Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

"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 animal world was able to survive.

Only plants could trap and convert and store the vital stuff of life.

It was only by making use of the energy provided by the vegetable world that the animal kingdom could exist. Plants, by 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.