All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  "Quite alone," said Packer.

  "This is a matter of some delicacy," Hazlitt told him, "and of some alarm as well. I came to you rather than Mr. Anton Camper because I know of you by reputation as a man of proven business sagacity. I feel you could understand the problem where Mr. Camper —»

  "Fire away," invited Packer cordially.

  He had a feeling that he was going to enjoy this. The man was obviously upset and scared to death as well.

  Hazlitt hunched forward in his chair and his voice dropped almost to a whisper.

  "Mr. Packer," he confided in stricken horror, "I am becoming honest!"

  "That's too bad," said Packer sympathetically.

  "Yes, it is," said Hazlitt soberly. "A man in my position — in any business connection — simply can't be honest. Mr. Packer, I'll tell you confidentially that I lost out on one of the biggest deals in all my business life just last week because I had grown honest."

  "Maybe," Packer suggested, "if you persevered, if you set your heart on it, you could remain at least partially dishonest."

  Hazlitt shook his head dolefully. "I tell you, sir, can't. I've tried. You don't know how hard I've tried. And no matter how I try, I find myself telling the truth about everything. I find that I cannot take unfair advantage of anyone, not even of a customer. I even found myself the other day engaged in cutting my profit margins down to a more realistic figure —»

  "Why, that's horrible!" cried Packer.

  "And it's all your fault," yelled Hazlitt.

  "My fault," protested "Packer, whuffling out his whiskers. "Upon my word, Mr. Hazlitt, I can't see how you can say a thing like that. I haven't had a thing to do with it."

  "It's your Efficiency units," howled Hazlitt. "They're the cause of it."

  "The Efficiency units have nothing to do with you, declared Packer angrily. "All they do…"

  He stopped.

  Good Lord, he thought, they could!

  He'd been feeling better than he'd felt for years an he didn't need his nap of an afternoon and here he was dressing to go out in the middle of the night!

  "How long has this been going on?" he asked in growing horror.

  "For a month at least," said Hazlitt. "I think I first noticed it a month or six weeks ago."

  "Why didn't you simply heave the unit out?"

  "I did," yelled Hazlitt, "but it did no good."

  "I don't understand. If you threw it out that should be the end of it."

  "That's what I thought at the time, myself. But I was wrong. That yellow stuffs still there. It's growing in the

  cracks and floating in the air and you can't get rid of it. Once you have it, you are stuck with it."

  Packer clucked in sympathy.

  "You could move, perhaps."

  "Do you realize what that would cost me, Packer? And besides, as far as I'm concerned, it simply is no good. The stuff's inside of me!"

  He pounded at his chest. "I can feel it here, inside of me — turning me honest, making a good man out of me, making me orderly and efficient, just like it made our files. And I don't want to be a good man, Packer — I want to make a lot of money!"

  "There's one consolation," Packer told him. "Whatever is happening to you undoubtedly also is happening to your competitors."

  "But even if that were the case," protested Hazlitt, "it would be no fun. What do you think a man goes into business for? To render service, to become identified with the commercial community, to make money only? No, sir, I tell you — it's the thrill of skinning a competitor, of running the risk of losing your own shirt, of —»

  "Amen," Packer said loudly.

  Hazlitt stared at him. "You, too…"

  "Not a chance," said Packer proudly. "I'm every bit as big a rascal as I ever was."

  Hazlitt settled back into his chair. His voice took on an edge, grew a trifle cold.

  "I had considered exposing you, warning the world, and then I saw I couldn't…"

  "Of course you can't," said Packer gruffly. "You don't enjoy being laughed at. You are the kind of man who can't stand the thought of being laughed at."

  "What's your game, Packer?"

  "My game?"

  "You introduced the stuff. You must have known what it would do. And yet you say you are unaffected by it. What are you shooting at — gobbling up the entire planet?"

  Packer whuffled. "I hadn't thought of it," he said. "But it's a capital idea."

  He rose stiffly to his feet. "Little old for it," he said, "but I have a few years yet. And I'm in the best of fettle. Haven't felt —»

  "You were going out," said Hazlitt, rising. "I'll not detain you."

  "I thank you, sir," said Packer. "I noticed that there was a moon and I was going for a stroll. You wouldn't join me, would you?"

  "I have more important things to do, Packer, than strolling in the moonlight."

  "I have no doubt of that," said Packer, bowing slightly. "You would, of course, an upright, honest businessman like you."

  Hazlitt slammed the door as he went out.

  Packer padded back to the bedroom, took up the tie again.

  Hazlitt an honest man, he thought. And how many other honest men this night? And a year from now — how many honest men in the whole wide world just one year from now? How long before the entire Earth would be an honest Earth? With spores lurking in the cracks and floating in the air and running with the rivers, it might not take so long.

  Maybe that was the reason Tony hadn't skinned him yet. Maybe Tony was getting honest, too. Too bad, thought Packer, gravely. Tony wouldn't be half as interesting if he should happen to turn honest.

  And the Government? A Government that had come begging for the spores — begging to be honest, although to be completely fair one must admit the Government as yet did not know about the honesty.

  That was a hot one, Packer told himself. An honest Government! And it would serve those stinkers right! He could see the looks upon their faces.

  He gave up the business of the tie and sat down on the bed and shook for minutes with rumbling belly laughter.

  At last he wiped the tears out of his eyes and finished with the tie.

  Tomorrow morning, bright and early, he'd get in touch with Griffin and arrange the package deal for the stamp material. He'd act greedy and drive a hard bargain and then, in the end, pay a bit more than the price agreed upon for a long-term arrangement. An honest Government, he told himself, would be too honest to rescind such an agreement even if, in the light of its new honesty, it should realize the wrongness of it. For, happily, one of the tenets of honesty was to stay stuck with a bad bargain, no matter how arrived at.

  He shucked into his jacket and went into the living room. He stopped at the desk and opened the drawer. Reaching in, he lifted the lid of the box of leaf. He took a pinch and had it halfway to his mouth when the thought struck him suddenly and he stood for a moment frozen while all the gears came together, meshing, and the pieces fell into a pattern and he knew, without even asking, why he was the only genuine dishonest man left on the entire Earth.

  • I profetick and wach ahed for you!-

  He put the leaf into his mouth and felt the comfort of it.

  • Antidote-, he thought, and knew that he was right.

  But how could Pug have known — how could he have foreseen the long, twisting tangle of many circumstances which must inevitably crystallize into this very moment?

  • Leg. forst.?-

  He closed the lid of the box and shut the drawer and turned toward the door.

  The only dishonest man in the world, he thought. Immune to the honesty factor in the yellow spores because of the resistance built up within him by his long use of the leaf.

  He had set a trap tonight to victimize Pickering and tomorrow he'd go out and fox the Government and there was no telling where he'd go from there. Hazlitt had said something about taking over the entire planet and the idea was not a bad one if he could only squeeze out the necessary time.

&nbs
p; He chuckled at the thought of how all the honest suckers would stand innocently in line, unable to do a thing about it — all fair prey to the one dishonest man in the entire world. A wolf among the sheep!

  He drew himself erect and pulled the white gloves on carefully. He flicked his walking stick. Then he thumped himself on the chest — just once — and let himself out into the hall. He did not bother to lock the door behind him.

  In the lobby, as he stepped out of the elevator, he saw the Widow Foshay coming in the door. She turned and called back cheerfully to friends who had brought her home.

  He lifted his hat to her with an olden courtesy that he thought he had forgotten.

  She threw up her hands in mock surprise. "Mr. Packer," she cried, "what has come over you? Where do you think you're going at this time of night, when all honest people are abed?"

  "Minerva," he told her gravely, "I was about to take a stroll. I wonder if you might come along with me?"

  She hesitated for an instant, just long enough to give the desired small show of reluctance and indecision.

  He whuffled out his moustache at her. "Besides," he said, "I am not an honest person."

  He offered her his arm with distinguished gallantry.

  Madness from Mars

  Original copyright year: 1939

  The "Hello Mars IV" was coming home, back from the outward reaches of space, the first ship ever to reach the Red Planet and return. Telescopes located in the Crater of Copernicus Observatory on the Moon had picked it up and flashed the word to Earth, giving its position. Hours later, Earth telescopes had found the tiny mote that flashed in the outer void.

  Two years before, those same telescopes had watched the ship's outward voyage, far out until its silvery hull had dwindled into nothingness. From that day onward there had been no word or sign of "Hello Mars IV" — nothing until the lunar telescopes, picking up again that minute speck in space, advised Earth of its homecoming.

  Communication with the ship by Earth had been impossible. On the Moon, powerful radio stations were capable of hurling ultra-short wave messages across the quarter million miles to Earth. But man as yet had found no means of communicating over fifty million miles of space. So "Hello Mars IV" had arrowed out into the silence, leaving the Moon and the Earth to speculate and wonder over its fate.

  Now, with Mars once again swinging into conjunction, the ship was coming back — a tiny gnat of steel pushing itself along with twinkling blasts of flaming rocket-fuel. Heading Earthward out of that region of silent mystery, spurning space-miles beneath its steel-shod heels. Triumphant, with the red dust of Mars still clinging to its plates — a mote of light in the telescopic lenses.

  Aboard it were five brave men — Thomas Delvaney, the expedition's leader; Jerry Cooper, the red-thatched navigator; Andy Smith, the world's ace cameraman, and two space-hands, Jimmy Watson and Elmer Paine, grim old veterans of the Earth-Moon run.

  There had been three other "Hello Mars" ships — three other ships that had never come back — three other flights that had collided with a meteor a million miles out from the Moon. The second had flared briefly, deep in space, a red splash of flame in the telescopes through which the flight was watched — the fuel tanks had exploded. The third had simply disappeared. On and on it had gone, boring outward until lost from sight. That had been six years ago, but men still wondered what had happened.

  Four years later — two years ago — the "Hello Mars IV" had taken off. Today it was returning, a gleaming thing far out in space, a shining symbol of man's conquest of the planets. It had reached Mars — and it was coming back. There would be others, now — and still others. Some would flare against the black and be lost forever. But others would win through, and man, blindly groping, always outward, to break his earthly bonds, at last would be on the pathway to the stars.

  Jack Woods, «Express» reporter, lit a cigarette and asked:

  "What do you figure they found out there, Doc?"

  Dr. Stephen Gilmer, director of the Interplanetary Communications Research Commission, puffed clouds of smoke from his black cigar and answered irritably:

  "How in blue hell would I know what they found? I hope they found something. This trip cost us a million bucks."

  "But can't you give me some idea of what they might have found?" persisted Woods. "Some idea of what Mars is like. Any new ideas."

  Dr. Gilmer wrangled the cigar viciously.

  "And have you spread it all over the front page," he said. "Spin something out of my own head just because you chaps are too impatient to wait for the actual data. Not by a damn sight. You reporters get my goat sometimes."

  "Ah, Doc, give us something," pleaded Gary Henderson, staff man for the Star.

  "Sure," said Don Buckley, of the «Spaceways». "What do you care? You can always say we misquoted you. It wouldn't be the first time."

  Gilmer gestured toward the official welcoming committee that stood a short distance away.

  "Why don't you get the mayor to say something, boys?" he suggested. "The mayor is always ready to say something."

  "Sure," said Gary, "but it never adds up to anything. We've had the mayor's face on the front page so much lately that he thinks he owns the paper."

  "Have you any idea why they haven't radioed us?" asked

  Woods. "They've been in sending distance for several hours now."

  Gilmer rolled the cigar from east to west. "Maybe they broke the radio," he said.

  Nevertheless there were little lines of worry on his face. The fact that there had been no messages from the "Hello Mars IV" troubled him. If the radio had been broken it could have been repaired.

  Six hours ago the "Hello Mars IV" had entered atmosphere. Even now it was circling the Earth in a strenuous effort to lose speed. Word that the ship was nearing Earth had brought spectators to the field in ever-increasing throngs. Highways and streets were jammed for miles around.

  Perspiring police cordons struggled endlessly to keep the field clear for a landing. The day was hot, and soft drink stands were doing a rushing business. Women fainted in the crowd and some men were knocked down and trampled. Ambulance sirens sounded.

  "Humph," Woods grunted. "We can send space-ships to Mars, but we don't know how to handle crowds."

  He stared expectantly into the bright blue bowl of the sky.

  "Ought to be getting in pretty soon," he said.

  His words were blotted out by a mounting roar of sound. The ear-splitting explosions of roaring rocket tubes. The thunderous drumming of the ship shooting over the horizon.

  The bellow from the crowd competed with the roaring of the tubes as the "Hello Mars IV" shimmered like a streak of silver light over the field. Then fading in the distance, it glowed redly as its forward tubes shot flame.

  "Cooper sure is giving her everything he has," Woods said in awe. "He'll melt her down, using the tubes like that."

  He stared into the west, where the ship had vanished. His cigarette forgotten, burned down and scorched his fingers.

  Out of the tail of his eye he saw Jimmy Andrews, the «Express» photographer.

  "Did you get a picture?" Woods roared at him.

  "Picture, hell," Andrews shouted back. "I can't shoot greased lightning."

  The ship was coming back again, its speed slowed, but still traveling at a terrific pace. For a moment it hung over the horizon and then nosed down toward the field.

  "He can't land at that speed," Woods yelled. "It'll crack wide open!"

  "Look out," roared a dozen voices and then the ship was down, its nose plowing into the ground, leaving in its wake a smoking furrow of raw earth, its tail tilting high in the air, threatening to nose over on its back.

  The crowd at the far end of the field broke and stampeded, trampling, clawing, pushing, shoving, suddenly engulfed in a hysteria of fear at the sight of the ship plowing toward them.

  But the "Hello Mars IV" stopped just short of the police cordon, still right side up. A pitted, battered ship — final
ly home from space — the first ship to reach Mars and return.

  The newspapermen and photographers were rushing forward. The crowd was shrieking. Automobile horns and sirens blasted the air. From the distant rim of the city rose the shrilling of whistles and the far-away roll of clamoring bells.

  As Woods ran a thought hammered in his head. A thought that had an edge of apprehension. There was something wrong. if Jerry Cooper had been at the controls, he never would have landed the ship at such speed. It had been a madman's stunt to land a ship that way. Jerry was a skilled navigator, averse to taking chances. Jack had watched him in the Moon Derby five years before and the way Jerry could handle a ship was beautiful to see.

  The valve port in the ship's control cabin swung slowly open, clanged back against the metal side. A man stepped out — a man who staggered jerkily forward and then stumbled and fell in a heap.

  Dr. Gilmer rushed to him, lifted him in his arms.

  Woods caught a glimpse of the man's face as his head lolled in Gilmer's arms. It was Jerry Cooper's face — but a face that was twisted and changed almost beyond recognition, a face that burned itself into Jack Wood's brain, indelibly etched there, something to be remembered with a shudder through the years. A haggard face with deeply sunken eyes, with hollow cheeks, with drooling lips that slobbered sounds that were not words.

  A hand pushed at Woods.

  "Get out of my way," shrilled Andrews~ "How do you expect me to take a picture?"

  The newsman heard the camera whirr softly, heard the click of changing plates.

  "Where are the others?" Gilmer was shouting at Cooper. The man looked up at him vacantly, his face twisting itself into a grimace of pain and fear.

  "Where are the others?" Gilmer shouted again, his voice ringing over the suddenly hushed stillness of the crowd.

  Cooper jerked his head toward the ship.

  "In there," he whispered and the whisper cut like a sharp-edged knife.

  He mumbled drooling words, words that meant nothing. Then with an effort he answered.