Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

"But he took my roll," I said. "He sneaked it out of the envelope when I was asleep."

"Keep quiet," said the honeyed voice. "Just keep quiet and listen."

"Not until I get my fifteen hundred back."

"You'll get it back. You'll get much more than your fifteen hundred back."

"You can guarantee that?"

"We'll guarantee it." I sat down again.

"Look," I said, "you don't know what that money meant to me. It's part my fault, of course. I should have waited until the bank was open or I should have found a good safe place to hide it. But there was so much going on…"

"Don't worry for a moment," said the Flowers. "We'll get it back to you."

"OK," I said, "and does he have to use that voice?"

"What's the matter with the voice?"

"Oh, hell," I said, "go ahead and use it. I want to talk to you, maybe even argue with you, and it's unfair, but I'll remember who is speaking."

"We'll use another voice, then," said the Flowers, changing in the middle of the sentence to the voice of the businessman.

"Thanks very much," I said.

"You remember," said the Flowers, "the time we spoke to you on the phone and suggested that you might represent us?

"Certainly I remember. But as for representing you…"

"We need someone very badly. Someone we can trust."

"But you can't be certain I'm the man to trust."

"Yes, we can," they said. "Because we know you love us."

"Now, look here," I said. "I don't know what gives you that idea. I don't know if…"

"Your father found those of us who languished in your world. He took us home and cared for us. He protected us and tended us and he loved us and we flourished."

"Yes, I know all that."

"You're an extension of your father."

"Well, not necessarily. Not the way you mean."

"Yes," they insisted. "We have knowledge of your biology. We know about inherited characteristics. Like father, like son is a saying that you have." It was no use, I saw. You couldn't argue with them. From the logic of their race, from the half-assimilated, half-digested facts they had obtained in some manner in their contact with our Earth, they had it figured out. And it probably made good sense in their plant world, for an offspring plant would differ very little from the parents. It would be, I suspected, a fruitless battle to try to make them see that an assumption that was valid in their case need not extend its validity into the human race.

"All right," I said, "we'll let you have it your way. You're sure that you can trust me and probably you can. But in all fairness I must tell you I can't do the job."

"Can't?" they asked.

"You want me to represent you back on Earth. To be your ambassador. Your negotiator."

"That was the thought we had in mind."

"I have no training for a job of that sort. I'm not qualified. I wouldn't know how to do it. I wouldn't even know how to make a start."

"You have started," said the Flowers. "We are very pleased with the start you've made."

I stiffened and jerked upright. "The start I've made?" I asked.

"Why, yes, of course," they told me. "Surely you remember. You asked that Gerald Sherwood get in touch with someone. Someone, you stressed, in high authority."

"I wasn't representing you."

"But you could," they said. "We want someone to explain us."

"Let's be honest," I told them. "How can I explain you? I know scarcely anything about you."

"We would tell you anything you want to know."

"For openers," I said, "this is not your native world."

"No, it's not. We've advanced through many worlds."

"And the people — no, not the people, the intelligences — what happened to the intelligences of those other worlds?"

"We do not understand."

"When you get into a world, what do you do with the intelligence you find there?

"It is not often we find intelligence — not meaningful intelligence, not cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence does not develop on all worlds. When it does, we co-operate. We work with it. That is, when we can."

"There are times when you can't?"

"Please do not misunderstand," they pleaded. "There has been a case or two where we could not contact a world's intelligence. It would not become aware of us. We were just another life form, another — what do you call it? Another weed, perhaps."

"What do you do, then?"

"What can we do?" they asked.

It was not, it seemed to me, an entirely honest answer. There were a lot of things that they could do.

"And you keep on going."

"Keep on going?"

"From world to world," I said.

"From one world to another."

"When do you intend to stop?

"We do not know," they said.

"What is your goal? What are you aiming at?"

"We do not know," they said.

"Now, just wait a minute. That's the second time you've said that. You must know…"

"Sir," they asked, "does your race have a goal — a conscious goal?"

"I guess we don't," I said.

"So that would make us even."

"I suppose it would."

"You have on your world things you call computers."

"Yes," I said, "but very recently."

"And the function of computers is the storage of data and the correlation of that data and making it available whenever it is needed."

"There still are a lot of problems. The retrieval of the data…"

"That is beside the point. What would you say is the goal of your computers?

"Our computers have no purpose. They are not alive."

"But if they were alive?"

"Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the storage of a universal data and its correlation."

"That perhaps is right," they said. "We are living computers."

"Then there is no end for you. You'll keep on forever."

"We are not sure," they said.

"But…"

"Data," they told me, pontifically, "is the means to one end only arrival at the truth. Perhaps we do not need a universal data to arrive at truth."

"How do you know when you have arrived?"

"We will know," they said.

I gave up. We were getting nowhere. "So you want our Earth," I said.

"You state it awkwardly and unfairly. We do not want your Earth. We want to be let in, we want some living space, we want to work with you. You give us your knowledge and we will give you ours."

"We'd make quite a team," I said.

"We would, indeed," they said.

"And then?"

"What do you mean?" they asked.

"After we've swapped knowledge, what do we do then?"

"Why, we go on," they said. "Into other worlds. The two of us together."

"Seeking other cultures? After other knowledge?"

"That is right," they said.

They made it sound so simple. And it wasn't simple; it couldn't be that simple. There was nothing ever simple.

A man could talk with them for days and still be asking questions, getting no more than a bare outline of the situation.

"There is one thing you must realize," I said. "The people of my Earth will not accept you on blind faith alone. They must know what you expect of us and what we can expect of you. They must have some assurance that we can work together."

"We can help," they said, "in many different ways. We need not be as you see us now. We can turn ourselves into any kind of plant you need. We can provide a great reservoir of economic resources. We can be the old things that you have relied upon for years, but better than the old things ever were. We can be better foodstuff and better building material; better fibre. Name anything you need from plants and we can be that thing."

"You mean you'd let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you into cloth? And you would not mind?"

They came very close to sighing. "How can we make you understand? Eat one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life of us is one life — you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers. We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping."