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

“Those lousy planet-runners,” said Smith, “figured they’d take that tree and sell it to someone back on Earth. I can think of a lot of big shots who’d pay plenty to have one of those trees in their back yard.”

“It’s a lucky thing we came along,” said Mackenzie, soberly. “If we hadn’t, if they’d got away with it, the whole planet would have gone on the warpath. We could have closed up shop. It might have been years before we dared come back again.”

Smith rubbed his hands together, smirking. “We’ll take back their precious tree,” he declared, “and that will put us in solid! They’ll give us their tunes from now on, free for nothing, just out of pure gratitude.”

“You gentlemen,” said Wade, “are motivated by mercenary factors but you have the right idea.”

A heavy tread sounded behind them and when they turned they saw Nellie striding down the hill. She clutched a life blanket in her hand.

“He got away,” she said, “but I got his blanket. Now I got a blanket, too, just like you fellows.”

“What do you need with a life blanket?” yelled Smith. “You give that blanket to Mr. Wade. Right away. You hear me.”

Nellie pouted. “You won’t let me have anything. You never act like I’m human—”

“You aren’t,” said Smith.

“If you give that blanket to Mr. Wade,” wheedled Mackenzie, “I’ll let you drive the car.”

“You would?” asked Nellie, eagerly.

“Really,” said Wade, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed.

“You take that blanket,” said Mackenzie. “You need it. Looks like you haven’t eaten for a day or two.”

“I haven’t,” Wade confessed.

“Shuck into it then and get yourself a meal,” said Smith.

Nellie handed it over.

“How come you were so good pegging those rocks?” asked Smith.

Nellie’s eyes gleamed with pride. “Back on Earth I was on a baseball team,” she said. “I was the pitcher.”

Alexander’s car was undamaged except for a few dents and a smashed vision plate where Wade’s first bolt had caught it, blasting the glass and startling the operator so that he swerved sharply, spinning the treads across a boulder and upsetting it.

The music tree was unharmed, its roots still well moistened in the burlap-wrapped, water-soaked ball of earth. Inside the tractor, curled in a tight ball in the darkest corner, unperturbed by the uproar that had been going on outside, they found Delbert, the two-foot high, roly-poly conductor that resembled nothing more than a poodle dog walking on its hind legs.

The Groombridgians were dead, their crushed chitinous armor proving the steam behind Nellie’s delivery.

Smith and Wade were inside the tractor, settle down for the night. Nellie and the Encyclopedia were out in the night, hunting for the gun Alexander had dropped when he fled. Mackenzie, sitting on the ground, Nicodemus pulled snugly about him, leaned back against the car and smoked a last pipe before turning in.

The grass behind the tractor rustled.

“That you, Nellie?” Mackenzie called, softly.

Nellie clumped hesitantly around the corner of the car.

“You ain’t sore at me?” she asked.

“No, I’m not sore at you. You can’t help the way you are.”

“I didn’t find the gun,” said Nellie.

“You knew where Alexander dropped it?”

“Yes,” said Nellie. “It wasn’t there.”

Mackenzie frowned in the darkness. “That means Alexander managed to come back and get it. I don’t like that. He’ll be out gunning for us. He didn’t like the company before. He’ll really be out for blood after what we did today.”

He looked around. “Where’s the Encyclopedia?”

“I sneaked away from him. I wanted to talk to you about him.”

“O.K.,” said Mackenzie. “Fire away.”

“He’s been trying to read my brain,” said Nellie.

“I know. He read the rest of ours. Did a good job of it.”

“He’s been having trouble,” declared Nellie.

“Trouble reading your brain? I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“You don’t need to talk as if my brain—” Nellie began, but Mackenzie stopped her.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Nellie. Your brain is all right, far as I know. Maybe even better than ours. But the point is that it’s different. Ours are natural brains, the orthodox way for things to think and reason and remember. The Encyclopedia knows about those kinds of brains and the minds that go with them. Yours isn’t that kind. It’s artificial. Part mechanical, part chemical, part electrical, Lord knows what else; I’m not a robot technician. He’s never run up against that kind of brain before. It probably has him down. Matter of fact, our civilization probably has him down. If this planet ever had a real civilization, it wasn’t a mechanical one. There’s no sign of mechanization here. None of the scars machines inflict on planets.”

“I been fooling him,” said Nellie quietly. “He’s been trying to read my mind, but I been reading his.”

Mackenzie started forward. “Well, I’ll be—” he began. Then he settled back against the car, dead pipe hanging from between his teeth. “Why didn’t you ever let us know you could read minds?” he demanded. “I suppose you been sneaking around all this time, reading our minds, making fun of us, laughing behind our backs.”

“Honest, I ain’t,” said Nellie. “Cross my heart, I ain’t. I didn’t even know I could. But, when I felt the Encyclopedia prying around inside my head the way he does, it kind of got my dander up. I almost hauled off and smacked him one. And then I figured maybe I better be more subtle. I figured that if he could pry around in my mind, I could pry around in his. I tried it and it worked.”

“Just like that,” said Mackenzie.

“It wasn’t hard,” said Nellie. “It come natural. I seemed to just know how to do it.”

“If the guy that made you knew what he’d let slip through his fingers, he’d cut his throat,” Mackenzie told her.

Nellie sidled closer. “It scares me,” she said.

“What’s scaring you now?”

“That Encyclopedia knows too much.”

“Alien stuff,” said Mackenzie. “You should have expected that. Don’t go messing around with an alien mentality unless you’re ready for some shocks.”

“It ain’t that,” said Nellie. “I knew I’d find alien stuff. But he knows other things. Things he shouldn’t know.”

“About us?”

“No, about other places. Places other than the Earth and this planet here. Places Earthmen ain’t been to yet. The kind of things no Earthman could know by himself or that no Encyclopedia could know by himself, either.”

“Like what?”

“Like knowing mathematical equations that don’t sound like anything we know about,” said Nellie. “Nor like he’d know about if he’d stayed here all his life. Equations you couldn’t know unless you knew a lot more about space and time than even Earthmen know.

“Philosophy, too. Ideas that make sense in a funny sort of way, but make your head swim when you try to figure out the kind of people that would develop them.”

Mackenzie got out his pouch and refilled his pipe, got it going.

“Nellie, you think maybe this Encyclopedia has been at other minds? Minds of other people who may have come here?”

“Could be,” agreed Nellie. “Maybe a long time ago. He’s awful old. Lets on he could be immortal if he wanted to be. Said he wouldn’t die until there was nothing more in the universe to know. Said when that time came there’d be nothing more to live for.”

Mackenzie clicked his pipestem against his teeth. “He could be, too,” he said. “Immortal, I mean. Plants haven’t got all the physiological complications animals have. Given any sort of care, they theoretically could live forever.”