Teeth grinned at me out of the blackness of the bank that rose above
the stream, and I stopped dead, staring at that row of snaggled teeth and
the whiteness of the bone that arched above them. The water, tugging at my
ankles, growled a little at me and I shivered in the chill that swept down
from the darkening hills.
For, staring at that second skull, grinning at me out of the darkness
of the soil that stood poised above the water, I knew that the human race
faced the greatest danger it had ever known. Except for man himself, there
had been, up to this moment, no threat against the continuity of humanity.
But here, finally, that threat lay before my eyes.
13
I sighted the small glowing of the fire before I reached the camp. When
I stumbled down the hillside, I could see that Tupper had finished with his
nap and was cooking supper.
‘Out for a walk?’ he asked.
‘Just a look around,’ I said. ‘There isn’t much to see.’
‘The Flowers is all,’ said Tupper.
He wiped his chin and counted the fingers on one hand, then counted
them again to be sure he’d made no mistake.
‘Tupper?’
‘What is it, Brad?’
‘Is it all like this? All over this Earth, I mean? Nothing but the
Flowers?’
‘There are others come sometimes.’
‘Others?’
‘From other worlds,’ he said. ‘But they go away.’
‘What kind of others?’
‘Fun people. Looking for some fun.’ ‘What kind of fun?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Just fun, is all.’
He was surly and evasive.
‘But other than that,’ I said, ‘there’s nothing but the Flowers?’
‘That’s all,’ he said.
‘But you haven’t seen it all.’
‘They tell me,’ Tupper said. ‘And they wouldn’t lie. They aren’t like
people back in Millville. They don’t need to lie.’
He used two sticks to move the earthen pot off the hot part of the
fire.
‘Tomatoes,’ he said. ‘I hope you like tomatoes.’
I nodded that I did and he squatted down beside the fire to watch the
supper better.
‘They don’t tell nothing but the truth,’ be said, going back to the
question I had asked. ‘They couldn’t tell nothing but the truth. That’s the
way they’re made. They got all this truth wrapped up in them and that’s what
they live by. And they don’t need to tell nothing but the truth. It’s afraid
of being hurt that makes people lie and there is nothing that can hurt
them.’
He lifted his face to stare at me, daring me to disagree with him.
‘I didn’t say they lied,’ I told him. ‘I never for a moment questioned
anything they said. By this truth they’re wrapped up in, you mean their
knowledge, don’t you?’
‘I guess that’s what I mean. They know a lot of things no one back in
Millville knows.’
I let it go at that. Millville was Tupper’s former world. By saying
Millville, he meant the human world.
Tupper was off on his finger-counting routine once again. I watched him
as he squatted there, so happy and content, in a world where he had nothing,
but was happy and content.
I wondered once again at his strange ability to communicate with the
Flowers, to know them so well and so intimately that he could speak for
them. Was it possible, I asked myself, that this slobbering, finger-counting
village idiot possessed some sensory perception that the common run of
mankind did not have? That this extra ability of his might be a form of
compensation, to make up in some measure for what he did not have?
After all, I reminded myself, man was singularly limited in his
perception, not knowing what he lacked, not missing what he lacked by the
very virtue of not being able to imagine himself as anything other than he
was. It was entirely possible that Tupper, by some strange quirk of genetic
combination, might have abilities that no other human had, all unaware that
he was gifted in any special way, never guessing that other men might lack
what seemed entirely normal to himself. And could these extra-human
abilities match certain un-guessed abilities that lay within the Flowers
themselves?
The voice on the telephone, in mentioning the diplomatic job, had said
that I came highly recommended. And was it this man across the fire who had
recommended me? I wanted very much to ask him, but I didn’t dare.
‘Meow,’ said Tupper. ‘Meow, meow, meow.’
I’ll say this much for him. He sounded like a cat. He could sound like
anything at all. He was always making funny noises, practising his mimicry
until he had it pat.
I paid no attention to him. He had pulled himself back into his private
world and the chances were he’d forgotten I was there.
The pot upon the fire was steaming and the smell of cooking stole upon
the evening air. Just above the eastern horizon the first star came into
being and once again I was conscious of the little silences, so deep they
made me dizzy when I tried to listen to them, that fell into the chinks
between the crackling of the coals and the sounds that Tupper made.
It was a land of silence, a great eternal globe of silence, broken only
by the water and the wind and the little feeble noises that came from
intruders like Tupper and myself. Although, by now, Tupper might be no
intruder.
I sat alone, for the man across the fire had withdrawn himself from me,
from everything around him, retreating into a room he had fashioned for
himself; a place that was his alone, locked behind a door that could be
opened by no one but himself, for there was no other who had a key to it or,
indeed, any idea as to what kind of key was needed.
Alone and in the silence, I sensed the purpleness – the formless,
subtle personality of the things that owned this planet. There was a
friendliness, I thought, but a repulsive friendliness, the fawning
friendliness of some monstrous beast. And I was afraid.
Such a silly thing, I thought. To be afraid of flowers.
Tupper’s cat was lone and lost. It prowled the dark and dripping woods
of some other ogre-land and it mewed softly to itself; sobbing as it padded
on and on, along a confusing world-line of uncertainties.
The fear had moved away a little beyond the circle of the firelight.
But the purpleness still was there, hunched upon the hilltop.
An enemy, I wondered. Or just something strange?
If it were an enemy, it would be a terrible enemy, implacable and
efficient.
For the plant world was the sole source of energy by which the anima1
world was able to survive.
Only plants could trap and convert and store the vital stuff of life.
It was only by making use of the energy provided by the vegetable world that
the animal kingdom could exist. Plants, by wilfully becoming dormant or by
making themselves somehow inedible, could doom all other life.
And the Flowers were versatile, in a very nasty way. They could, as
witness Tupper’s garden and the trees that grew to supply him wood, be any
kind of plant at all. They could be tree or grass, vine or bush or grain.
They could not only masquerade as another plant, they could become that
plant.
Suppose they were allowed into the human Earth and should offer to
replace the native trees for a better tree, or perhaps the same old trees we
had always known, only that they would grow faster and straighter and
taller, for better shade or lumber. Or to replace wheat for a better wheat,
with a higher yield and a fuller kernel, and a wheat that was resistant to
drought and other causes that made a wheat crop fail. Suppose they made a
deal to become all vegetables, all grass, all grain, all trees, replacing
the native plants of Earth, giving men more food per acre, more lumber per
tree, an improved productivity in everything that grew.
There would be no hunger in the world, no shortages of any kind at all,
for the Flowers could adapt themselves to every human need.
And once man had come to rely upon them, once he had his entire economy
based upon them, and his very life staked upon their carrying out their
bargain, then they would have man at their mercy. Overnight they could cease
being wheat and corn and grass; they could rob the entire Earth of its food
supply. Or they might turn poisonous and thus kill more quickly and more
mercifully. Or, if by that time, they had come to hate man sufficiently,
they could develop certain types of pollen to which all Earthly life would
be so allergic that death, when it came, would be a welcome thing.
Or let us say, I thought, playing with the thought, that man did not