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

“I told you every word of that,” agreed Mackenzie. “Probably even more. But I didn’t know what I know now.”

Harper groaned. “Galactic is plastering every front page in the Solar System with the news. Earth radios right now are bellowing it out from Mercury to Pluto. Before another hour is gone every man, woman and child will know those trees are coming to Earth. And once they know that, there’s nothing we can do. Do you understand that, Mackenzie? We have to get them there!”

“I can’t do it, chief,” Mackenzie insisted, stubbornly.

“Why can’t you?” screamed Harper. “So help me Hannah, if you don’t—”

“I can’t bring them in because Nellie’s burning them. She’s down in the Bowl right now with a flamer. When she’s through, there won’t be any music trees.”

“Go out and stop her!” shrieked Harper. “What are you sitting there for! Go out and stop her! Blast her if you have to. Do anything, but stop her! That crazy robot—”

“I told her to,” snapped Mackenzie. “I ordered her to do it. When I get through here, I’m going down and help her.”

“You’re crazy, man!” yelled Harper. “Stark, staring crazy. They’ll throw the book at you for this. You’ll be lucky if you just get life—”

Two darting hands loomed in the plate, hands that snapped down and closed around Mackenzie’s throat, hands that dragged him away and left the screen blank, but with a certain blurring motion, as if two men might be fighting for their lives just in front of it.

“Mackenzie!” screamed Harper. “Mackenzie!”

Something smashed into the screen and shattered it, leaving the broken glass gaping in jagged shards.

Harper clawed at the visiphone. “Mackenzie! Mackenzie, what’s happening!”

In answer the screen exploded in a flash of violent flame, howled like a screeching banshee and then went dead.

Harper stood frozen in the room, listening to the faint purring of the radio. His pipe fell from his hand and bounced along the floor, spilling burned tobacco.

Cold, clammy fear closed down upon him, squeezing his heart. A fear that twisted him and mocked him. Galactic would break him for this, he knew. Send him out to some of the jungle planets as the rankest subordinate. He would be marked for life, a man not to be trusted, a man who had failed to uphold the prestige of the company.

Suddenly a faint spark of hope stirred deep within him. If he could get there soon enough! if he could get to Melody Bowl in time, he might stop this madness. Might at least save something, save a few of the precious trees.

The flier was in the compound, waiting. Within half an hour he could be above the Bowl.

He leaped for the door, shoved it open and even as he did a pellet whistled past his cheek and exploded into a puff of dust against the door frame. Instinctively, he ducked and another pellet brushed his hair. A third caught him in the leg with stinging force and brought him down. A fourth puffed dust into his face.

He fought his way to his knees, was staggered by another shot that slammed into his side. He raised his right arm to protect his face and a sledge-hammer blow slapped his wrist. Pain flowed along his arm and in sheer panic he turned and scrambled on hands and knees across the threshold, kicked the door shut with his foot.

Sitting flat on the floor, he held his right wrist in his left hand. He tried to make his fingers wiggle and they wouldn’t. The wrist, he knew, was broken.

After weeks of being off the beam the rifle tree outside the compound suddenly had regained its aim and gone on a rampage.

Mackenzie raised himself off the floor and braced himself with one elbow, while with the other hand he fumbled at his throbbing throat. The interior of the tractor danced with wavy motion and his head thumped and pounded with pain.

Slowly, carefully, he inched himself back so he could lean against the wall. Gradually the room stopped rocking, but the pounding in his head went on.

Someone was standing in the doorway of the tractor and he fought to focus his eyes, trying to make out who it was.

A voice screeched across his nerves.

“I’m taking your blankets. You’ll get them back when you decide to leave the trees alone.”

Mackenzie tried to fashion words, but all he accomplished was a croak. He tried again.

“Wade?” he asked.

It was Wade, he saw.

The man stood within the doorway, one hand clutching a pair of blankets, the other holding a gun.

“You’re crazy, Wade,” he whispered. “We have to burn the trees. The human race never would be safe. Even if they fail this time, they’ll try again. And again—and yet again. And some day they will get us. Even without going to Earth they can get us. They can twist us to their purpose with recordings alone. Long distance propaganda. Take a bit longer, but it will do the job as well.”

“They are beautiful,” said Wade. “The most beautiful things in all the universe. I can’t let you destroy them. You must not destroy them.”

“But can’t you see,” croaked Mackenzie, “that’s the thing that makes them so dangerous. Their beauty, the beauty of their music, is fatal. No one can resist it.”

“It was the thing I lived by,” Wade told him, soberly. “You say it made me something that was not quite human. But what difference does that make. Must racial purity, in thought and action, be a fetish that would chain us to a drab existence when something better, something greater, is offered. And we never would have known. That is the best of it all, we never would have known. They would have changed us, yes, but so slowly, so gradually, that we would not have suspected. Our decisions and our actions and our way of thought would still have seemed to be our own. The trees never would have been anything more than something cultural.”

“They want our mechanization,” said Mackenzie. “Plants can’t develop machines. Given that, they might have taken us along a road we, in our rightful heritage, never would have taken.”

“How can we be sure,” asked Wade, “that our heritage would have guided us aright?”

Mackenzie slid straighter against the wall. His head still throbbed and his throat still ached.

“You’ve been thinking about this?” he asked.

Wade nodded. “At first there was the natural reaction of horror. But, logically, that reaction is erroneous. Our schools teach our children a way of life. Our press strives to formulate our adult opinion and belief. The trees were doing no more to us than we do to ourselves. And perhaps, for a purpose no more selfish.”

Mackenzie shook his head. “We must live our own life. We must follow the path the attributes of humanity decree that we should follow. And anyway, you’re wasting your time.”

“I don’t understand,” said Wade.

“Nellie already is burning the trees,” Mackenzie told him. “I sent her out before I made the call to Harper.”

“No, she’s not,” said Wade.

Mackenzie sat bolt upright. “What do you mean?”

Wade flipped the pistol as Mackenzie moved as if to regain his feet.

“It doesn’t matter what I mean,” he snapped. “Nellie isn’t burning any trees. She isn’t in a position to burn any trees. And neither are you, for I’ve taken both your flamers. And the tractor won’t run, either. I’ve seen to that. So the only thing that you can do is stay right here.”

Mackenzie motioned toward Smith, lying on the floor. “You’re taking his blanket, too?”

Wade nodded.

“But you can’t. Smith will die. Without that blanket he doesn’t have a chance. The blanket could have healed the wound, kept him fed correctly, kept him warm—”

“That,” said Wade, “is all the more reason that you come to terms directly.”