Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

Nan Maxill faced the problem. Ash was properly a gift to all the people of the world. There was none who couldn’t learn from him; all would benefit by what they learned. Scientists could understand what she couldn’t; piece together the hints of matters above Ash’s own head. The impetus he could give to technology would make the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries seem stagnant periods. Musicians and philologists could be pushed to amazing discoveries. Farmers could benefit most of all. Under his guidance dead sands and unused spaces would be rich with food; many if not all wars might be avoided; To keep him on the farm in Evarts County would be cheating humanity.

Against all this what could she set? The prosperity of the Maxills? Her growing attachment to Ash? The threat of her father selling the farm—easy enough now—and seeing the money spent until they were worse off than ever? She would have been stupid or foolish not to have considered these things. But the picture that pushed all others aside was that of Ash on the rack, victim of polite, incredulous inquisitors.

They wouldn’t believe a word he said. They’d find the most convincing reasons for disregarding the evidence of the corn, the fruit, the untouched fiddle. They would subject him to psychiatric tests: intelligence, co-ordination, memory; physical tests—every possible prying and prodding. Where was he born, what was his full name, who were his father and mother? Unbelieving, refusing to believe, but so politely, gently, insistently: Yes, yes of course, we understand; but try and think back, Mr. Uh Er Ash. Try to recall your childhood...

And when they finally realized, it would be worse, not better. Now this force, Mr. Ash—try to remember how.... This equation; surely you can.... We know you practice telekinesis, just show us.... Again, please...Again, please.... About healing sores, please explain.... Let’s go through that revival of dying plant life once more.....Now about this ultrachromatic scale.... Now this, now that.

Or suppose it wasn’t that way at all? Suppose the peril to Ash wasn’t the apelike human greed for information but the tigerish human fear and hate of the stranger? Arrest for illegal entry or whatever they wanted to call it, speeches in Congress, uproar in newspapers and over the air. Spy, saboteur, alien agent. (How do we know what he’s done to what he grows? Maybe anybody who eats it will go crazy or not be able to have babies.) There were no means of deporting Ash; this didn’t mean he couldn’t be gotten rid of by those terrified of an invasion of which he was the forerunner. Trials, legal condemnation, protective custody, lynchers...

Uncovering Ash meant disaster. Two hundred years earlier or later he could bring salvation. Not now. In this age of fear, the revelation of his existence would be an irreparable mistake. Nan knew her father wouldn’t be anxious to tell who was responsible for his crops; Gladys and Muriel knew nothing except that they had a hired man who was somewhat peculiar; anyway they wouldn’t call themselves to the attention of Evarts County in any controversial light. The younger kids could be trusted to follow the example of their father and sisters. Besides, she was the only one in whom Ash had confided.

That winter Maxill bought two more cows. Ancient, dry and bony, destined for the butcher’s where they would have brought very little. Under Ash’s care they rejuvenated from day to day, their ribs vanished beneath flesh, their eyes brightened. The small, slack bags emerged, rounded, swelled, and eventually hung as full of milk as though they had just calved.

“What I want to know is, why can’t we do as much for the pigs?” he demanded of Nan, ignoring, as always except when it suited him, Ash’s presence. “Hogs are way down; I could get me some bred sows cheap. He could work his hocus-pocus—I can just see what litters they’d have.”

“It isn’t hocus-pocus. Ash just knows more about these things than we do. And he won’t do anything to help killing,” Nan explained. “He won’t eat meat or eggs or milk himself—”

“He did something to make the hens lay more. And look at the milk we’re getting.”

“The more the hens lay the farther they are from the ax. The same goes for the cows. You notice nothing’s improved the young cockerels. Maybe it isn’t that he won’t; maybe he can’t do anything to get animals ready to be eaten. Ask him.”

The seed catalogues began coming. Maxill had never bothered with the truck garden beyond having it plowed for the girls to sow and tend. This year he treated each pamphlet like a love letter, gloating over the orange-icicle carrots, impudent radishes, well-born heads of lettuce on the glistening covers. Nan intercepted his rhapsody of cabbages bigger than pumpkins, watermelons too heavy for a man to lift unaided, succulent tomatoes weighing three pounds or more apiece.

And Ash was content. For the first time Nan felt the double-edged anger of women toward both exploiter and exploited. Ash ought to have some self-respect, some ambition. He oughtn’t be satisfied puttering around an old farm. With his abilities and the assurance of a superior among primitives he could be just about anything he wanted. But of course all he wanted was to be a farmer.

Maxill couldn’t wait for the ground to be ready. While it was still too wet he had it plowed. Badly and at extra cost. He planted every inch of the fifty-odd available acres, to the carefully concealed amusement of his neighbors who knew the seed would rot.

Nan asked Ash, “Can you control whatever it is you do?”

“I can’t make pear trees bear cucumbers or a grapevine have potatoes on its roots.”

“I mean, everything doesn’t have to be extra big, does it? Can you fix it so the corn is only a little bigger than usual?”

“Why?”

Nan Maxill knew the shame of treason, as she tried to explain.

“You’re using words I don’t know,” said Ash. “Please define: jealousy, envy, foreigner, competition, furious, suspicion and—well, begin with those.”

She did the best she could. It wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t nearly good enough. Nan, who had been outraged at Ash’s banishment, began to see how one too far behind or too far ahead might become intolerable. She could only guess what Ash represented to his people—a reminder of things better forgotten, a hint that they weren’t so advanced as they thought when such a one could still be born to them —but she knew what he was on earth in the year 1937: a reproach and a condemnation.

Spring winds snapped the dead wood on the fruit trees, pruning them as efficiently as a man with saw, shears and snips. The orchard could not be mistaken for a young one, the massive trunks and tall tops showed how long they had been rooted, but it was unquestionably a healthy one. The buds filled and opened, some with red-tipped unspoiled leaves, others with soft, powdery, uncountable blossoms. The shade they cast was so dense no weeds grew between the trees.

Not so in the fields. Whatever Ash had done to the soil also affected the windblown seeds lighting in and between the furrows. They came up so thickly that stem grew next to stem, roots tangled inextricably, heads rose taller and taller, reaching for unimpeded sunlight. Unless you got down on hands and knees the tiny green pencils were invisible under the network of weeds.

“Anyways,” said Malcolm Maxill, “the darned things came up instead of rotting; that’s going to make some of the characters around here look pretty sick. I’ll have a crop two-three weeks ahead of the rest. Depression’s over for the Maxills. Know what? We’ll have to cultivate like heck to get rid of the weeds; I’m going to get us a tractor on time. Then we won’t have to hire our plowing next year. Suppose he can learn to run a tractor7”