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

Grass rustled on the hillside above them and Mackenzie settled back against the car, kept on smoking. Nellie hunkered down a few feet away.

The Encyclopedia waddled down the hill, starlight glinting from his shell-like back. Ponderously he lined up with them beside the car, pushing his taproot into the ground for an evening snack.

“Understand you may be going back to Earth with us,” said Mackenzie, conversationally.

The answer came, measured in sharp and concise thought that seemed to drill deep into Mackenzie’s mind. “I should like to. Your race is interesting.”

It was hard to talk to a thing like that, Mackenzie told himself. Hard to keep the chatter casual when you knew all the time it was hunting around in the corners of your mind. Hard to match one’s voice against the brittle thought with which it talked.

“What do you think of us?” he asked and knew, as soon as he had asked it, that it was asinine.

“I know very little of you,” the Encyclopedia declared. “You have created artificial lives, while we on this planet have lived natural lives. You have bent every force that you can master to your will. You have made things work for you. First impression is that, potentially, you are dangerous.”

“I guess I asked for it,” Mackenzie said.

“I do not follow you.”

“Skip it,” said Mackenzie.

“The only trouble,” said the Encyclopedia, “is that you don’t know where you’re going.”

“That’s what makes it so much fun,” Mackenzie told him. “Cripes, if we knew where we were going there’d be no adventure. We’d know what was coming next. As it is, every corner that we turn brings a new surprise.”

“Knowing where you’re going has its advantages,” insisted the Encyclopedia.

Mackenzie knocked the pipe bowl out on his boot heel, tramped on the glowing ash.

“So you have us pegged,” he said.

“No,” said the Encyclopedia. “Just first impressions.”

The music trees were twisted gray ghosts in the murky dawn. The conductors, except for the few who refused to let even a visit from the Earthmen rouse them from their daylight slumber, squatted like black imps on their podia.

Delbert rode on Smith’s shoulder, one clawlike hand entwined in Smith’s hair to keep from falling off. The Encyclopedia waddled along in the wake of the Earthman party. Wade led the way towards Alder’s podium.

The Bowl buzzed with the hum of distorted thought, the thought of many little folk squatting on their mounds—an alien thing that made Mackenzie’s neck hairs bristle just a little as it beat into his mind. There were no really separate thoughts, no one commanding thought, just the chitter-chatter of hundreds of little thoughts, as if the conductors might be gossiping.

The yellow cliffs stood like a sentinel wall and above the path that led to the escarpment, the tractor loomed like a straddled beetle against the early dawn.

Alder rose from the podium to greet them, a disreputable-looking gnome on gnarly legs.

The Earth delegation squatted on the ground. Delbert, from his perch on Smith’s shoulder, made a face at Alder.

Silence held for a moment and then Mackenzie, dispensing with formalities, spoke to Alder. “We rescued Delbert for you,” he told the gnome. “We brought him back.”

Alder scowled and his thoughts were fuzzy with disgust. “We do not want him back,” he said.

Mackenzie, taken aback, stammered. “Why, we thought … that is, he’s one of you … we went to a lot of trouble to rescue him—”

“He’s a nuisance,” declared Alder. “He’s a disgrace. He’s a no-good. He’s always trying things.”

“You’re not so hot yourself,” piped Delbert’s thought. “Just a bunch of fuddy-duddies. A crowd of corn peddlers. You’re sore at me because I want to be different. Because I dust it off—”

“You see,” said Alder to Mackenzie, “what he is like.”

“Why, yes,” agreed Mackenzie, “but there are times when new ideas have some values. Perhaps he may be—”

Alder leveled an accusing finger at Wade. “He was all right until you took to hanging around,” he screamed. “Then he picked up some of your ideas. You contaminated him. Your silly notions about music—” Alder’s thoughts gulped in sheer exasperation, then took up again. “Why did you come? No one asked you to. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Wade, red faced behind his beard, seemed close to apoplexy.

“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life,” he howled. He thumped his chest with a doubled fist. “Back on Earth I wrote great symphonies myself. I never held with frivolous music. I never—”

“Crawl back into your hole,” Delbert shrilled at Alder. “You guys don’t know what music is. You saw out the same stuff day after day. You never lay it in the groove. You never get gated up. You all got long underwear.”

Alder waved knotted fists above his head and hopped up and down in rage. “Such language!” he shrieked. “Never was the like heard here before.”

The whole Bowl was yammering. Yammering with clashing thoughts of rage and insult.

“Now, wait,” Mackenzie shouted. “All of you, quiet down!”

Wade puffed out his breath, turned a shade less purple. Alder squatted back on his haunches, unknotted his fists, tried his best to look composed. The clangor of thought subsided to a murmur.

“You’re sure about this?” Mackenzie asked Alder. “Sure you don’t want Delbert back.”

“Mister,” said Alder, “there never was a happier day in Melody Bowl than the day we found him gone.”

A rising murmur of assent from the other conductors underscored his words.

“We have some others we’d like to get rid of, too,” said Alder.

From far off across the Bowl came a yelping thought of derision.

“You see,” said Alder, looking owlishly at Mackenzie, “what it is like. What we have to contend with. All because this … this … this—”

Glaring at Wade, thoughts failed him. Carefully he settled back upon his haunches, composed his face again.

“If the rest were gone,” he said, “we could settle down. But as it is, these few keep us in an uproar all the time. We can’t concentrate, we can’t really work. We can’t do the things we want to do.”

Mackenzie pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

“Alder,” he declared, “you sure are in a mess.”

“I was hoping,” Alder said, “that you might be able to take them off our hands.”

“Take them off your hands!” yelled Smith. “I’ll say we’ll take them! We’ll take as many—”

Mackenzie nudged Smith in the ribs with his elbow, viciously. Smith gulped into silence. Mackenzie tried to keep his face straight.

“You can’t take them trees,” said Nellie, icily. “It’s against the law.”

Mackenzie gasped. “The law?”

“Sure, the regulations. The company’s got regulations. Or don’t you know that? Never bothered to read them, probably. Just like you. Never pay no attention to the things you should.”

“Nellie,” said Smith savagely, “you keep out of this. I guess if we want to do a little favor for Alder here—”

“But it’s against the law!” screeched Nellie.

“I know,” said Mackenzie. “Section 34 of the chapter on Relations with Extraterrestrial Life. ‘No member of this company shall interfere in any phase of the internal affairs of another race.’”

“That’s it,” said Nellie, pleased with herself. “And if you take some of these trees, you’ll be meddling in a quarrel that you have no business having anything to do with.”

Mackenzie flipped his hands. “You see,” he said to Alder.

“We’ll give you a monopoly on our music,” tempted Alder. “We’ll let you know when we have anything. We won’t let the Groomies have it and we’ll keep our prices right.”