“You mean you’d let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you into cloth? And you would not mind?”
They came very close to sighing. “How can we make you understand? Eat one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life of us is one life—you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers. We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping.
“And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of trees—ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs. Let your chemists tell us what you want and we’ll be that for you. We’ll be made-to-order plants.”
“All this,” I said, “and your knowledge, too.”
“That is right,” they said.
“And in return, what do we do?”
“You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase boundaries into other worlds.”
“And the time dome that you put over Millville—why did you do that?”
“To gain your world’s attention. To let you know that we were here and waiting.”
“But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for instance.”
“Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too.”
“They could have told the world.”
“Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as—how do you say it—crackpots?”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy said. But surely there were others.”
“Only certain types of minds,” they told me, “can make contact with us. We can reach many minds, but they can’t reach back to us. And to believe in us, to know us, you must reach back to us.”
“You mean only the screwballs…”
“We’re afraid that’s what we mean,” they said.
It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with Stiffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid citizen.
I sat there for a moment, wondering why they’d contacted me and Gerald Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They’d contacted Sherwood because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me? Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it was.
“So, O.K.,” I said. “I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?”
“We planted a demonstration plot,” they told me. “So your people could realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are.”
You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.
I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to get back to Millville.
And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren’t any Flowers. Maybe it was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it rehearsed so he could pull it off.
But, I argued with myself, it couldn’t be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn’t bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn’t dream it up and he couldn’t pull it off. And besides, there was the matter of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would not explain.
I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.
The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out again, although I still knew that it was there.
There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat about the campfire and yarn the night away.
Ready? asked the Presence.
A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain—something born of the purpleness and moonlight?
“Yes,” I said, “I’m ready. I will do the best I can.”
I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine. It was fear, perhaps, but it didn’t feel like fear.
I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.
“I am not afraid of you,” I told it.
It didn’t say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse and garden were.
A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me, and then go straight ahead.
I turned a little to my left and then went straight ahead.
A few more feet, it said.
I stopped and turned my head to face it and there was nothing there. If there had been anything, it was gone from there.
The moon was a golden gargoyle in the west. The world was lone and empty; the silvered slope had a hungry look. The blue-black sky was filled with many little eyes with a hard, sharp glitter to them, a predatory glitter and the remoteness of uncaring.
Beyond the ridge a man of my own race drowsed beside a dying campfire, and it was all right for him, for he had a talent that I did not have, that I knew now I did not have—the talent for reaching out to grasp an alien hand (or paw or claw or pad) and being able in his twisted mind to translate that alien touch into a commonplace.
I shuddered at the gargoyle moon and took two steps forward and walked out of that hungry world straight into my garden.
15
Ragged clouds still raced across the sky, blotting out the moon. A faint lighting in the east gave notice of the dawn. The windows of my house were filled with lamplight and I knew that Gerald Sherwood and the rest of them were waiting there for me. And just to my left the greenhouse with the tree growing at its corner loomed ghostly against the rise of ground behind it.
I started to walk forward and fingers were scratching at my trouser legs. Startled, I looked down and saw that I had walked into a bush.
There had been no bush in the garden the last time I had seen it; there had been only the purple flowers. But I think I guessed what might have happened even before I stooped to have a look.
Squatting there, I squinted along the ground and in the first gray light of the coming day, I saw there were no flowers. Instead of a patch of flowers there was a patch of little bushes, perhaps a little larger, but not much larger than the flowers.
I hunkered there, with a coldness growing in me—for there was no explanation other than the fact that the bushes were the flowers, that somehow the Flowers had changed the flowers that once had grown there into little bushes. And, I wondered wildly, what could their purpose be?
Even here, I thought—even here they reach out for us. Even here they play their tr
icks on us and lay their traps for us. And they could do anything they wanted, I supposed, for if they did not own, at least they manipulated this corner of the Earth entrapped beneath the dome.
I put out a hand and felt along a branch and the branch had soft-swelling buds all along its length. Springtime buds, that in a day or so would be breaking into leaf. Springtime buds in the depth of summer!
I had believed in them, I thought. In that little space of time toward the very end, when Tupper had ceased his talking and had dozed before the fire and there had been something on the hillside that had spoken to me and had walked me home, I had believed in them.
Had there been something on that hillside? Had something walked with me? I sweated, thinking of it.
I felt the bulk of the wrapped time contraption underneath my arm, and that, I realized, was a talisman of the actuality of that other world. With that, I must believe.
They had told me, I remembered, that I’d get my money back—they had guaranteed it. And here I was, back home again, without my fifteen hundred.
I got to my feet and started for the house, then changed my mind. I turned around and went up the slope toward Doc Fabian’s house. It might be a good idea, I told myself, to see what was going on outside the barrier. The people who were waiting at the house could wait a little longer.
I reached the top of the slope and turned around, looking toward the east. There, beyond the village, blazed a line of campfires and the lights of many cars running back and forth. A searchlight swung a thin blue finger of light up into the sky, slowly sweeping back and forth. And at one spot that seemed a little closer was a greater blob of light. A great deal of activity seemed to be going on around it.
Watching it, I made out a steam shovel and great black mounds of earth piled up on either side of it. I could hear, faintly, the metallic clanging of the mighty scoop as it dumped a load and then reached down into the hole to take another bite. Trying, I told myself, to dig beneath the barrier.
A car came rattling down the street and turned into the driveway of the house behind me.
Doc, I thought—Doc coming home after being routed out of bed on an early morning call.
I walked across the lawn and around the house. The car was parked on the concrete strip of driveway and Doc was getting out.
“Doc,” I said, “it’s Brad.”
He turned and peered at me.
“Oh,” he said, and his voice sounded tired, “so you are back again. There are people waiting at the house, you know.”
Too tired to be surprised that I was back again; too all beat out to care.
He shuffled forward and I saw, quite suddenly, that Doc was old. Of course I had thought of him as old, but never before had he actually seemed old. Now I could see that he was—the slightly stooped shoulders, his feet barely lifting off the ground as he walked toward me, the loose, old-man hang of his trousers, the deep lines in his face.
“Floyd Caldwell,” he said. “I was out to Floyd’s. He had a heart attack—a strong, tough man like him and he has a heart attack.”
“How is he?”
“As well as I can manage. He should be in a hospital, getting complete rest. But I can’t get him there. With that thing out there, I can’t get him where he should be.
“I don’t know, Brad. I just don’t know what will happen to us. Mrs. Jensen was supposed to go in this morning for surgery. Cancer. She’ll die, anyhow, but surgery would give her months, maybe a year or two, of life. And there’s no way to get her there. The little Hopkins girl has been going regularly to a specialist and he’s been helping her a lot. Decker—perhaps you’ve heard of him. He’s a top-notch man. We interned together.”
He stopped in front of me. “Can’t you see,” he said. “I can’t help these people. I can do a little, but I can’t do enough. I can’t handle things like this—I can’t do it all alone. Other times I could send them somewhere else, to someone who could help them. And now I can’t do that. For the first time in my life, I can’t help my people.”
“You’re taking it too hard,” I said.
He looked at me with a beaten look, a tired and beaten look. “I can’t take it any other way,” he said. “All these years, they’ve depended on me.”
“How’s Stiffy?” I asked. “You have heard, of course.”
Doc snorted angrily. “The damn fool ran away.”
“From the hospital?”
“Where else would he run from? Got dressed when their backs were turned and snuck away. He always was a sneaky old goat and he never had good sense. They’re looking for him, but no one’s found him yet.”
“He’d head back here,” I said.
“I suppose he would,” said Doc. “What about this story I heard about some telephone he had?”
I shook my head. “Hiram said he found one.”
Doc peered sharply at me. “You don’t know anything about it?”
“Not very much,” I said.
“Nancy said you were in some other world or something. What kind of talk is that?”
“Did Nancy tell you that?”
He shook his head. “No, Gerald told me. He asked me what to do. He was afraid that if he mentioned it, he would stir up the village.”
“And?”
“I told him not to. The folks are stirred up enough. He told them what you said about the flowers. He had to tell them something.”
“Doc,” I said, “it’s a funny business. I don’t rightly know myself. Let’s not talk about it. Tell me what’s going on. What are those fires out there?”
“Those are soldier fires,” he told me. “There are state troops out there. They’ve got the town ringed in. Brad, it’s crazier than hell. We can’t get out and no one can get in, but they got troops out there. I don’t know what they think they’re doing. They evacuated everybody for ten miles outside the barrier and there are planes patrolling and they have some tanks. They tried to dynamite the barrier this morning and they didn’t do a thing except blow a hole in Jake Fisher’s pasture. They could have saved that dynamite.”
“They’re trying to dig under the barrier,” I said.
“They’ve done a lot of things,” said Doc. “They had some helicopters that flew above the town, then tried to come straight down. Figuring, I guess, that there are only walls out there, without any top to them. But they found there was a top. They fooled around all afternoon and they wrecked two ’copters, but they found out, I guess, that it’s a sort of dome. It curves all the way above us. A kind of bubble, you might say.
“And there are all those fool newspapermen out there. I tell you, Brad, there’s an army of them. There isn’t anything but Millville on the TV and radio, or in the papers either.”
“It’s big news,” I said.
“Yes, I suppose so. But I’m worried, Brad. This village is getting ready to blow up. The people are on edge. They’re scared and touchy. The whole damn place could go hysterical if you snapped your fingers.”
He came a little closer.
“What are you planning, Brad?”
“I’m going down to my place. There are people down there. You want to come along?”
He shook his head. “No, I was down there for a while and then I got this call from Floyd. I’m all beat out. I’m going in to bed.”
He turned and started to shuffle away and then he turned back.
“You be careful, boy,” he warned. “There’s a lot of talk about the flowers. They say if your father hadn’t raised those flowers it never would have happened. They think it was a plot your father started and you are in on it.”
“I’ll watch my step,” I said.
16
They were in the living room. As soon as I came in the kitchen door, Hiram Martin saw me.
“There he is!” he bellowed, leaping up and charging out into the kitchen.
He stopped his rush and looked accusingly at me. “It took you long enough,” he said.
I didn’t answer him.
&
nbsp; I put the time contraption, still wrapped in my jacket, on the kitchen table. A fold of cloth fell away from it and the many-angled lenses winked in the light from the ceiling fixture.
Hiram backed away a step. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Something I brought back,” I said. “A time machine, I guess.”
The coffee pot was on the stove and the burner was turned low. Used coffee cups covered the top of the kitchen sink. The sugar canister had its lid off and there was spilled sugar on the counter top.
The others in the living room were crowding through the door and there were a lot of them, more than I’d expected.
Nancy came past Hiram and walked up to me. She put out a hand and laid it on my arm.
“You’re all right,” she said.
“It was a breeze,” I told her.
She was beautiful, I thought—more beautiful than I’d remembered her, more beautiful than back in the high school days when I’d looked at her through a haze of stars. More beautiful, here close to me, than my memory had made her.
I moved closer to her and put an arm around her. For an instant she leaned her head against my shoulder, then straightened it again. She was warm and soft against me and I was sorry that it couldn’t last, but all the rest of them were watching us and waiting.
“I made some phone calls,” Gerald Sherwood said. “Senator Gibbs is coming out to see you. He’ll have someone from the State Department. On short notice, Brad, that was the best I could do.”
“It’ll do,” I said.
For, standing in my kitchen once again, with Nancy close beside me, with the lamplight soft in the coming dawn, with the old familiar things all around, that other world had retreated into the background and had taken on a softness that half obscured its threat—if it were a threat.
“What I want to know,” Tom Preston blurted, “is what about this stuff that Gerald tells us about your father’s flowers.”
“Yes,” said Mayor Higgy Morris, “what have they to do with it?”
Hiram didn’t say anything, but he sneered at me.