Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

"And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of trees — ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs. Let your chemists tell us what you want and we'll be that for you. We'll be made-to-order plants."

"All this," I said, "and your knowledge, too."

"That is right," they said.

"And in return, what do we do?"

"You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase boundaries into other worlds."

"And the time dome that you put over Millville — why did you do that?

"To gain your world's attention. To let you know that we were here and waiting."

"But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for instance."

"Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too."

"They could have told the world."

"Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as how do you say it — crackpots?"

"Yes, I know," I said. "No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy said. But surely there were others."

"Only certain types of minds," they told me, "can make contact with us. We can reach many minds, but they can't reach back to us. And to believe in us, to know us, you must reach back to us."

"You mean only the screwballs…"

"We're afraid that's what we mean," they said.

It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with Stuffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid citizen.

I sat there for a moment, wondering why they'd contacted me and Gerald Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They'd contacted Sherwood because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me?

Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it was.

"So, OK," I said. "I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?"

"We planted a demonstration plot," they told me. "So your people could realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are." You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.

I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to get back to Millville.

And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren't any Flowers. Maybe it was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it rehearsed so he could pull it off.

But, I argued with myself it couldn't be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn't bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn't dream it up and he couldn't pull it off. And besides, there was the matter of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would not explain.

I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.

The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out again, although I still knew that it was there.

There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat about the campfire and yarn the night away.

Ready? asked the Presence.

A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain — something born of the purpleness and moonlight?

"Yes," I said, "I'm ready. I will do the best I can." I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine.

It was fear, perhaps, but it didn't feel like fear.

I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.

"I am not afraid of you," I told it.

It didn't say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse and garden were.

A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me, and then go straight ahead.

I turned a little to my left and then went straight ahead.

A few more feet, it said.

I stopped and turned my head to face it and there was nothing there. If there had been anything, it was gone from there.

The moon was a golden gargoyle in the west. The world was lone and empty; the silvered slope had a hungry look. The blue-black sky was filled with many little eyes with a hard sharp glitter to them, a predatory glitter and the remoteness of uncaring.

Beyond the ridge a man of my own race drowsed beside a dying campfire, and it was all right for him, for he had a talent that I did not have, that I knew now I did not have — the talent for reaching out to grasp an alien hand (or paw or claw or pad) and being able in his twisted mind to translate that alien touch into a commonplace.

I shuddered at the gargoyle moon and took two steps forward and walked out of that hungry world straight into my garden.

Ragged clouds still raced across the sky, blotting out the moon. A faint lighting in the east gave notice of the dawn. The windows of my house were filled with lamplight and I knew that Gerald Sherwood and the rest of them were waiting there for me. And just to my left the greenhouse with the tree growing at its corner loomed ghostly against the rise of ground behind it.

I started to walk forward and fingers were scratching at my trouser leg. Startled, I looked down and saw that I had walked into a bush.

There had been no bush in the garden the last time I had seen it; there had been only the purple flowers. But I think I guessed what might have happened even before I stooped to have a look.

Squatting there, I squinted along the ground and in the first grey light of the coming day, I saw there were no flowers. Instead of a patch of flowers there was a patch of little bushes, perhaps a little larger, but not much larger than the flowers.

I hunkered there, with a coldness growing in me — for there was no explanation other than the fact that the bushes were the flowers, that somehow the Flowers had changed the flowers that once had grown there into little bushes. And, I wondered wildly, what could their purpose be?

Even here, I thought — even here they reach out for us. Even here they play their tricks on us and lay their traps for us. And they could do anything they wanted, I supposed, for if they did not own, at least they manipulated this corner of the Earth entrapped beneath the dome.

I put out a hand and felt along a branch and the branch had soft-swelling buds all along its length. Springtime buds, that in a day or so would be breaking into leaf. Springtime buds in the depth of summer!