Clifford Simak - All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

I had believed in them, I thought. In that little space of time toward the very end, when Tupper had ceased his talking and had dozed before the fire and there had been something on the hillside that had spoken to me and had walked me home, I had believed in them.

Had there been something on that hillside? Had something walked with me? I sweated, thinking of it.

I felt the bulk of the wrapped time contraption underneath my arm, and that, I realized, was a talisman of the actuality of that other world. With that, I must believe.

They had told me, I remembered, that I'd get my money back — they had guaranteed it. And here I was, back home again, without my fifteen hundred.

I got to my feet and started for the house, then changed my mind. I turned around and went up the slope toward Doc Fabian's house. It might be a good idea, I told myself, to see what was going on outside the barrier. The people who were waiting at the house could wait a little longer.

I reached the top of the slope and turned around, looking toward the east. There, beyond the village, blazed a line of campfires and the lights of many cars running back and forth.

A searchlight swung a thin blue finger of light up into the sky, slowly sweeping back and forth. And at one spot that seemed a little closer was a greater blob of light. A great deal of activity seemed to be going on around it.

Watching it, I made out a steam shovel and great black mounds of earth piled up on either side of it. I could hear, faintly, the metallic clanging of the mighty scoop as it dumped a load and then reached down into the hole to take another bite. Trying, I told myself, to dig beneath the barrier.

A car came rattling down the street and turned into the driveway of the house behind me. Doc, I thought — Doc coming home after being routed out of bed on an early morning call. I walked across the lawn and around the house.

The car was parked on the concrete strip of driveway and Doc was getting out.

"Doc," I said, "it's Brad." He turned and peered at me.

"Oh," he said, and his voice sounded tired, "so you are back again. There are people waiting at the house, you know." Too tired to be surprised that I was back again; too all beat out to care.

He shuffled forward and I saw, quite suddenly, that Doc was old. Of course I had thought of him as old, but never before had he actually seemed old. Now I could see that he was — the slightly stooped shoulders, his feet barely lifting off the ground as he walked toward me, the loose, old-man hang of his trousers, the deep lines in his face.

"Floyd Caidwell," he said. "I was out to Floyd" s. He had a heart attack — a strong, tough man like him and he has a heart attack."

"How is he?"

"As well as I can manage. He should be in a hospital, getting complete rest. But I can't get him there. With that thing out there, I can't get him where he should be.

"I don't know, Brad. I just don't know what will happen to us. Mrs Jensen was supposed to go in this morning for surgery. Cancer. She'll die, anyhow, but surgery would give her months, maybe a year or two, of life. And there's no way to get her there. The little Hopkins girl has been going regularly to a specialist and he's been helping her a lot. Decker — perhaps you've heard of him. He's a top-notch man. We interned together." He stopped in front of me. "Can't you see," he said. "I can't help these people. I can do a little, but I can't do enough. I can't handle things like this — I can't do it all alone. Other times I could send them somewhere else, to someone who could help them. And now I can't do that. For the first time in my life, I can't help my people."

"You're taking it too hard," I said.

He looked at me with a beaten look, a tired and beaten look.

"I can't take it any other way," he said. "All these years, they've depended on me."

"How's Stuffy?" I asked.

"You have heard, of course." Doc snorted angrily. "The damn fool ran away."

"From the hospital?"

"Where else would he run from? Got dressed when their backs were turned and snuck away. He always was a sneaky old goat and he never had good sense. They're looking for him, but no one's found him yet."

"He'd head back here," I said.

"I suppose he would," said Doc. "What about this story I heard about; some telephone he had?"

I shook my head. "Hiram said he found one."

Doc peered sharply at me. "You don't know anything about it?"

"Not very much," I said.

"Nancy said you were in some other world or something. What kind of talk is that?"

"Did Nancy tell you that?"

He shook his head. "No, Gerald told me. He asked me what to do. He was afraid that if he mentioned it, he would stir up the village."

"And?"

"I told him not to. The folks are stirred up enough. He told them what you said about the flowers. He had to tell them something."

"Doc," I said, "it's a funny business. I don't rightly know myself. Let's not talk about it. Tell me what's going on. What are those fires out there?"

"Those are soldier fires," he told me. "There are state troops out there. They've got the town ringed in. Brad, it's crazier than hell. We can't get out and no one can get in, but they got troops out there. I don't know what they think they're doing. They evacuated everybody for ten miles outside the barrier and there are planes patrolling and they have some tanks. They tried to dynamite the barrier this morning and they didn't do a thing except blow a hole in Jake Fisher's pasture. They could have saved that dynamite."

"They're trying to dig under the barrier," I said.

"They've done a lot of things," said Doe. "They had some helicopters that flew above the town, then tried to come straight down. Figuring, I guess, that there are only walls out there, without any top to them. But they found there was a top. They fooled around all afternoon and they wrecked two ‘copters, but they found out, I guess, that it's a sort of dome. It curves all the way above us. A kind of bubble, you might say."

"And there are all those fool newspapermen out there. I tell you, Brad, there's an army of them. There isn't anything but Millville on the TV and radio, or in the papers either."

"It's big news," I said.

"Yes, I suppose so. But I'm worried, Brad. This village is getting ready to blow up. The people are on edge. They're scared and touchy. The whole damn place could go hysterical if you snapped your fingers." He came a little closer. "What are you planning, Brad?"

"I'm going down to my place. There are people down there. You want to come along?"

He shook his head. "No, I was down there for a while and then I got this call from Floyd. I'm all beat out. I'm going in to bed." He turned, and started to shuffle away and then he turned back.

"You be careful, boy," he warned. "There's a lot of talk about the flowers. They say if your father hadn't raised those flowers it never would have happened. They think it was a plot your father started and you are in on it."

"I'll watch my step," I said.

They were in the living-room. As soon as I came in the kitchen door, Hiram Martin saw me.

"There he is!" he bellowed, leaping up and charging out into the kitchen.

He stopped his rush and looked accusingly at me. "It took you long enough," he said.

I didn't answer him.

I put the time contraption, still wrapped in my jacket, on the kitchen table. A fold of cloth fell away from it and the many-angled lenses winked in the light from the ceiling fixture.

Hiram backed away a step. "What's that?" he asked.

"Something I brought back," I said. "A time machine, I guess." The coffee pot was on the stove and the burner was turned low. Used coffee cups covered the top of the kitchen sink. The sugar canister had its lid off and there was spilled sugar on the counter top.