Clifford Simak - I Am Crying All Inside - And Other Stories

For the aeons before the human beings came to this twilight world, the life blankets had dragged out a humdrum existence. Occasionally one of them allied itself with a higher form of plant life, but not often. After all, such an arrangement was very little better than staying as they were.

When the humans came, however, the blankets finally clicked. Between them and the men of Earth grew up a perfect mutual agreement, a highly profitable and agreeable instance of symbiosis. Overnight, the blankets became one of the greatest single factors in galactic exploration.

For the man who wore one of them, like a cloak around his shoulders, need never worry where a meal was coming from; knew, furthermore, that he would be fed correctly, with a scientific precision that automatically counterbalanced any upset of metabolism that might be brought by alien conditions. For the curious plants had the ability to gather energy and convert it into food for the human body, had an uncanny instinct as to the exact needs of the body, extending, to a limited extent, to certain basic medical requirements.

But if the life blankets gave men food and warmth, served as a family doctor, man lent them something that was even more precious—the consciousness of life. The moment one of the plants wrapped itself around a man it became, in a sense, the double of that man. It shared his intelligence and emotions, was whisked from the dreary round of its own existence into a more exalted pseudo-life.

Nicodemus, at first moping outside the bathroom door, gradually grew peeved. He felt his thin veneer of human life slowly ebbing from him and he was filled with a baffling resentment.

Finally, feeling very put upon, he waddled out of the trading post upon his own high lonesome, flapping awkwardly along, like a sheet billowing in the breeze.

The dull brick-red sun that was Sigma Draco shone down upon a world that even at high noon appeared to be in twilight and Nicodemus’ bobbling shape cast squirming, unsubstantial purple shadows upon the green and crimson ground. A rifle tree took a shot at Nicodemus but missed him by a yard at least. That tree had been off the beam for weeks. It had missed everything it shot at. Its best effort had been scaring the life out of Nellie, the bookkeeping robot that never told a lie, when it banked one of its bulletlike seeds against the steel-sheeted post.

But no one had felt very badly about that, for no one cared for Nellie. With Nellie around, no one could chisel a red cent off the company. That, incidentally, was the reason she was at the post.

But for a couple of weeks now, Nellie hadn’t bothered anybody. She had taken to chumming around with Encyclopedia, who more than likely was slowly going insane trying to figure out her thoughts.

Nicodemus told the rifle tree what he thought of it, shooting at its own flesh and blood, as it were, and kept shuffling along. The tree, knowing Nicodemus for a traitor to his own, a vegetable renegade, took another shot at him, missed by two yards and gave up in disgust.

Since he had become associated with a human, Nicodemus hadn’t had much to do with other denizens of the planet—even the Encyclopedia. But when he passed a bed of moss and heard it whispering and gossiping away, he tarried for a moment, figurative ear cocked to catch some juicy morsel.

That is how he heard that Alder, a minor musician out in Melody Bowl, finally had achieved a masterpiece. Nicodemus knew it might have happened weeks before, for Melody Bowl was half a world away and the news sometimes had to travel the long way round, but just the same he scampered as fast as he could hump back toward the post.

For this was news that couldn’t wait. This was news Mackenzie had to know at once. He managed to kick up quite a cloud of dust coming down the home stretch and flapped triumphantly through the door, above which hung the crudely lettered sign:

GALACTIC TRADING CO.

Just what good the sign did, no one yet had figured out. The humans were the only living things on the planet that could read it.

Before the bathroom door, Nicodemus reared up and beat his fluttering self against it with tempestuous urgency.

“All right,” yelled Mackenzie. “All right. I know I took too long again. Just calm yourself. I’ll be right out.”

Nicodemus settled down, still wriggling with the news he had to tell, heard Mackenzie swabbing out the tub.

With Nicodemus wrapped happily about him, Mackenzie strode into the office and found Nelson Harper, the factor, with his feet up on the desk, smoking his pipe and studying the ceiling.

“Howdy, lad,” said the factor. He pointed at a bottle with his pipestem. “Grab yourself a snort.”

Mackenzie grabbed one.

“Nicodemus has been out chewing fat with the moss,” he said. “Tells me a conductor by the name of Alder has composed a symphony. Moss says it’s a masterpiece.”

Harper took his feet off the desk. “Never heard of this chap, Alder,” he said.

“Never heard of Kadmar, either,” Mackenzie reminded him, “until he produced the Red Sun symphony. Now everyone is batty over him. If Alder has anything at all, we ought to get it down. Even a mediocre piece pays out. People back on Earth are plain wacky over this tree music of ours. Like that one fellow … that composer—”

“Wade,” Harper filled in. “J. Edgerton Wade. One of the greatest composers Earth had ever known. Quit in mortification after he heard the Red Sun piece. Later disappeared. No one knows where he went.”

The factor nursed his pipe between his palms. “Funny thing. Came out here figuring our best trading bet would be new drugs or maybe some new kind of food. Something for the high-class restaurants to feature, charge ten bucks a plate for. Maybe even a new mineral. Like out on Eta Cassiop. But it wasn’t any of those things. It was music. Symphony stuff. High-brow racket.”

Mackenzie took another shot at the bottle, put it back and wiped his mouth. “I’m not so sure I like this music angle,” he declared. “I don’t know much about music. But it sounds funny to me, what I’ve heard of it. Brain-twisting stuff.”

Harper grunted. “You’re O.K. as long as you have plenty of serum along. If you can’t take the music, just keep yourself shot full of serum. That way it can’t touch you.”

Mackenzie nodded. “It almost got Alexander that time, remember? Ran short of serum while he was down in the Bowl trying to dicker with the trees. Music seemed to have a hold on him. He didn’t want to leave. He fought and screeched and yelled around. … I felt like a heel, taking him away. He never has been quite the same since then. Doctors back on Earth finally were able to get him straightened out, but warned him never to come back.”

“Alexander’s back again,” said Harper. “Grant spotted him over at the Groombridge post. Throwing in with the Groomies, I guess. Just a yellow-bellied renegade. Going against his own race. You boys shouldn’t have saved him that time. Should have let the music get him.”

“What are you going to do about it?” demanded Mackenzie.

Harper shrugged his shoulders. “What can I do about it? Unless I want to declare war on the Groombridge post. And that is out. Haven’t you heard it’s all sweetness and light between Earth and Groombridge 34? That’s the reason the two posts are stuck away from Melody Bowl. So each one of us will have a fair shot at the music. All according to some pact the two companies rigged up. Galactic’s got so pure they wouldn’t even like it if they knew we had a spy planted on the Groomie post.”

“But they got one planted on us,” declared Mackenzie. “We haven’t been able to find him, of course, but we know there is one. He’s out there in the woods somewhere, watching every move we make.”