will not accept you on blind faith alone. They must know what you expect of
us and what we can expect of you. They must have some assurance that we can
work together.’
‘We can help,’ they said, ‘in many different ways. We need not be as
you see us now. We can turn ourselves into any kind of plant you need. We
can provide a great reservoir of economic resources. We can be the old
things that you have relied upon for years, but better than the old things
ever were. We can be better foodstuff and better building material; better
fibre. Name anything you need from plants and we can be that thing.’
‘You mean you’d let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you
into cloth? And you would not mind?’
They came very close to sighing. ‘How can we make you understand? Eat
one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life
of us is one life – you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life
is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers.
We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping.’
‘And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which
you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of
trees – ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils
or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs.
Let your chemists tell us what you want and we’ll be that for you. We’ll be
made-to-order plants.’
‘All this,’ I said, ‘and your knowledge, too.’
‘That is right,’ they said.
‘And in return, what do we do?’
‘You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all
knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we
cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is
worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work
with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense
of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope
that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase
boundaries into other worlds.’
‘And the time dome that you put over Millville – why did you do that?
‘To gain your world’s attention. To let you know that we were here and
waiting.’
‘But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could
have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for
instance.’
‘Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too.’
‘They could have told the world.’
‘Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as how
do you say it – crackpots?’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy
said. But surely there were others.’
‘Only certain types of minds,’ they told me, ‘can make contact with us.
We can reach many minds, but they can’t reach back to us. And to believe in
us, to know us, you must reach back to us.’
‘You mean only the screwballs…’
‘We’re afraid that’s what we mean,’ they said.
It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact
they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with
Stuffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid
citizen.
I sat there for a moment, wondering why they’d contacted me and Gerald
Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They’d contacted Sherwood
because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and
he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me?
Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it
was.
‘So, OK,’ I said. ‘I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?’
‘We planted a demonstration plot,’ they told me. ‘So your people could
realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are.’
You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.
I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really
wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to
get back to Millville.
And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren’t any Flowers. Maybe it
was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called
mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it
rehearsed so he could pull it off.
But, I argued with myself it couldn’t be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn’t
bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn’t
dream it up and he couldn’t pull it off. And besides, there was the matter
of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would
not explain.
I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the
camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple
flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched
forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.
The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a
trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I
strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out
again, although I still knew that it was there.
There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an
intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk
with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat
about the campfire and yarn the night away.
Ready? asked the Presence.
A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain –
something born of the purpleness and moonlight?
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m ready. I will do the best I can.’
I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it
underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up
there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine.
It was fear, perhaps, but it didn’t feel like fear.
I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I
knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.
‘I am not afraid of you,’ I told it.
It didn’t say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the
ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse
and garden were.
A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me,
and then go straight ahead.
I turned a little to my left and then went straight ahead.
A few more feet, it said.
I stopped and turned my head to face it and there was nothing there. If
there had been anything, it was gone from there.
The moon was a golden gargoyle in the west. The world was lone and
empty; the silvered slope had a hungry look. The blue-black sky was filled
with many little eyes with a hard sharp glitter to them, a predatory glitter
and the remoteness of uncaring.
Beyond the ridge a man of my own race drowsed beside a dying campfire,
and it was all right for him, for he had a talent that I did not have, that
I knew now I did not have – the talent for reaching out to grasp an alien
hand (or paw or claw or pad) and being able in his twisted mind to translate
that alien touch into a commonplace.
I shuddered at the gargoyle moon and took two steps forward and walked
out of that hungry world straight into my garden.
15
Ragged clouds still raced across the sky, blotting out the moon. A
faint lighting in the east gave notice of the dawn. The windows of my house
were filled with lamplight and I knew that Gerald Sherwood and the rest of
them were waiting there for me. And just to my left the greenhouse with the
tree growing at its corner loomed ghostly against the rise of ground behind
it.
I started to walk forward and fingers were scratching at my trouser
leg. Startled, I looked down and saw that I had walked into a bush.
There had been no bush in the garden the last time I had seen it; there
had been only the purple flowers. But I think I guessed what might have