Who, he wondered, could have, or would have, done a job like that? Where would the patience have been mustered and the technique and the purpose? He shook his head in wonderment.
He had heard somewhere about Indians weaving brush together to make weirs for catching fish, but there were no fish in this dry stream bed and no Indians for several hundred miles.
He tried to figure out the pattern of the weaving and there was no pattern that he could detect. Everything was twisted and intergrown around everything else and the whole thing was one solid mass.
Somewhat rested and with his wind at least partially restored, he proceeded on his way, trailing a ravaging cloud of mosquitoes in his wake.
It seemed now that the trees were thinning and that he could see blue sky ahead. The terrain leveled out a bit and he tried to hurry, but racked leg muscles screamed at him and he contented himself with jogging along as best he could.
He reached more level ground and finally broke free into a clearing that climbed gently to the top of a grassy knoll. Wind came out of the west, no longer held back by the trees, and the mosquitoes fell away, except for a small swarm of diehards that went part way up the knoll with him.
He reached the top of the knoll and threw himself in the grass, lying flat, panting like a tuckered dog.
And there, not more than a hundred yards away, was the fence that closed in Metcalfe's farm.
It marched across the rolling, broken hills, a snake of shining metal. And extending out from it was a broad swath of weeds, waist-high, silver-green in the blasting sunlight — as if the ground had been plowed around the fence for a distance of a hundred feet or so and the weeds sown in the ground as one might sow a crop. Doyle squinted his eyes to try to make out what kind of weeds they were, but he was too far away.
Far on the distant ridge was the red gleam of a rooftop among many sheltering trees and to the west of the buildings lay an orchard, ordered row on row.
Was it, Doyle wondered, only his imagination that the shapes of those orchard trees were the remembered shape of the night-seen tree in the walled garden in the rear of Metcalfe's town-house? And was it once more only his imagination that the green of them was slightly different than the green of other leaves — the green, perhaps of mint-new currency?
He lay in the grass, with the fingers of the wind picking at his sweat-soaked shirt, and wondered about the legal aspects of money that was grown on trees. It could not be counterfeit, for it was not made but grown. And if it were identical with perfectly legal, government-printed money, could anyone prove in any court of law that it was bogus money? He didn't know much law, but he wondered if there could be any statute upon the books that would cover a point of law like this? Probably not, he concluded, since it was so fantastic that it could not be anticipated and thus would require no rule to legislate against it.
And now, for the first time, he began really to wonder how money could be grown on trees. He had told Mabel, off-handedly and casual, so she wouldn't argue, that a botanist could do anything. But that wasn't entirely right, of course, because a botanist only studied plants and learned what he could about them. But there were those other fellows — these bio-something or other — who fooled around with changing plants. They bred grasses that would grow on land that would grow no more than thistles, they cross-pollinated corn to grow more and bigger ears, they developed grains that were disease-resistant, and they did a lot of other things. But developing a tree that would grow letter-perfect money in lieu of leaves seemed just a bit far-fetched.
The sun beat against his back and he felt the heat of it through his drying shirt. He looked at his watch and it was almost three o'clock.
He turned his attention back to the orchard and this time he saw that many little figures moved among the trees. He strained his eyes to see them better, but he could not be sure — although they looked for all the world like a gang of ralias.
He crawled down the knoll and across the strip of grass toward the weeds. He kept low and inched along and was very careful. His only hope of making a deal, any kind of deal, with Metcalfe, was to come upon him unawares and let him know immediately what kind of hand he held.
He started worrying about how Mabel might be getting along, but he wiped the worry out. He had enough to worry about without adding to it. And, anyhow, Mabel was quite a gal and could take care of herself.
He began running through his mind alternate courses of action if he should fail to locate Metcalfe, and the most obvious, of course, was to attempt a raid upon the orchard. As he thought it over, he wasn't even sure but what a raid upon the orchard might be the thing to do. He wished he'd brought along the sugar sack Mabel had fixed up for him.
The fence worried him a little, but he also thrust that worry to one side. It would be time enough to worry about the fence once he got to it.
He slithered through the grass and he was doing swell. He was almost to the strip of weeds and no one apparently had seen him. Once he got to the weeds, it would be easier, for they would give him cover. He could sneak right up to the fence and no one would ever notice.
He reached the weeds and wilted at what he saw.
The weeds were the healthiest and thickest patch of nettles that had ever grown outdoors!
He put out a tentative hand and the nettles stung. They were the real McCoy. Ruefully, he rubbed at the dead-white welts rising on his fingers.
He raised himself cautiously to peer above the nettles. One of the rollas was coming down the slope toward the fence and there was no doubt now that the things he'd seen up in the orchard was a gang of rollas.
He ducked behind the nettles, hoping that the rolla had not seen him. He lay flat upon the ground and the sun was hot and the place upon his hand that had touched the nettles blazed with fire, although it was hard to decide which was the worst — the nettle sting or all the mosquito lumps that had blossomed out on him.
He noticed that the nettles were beginning to wave and toss as if they were blowing in the wind and that was a funny deal, for there wasn't that much wind.
The nettles kept on blowing and all at once they parted right in front of him, running in a straight line, making a path between him and the fence. The nettles on the right blew to the right so hard they lay flat upon the ground and those to the left blew to the left so hard they were likewise on the ground and the path was there, without a thing to stop one walking to the fence.
The rolla stood just beyond the fence and he spelled out a message in large capital letters upon his blackboard chest:
COME ON OVER, HEEL!
Doyle hesitated, filled with dismay. It was a rotten break that he had been discovered by this little stinker. Now the cat was out the bag for sure, and all his toiling up the hollow, all his sneaking through the grass stood for absolutely nothing.
He saw that the other rollas were waddling down the slope toward the fence, while the first rolla still stood there, with the invitation on his chest.
Then the lettering on the rolla flickered out. The nettles still stayed down and the path stayed open. The rollas who had been coming down the slope reached the fence and all of them — all five of them — lined up in a solemn row. The first one's chest lit up with words:
WE HAVE THREE MISSING ROLLAS
And the chest of the second one: DO YOU BRING WORD TO US? And the third:
WE WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO YOU
The fourth:
ABOUT THE MISSING ONES
The fifth:
PLEASE COME TO US, HEEL.
Doyle raised himself from where he had been lying flat upon the ground and squatted on his toes.
It could be a trap.
What could he gain by talking with the rollasl
But there was no way to retreat without losing what little advantage he might have — there was no choice but to do his best at brazening it out.
He rose to his feet and ambled down the nettle-path with as slight a show of concern as he could manage.
&nbs
p; He reached the fence and hunkered down so that he was almost level with the rollas.
'I know where one of the missing rollas is,' he said, 'but not the other two.'
YOU KNOW ABOUT THE
ONE WHO WAS IN TOWN WITH METCALFE?
That's right.'
YOU TELL US WHERE HE IS
'I'll make a deal,' said Doyle.
All five of them asked, DEAL?
Til tell you where he is; you do something for me. You let me up into that orchard for an hour tonight, then let me out again. Without letting Metcalfe know.'
They huddled, conferring, their blackboard fronts a-squiggle with the queer, confusing symbols Doyle had seen on the rolla's chest back in Metcalfe's garden.
Then they turned to face him again, the five of them lined up, shoulder to shoulder:
WE CANNOT DO THAT WE MADE AN AGREEMENT AND WE GAVE OUR WORD WE GROW THE MONEY METCALFE DISTRIBUTES IT
'I wouldn't distribute it,' said Doyle. 'I promise that I wouldn't. I'd keep it for myself.'
NO SOAP, spelled out rolla No. 1. This agreement that you have with Metcalfe. How come you made it?'
GRATITUDE, said No. 2.
'Don't mind my snickering, but gratitude for Metcalfe…'
HE FOUND US AND HE RESCUED AND PROTECTED US AND WE ASKED HIM WHAT CAN WE DO?
'And he said, grow me some money.'
HE SAY THE PLANET NEEDED MONEY HE SAY MONEY MAKE HAPPY ALL POOR HEELS LIKE YOU
'The hell you say,' said Doyle, aghast.
WE GROW IT HE DISTRIBUTE IT BETWEEN US WE MAKE ALL THE PLANET HAPPY
'Just a bunch of missionaries!'
WE DO NOT READ YOU, CHUM
'Missionaries. People who do good.'
WE DO GOOD
ON MANY PLANETS
WHY NOT DO GOOD HERE?
'But money?'
THAT WHAT METCALFE SAY HE SAY PLANET HAS PLENTY OF ALL ELSE BUT IS SHORT ON MONEY.
'What about the other two rollas that are missing?'
THEY DISAGREE THEY LEAVE WE WORRY MUCH ABOUT THEM.
'You disagreed on growing money? They thought, maybe, you should grow something else?'
WE DISAGREE ON METCALFE TWO SAY HE TRICK US. REST OF US SAY HE VERY NOBLE HUMAN
What a bunch of creeps, thought Doyle. Very noble human!
WE TALK ENOUGH NOW WE SAY GOODBYE.
They turned around, almost as if someone had shouted orders at them, and went stumping up the slope, back toward the orchard.
'Hey!' yelled Doyle, leaping to his feet.
Behind him was a rustle and he whirled around.
The nettles that had been laid to either side to make the path were rising, wiping out the path!
'Hey!' yelled Doyle again, but the rollas paid no attention to him. They went on stumping up the slope.
Doyle stood in his little trampled area, wedged against the fence, and all around him were the nettles — upright and strong and bright in the afternoon. They stretched in a solid mass at least a hundred feet back from the fence and they were shoulder high.
A man could manage to get through them. They could be kicked aside and trampled down, but some of them would be bound to peg a man and by the time one got out of there he'd have plenty welts.
And did he, at the moment, really want to get out of there?
He was, he told himself, no worse off than he had been before. Better off, perhaps, for he was through the nettles.
Better off, that is, if those stinking little rollas didn't run and tattle on him.
There was no sense, he decided, in going through the nettles now. If he did, in just a couple of hours or so he'd have to wade back through them once again to reach the fence.
He couldn't climb the fence until it was getting dark and he had no place else to go.
He took a good look at the fence and it would be a tough one to get over. It was a good eight feet of woven wire and atop that were three strands of barbed wire, attached to an arm-like bracket that extended outward beyond the woven fence.
Just beyond the fence stood an ancient oak tree and if he had had a rope he could make a lariat — but he had no rope, and if he wanted to get over the fence, he would somehow have to climb it.
He hunkered tight against the ground and felt downright miserable. His body was corrugated with mosquito lumps and the nettle welts on his hand had turned into blisters and he'd had a bit more sun than he was accustomed to. And now the upper molar on the left side of his jaw was developing a sort of galloping ache. All he needed.
He sneezed and it hurt his head to sneeze and the aching tooth gave a bounding leap.
Maybe, he figured, it was the pollen from those lousy nettles.
Never saw no nettles like them before, he told himself, eying them warily.
More than likely the rollas had a hand in growing them. The rollas were good with plants. They had developed the money trees and if they could develop money trees there wasn't anything they couldn't do with plants. He remembered how the nettles had fallen over to the left and right to make a path for him. It had been the rolla, he was sure, who had made them do that, for there hadn't been enough wind to do it and even if there had been a wind, there wasn't any wind that blew two ways at once.
There was nothing like the rollas in the world. And that might be exactly it. They'd said something about doing good on other worlds. But no matter what they'd done on other worlds, they'd sure been suckered here.
Do-gooders, he thought. Missionaries, maybe, from some other world, from some place out in space — a roving band of beings devoted to a cause. And trapped into a ridiculous situation on a planet that might have little, if anything, in common with any other world they'd ever seen.
Did they even, he wondered, understand what money was? Just what kind of story had Metcalfe palmed off on them?
They had arrived and Metcalfe, of all persons, had stumbled onto them and taken them in tow. Metcalfe, not so much a man as an organization that from long experience would know exactly how to exploit a situation such as the rollas offered. One man alone could not have handled it, could not have done all that needed to be done to set up the rollas for the kill. And only in an organization such as Metcalfe headed, long schooled in the essentials of self preservation, could there have been any hope of maintaining the essential secrecy.
The rollas had been duped — completely, absolutely fooled — and yet they were no fools. They had learned the language, not the spoken language only, but both the spoken and the written, and that spelled sharp intelligence. Perhaps more intelligence than was first apparent, for they did not make use of sound in their normal talk among themselves. But they had adapted readily, it seemed, to sound communication.
The sun long since had disappeared behind the nettles and now was just above the tree line of the bluffs. Dusk would be coming soon and then, Doyle told himself, he could get busy.
He debated once again which course he should take. By now the rollas might have told Metcalfe he was at the fence and Metcalfe might be waiting for him, although Metcalfe, if he knew, more than likely would not just wait, but would be coming out to get him. And as for the raid upon the orchard — he'd had trouble enough with just one rolla when he tried to rob a tree. He didn't like to think what five might do to him.
Behind him the nettles began to rustle and he leaped to his feet. Maybe, he thought wildly, they were opening up the path again. Maybe the path was opened automatically, at regularly scheduled hours. Maybe the nettles were like four o'clocks or morning glories — maybe they were engineered by the ralias to open and to close the path so many times a day.
And what he imagined was the truth in part. A path, he saw, was opening. And waddling down the path was another rolla. The path opened in front of him and then closed as he passed.
The rolla came out into the trampled area and stood facing Doyle.
GOOD EVENING, HEEL, he said.
It couldn't be the rolla locked in the trunk of the car down on the river road. It must,
Doyle told himself, be one of the two that had walked out on the money project.
YOU SICK? the rolla asked.
'I itch just something awful and my tooth is aching and every time I sneeze the top of my head comes off.'
COULD FIX
'Sure, you could grow a drug-store tree, sprouting lina-ments and salves and pills and all the other junk.'
SIMPLE, spelled the rolla.
'Well, now,' said Doyle and then tried to say no more. For suddenly it struck him that it would be as the rolla said — very, very simple.
Most medicines came from plants and there wasn't anyone or anything that could engineer a plant the way the rollas could.
'You're on the level there,' said Doyle enthusiastically. 'You would be able to cure a lot of things. You might find a cure for cancer and you might develop something that would hold off heart disease. And there's the common cold…'
SORRY, PAL, BUT WE ARE OFF OF YOU. YOU MADE SAPS OF US.
Then you are one of them that ran away,' said Doyle in some excitement. 'You saw through Metcalfe's game…'
But the rolla was paying no attention to anything he said. It had drawn itself a little straighter and a little taller and it had formed its lips into a circle as if it might be getting ready to let out a bay and the sides of its throat were quivering as if it might be singing, but there was no sound.
No sound, but a rasping shrillness that skidded on one's nerves, a something in the air that set one's teeth on edge.
It was an eerie thing, that sense of singing terror in the silence of the dusk, with the west wind blowing quietly along the tops of the darkening trees, with the silky rustle of the nettles and somewhere in the distance the squeaking of a chipmunk homeward bound on the last trip of the day.
Out beyond the fence came the thumping of awkward running feet and in the thickening dusk Doyle saw the five rollas from the orchard plunging down the slope.
There was something going on. Doyle was sure of that. He sensed the importance of the moment and the excitement that was in it, but there was no inkling of what it all might mean.
The Creator and Other Stories Page 17