd left it there it might have turned out better. Some other aliens may be looking for it by now."

  "You did right," said Angela. "Don't start in fighting with windmills."

  She crossed the room and sat down in a chair. He went over to the window and stared somberly out across the city.

  "What happened to you?" she asked. "Nothing."

  "But your clothes. Just look at your clothes."

  "I got thrown out of a dive. I tried to take some film."

  "Without paying for it."

  "I didn't have the money."

  "I offered you a fifty."

  "I know you did. But I couldn't take it. Don't you understand, Angela? — I simply couldn't take it. — "

  She said softly, "You're bad off, Kemp."

  He swung around, outraged. She hadn't needed to say that. She had no right to say it. She — He caught himself up before the words came tumbling out

  She had a right. She'd offered him a fifty — but that had been only a part of it. She had the right to say it because she knew that she could say it. No one else in all the world could have felt the way she did, about him.

  "I can't write," he said. "Angela, no matter how I try, I can't make it come out right. The machine is haywire and the tapes are threadbare and most of them are patched."

  "What have you had to eat today?"

  "I had the beers with you and I had some — bocca-."

  "That isn't eating. You wash your face and change into some different clothes and we'll go downstairs and get you some food."

  "I have eating money."

  "I know you have. You told me about the advance from Irving."

  "It wasn't an advance."

  "I know it wasn't, Kemp."

  "What about the alien?"

  "It'll be all right — at least long enough for you to get a bite to eat. You can't help it by standing here. You don't know how to help it."

  "I guess you're right."

  "Of course I am. Now get going and wash your dirty face. And don't forget your ears."

  Jasper Hansen was alone in the Bright Star bar. They went over to his table and sat down. Jasper was finishing a dish of sauerkraut and pig's knuckles and was drinking wine with it, which seemed a bit blasphemous.

  "Where's everyone else?" asked Angela. "There's a party down the street," said Jasper. "Someone sold a book."

  "Someone that we know?"

  "Hell, no," Jasper said. "Just someone sold a book. You don't have to know a guy to go to his party when he sells a book."

  "I didn't hear anything about it."

  "Neither did the rest of the bunch. Someone looked in at the door and hollered about the party and everyone took off. Everyone but me. I can't monkey with no party. I've got work to do."

  "Free food?" asked Angela.

  "Yeah. Don't it beat you, though. Here we are, honorable and respected craftsmen, and every one of us will break a leg to grab himself a sandwich and a drink."

  "Times are tough," said Hart.

  "Not with me," said Jasper. "I keep working all the time."

  "But work doesn't solve the main problem."

  Jasper regarded him thoughtfully, tugging at his chin.

  "What else is there?" he demanded. "Inspiration? Dedication? Genius? Go ahead and name it. We are rnechanics, man. We got machines and tapes. We went into top production two hundred years ago. We mechanized so we could go into top production so that people could turn out books and stories even if they had no talent at all. We got a job to do. We got to turn out tons of drivel for the whole damn galaxy. We got to keep them drooling over what is going to happen next to sloe-eyed Annie, queen of the far-flung spaceways. And we got to shoot up the lad with her and patch him up and shoot him up and patch him up and…"

  He reached for an evening paper, opened it to a certain page and thumped his fist upon it.

  "Did you see this?" he asked. "The Classic, they call it. Guaranteed to turn out nothing but a classic."

  Hart snatched the paper from him and there it was, the wondrous yarner he had
seen that morning, confronting him in all its glory from the center of a full-page

  "Pretty soon," said Jasper, "all you'll need to write is have a lot of money. You can go out and buy a machine like that and say turn out a story and press a button or flip a switch or maybe simply kick it and it'll cough out a story complete to the final exclamation point.

  "It used to be that you could buy an old beat-up machine for, say, a hundred dollars and you could turn out any quantity of stuff — not good, but salable. Today you got to have a high-priced machine and an expensive camera and a lot of special tape and film. Someday," he said, "the human race will outwit itself. Someday it will mechanize to the point where there won't be room for humans, but only for machines."

  "You do all right," said Angela.

  "That's because I keep dinging my machine up all the time. It don't give me no rest. That place of mine is half study and half machine shop and I know as much about electronics as I do about narration."

  Blake came shuffling over.

  "What'll it be?" he growled.

  "I've eaten," Angela told him. "All I want is a glass of beer."

  He turned to Hart. "How about you" he demanded.

  "Give me some of that stuff Jasper has — without the wine.

  "No cuff," said Blake.

  "Damn it, who said anything about cuff? Do you expect me to pay you before you bring it?"

  "No," said Blake. "But immediately, after I bring it."

  He turned and shuffled off.

  "Some day," said Jasper, "there has to be a limit to it. There must be a limit to it and we must be reaching it. You can only mechanize so far. You can assign only so many human activities and duties to intelligent machines. Who, two hundred years ago, would have said that the writing of fiction could have been reduced to a matter of mechanics?"

  "Who, two hundred years ago," said Hart, "could have guessed that Earth could gear itself to a literary culture? But that is precisely what we have today. Sure, there are factories that build the machines we need and lumbermen who cut the trees for pulp and farmers who grow the food, and all the other trades and skills which are necessary to keep a culture operative. But by and large Earth today is principally devoted to the production of a solid stream of fiction for the alien trade."