If it were really humanoid, I told myself, then it meant that at one time a thing like man had lived here. And could it mean that something very similar to the human race still resided here?
A planet full of flowers—with nothing living on it except the purple flowers, and more lately Tupper Tyler. That was what I’d thought when I had seen the flowers spreading to the far horizons, but it had been supposition only. It was a conclusion I had jumped to without too much evidence. Although it was in part supported by the seeming fact that nothing else existed in this particular place—no birds, no insects or animals, not a thing at all, except perhaps some bacteria and viruses and even these, I thought, might be essential to the well-being of the Flowers.
Although the outer surface of the bone had chalked off when I picked it up, it seemed sound in structure. Not too long ago, I knew, it had been a part of a living thing. Its age probably would depend to a large extent upon the composition and the moistness of the soil and probably many other factors. It was a problem for an expert and I was no expert.
Now I saw something else, a little spot of whiteness just to the right of me. It could have been a white stone lying on the ground, but even as I looked at it I didn’t think it was. It had that same chalky whiteness of the rib I had picked up.
I moved over to it and as I bent above it I could see it was no stone. I let the rib drop from my fingers and began to dig. The soil was loose and sandy and although I had no tools, my fingers served the purpose.
As I dug, the bone began to reveal its shape and in a moment I knew it was a skull—and only a little later that it was a human skull.
I dug it loose and lifted it and while I might have failed to identify the rib, there was no mistaking this.
I hunkered on the slope and felt pity well inside of me, pity for this creature that once had lived and died—and a growing fear, as well.
For by the evidence of the skull I held within my hands, I knew for a certainty that this was not the home world of the Flowers. This was—this must be—a world that they had conquered, or at least had taken over. They might, indeed, I thought, be very far in time from that old home where another race (by their description of it, a non-human race) had trained them to intelligence.
How far back, I wondered, lay the homeland of the Flowers? How many conquered earths lay between this world and the one where they had risen? How many other earths lay empty, swept clean of any life that might compete with the Flowers?
And that other race, the race that had raised and elevated them above their vegetable existence—where was that old race today?
I put the skull back into the hole from which I’d taken it. Carefully, I brushed back the sand and dirt until it was covered once again, this time entirely covered, with no part of it showing. I would have liked to take it back to camp with me so I could have a better look at it. But I knew I couldn’t, for Tupper must not know what I had found. His mind was an open book to his friends the Flowers, and I was sure mine wasn’t, for they had had to use the telephone to get in touch with me. So long as I told Tupper nothing, the Flowers would never know that I had found the skull. There was the possibility, of course, that they already knew, that they had the sense of sight, or perhaps some other sense that was as good as sight. But I doubted that they had; there was so far no evidence they had. The best bet was that they were mental symbiots, that they had no awareness beyond the awareness they shared with minds in other kinds of life.
I worked my way around and down the mound and along the way I found other blocks of stone. It was becoming evident to me that at some other time a building had stood upon this site. A city, I wondered, or a town? Although whatever form it might have taken, it had been a dwelling place.
I reached the creek at the far end of the mound, where it ran close against the cutbank it had chewed out of the mound, and started wading back to the place where I had crossed.
The sun had set and with it had gone the diamond sparkle of the water. The creek ran dark and tawny in the shadow of the first twilight.
Teeth grinned at me out of the blackness of the bank that rose above the stream, and I stopped dead, staring at that row of snaggled teeth and the whiteness of the bone that arched above them. The water, tugging at my ankles, growled a little at me and I shivered in the chill that swept down from the darkening hills.
For, staring at that second skull, grinning at me out of the darkness of the soil that stood poised above the water, I knew that the human race faced the greatest danger it had ever known. Except for man himself, there had been, up to this moment, no threat against the continuity of humanity. But here, finally, that threat lay before my eyes.
13
I sighted the small glowing of the fire before I reached the camp. When I stumbled down the hillside, I could see that Tupper had finished with his nap and was cooking supper.
“Out for a walk?” he asked.
“Just a look around,” I said. “There isn’t much to see.”
“The Flowers is all,” said Tupper.
He wiped his chin and counted the fingers on one hand, then counted them again to be sure he’d made no mistake.
“Tupper?”
“What is it, Brad?”
“Is it all like this? All over this Earth, I mean? Nothing but the Flowers?”
“There are others come sometimes.”
“Others?”
“From other worlds,” he said. “But they go away.”
“What kind of others?”
“Fun people. Looking for some fun.”
“What kind of fun?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just fun, is all.”
He was surly and evasive.
“But other than that,” I said, “there’s nothing but the Flowers?”
“That’s all,” he said.
“But you haven’t seen it all.”
“They tell me,” Tupper said. “And they wouldn’t lie. They aren’t like people back in Millville. They don’t need to lie.”
He used two sticks to move the earthen pot off the hot part of the fire.
“Tomatoes,” he said. “I hope you like tomatoes.”
I nodded that I did and he squatted down beside the fire to watch the supper better.
“They don’t tell nothing but the truth,” he said, going back to the question I had asked. “They couldn’t tell nothing but the truth. That’s the way they’re made. They got all this truth wrapped up in them and that’s what they live by. And they don’t need to tell nothing but the truth. It’s afraid of being hurt that makes people lie and there is nothing that can hurt them.”
He lifted his face to stare at me, daring me to disagree with him.
“I didn’t say they lied,” I told him. “I never for a moment questioned anything they said. By this truth they’re wrapped up in, you mean their knowledge, don’t you?”
“I guess that’s what I mean. They know a lot of things no one back in Millville knows.”
I let it go at that. Millville was Tupper’s former world. By saying Millville, he meant the human world.
Tupper was off on his finger-counting routine once again. I watched him as he squatted there, so happy and content, in a world where he had nothing, but was happy and content.
I wondered once again at his strange ability to communicate with the Flowers, to know them so well and so intimately that he could speak for them. Was it possible, I asked myself, that this slobbering, finger-counting village idiot possessed some sensory perception that the common run of mankind did not have? That this extra ability of his might be a form of compensation, to make up in some measure for what he did not have?
After all, I reminded myself, man was singularly limited in his perception, not knowing what he lacked, not missing what he lacked by the very virtue of not being able to imagine himself as anything other than he was. It was entirely possible that Tupper, by some strange quirk of genetic combination, might have abilities that no other human had, all unaware
that he was gifted in any special way, never guessing that other men might lack what seemed entirely normal to himself. And could these extra-human abilities match certain un-guessed abilities that lay within the Flowers themselves?
The voice on the telephone, in mentioning the diplomatic job, had said that I came highly recommended. And was it this man across the fire who had recommended me? I wanted very much to ask him, but I didn’t dare.
“Meow,” said Tupper. “Meow, meow, meow.”
I’ll say this much for him. He sounded like a cat. He could sound like anything at all. He was always making funny noises, practicing his mimicry until he had it pat.
I paid no attention to him. He had pulled himself back into his private world and the chances were he’d forgotten I was there.
The pot upon the fire was steaming and the smell of cooking stole upon the evening air. Just above the eastern horizon the first star came into being and once again I was conscious of the little silences, so deep they made me dizzy when I tried to listen to them, that fell into the chinks between the crackling of the coals and the sounds that Tupper made.
It was a land of silence, a great eternal globe of silence, broken only by the water and the wind and the little feeble noises that came from intruders like Tupper and myself. Although, by now, Tupper might be no intruder.
I sat alone, for the man across the fire had withdrawn himself from me, from everything around him, retreating into a room he had fashioned for himself, a place that was his alone, locked behind a door that could be opened by no one but himself, for there was no other who had a key to it or, indeed, any idea as to what kind of key was needed.
Alone and in the silence, I sensed the purpleness—the formless, subtle personality of the things that owned this planet. There was a friendliness, I thought, but a repulsive friendliness, the fawning friendliness of some monstrous beast. And I was afraid.
Such a silly thing, I thought. To be afraid of flowers.
Tupper’s cat was lone and lost. It prowled the dark and dripping woods of some other ogre-land and it mewed softly to itself, sobbing as it padded on and on, along a confusing world-line of uncertainties.
The fear had moved away a little beyond the circle of the firelight. But the purpleness still was there, hunched upon the hilltop.
An enemy, I wondered. Or just something strange?
If it were an enemy, it would be a terrible enemy, implacable and efficient.
For the plant world was the sole source of energy by which the animal world was able to survive.
Only plants could trap and convert and store the vital stuff of life. It was only by making use of the energy provided by the vegetable world that the animal kingdom could exist. Plants, by willfully becoming dormant or by making themselves somehow inedible, could doom all other life.
And the Flowers were versatile, in a very nasty way. They could, as witness Tupper’s garden and the trees that grew to supply him wood, be any kind of plant at all. They could be tree or grass, vine or bush or grain. They could not only masquerade as another plant, they could become that plant.
Suppose they were allowed into the human Earth and should offer to replace the native trees for a better tree, or perhaps the same old trees we had always known, only that they would grow faster and straighter and taller, for better shade or lumber. Or to replace wheat for a better wheat, with a higher yield and a fuller kernel, and a wheat that was resistant to drought and other causes that made a wheat crop fail. Suppose they made a deal to become all vegetables, all grass, all grain, all trees, replacing the native plants of Earth, giving men more food per acre, more lumber per tree, an improved productivity in everything that grew.
There would be no hunger in the world, no shortages of any kind at all, for the Flowers could adapt themselves to every human need.
And once man had come to rely upon them, once he had his entire economy based upon them, and his very life staked upon their carrying out their bargain, then they would have man at their mercy. Overnight they could cease being wheat and corn and grass; they could rob the entire Earth of its food supply. Or they might turn poisonous and thus kill more quickly and more mercifully. Or, if by that time, they had come to hate man sufficiently, they could develop certain types of pollen to which all Earthly life would be so allergic that death, when it came, would be a welcome thing.
Or let us say, I thought, playing with the thought, that man did not let them in, but they came in all the same, that man made no bargain with them, but they became the wheat and grass and all the other plants of Earth surreptitiously, killing off the native plants of Earth and replacing them with an identical plant life, in all its variations. In such a case, I thought, the result could be the same.
If we let them in, or if we didn’t let them in (but couldn’t keep them out), we were in their hands. They might kill us, or they might not kill us, but even if they didn’t kill us, there’d still remain the fact they could at any time they wished.
But if the Flowers were bent on infiltrating Earth, if they planned to conquer Earth by wiping out all life, then why had they contacted me? They could have infiltrated without us knowing it. It would have taken longer, but the road was clear. There was nothing that would stop them, for we would not know. If certain purple flowers should begin escaping Millville gardens, spreading year by year, in fence corners and in ditches, in the little out-of-the-way places of the land, no one would pay attention to them. Year by year the flowers could have crept out and out and in a hundred years have been so well established that nothing could deny them.
And there was another thought that, underneath my thinking and my speculation, had kept hammering at me, pleading to be heard. And now I let it in: even if we could, should we keep them out? Even in the face of potential danger, should we bar the way to them? For here was an alien life, the first alien life we’d met. Here was the chance for the human race, if it would take the chance, to gain new knowledge, to find new attitudes, to fill in the gaps of knowing and to span the bridge of thought, to understand a non-human viewpoint, to sample new emotion, to face new motivation, to investigate new logic. Was this something we could shy away from? Could we afford to fail to meet this first alien life halfway and work out the differences that might exist between the two of us? For if we failed here, the first time, then we’d fail the second time, and perhaps forever.
Tupper made a noise like a ringing telephone and I wondered how a telephone had gotten in there with that lone, lost cat of his. Perhaps, I thought, the cat had found a telephone, maybe in a booth out in the dark and dripping woods, and would find out where it was and how it might get home.
The telephone rang again and there was a little wait. Then Tupper said to me, most impatiently, “Go ahead and talk. This call is for you.”
“What’s that?” I asked, astonished.
“Say hello,” said Tupper. “Go ahead and answer.”
“All right,” I said, just to humor him. “Hello.”
His voice changed to Nancy’s voice, so perfect an imitation that I felt the presence of her.
“Brad!” she cried. “Brad, where are you?”
Her voice was high and gasping, almost hysterical.
“Where are you, Brad?” she asked. “Where did you disappear to?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “that I can explain. You see…”
“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said, in a rush of words. “We’ve looked everywhere. The whole town was looking for you. And then I remembered the phone in father’s study, the one without a dial, you know. I knew that it was there, but I’d never paid attention to it. I thought it was a model of some sort, or maybe just a decoration for the desk or a gag of some sort. But there was a lot of talk about the phones in Stiffy’s shack, and Ed Adler told me about the phone that was in your office. And it finally dawned on me that maybe this phone that father had was the same as those other phones. But it took an awful long time for it to dawn on me. So I went into his study and I
saw the phone and I just stood and looked at it—because I was scared, you see. I was afraid of it and I was afraid to use it because of what I might find out. But I screwed my courage up and I lifted the receiver and there was an open line and I asked for you. I knew it was a crazy thing to do, but … What did you say, Brad?”
“I said I don’t know if I can explain exactly where I am. I know where I am, of course, but I can’t explain it so I’ll be believed.”
“Tell me. Don’t you fool around. Just tell me where you are.”
“I’m in another world. I walked out of the garden…”
“You walked where!”
“I was just walking in the garden, following Tupper’s tracks and…”
“What kind of track is that?”
“Tupper Tyler,” I said. “I guess I forgot to tell you that he had come back.”
“But he couldn’t,” she told me. “I remember him. That was ten years ago.”
“He did come back,” I said. “He came back this morning. And then he left again. I was following his tracks…”
“You told me,” she said. “You were following him and you wound up in another world. Where is this other world?”
She was like any other woman. She asked the damndest questions.
“I don’t exactly know, except that it’s in time. Perhaps only a second away in time.”
“Can you get back?”
“I’m going to try,” I said. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Is there anything I can do to help—that the town can do to help?”
“Listen, Nancy, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Tell me, where is your father?”
“He’s down at your place. There are a lot of people there. Hoping that you will come back.”
“Waiting for me?”
“Well, yes. You see, they looked everywhere and they know you aren’t in the village and there are a lot of them convinced that you know all about this…”
“About the barrier, you mean.”