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distant and so improbable. This was the day that the human race had come
into contact (or perhaps, collision) with an alien race.
All the speculation, of course, had concerned an alien out of space, an
alien on, or from, some other world in space. But here was the alien, not
out of space, but time or at least from behind a barrier in time.
It made no difference, I told myseIf. Out of either space or time, the
involvement was the same. Man at this moment finally faced his greatest
test, and one he could not fail.
I gathered up the pottery and went back up the trail again.
Tupper was still sleeping, but no longer snoring. He had not changed
position and his toes still pointed at the sky.
The sun had moved far down the west, but the heat still held and there
was no hint of breeze. The purple of the flowers lay unstirring on the
hillsides.
I stood and looked at them and they were innocent and pretty and they
held no promise and no threat. They were just a field of flowers, like a
field of daisies or of daffodils. They were the sort of thing that we had
taken for granted all our years on earth. They had no personality and they
stood for nothing except a splotch of colour that was pleasing to the eye.
That was the hard thing about all this, I thought - the utter
impossibility of thinking of the Flowers as anything but flowers. It was
impossible to think of them as beings, as anything that had even a symbol of
importance. One could not take them seriously and yet they must be taken
seriously, for in their right they were as intelligent, perhaps more
intelligent than the human race.
I put the dishes down beside the fire and slowly climbed the hill. My
moving feet brushed the flowers aside and I crushed some of them, but there
was no chance of walking without crushing some of them.
I'd have to talk to them again, I told myself. As soon as Tupper could
get rested, I'd talk to them again. There were a lot of things that must be
clarified, much to be explained. If the Flowers and the human race were to
live together, there must be understanding. I ran through the conversation
I'd had with them, trying to find the gentle threat that I knew was there.
But from what I could remember, there had been no threat.
I reached the top of the hill and stopped there, gazing out across the
undulating purple swales. At the bottom of the slope, a small creek ran
between the hills to reach the river. From where I was I could hear the
silver babble of it as it ran across the stones.
Slowly I made my way down the hill toward it and as I moved down the
slope I saw the mound that lay across the creek, at the foot of the opposite
slope. I had not seen it before and I supposed that my failure to see it was
because it had been masked by the slant of light across the land.
There was nothing special about it except that it appeared slightly out
of character. Here, in this place of flowing swales, it stood by itself,
like a hump-backed monstrosity left over from another time.
I came down to the creek and waded across a shallow place where the
water ran no deeper than three inches over a shining gravel bar.
At the water's edge a large block of stone lay half-buried in the sharp
rise of the bank. It offered a ready seat and I sat down upon it, looking
down the stream. The sun glanced off the water, making diamonds out of every
ripple, and the air was sprayed with the silver tinkle of the singing brook.
There was no creek here in the world where Millville lay, although
there was a dry run in Jack Dickson's pasture, through which the swamp that
lay back of Stiffy's shack sometimes drained. Perhaps there had been such a
creek as this, I thought, in Millville's world before the farmer's plough
and resultant erosion had reshaped the terrain.
I sat entranced by the flashing diamonds of the water and the tinkle of
the stream. It seemed that a man could sit there forever, warm in the last
rays of the sun and guarded by the hills.
I had put my hands on either side of me and had been idly rubbing them
back and forth across the surface of the stone on which I sat. My hands must
have told me almost instantly that there was something strange about the
surface, but I was so engrossed with the sensations of sun and water that it
took some minutes before the strangeness broke its way into my
consciousness.
When it did, I still remained sitting there, still rubbing the surface
of the stone with the tips of my fingers, but not looking at it, making sure
that I had not been wrong, that the stone had the feel of artificial
shaping.
When I got up and examined the block, there was no doubt of it. The
stone had been squared into a block and there were places where the chisel
marks could still be seen upon it. Around one corner of it still clung a
brittle substance that could be nothing else than some sort of mortar in
which the block had once been set.
I straightened up from my examination and stepped away, back into the
stream, with the water tugging at my ankles.
Not a simple boulder, but a block of stone! A block of stone bearing
chisel marks and with a bit of mortar still sticking to one edge.
The Flowers, then, were not the only ones upon this planet. There were
others - or there had been others. Creatures that knew the use of stone and
had the tools to chip the stone into convenient form and size.
My eyes travelled from the block of stone up the mound that stood at
the water's edge, and there were other blocks of stone protruding from its
face. Standing frozen, with the glint of water and the silver song
forgotten, I traced out the blocks and could see that once upon a time they
had formed a wall.
This mound, then, was no vagary of nature. It was the evidence of a
work that at one time had been erected by beings that knew the use of tools.
I left the stream and clambered up the mound. None of the stones was
large, none was ornamented; there were just the chisel marks and here and
there the bits of mortar that had lain between the blocks. Perhaps, a
building had stood here at one time. Or it may have been a wall. Or a
monument.
I started down the mound, choosing a path a short way downstream from
where I had crossed the creek, working my way along slowly and carefully,
for the slope was steep, using my hands as brakes to keep myself from
sliding or from fal1ing.
And it was then, hugged close against the slope, that I found the piece
of bone. It had weathered out of the ground, perhaps not too long ago, and
it lay hidden there among the purple flowers. Under ordinary circumstances,
I probably would have missed it. I could not see it well at first, just the
dull whiteness of it lying on the ground. I had slid past it before I saw it
and crawled back to pick it up.
The surface of it powdered slightly at the pressure of my fingers, but
it did not break. It was slightly curved and white, a ghostly, chalky white.
Turning it over in my hand, I made out that it was a rib bone and the shape
and size of it was such that it could be human, although my knowledge was
too slight to be absolutely sure. 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 symbionts, 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.
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,' be 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, practising 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 anima1
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 wilfully 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 humour 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...'
'Whatkind 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 know exactly, 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.'
'Yes, that's what I mean.' 'And they are pretty sore? 'Some of them,'
she said. 'Listen, Nancy...'
'Don't say that again. I am listening.' 'Can you go down and see your
father?' 'Of course I can,' she said.
'All right. Go down and tell him that when I can get back - if I can
get back - I'll need to talk with someone. Someone in authority. Someone
high in authority. The President, perhaps, or someone who's close to the
President. Maybe someone from the United Nations...'
'But, Brad, you can't ask to see the President!' 'Maybe not,' I said.
'But as high as I can get. I have something our government has to know. Not
only ours, but all the governments. Your father must know someone he can
talk to. Tell him I'm not fooling. Tell him it's important.' 'Brad,' she
said. 'Brad, you're sure you 'aren't kidding? Because if you are, this could
be an awful mess.' 'Cross my heart,' I said. 'I mean it, Nancy, it's exactly
as I've said. I'm in another world, an alternate world...' 'Is it a nice
world, Brad?'
'It's nice enough,' I said. 'There's nothing here but flowers.'
'What kind of flowers?'
'Purple flowers. My father's flowers. The same kind that are back in
Millville. The flowers are people, Nancy. They're the ones that put up the
barrier.'
'But flowers can't be people, Brad.'
Like I was a kid. Like she had to humour me. Asking me if it was a nice
world and telling me that flowers never could be people. All sweet
reasonableness.
I held in my anger and my desperation.
'I know they can't,' I said. 'But just the same as people. They are
intelligent and they can communicate.'
'You have talked with them?'
'Tupper talks for them. He's their interpreter.' 'But Tupper was a
drip.'
'Not back here he isn't. He's got things we haven't.' 'What kind of
things? Brad, you have to be...' 'You will tell your father?'
'Right away,' she said. 'I'll go down to your place...' 'And, Nancy...'
'Yes.'
'Maybe it would be just as well if you didn't tell where I am or how
you got in touch. I imagine the village is pretty well upset.'
'They are wild,' said Nancy.
'Tell your father anything you want. Tell him everything. But not the
rest of them. He'll know what to tell them. There's no use in giving the
village something more to talk about.'
'All right,' she said. 'Take care of yourself. Come back safe and
sound.'
'Sure,' I said.
'You can get back?'
'I think I can. I hope I can.'
'I'll tell Father what you said. Exactly what you said. He'll get busy
on it.'
'Nancy. Don't worry. It'll be all right.'
'Of course I won't. I'll be seeing you.'
'So long, Nancy. Thanks for calling.'
'I said to Tupper, 'Thank you, telephone.'
He lifted a hand and stretched out a finger at me, stroking it with the
finger of the other hand, making the sign for shame.
'Brad has got a girl,' he chanted in a sing-song voice. 'Brad has got a
girl.'
'I thought you never listened in,' I said, just a little nettled. 'Brad
has got a girl! Brad has got a girl! Brad has got a girl!' He was getting
excited about it and the slobber was flying all about his face.
'Cut it out,' I yelled at him. 'If you don't cut it out, I'll break
your God damn neck.'
He knew I wasn't fooling, so he cut it out.
I woke in a blue and silver night and wondered, even as I woke, what
had wakened me. I was lying on my back and above me the sky was glimmering
with stars. I was not confused. I knew where I was. There was no blind
groping back to an old reality. I heard the faint chuckling of the river as
it ran between its banks and I smelled the wood smoke that drifted from the
campfire.
Something had awakened me. I lay still, for it seemed important that
whatever had wakened me, if it were close at hand, should not know that I
was awake. There was a sense of fear, or perhaps of expectation. But if it
were a sense of fear, it was neither deep nor sharp.
Slowly I twisted my head a bit and when I did I could see the moon,
bright and seeming very near, swimming just above the line of scrubby trees
that grew on the river bank.
1 was lying flat upon the ground, with nothing under me but the
hard-packed earth. Tupper had crawled into his hut to sleep, curling up so
his feet did not stick out. And if he were still there and sleeping, he was
very quiet about it, for I heard no sound from him.
Having turned my head, I lay quietly for a time, listening for a sound
to tell me that something prowled the camp. But there was no sound and
finally I sat up.
The slope of ground above the camp, silvered by the floodlight of the
moon, ran up to touch the night-blue sky - a balanced piece of beauty
hanging in the silence, so fragile that one was careful not to speak nor to
make any sudden motion, for fear that one might break that beauty and that
silence and bring it down, sky and slope together, in a shower of shards.
Carefully I got to my feet, standing in the midst of that fragile
world, still wondering what had wakened me.
But there was nothing. The land and sky were poised, as if they stood
on tiptoe in a single instant of retarded time. Here, it seemed, was the
present frozen, with no past or future, a place where no clock would ever
tick nor any word be spoken.
Then something moved upon the hilltop, a man or a manlike thing,
running on the ridge crest, black against the sky, lithe and tall and
graceful, running with abandon.
I was running, too. Without reason, without purpose, simply running up
the slope. Simply knowing there was a man or a man1ike thing up there and
that I must stand face to face with it, hoping, perhaps, that in this land
of emptiness and flowers, in this land of silence and of fragile beauty, it
might make some sense, might lend to this strange dimension of space and
time some sort of perspective that I could understand.
The manlike thing was still running on the hilltop and I tried to shout
to it, but my throat would make no sound and so I kept on running.
The figure must have seen me, for suddenly it stopped and swung around
to face me and stood there on the hilltop, looking down at me. And now I saw
that while it undoubtedly was of human form, it had a crest of some sort
above its head, giving it a birdlike look as if the head of a cockatoo had
been grafted on a human body.
I ran, panting, toward it, and now it moved down the hill to meet me,
walking slowly and deliberately and with unconscious grace.
I stopped running and stood still, fighting to regain my breath. There
was no need of running any more. I need not run to catch it.
It continued walking down the hill toward me and while its body still
stayed black and featureless, I could see that the crest was white, or
silver. In the moonlight it was hard to tell if it were white or silver.
My breath came more easily now and I climbed up the hill to meet it. We
approached one another slowly, each of us, I suppose, afraid that any other
manner of approach might give the other fright.
The manlike thing stopped ten feet or so away and I stopped as well,
and now I saw that indeed it was humanoid and that it was a woman, either a
naked or an almost naked woman. In the moonlight, the crest upon her head
was a thing of shining wonder, but I could not make out if it were a natural
appendage or some sort of eccentric hairdo, or perhaps a hat.
The crest was white, but the rest of her was black, a jet black with
blue highlights that glinted in the moonlight. And there was about her body
an alertness and an awareness and a sense of bubbling life that took my
breath away.
She spoke to me in music. It must have been a music, for there seemed
to be no words.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I do not understand.'
She spoke again and the trilling of the voice ran across the blue and
silver world like a spray of crystal thought, but there was no
understanding. I wondered, in despair, if any man of my race could ever
understand a language that expressed itself in music, or if, in fact, it was
meant to be understood as were the words we used.
I shook my head and she laughed, the laughter making her without any
doubt a human - a low and tinkling laugh that was happy and excited.
She held out her hand and took a few quick steps toward me and I took
the outstretched hand. And as I took her hand, she turned and ran lightly up
the hill and I went running with her. We reached the top of the ridge and
continued running, hand in hand, down the other slope, a wild, ecstatic
running that was sheer youth and craziness - a running into nothing, for the
utter joy of being alive in that heady moonlight.
We were young and drunk with a strange happiness for which there seemed
no reason or accounting - drunk with, at least for me, a wild exuberance.
Her grip upon my hand was hard, with a lithe, young strength, and we
ran together as if we were one person running - and it seemed to me, indeed,
that in some awesome manner I had become a part of her, and that somehow I
knew where we were going and why we were going there, but my brain was so
seething with this strange happiness that it could not translate the
knowledge into terms I understood.
We came down to the creek and splashed across, then ran around the
mound where I had found the skulls and on up the second ridge and there, at
the top of it, we came upon the picnic.
There were other people there, at this midnight picnic, a half a dozen
of them, all like this alien girl who had run with me. Scattered on the
ground were hampers, or things that looked like hampers, and bottles, and
these bottles and the hampers were arranged in a sort of circle. In the
centre of the circle was a small, silvery contraption that was just slightly
larger than a basketball.
We stopped at the edge of the circle and all the rest of them turned to
look at us - but to look without surprise, as if it were not unusual at all
for one of them to lead in an alien creature such as I.
The woman who was with me spoke in her singing voice and they answered
back with music. All of them were watching me, but it was friendly watching.
Then all of them except one sat down in the circle and the one who
remained standing stepped toward me, making a motion inviting me to join the
circle with them.
I sat down, with the running woman on one side of me and the one who
made the invitation sitting on the other.
It was, I gathered, some sort of holiday, although there was something
in that circle which made it more than a holiday.
There was a sense of anticipation in the faces and the bodies of these
people sitting in the circle, as if they might be waiting for an event of
great importance. They were happy and excited and vibrant with the sense of
life to their fingertips.
Except for their crests, they were humanoid, and I could see now that
they wore no clothing. I found time to wonder where they might have come
from, for Tupper would have told me if there were people such as they. But
he had told me that the Flowers were the only things which existed on this
planet, although he had said sometimes there were others who came visiting.
Were these people, then, the ones who came visiting, or was it possible
that they were the descendants of those people whose bones I had found down
on the mound, now finally emerged from some secret hiding place? Although
there was no sign in them of ever having hidden, of ever having skulked.
The strange contraption lay in the centre of the circle. At a picnic
back in Millville it would have been a record player or a radio that someone
had brought along. But these people had no need of music, for they talked in
music, and the thing looked like nothing I had ever seen. It was round and
seemed to be fashioned of many lenses, all tilted at different angles so
that the surfaces caught the moonlight, reflecting it to make the ball
itself a sphere of shining glory.
Some of the people sitting in the circle began an unpacking of the
hampers and an uncorking of the bottles and I knew that more than likely
they'd ask me to eat with them. It worried me to think of it, for since
they'd been so kind I could not very well refuse, and yet it might be
dangerous to eat the food they had. For although they were humanoid, there
easily could be differences in their metabolism and what might be food for
them could be poisonous for me.
It was a little thing, of course, but it seemed a big decision, and I
sat there in mental agony, trying to make up my mind.
The food might be a loathsome and nauseating mess, but that I could
have managed; for the friendship of these people I would have choked it
down. It was the thought that it might be deadly that made me hesitate.
A while ago, I remembered, I had convinced myself that no matter how
great a threat the Flowers might be, we still must let them in, must strive
to find a common ground upon which any differences that might exist between
us could somehow be adjusted. I had told myself that the future of the human
race might easily hang upon our ability to meet and to get along with an
alien race, for the time was coming, in a hundred years from now, or a
thousand years from now, when we'd be encountering other alien races, and we
could not fail this first time.
And here, I realized, was another alien race, sitting in this circle,
and there could be no double standard as between myself and the world at
large. I, in my own right, must act as I'd decided the human race must act -
I must eat the food when it was offered me.
Perhaps I was not thinking very clearly. Events were happening much too
fast and I had too little time. It was a snap decision at best and I hoped I
was not wrong.
I never had a chance to know, for before the food could be passed
around, the contraption in the centre of the circle began a little ticking -
no more than the ticking of a clock in an empty room, but at the first tick
it gave they all jumped to their feet and stood watching it.
I jumped up, too, and stood watching with them, and I could sense that
they'd forgotten I was with them. All of their attentions were fastened on
that shining basketball.
As it ticked, the glow of it became a shining mistiness and the
mistiness spread out, like a fog creeping up the land from a river bottom.
The mistiness enveloped us and out of that mistiness strange shapes
began to form. At first they were wavering and unstable forms, but in a
while they steadied and became more substantial, although never quite
substantial; there was about them a touch of fairyland, of a shape and time
that one might see, but that was forever out of reach.
And now the mistiness went away - or perhaps it still remained and we
did not notice it, for with the creation of the forms it had supplied
another world, of which we were observers, if not an actual part.
It appeared that we were standing on the terrace of what on Earth might
have been called a villa. Beneath our feet were rough-hewn flagstones, with
thin lines of grass growing in the cracks between the stones, and back of us
rose rough walls of masonry. But the walls had a misty texture, as if they
were some sort of simulated backdrop that one was not supposed to inspect
too closely.
In front of us spread a city, an ugly city with no beauty in it. It was
utilitarian in its every aspect, a geometric mass of stone, reared without
imagination, with no architectural concept beyond the principle that one
stone piled atop another would achieve a place of shelter. The city was the
drab colour of dried mud and it spread as far as the eye could see, a
disorderly mass of rectilinear structures thrust together, cheek by jowl,
with no breathing space provided.
And yet there was an insubstantiality about it; never for an instant
did that massive city become solid masonry. Nor were the flagstones
underneath our feet an actual flagstone terrace.
Rather it was as though we floated, a fraction of an inch above the
flagstones, never touching them.
We stood, it seemed, in the middle of a three-dimensional movie. And
all around us the movie moved and went about its business and we knew that
we were there, for we could see it on every side of us, but the actors in
the movie were unaware of us and while we knew that we were there, there
also was the knowledge that we were not a part of it, that we somehow stood
aside from this magic world in which we were engulfed.
At first I'd seen only the city, but now I saw there was terror in the
city. People were running madly in the streets, and from far off I could
hear the screaming, the thin and frantic wailing of a lost and hopeless
people.
Then the city and the screaming were blotted out in a searing flash of
light, a blossoming whiteness that became so intense it suddenly went black.
The blackness covered us and we stood in a world that had nothing in it
except the darkness and the cataract of thunder that poured out of that
place where the flash of light had blossomed.
I took a short step forward, groping as I went. My hands met emptiness
and the feeling flooded over me that I stood in an emptiness that stretched
on forever, that what I'd known before had been nothing but illusion and the
illusion now was gone, leaving me to grope eternally through black
nothingness.
I took no other step, but stood stiff and straight, afraid to move a
muscle, sensing in all irrationality that I stood upon a platform and might
fall from it into a great emptiness which would have no bottom.
As I stood there the blackness turned to grey and through the greyness
I could see the city, flattened and sharded, swept by tornadic winds, with
gouts of flame and ash twisting in the monstrous whirlwind of destruction.
Above the city was a rolling cloud, as if a million thunderstorms had been
rolled all into one. And from this maelstrom of fury came a deepthroated
growling of death and fear and fate, a savage terrible sound that made one
think of evil.
Around me I saw the others - the black-skinned people with the silver
crests - standing transfixed and frozen, fascinated by the sight that lay
before them, rigid as if with fear, but something more than just plain fear
- superstitious fear, perhaps.
I stood there, rooted with them, and the growling died away. Thin wisps
of smoke curled up above the rubble, and in the silence that came as the
growling ceased I could hear the little cracklings and groanings and the
tiny crashes as the splintered stone that still remained settled more firmly
into place. But there was no sound of crying now, none of the thin, high
screaming. There were no people and the only movements were the little
ripples of settling rubble that lay beyond the bare and blackened and
entirely featureless area where the light had blossomed.
The greyness faded and the city began to dim. Out in the centre of the
picnic circle I could make out the glimmer of the lens-covered basketball.
There were no signs of my fellow picnickers; they had disappeared. And from
the thinning greyness came another screaming - but a different kind of
screaming, not the kind I'd heard from the city before the bomb had struck.
For now I knew that I had seen a city destroyed by a nuclear explosion
- as one might have watched it on a TV set. And the TV set, if one could
call it that, could have been nothing other than the basketball. By some
strange magic mechanism it had invaded time and brought back from the past a
moment of high crisis.
The greyness faded out and the night came back again, with the golden
moon and the dust of stars and the silver slopes that curved to meet the
quicksilver of the creek.
Down the farther slope I could see the scurrying figures, with their
silver topknots gleaming in the moonlight, running wildly through the night
and screaming in simulated terror. I stood looking after them and shivered,
for there was something here, I knew, that had a sickness in it, a sickness
of the mind, an illness of the soul.
Slowly I turned back to the basketball. It was, once again, just a
thing of lenses. I walked over to it and knelt beside it and had a look at
into contact (or perhaps, collision) with an alien race.
All the speculation, of course, had concerned an alien out of space, an
alien on, or from, some other world in space. But here was the alien, not
out of space, but time or at least from behind a barrier in time.
It made no difference, I told myseIf. Out of either space or time, the
involvement was the same. Man at this moment finally faced his greatest
test, and one he could not fail.
I gathered up the pottery and went back up the trail again.
Tupper was still sleeping, but no longer snoring. He had not changed
position and his toes still pointed at the sky.
The sun had moved far down the west, but the heat still held and there
was no hint of breeze. The purple of the flowers lay unstirring on the
hillsides.
I stood and looked at them and they were innocent and pretty and they
held no promise and no threat. They were just a field of flowers, like a
field of daisies or of daffodils. They were the sort of thing that we had
taken for granted all our years on earth. They had no personality and they
stood for nothing except a splotch of colour that was pleasing to the eye.
That was the hard thing about all this, I thought - the utter
impossibility of thinking of the Flowers as anything but flowers. It was
impossible to think of them as beings, as anything that had even a symbol of
importance. One could not take them seriously and yet they must be taken
seriously, for in their right they were as intelligent, perhaps more
intelligent than the human race.
I put the dishes down beside the fire and slowly climbed the hill. My
moving feet brushed the flowers aside and I crushed some of them, but there
was no chance of walking without crushing some of them.
I'd have to talk to them again, I told myself. As soon as Tupper could
get rested, I'd talk to them again. There were a lot of things that must be
clarified, much to be explained. If the Flowers and the human race were to
live together, there must be understanding. I ran through the conversation
I'd had with them, trying to find the gentle threat that I knew was there.
But from what I could remember, there had been no threat.
I reached the top of the hill and stopped there, gazing out across the
undulating purple swales. At the bottom of the slope, a small creek ran
between the hills to reach the river. From where I was I could hear the
silver babble of it as it ran across the stones.
Slowly I made my way down the hill toward it and as I moved down the
slope I saw the mound that lay across the creek, at the foot of the opposite
slope. I had not seen it before and I supposed that my failure to see it was
because it had been masked by the slant of light across the land.
There was nothing special about it except that it appeared slightly out
of character. Here, in this place of flowing swales, it stood by itself,
like a hump-backed monstrosity left over from another time.
I came down to the creek and waded across a shallow place where the
water ran no deeper than three inches over a shining gravel bar.
At the water's edge a large block of stone lay half-buried in the sharp
rise of the bank. It offered a ready seat and I sat down upon it, looking
down the stream. The sun glanced off the water, making diamonds out of every
ripple, and the air was sprayed with the silver tinkle of the singing brook.
There was no creek here in the world where Millville lay, although
there was a dry run in Jack Dickson's pasture, through which the swamp that
lay back of Stiffy's shack sometimes drained. Perhaps there had been such a
creek as this, I thought, in Millville's world before the farmer's plough
and resultant erosion had reshaped the terrain.
I sat entranced by the flashing diamonds of the water and the tinkle of
the stream. It seemed that a man could sit there forever, warm in the last
rays of the sun and guarded by the hills.
I had put my hands on either side of me and had been idly rubbing them
back and forth across the surface of the stone on which I sat. My hands must
have told me almost instantly that there was something strange about the
surface, but I was so engrossed with the sensations of sun and water that it
took some minutes before the strangeness broke its way into my
consciousness.
When it did, I still remained sitting there, still rubbing the surface
of the stone with the tips of my fingers, but not looking at it, making sure
that I had not been wrong, that the stone had the feel of artificial
shaping.
When I got up and examined the block, there was no doubt of it. The
stone had been squared into a block and there were places where the chisel
marks could still be seen upon it. Around one corner of it still clung a
brittle substance that could be nothing else than some sort of mortar in
which the block had once been set.
I straightened up from my examination and stepped away, back into the
stream, with the water tugging at my ankles.
Not a simple boulder, but a block of stone! A block of stone bearing
chisel marks and with a bit of mortar still sticking to one edge.
The Flowers, then, were not the only ones upon this planet. There were
others - or there had been others. Creatures that knew the use of stone and
had the tools to chip the stone into convenient form and size.
My eyes travelled from the block of stone up the mound that stood at
the water's edge, and there were other blocks of stone protruding from its
face. Standing frozen, with the glint of water and the silver song
forgotten, I traced out the blocks and could see that once upon a time they
had formed a wall.
This mound, then, was no vagary of nature. It was the evidence of a
work that at one time had been erected by beings that knew the use of tools.
I left the stream and clambered up the mound. None of the stones was
large, none was ornamented; there were just the chisel marks and here and
there the bits of mortar that had lain between the blocks. Perhaps, a
building had stood here at one time. Or it may have been a wall. Or a
monument.
I started down the mound, choosing a path a short way downstream from
where I had crossed the creek, working my way along slowly and carefully,
for the slope was steep, using my hands as brakes to keep myself from
sliding or from fal1ing.
And it was then, hugged close against the slope, that I found the piece
of bone. It had weathered out of the ground, perhaps not too long ago, and
it lay hidden there among the purple flowers. Under ordinary circumstances,
I probably would have missed it. I could not see it well at first, just the
dull whiteness of it lying on the ground. I had slid past it before I saw it
and crawled back to pick it up.
The surface of it powdered slightly at the pressure of my fingers, but
it did not break. It was slightly curved and white, a ghostly, chalky white.
Turning it over in my hand, I made out that it was a rib bone and the shape
and size of it was such that it could be human, although my knowledge was
too slight to be absolutely sure. 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 symbionts, 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.
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,' be 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, practising 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 anima1
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 wilfully 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 humour 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...'
'Whatkind 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 know exactly, 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.'
'Yes, that's what I mean.' 'And they are pretty sore? 'Some of them,'
she said. 'Listen, Nancy...'
'Don't say that again. I am listening.' 'Can you go down and see your
father?' 'Of course I can,' she said.
'All right. Go down and tell him that when I can get back - if I can
get back - I'll need to talk with someone. Someone in authority. Someone
high in authority. The President, perhaps, or someone who's close to the
President. Maybe someone from the United Nations...'
'But, Brad, you can't ask to see the President!' 'Maybe not,' I said.
'But as high as I can get. I have something our government has to know. Not
only ours, but all the governments. Your father must know someone he can
talk to. Tell him I'm not fooling. Tell him it's important.' 'Brad,' she
said. 'Brad, you're sure you 'aren't kidding? Because if you are, this could
be an awful mess.' 'Cross my heart,' I said. 'I mean it, Nancy, it's exactly
as I've said. I'm in another world, an alternate world...' 'Is it a nice
world, Brad?'
'It's nice enough,' I said. 'There's nothing here but flowers.'
'What kind of flowers?'
'Purple flowers. My father's flowers. The same kind that are back in
Millville. The flowers are people, Nancy. They're the ones that put up the
barrier.'
'But flowers can't be people, Brad.'
Like I was a kid. Like she had to humour me. Asking me if it was a nice
world and telling me that flowers never could be people. All sweet
reasonableness.
I held in my anger and my desperation.
'I know they can't,' I said. 'But just the same as people. They are
intelligent and they can communicate.'
'You have talked with them?'
'Tupper talks for them. He's their interpreter.' 'But Tupper was a
drip.'
'Not back here he isn't. He's got things we haven't.' 'What kind of
things? Brad, you have to be...' 'You will tell your father?'
'Right away,' she said. 'I'll go down to your place...' 'And, Nancy...'
'Yes.'
'Maybe it would be just as well if you didn't tell where I am or how
you got in touch. I imagine the village is pretty well upset.'
'They are wild,' said Nancy.
'Tell your father anything you want. Tell him everything. But not the
rest of them. He'll know what to tell them. There's no use in giving the
village something more to talk about.'
'All right,' she said. 'Take care of yourself. Come back safe and
sound.'
'Sure,' I said.
'You can get back?'
'I think I can. I hope I can.'
'I'll tell Father what you said. Exactly what you said. He'll get busy
on it.'
'Nancy. Don't worry. It'll be all right.'
'Of course I won't. I'll be seeing you.'
'So long, Nancy. Thanks for calling.'
'I said to Tupper, 'Thank you, telephone.'
He lifted a hand and stretched out a finger at me, stroking it with the
finger of the other hand, making the sign for shame.
'Brad has got a girl,' he chanted in a sing-song voice. 'Brad has got a
girl.'
'I thought you never listened in,' I said, just a little nettled. 'Brad
has got a girl! Brad has got a girl! Brad has got a girl!' He was getting
excited about it and the slobber was flying all about his face.
'Cut it out,' I yelled at him. 'If you don't cut it out, I'll break
your God damn neck.'
He knew I wasn't fooling, so he cut it out.
I woke in a blue and silver night and wondered, even as I woke, what
had wakened me. I was lying on my back and above me the sky was glimmering
with stars. I was not confused. I knew where I was. There was no blind
groping back to an old reality. I heard the faint chuckling of the river as
it ran between its banks and I smelled the wood smoke that drifted from the
campfire.
Something had awakened me. I lay still, for it seemed important that
whatever had wakened me, if it were close at hand, should not know that I
was awake. There was a sense of fear, or perhaps of expectation. But if it
were a sense of fear, it was neither deep nor sharp.
Slowly I twisted my head a bit and when I did I could see the moon,
bright and seeming very near, swimming just above the line of scrubby trees
that grew on the river bank.
1 was lying flat upon the ground, with nothing under me but the
hard-packed earth. Tupper had crawled into his hut to sleep, curling up so
his feet did not stick out. And if he were still there and sleeping, he was
very quiet about it, for I heard no sound from him.
Having turned my head, I lay quietly for a time, listening for a sound
to tell me that something prowled the camp. But there was no sound and
finally I sat up.
The slope of ground above the camp, silvered by the floodlight of the
moon, ran up to touch the night-blue sky - a balanced piece of beauty
hanging in the silence, so fragile that one was careful not to speak nor to
make any sudden motion, for fear that one might break that beauty and that
silence and bring it down, sky and slope together, in a shower of shards.
Carefully I got to my feet, standing in the midst of that fragile
world, still wondering what had wakened me.
But there was nothing. The land and sky were poised, as if they stood
on tiptoe in a single instant of retarded time. Here, it seemed, was the
present frozen, with no past or future, a place where no clock would ever
tick nor any word be spoken.
Then something moved upon the hilltop, a man or a manlike thing,
running on the ridge crest, black against the sky, lithe and tall and
graceful, running with abandon.
I was running, too. Without reason, without purpose, simply running up
the slope. Simply knowing there was a man or a man1ike thing up there and
that I must stand face to face with it, hoping, perhaps, that in this land
of emptiness and flowers, in this land of silence and of fragile beauty, it
might make some sense, might lend to this strange dimension of space and
time some sort of perspective that I could understand.
The manlike thing was still running on the hilltop and I tried to shout
to it, but my throat would make no sound and so I kept on running.
The figure must have seen me, for suddenly it stopped and swung around
to face me and stood there on the hilltop, looking down at me. And now I saw
that while it undoubtedly was of human form, it had a crest of some sort
above its head, giving it a birdlike look as if the head of a cockatoo had
been grafted on a human body.
I ran, panting, toward it, and now it moved down the hill to meet me,
walking slowly and deliberately and with unconscious grace.
I stopped running and stood still, fighting to regain my breath. There
was no need of running any more. I need not run to catch it.
It continued walking down the hill toward me and while its body still
stayed black and featureless, I could see that the crest was white, or
silver. In the moonlight it was hard to tell if it were white or silver.
My breath came more easily now and I climbed up the hill to meet it. We
approached one another slowly, each of us, I suppose, afraid that any other
manner of approach might give the other fright.
The manlike thing stopped ten feet or so away and I stopped as well,
and now I saw that indeed it was humanoid and that it was a woman, either a
naked or an almost naked woman. In the moonlight, the crest upon her head
was a thing of shining wonder, but I could not make out if it were a natural
appendage or some sort of eccentric hairdo, or perhaps a hat.
The crest was white, but the rest of her was black, a jet black with
blue highlights that glinted in the moonlight. And there was about her body
an alertness and an awareness and a sense of bubbling life that took my
breath away.
She spoke to me in music. It must have been a music, for there seemed
to be no words.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I do not understand.'
She spoke again and the trilling of the voice ran across the blue and
silver world like a spray of crystal thought, but there was no
understanding. I wondered, in despair, if any man of my race could ever
understand a language that expressed itself in music, or if, in fact, it was
meant to be understood as were the words we used.
I shook my head and she laughed, the laughter making her without any
doubt a human - a low and tinkling laugh that was happy and excited.
She held out her hand and took a few quick steps toward me and I took
the outstretched hand. And as I took her hand, she turned and ran lightly up
the hill and I went running with her. We reached the top of the ridge and
continued running, hand in hand, down the other slope, a wild, ecstatic
running that was sheer youth and craziness - a running into nothing, for the
utter joy of being alive in that heady moonlight.
We were young and drunk with a strange happiness for which there seemed
no reason or accounting - drunk with, at least for me, a wild exuberance.
Her grip upon my hand was hard, with a lithe, young strength, and we
ran together as if we were one person running - and it seemed to me, indeed,
that in some awesome manner I had become a part of her, and that somehow I
knew where we were going and why we were going there, but my brain was so
seething with this strange happiness that it could not translate the
knowledge into terms I understood.
We came down to the creek and splashed across, then ran around the
mound where I had found the skulls and on up the second ridge and there, at
the top of it, we came upon the picnic.
There were other people there, at this midnight picnic, a half a dozen
of them, all like this alien girl who had run with me. Scattered on the
ground were hampers, or things that looked like hampers, and bottles, and
these bottles and the hampers were arranged in a sort of circle. In the
centre of the circle was a small, silvery contraption that was just slightly
larger than a basketball.
We stopped at the edge of the circle and all the rest of them turned to
look at us - but to look without surprise, as if it were not unusual at all
for one of them to lead in an alien creature such as I.
The woman who was with me spoke in her singing voice and they answered
back with music. All of them were watching me, but it was friendly watching.
Then all of them except one sat down in the circle and the one who
remained standing stepped toward me, making a motion inviting me to join the
circle with them.
I sat down, with the running woman on one side of me and the one who
made the invitation sitting on the other.
It was, I gathered, some sort of holiday, although there was something
in that circle which made it more than a holiday.
There was a sense of anticipation in the faces and the bodies of these
people sitting in the circle, as if they might be waiting for an event of
great importance. They were happy and excited and vibrant with the sense of
life to their fingertips.
Except for their crests, they were humanoid, and I could see now that
they wore no clothing. I found time to wonder where they might have come
from, for Tupper would have told me if there were people such as they. But
he had told me that the Flowers were the only things which existed on this
planet, although he had said sometimes there were others who came visiting.
Were these people, then, the ones who came visiting, or was it possible
that they were the descendants of those people whose bones I had found down
on the mound, now finally emerged from some secret hiding place? Although
there was no sign in them of ever having hidden, of ever having skulked.
The strange contraption lay in the centre of the circle. At a picnic
back in Millville it would have been a record player or a radio that someone
had brought along. But these people had no need of music, for they talked in
music, and the thing looked like nothing I had ever seen. It was round and
seemed to be fashioned of many lenses, all tilted at different angles so
that the surfaces caught the moonlight, reflecting it to make the ball
itself a sphere of shining glory.
Some of the people sitting in the circle began an unpacking of the
hampers and an uncorking of the bottles and I knew that more than likely
they'd ask me to eat with them. It worried me to think of it, for since
they'd been so kind I could not very well refuse, and yet it might be
dangerous to eat the food they had. For although they were humanoid, there
easily could be differences in their metabolism and what might be food for
them could be poisonous for me.
It was a little thing, of course, but it seemed a big decision, and I
sat there in mental agony, trying to make up my mind.
The food might be a loathsome and nauseating mess, but that I could
have managed; for the friendship of these people I would have choked it
down. It was the thought that it might be deadly that made me hesitate.
A while ago, I remembered, I had convinced myself that no matter how
great a threat the Flowers might be, we still must let them in, must strive
to find a common ground upon which any differences that might exist between
us could somehow be adjusted. I had told myself that the future of the human
race might easily hang upon our ability to meet and to get along with an
alien race, for the time was coming, in a hundred years from now, or a
thousand years from now, when we'd be encountering other alien races, and we
could not fail this first time.
And here, I realized, was another alien race, sitting in this circle,
and there could be no double standard as between myself and the world at
large. I, in my own right, must act as I'd decided the human race must act -
I must eat the food when it was offered me.
Perhaps I was not thinking very clearly. Events were happening much too
fast and I had too little time. It was a snap decision at best and I hoped I
was not wrong.
I never had a chance to know, for before the food could be passed
around, the contraption in the centre of the circle began a little ticking -
no more than the ticking of a clock in an empty room, but at the first tick
it gave they all jumped to their feet and stood watching it.
I jumped up, too, and stood watching with them, and I could sense that
they'd forgotten I was with them. All of their attentions were fastened on
that shining basketball.
As it ticked, the glow of it became a shining mistiness and the
mistiness spread out, like a fog creeping up the land from a river bottom.
The mistiness enveloped us and out of that mistiness strange shapes
began to form. At first they were wavering and unstable forms, but in a
while they steadied and became more substantial, although never quite
substantial; there was about them a touch of fairyland, of a shape and time
that one might see, but that was forever out of reach.
And now the mistiness went away - or perhaps it still remained and we
did not notice it, for with the creation of the forms it had supplied
another world, of which we were observers, if not an actual part.
It appeared that we were standing on the terrace of what on Earth might
have been called a villa. Beneath our feet were rough-hewn flagstones, with
thin lines of grass growing in the cracks between the stones, and back of us
rose rough walls of masonry. But the walls had a misty texture, as if they
were some sort of simulated backdrop that one was not supposed to inspect
too closely.
In front of us spread a city, an ugly city with no beauty in it. It was
utilitarian in its every aspect, a geometric mass of stone, reared without
imagination, with no architectural concept beyond the principle that one
stone piled atop another would achieve a place of shelter. The city was the
drab colour of dried mud and it spread as far as the eye could see, a
disorderly mass of rectilinear structures thrust together, cheek by jowl,
with no breathing space provided.
And yet there was an insubstantiality about it; never for an instant
did that massive city become solid masonry. Nor were the flagstones
underneath our feet an actual flagstone terrace.
Rather it was as though we floated, a fraction of an inch above the
flagstones, never touching them.
We stood, it seemed, in the middle of a three-dimensional movie. And
all around us the movie moved and went about its business and we knew that
we were there, for we could see it on every side of us, but the actors in
the movie were unaware of us and while we knew that we were there, there
also was the knowledge that we were not a part of it, that we somehow stood
aside from this magic world in which we were engulfed.
At first I'd seen only the city, but now I saw there was terror in the
city. People were running madly in the streets, and from far off I could
hear the screaming, the thin and frantic wailing of a lost and hopeless
people.
Then the city and the screaming were blotted out in a searing flash of
light, a blossoming whiteness that became so intense it suddenly went black.
The blackness covered us and we stood in a world that had nothing in it
except the darkness and the cataract of thunder that poured out of that
place where the flash of light had blossomed.
I took a short step forward, groping as I went. My hands met emptiness
and the feeling flooded over me that I stood in an emptiness that stretched
on forever, that what I'd known before had been nothing but illusion and the
illusion now was gone, leaving me to grope eternally through black
nothingness.
I took no other step, but stood stiff and straight, afraid to move a
muscle, sensing in all irrationality that I stood upon a platform and might
fall from it into a great emptiness which would have no bottom.
As I stood there the blackness turned to grey and through the greyness
I could see the city, flattened and sharded, swept by tornadic winds, with
gouts of flame and ash twisting in the monstrous whirlwind of destruction.
Above the city was a rolling cloud, as if a million thunderstorms had been
rolled all into one. And from this maelstrom of fury came a deepthroated
growling of death and fear and fate, a savage terrible sound that made one
think of evil.
Around me I saw the others - the black-skinned people with the silver
crests - standing transfixed and frozen, fascinated by the sight that lay
before them, rigid as if with fear, but something more than just plain fear
- superstitious fear, perhaps.
I stood there, rooted with them, and the growling died away. Thin wisps
of smoke curled up above the rubble, and in the silence that came as the
growling ceased I could hear the little cracklings and groanings and the
tiny crashes as the splintered stone that still remained settled more firmly
into place. But there was no sound of crying now, none of the thin, high
screaming. There were no people and the only movements were the little
ripples of settling rubble that lay beyond the bare and blackened and
entirely featureless area where the light had blossomed.
The greyness faded and the city began to dim. Out in the centre of the
picnic circle I could make out the glimmer of the lens-covered basketball.
There were no signs of my fellow picnickers; they had disappeared. And from
the thinning greyness came another screaming - but a different kind of
screaming, not the kind I'd heard from the city before the bomb had struck.
For now I knew that I had seen a city destroyed by a nuclear explosion
- as one might have watched it on a TV set. And the TV set, if one could
call it that, could have been nothing other than the basketball. By some
strange magic mechanism it had invaded time and brought back from the past a
moment of high crisis.
The greyness faded out and the night came back again, with the golden
moon and the dust of stars and the silver slopes that curved to meet the
quicksilver of the creek.
Down the farther slope I could see the scurrying figures, with their
silver topknots gleaming in the moonlight, running wildly through the night
and screaming in simulated terror. I stood looking after them and shivered,
for there was something here, I knew, that had a sickness in it, a sickness
of the mind, an illness of the soul.
Slowly I turned back to the basketball. It was, once again, just a
thing of lenses. I walked over to it and knelt beside it and had a look at