The rolla by his side had sent out some sort of rallying call, pitched too high for the human ear to catch, and now the orchard rollas were tumbling down the slope in answer to that call.
The five rollas reached the fence and lined up in their customary row and their blackboard chests were alive with glowing characters — the strange, flickering, nonsensical characters of their native language. And the chest of the one who stood outside the fence with Doyle also flamed with the fleeting symbols, changing and shifting so swiftly that they seemed to be alive.
It was an argument, Doyle thought. The five inside the fence were arguing heatedly with the one who stood outside and there seemed an urgency in the argument that could not be denied.
He stood there, on the edge of embarrassment, an innocent bystander pocketed in a family squabble he could not understand.
The rollas were gesturing wildly now and the characters upon their chests glowed more brightly than ever as darkness deepened on the land.
A squalling night bird flew overhead and Doyle tilted up his head to watch it and as he did he saw the moving figures of running men outlined against the lighter sky on the north ridge of the orchard.
'Watch out!' he shouted and wondered even as he shouted why he should have shouted.
At the shout the five rollas whirled back to face the fence.
One set of symbols appeared upon each chest, as if suddenly they might have reached agreement, as if the argument might finally be resolved.
There was a creaking sound and Doyle looked up quickly.
Against the sky he could see the old oak tree was tipping, slanting slowly toward the fence, as if a giant hand had reached out and given it a push.
He watched for a puzzled second and the tilt continued and the speed of the fall picked up and he knew that the tree was crashing down upon the fence and the time had come to get out of there.
He stepped back a pace to turn around and flee and when he put his foot down there was no solid ground beneath it. He fought briefly to keep from falling, but he didn't have a chance. He fell and thumped into a crowded cavity and above him he heard the roaring rush of the falling tree and then the jarring thud as it hit the ground and the long, high whine of wires stretched so tight they pinged and popped.
Doyle lay quietly, afraid to move.
He was in a ditch of some sort. It was not very deep, not more than three feet at the most, but he was cramped at an awkward angle and there was an uncomfortable stone or root in the middle of his back.
Above him was a tracery of limbs and twigs, where the top of the oak had crashed across the ditch. And running through the fallen branches was a rolla, moving much more swiftly than one would have thought was possible.
From up the slope beyond the smashed-down fence came the bellowing of men and the sound of running feet.
Doyle huddled in his ditch glad of the darkness and of the shelter of the fallen tree.
The stone or root was still in his back and he wriggled to get off it. He slid off to one side and put out a hand to catch his balance and his hand came in contact with a mound of stuff that felt like sand.
And froze there. For just beyond the ditch, standing among the branches and the nettles, was a pair of legs and the loom of a body extending up into the darkness.
'They went down that way,' said a voice. 'Down into the woods. It will be hard to find them.'
Metcalfe's voice answered: 'We have to find them, Bill. We can't let them get away.'
There was a pause, then Bill said: T wonder what got into them. They seemed happy up till now.'
Metcalfe swore bitterly. 'It's that photographer. That fellow — what's his name — I saw him when he was in the tree and he got away that time. But he won't make it this time. I don't know what he did or what's going on, but he's in it, clear up to his neck. He's around here somewhere.'
Bill moved away a little and Metcalfe said, 'If you run into this photographer, you know what to do.'
'Sure, boss.'
'Medium-sized guy. Has a dopey way about him.'
They moved away. Doyle could hear them thrashing through the nettles, cursing as the nettles stung them.
Doyle shivered a little.
He had to get out and he had to make it fast, for before too long the moon would be coming up.
Metcalfe and his boys weren't fooling. They couldn't afford to fool in a deal like this. If they spotted him, more than likely they would shoot to kill.
Now, with everyone out hunting down the rollas, would be the time to get up to that orchard. Although the chances were that Metcalfe had men patrolling it.
Doyle gave the idea some consideration and dropped it. There was, now, just one thing to do and that was get to the car down on the river road as fast as he could make it.
Cautiously, he crawled out of the ditch. Once out of it, he crouched for long minutes in the tangle of fallen branches, listening for sound. There wasn't any sound.
He moved out into the nettles, following the path that had been crushed down by the men who had pursued the rollas. But, crushed down or not, some of the nettles pegged him.
Then he started down the slope, running for the woods.
Ahead of him a shout went up and he braked his speed and swerved. He reached a clump of brush and hurled himself behind it as other shouts went up and then two shots, fired in quick succession.
He saw it moving above the treetops, rising from the woods — a pale ghost of a thing that rose into the sky, with the red glint of early moonlight on it.
From it trailed a twisting line that had the appearance of a vine and from the vine hung a struggling doll-like figure that was screaming thinly. The ghost-like shape was stubby at the bottom and pointed at the top. It had the look about it of a ballooning Christmas tree and there was about it, too, even from a distance, a faint familiarity.
And suddenly Doyle linked up that familiarity — linked it to the woven mass of vegetation that had damned the creek bed. And as he linked it up, he knew without a question the nature of this Christmas tree riding in the sky.
The rollas worked with plants as Man would work with metals. They could grow a money tree and a protective strip of nettles that obeyed, they could make an oak tree fall and if they could do all that, the growing of a spaceship would not be too hard a job.
The ship was moving slowly, slanting up across the ridge, and the doll still struggled at the end of the trailing vine and its screams came down to earth as a far-off wailing sound.
Someone was shouting in the woods below:
'It's the boss! Bill, do something! It's the boss!'
It was quite apparent there was nothing Bill could do.
Doyle sprang from his bush and ran. Now was the time to make his dash, when all the other men were yelling and staring up into the sky, where Metcalfe dangled, screaming, from the trailing vine — perhaps an anchor vine, mayhaps just a part of the ro//«-grown spaceship that had become unravelled. Although, remembering the craftsmanship of that woven barrier blocking the creek-bed, it seemed unlikely to Doyle that anything would come unravelled from a rolla ship.
He could imagine what had happened — Metcalfe glimpsing the last of the rollas clambering up the ship and rushing at them, roaring, firing those two shots, then the ship springing swiftly upward and the trailing vine twisted round the ankle.
Doyle reached the woods and went plunging into it. The ground dropped sharply and he went plunging down the slope, stumbling, falling, catching himself and going on again. Until he ran full tilt into a tree that bounced him back and put exploding stars inside his skull.
He sat upon the ground where the impact had bounced him and felt of his forehead, convinced it was cracked open, while tears of pain streamed down his cheeks.
His forehead was not cracked and there seemed to be no blood, although his nose was skinned and one lip began to puff.
Then he got up and went on slowly, feeling his way along, for despite the moonlight, it was black-dark ben
eath the trees.
Finally he came to the dry stream-bed and felt his way along it.
He hurried as best he could, for he remembered Mabel waiting in the car. She'd be sore at him, he thought — she'd sure be plenty sore. He had gone and let her think he might be back by dark.
He came to the place where the woven strip of vegetation dammed the stream-bed and almost tumbled over it onto the rocks below.
He ran the flat of his hand across the polished surface of the strip of weaving and tried to imagine what might have happened those several years ago.
A ship plunging down to Earth, out of control perhaps, and shattering on impact, with Metcalfe close at hand to effect a rescue.
It beats all hell, he thought, how things at times turn out.
If it had not been Metcalfe, given someone else who did not think in dollar signs, there might now be trees or bushes or rows of vegetables carrying hopes such as mankind had never known before — hope for surcease from disease and pain, an end to poverty and fear. And perhaps many other hopes that no one now could guess.
And they were gone now, in a spaceship grown by the two deserting rollas under Metcalfe's very nose.
He squatted atop the dam and knew the blasted hopes of mankind, the hope that had never come to be, wrecked by avarice and greed.
Now they were gone — but, wait a minute, not entirely gone! For there was a rolla left. He had to believe that the deserting rolla he had never seen was with the others — but there was still his rolla, locked in the trunk of that old heap down on the river road!
He got up and stumbled through the darkness to the end of the dam and climbed around the clump of anchor trees. He skidded down the sharp incline to the stream-bed and went fumbling down the hollow.
What should he do, he wondered. Head straight for Washington? Go to the FBI?
For whatever else, no matter what might happen, that one remaining rolla must be gotten into proper hands.
Already there was too much lost. There could be no further chances taken. Placed in governmental or scientific hands, that one lone rolla might still retrieve much that had been lost.
He began to worry about what might have happened to the rolla, locked inside the trunk. He recalled that it had been banging for attention.
What if it is suffocated? What if there were something of importance, something abut its care, perhaps, that it had been vital that it tell him? What if that had been the reason for its banging on the trunk?
He fumbled down the stream-bed in sobbing haste, tripping on the gravel beds, falling over boulders. Mosquitoes flew a heavy escort for him and he flapped his hands to try and clear them off, but he was so worried that they seemed little more than an inconvenience.
Up in the orchard, more than likely, Metcalfe's mob was busy stripping trees, harvesting no one could guess how many millions in brand new, crinkly bills.
For now the jig was up and all of them would know it. Now there was nothing left to do but clean out the orchard and disappear as best they could.
Perhaps the money trees had required the constant attention of the rollas to keep on producing letter-perfect money. Otherwise why had Metcalfe had the rolla to tend the tree in town? And now, with the rollas gone, the trees might go on producing, but the money that they grew might be defective and irregular, like the growth of nubbin corn.
The slope of the land told him that he was near the road.
He went on blindly and suddenly came upon the car. He went around it in the dark and rapped upon the window.
Inside, Mabel screamed.
'It's all right,' yelled Doyle. 'It is me. I'm back.'
She unlocked the door and he climbed in beside her. She leaned against him and he put an arm around her.
'Sorry,' he said. 'Sorry that I took so long.'
'Did everything go all right, Chuck?'
'Yes,' he mumbled. 'Yes, I imagine that you could say it did.'
'I'm so glad,' she said, relieved. 'It is all right, then. The rolla ran away.'
'Ran away! For God's sake, Mabel…'
'Now, please don't go getting sore, Chuck. He kept on with that banging and I felt sorry for him. I was afraid, of course, but more sorry than afraid. So I opened up the trunk and let him out and it was OK. He was the sweetest little chap
'So he ran away,' said Doyle, still not quite believing it. 'But he might still be around somewhere, out there in the dark.'
'No,' said Mabel, 'he is not around. He went up the hollow as fast as he could go, like a dog when his master calls. It was dark and I was scared, but I ran after him. I called and kept on following, but it was no use — I knew that he was gone.'
She sat up straight in the seat.
'It don't make no difference now,' she said. 'You don't need him any longer. Although I am sorry that he ran away. He'da made a dandy pet. He talked so nice — so much nicer than a parakeet — and he was so good. I tied a ribbon, a yellow piece of ribbon around his neck and you never seen anything so cute.'
'I just bet he was,' said Doyle.
And he was thinking of a rolla, rocketing through space in a new-grown ship, heading out for a far-off sun and taking with him possibly some of man's greatest hopes, all fixed up and cute with a ribbon round his neck.
Party Line
I
Einstein did not come in. That was unusual. Very seldom was Einstein late or absent. Usually he was waiting, ready to take up again the patient teaching that had been going on for months. Jay Martin tried again.
— Einstein. Einstein. Are you there? Einstein was not there.
The console in front of Martin hummed and the sensor lights were flickering. The cubicle was quiet, an engineered quietness, insulated against all distraction. Martin reached up and adjusted the helmet more firmly on his head.
— Einstein. Einstein. Where are you?
A faint sense of beginning panic flicked across Martin's mind. Had Einstein finally given it all up as a bad job? Had he (or she, or it, or them?) simply slipped away, dropping him, finally despairing of making so ignorant a student understand what he had to say?
Something out there stirred, a thin whistle of distant emptiness. Strange, thought Martin, how it always came that way — the haunting sense of distant emptiness. When there was, in fact, no distance nor no emptiness involved. The carrier waves were immune to any of the limitations of the electromagnetic spectrum. Instantaneous, no lag, as if distance, matter, time did not exist.
— Einstein? he asked, convinced that it wasn't Einstein. It didn't feel like Einstein, although he would have been hard pressed if he had been called upon to tell how Einstein felt.
The thin whistle came again.
— Yes, said Martin, I'm here. Who are you?
And the voice (the thought? the pulse? the intelligence?) spoke.
— The turning point, it said.
— Unclear, said Martin. What turning point?
— The universe. The universe has reached its turning point. Universal death has started. The universe has reached its farthest point. It now is running down. Entropy has been accomplished.
— That, said Martin, is a strange way to say it.
— The universe always strove toward entropy.
— Not here, said Martin. No entropy here. The stars still burn.
— At the edge. The outer fringe. The universe at the edge has reached the point of entropy. Heat death. No more energy. And now is falling back. It is retreating.
The distance whistled. The emptiness keened.
— You are at the edge?
— Near the rim. That is how we know. Our measurement…
The distance howled, drowning out the words.
— How long? asked Martin. How long till the end?
— Equal to the time since the beginning. Our calculations -
— Fifteen billion years, said Martin.
— We do not grasp your measurement.
— Never mind, said Martin. It makes no difference. I should no
t have said it.
— The pity of it! The irony!
— What pity? What irony?
— We have tried so long. Everyone has tried so long. To understand the universe and now we have no time.
— We have lots of time. Another fifteen billion years.
— You may have. We haven't. We're too close to the rim. We are in the dying zone.
A cry for help, thought Martin. The moaning of self pity. And was shaken. For there'd never been a cry for help before.
The other caught his thought.
— No cry for help, it said. There is no help. This is warning only.
The pulse, the thought cut off. Distance and emptiness whistled for a moment and then it, too, cut off.
Martin sat huddled in his cubicle, the weight of all that distance, all that emptiness crashing down upon him.
II
The day began badly for Paul Thomas.
The desk communicator chirped at him.
'Yes,' he said.
His secretary's voice said, 'Mr. Russell is here to see you.'
Thomas grimaced. 'Show him in,' he said.
Russell was prissy and precise. He came into the office and sat down in a chair across the desk from Thomas.
'What can I do for R&D this morning?' Thomas asked, ignoring all conversational preliminaries. Russell was a man who was impatient with social amenities.
'A lot more than you're doing,' Russell said. 'Goddammit, Paul, I know that you are hip-deep in data. It's piling up on you. We haven't had a thing from you in the last six months. I know the rules, of course, but aren't you giving them too strict an interpretation?'
'What are you interested in?'
'The faster-than-light business for one thing. I happen to know that Martin…'
'Martin still is working on it.'
'He must have something. Besides being a good telepath, he also happens to be a top-notch astrophysicist.'
'That's true,' said Thomas. 'We don't often get a man like him. Mostly, it's a raw farm boy or some girl who is clerking in the five-and-dime. We're running recruiting programs all the time, but…'
The Creator and Other Stories Page 18