Greener Than You Think

Greener Than You Think Page 2

by Ward Moore

  TWO

  _Consequences of a Discovery_

  _11._ "But it's got to be stopped," exclaimed Gootes.

  Miss Francis turned silently back to her flowerpot as though she'dforgotten us. Gootes coursed the kitchenfloor like a puzzled yet anxioushound. "Damn it, it's got to be stopped." He halfway extracted his packof cards, then hastily withdrew his hand as though guarding the moment'sgravity.

  "Otherwise ... why, otherwise itll swallow the house." He decided on thecards afterall and balanced four of them edgewise on the back of hishand. Miss Francis immediately abandoned the flowerpot to starechildishly at the feat. "In fact, if what you say is true, it willliterally swallow up the house. Digest it. Convert it into devilgrass."

  "_Cynodon dactylon._ What I say is true. How much elementary physics isinvolved in that trick?"

  "But that's terrible," protested Gootes. He regarded a bowl of algae asif about to make it disappear. Mentally I agreed; one of the greatestpotential moneymakers of the age lost and valueless.

  "Yes," she agreed, "it is terrible. Terrible as the starvation in a hivewhen the apiarist takes out the winter honey; terrible as the dailybusiness in an abattoir; terrible as the appetite of grown fish atspawning time."

  "Poo. Fate. Kismet. Nature."

  "Ah; you are unconcerned with catastrophes which don't affect man."

  "Local man," substituted Gootes. "Los Angeles man. _Pithecanthropusmoviensis._ Stiffs in Constantinople are strictly AP stuff."

  "It seems to me," I broke in, "that you are both assuming too much. Idon't know of anything that calls for the word catastrophe. I'm sure I'msorry if the Dinkmans' house is swallowed up as Gootes suggests, but ithasnt been and I'm sure the possibility is exaggerated. The authoritieswill do something or the grass will stop growing. I don't see any pointin looking at the blackest side of things."

  Gootes opened his mouth in pretended astonishment. "Wal, I swan. Boy's aphilosopher."

  "You are not particularly concerned, Weener?"

  "I don't know any reason why I should be," I retorted. "I sold yourproduct in good faith and I am not responsible--"

  "Oh, blind, blind. Do you imagine one man can suffer and you not suffer?Is your name Simeon Stylites? Do you think for an instant what happensto any man doesnt happen to everyman? Are you not your brother'skeeper?" She twisted her hands together. "Not responsible! Why, you areresponsible for every brutality, execution, meanness and calamity in theworld today!"

  I had often heard that the borderline between profundity and insanitywas thin and inexact and it was now clear on which side she stood. Ilooked at Gootes to see how he was taking her hysterical outburst, buthe had found a batch of empty testtubes which he was building into aperilously swaying structure.

  "Of course, of course," I agreed soothingly, backing away. "Youre quiteright."

  She walked the floor as if her awkward body were a burden. "Is theinstant response to an obvious truth--platitude even--always a diagnosisof lunacy? I state a thought so old no one knows who first expressed itand a hearer feels bound to choose between offense to himself andcontempt for the speaker. Believe me, Weener, I was offering noexclusive indictment: I too am guilty--infinitely culpable. Even if Ihad devoted my life to pure science--perhaps even more certainlythen--patterning myself on a medieval monastic, faithful to vows ofpoverty and singleness of purpose; even if I had not, for an apparentlylaudable end, betrayed my efforts to a base greed; even if I had neverpicked for a moment's use such an unworthy--do not be insulted again,Weener, unworthiness is a fact, insofar as there are any facts atall--such an unworthy tool as yourself; even if I had never compoundedthe Metamorphizer; even if I had been a biologist or an astronomer--eventhen I should be guilty of ruining the Dinkmans and making themhomeless, just as you are guilty and the reporter here is guilty and thegarbageman is guilty and the pastor in his pulpit is guilty."

  "Guilty," exclaimed Gootes suddenly, "guilty! What kind of a lousynewspaperman am I? Worrying about guilt and solutions in the face ofimpending calamity instead of serving it redhot to a palpitating public.Guilty--hell, I ought to be fired. Or anyway shot. Where's the phone?"

  "I manage a minimum of privacy in spite of inquiring reporters andunemployed canvassers. I have no telephone."

  "Hokay. Hole everythings. I return immediate."

  I followed him for I had no desire to be left alone with someone whomight prove dangerous. But his long legs took him quickly out of sightbefore I could catch him, even by running, and so I fell into a moresedate pace. All Miss Francis' metaphysical talk was beyond me, but whatlittle I could make of it was pure nonsense. Guilty. Why, I had neverdone anything illegal in my life, unless taking a glass of beer in dryterritory be so accounted. All this talk about guilt suggested some sortof inverted delusions of persecution. How sad it was the eccentricity ofgenius so often turned its possessors into cranks. I was thankful to beof mere normal intelligence.

  _12._ But I wasted no more thought on her, putting the whole episode ofthe Metamorphizer behind me, for I now had some liquid capital. It wastrue it didnt amount to much, but it existed, crinkled in my pocket, andI was sure with my experience and native ability I could turn the_Daily Intelligencer_'s forty dollars into a much larger sum.

  But a resolve to forget the Metamorphizer didnt enable me to escape MrsDinkman's lawn. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard, formulating, rejectingand reshaping plans for my future, I passed a radioshop and from aloudspeaker hung over the door with the evident purpose of inducingsuggestible pedestrians to rush in and purchase sets, the latest reportof the devilgrass's advance was blared out at me.

  "... Station KPAR, The Voice of Edendale, reaching you from a portabletransmitter located in the street in front of what was formerly theresidence of Mr and Mrs Dinkman. I guess youve all heard the story ofhow their lawn was allegedly sprinkled with some chemical which made thegrass run wild. I don't know anything about that, but I want to tell youthis grass is certainly running wild. It must be fifteen or sixteen feethigh--think of that, folks--nearly as high as three men standing on eachother's shoulders. It's covered the roof halfway to the peak and it'schoking the windows and doorways of the houses on either side. It's allover the sidewalk--looks like an enormous green woolly rug--no, that'snot quite right--anyway, it's all over the sidewalk and it would beright out here in the street where I'm talking to you from if thefiredepartment wasnt on the job constantly chopping off the creepingends as they come over the curb. I want to tell you, folks, it's afrightening sight to see grass--the same kind of grass growing in yourbackyard or mine--magnified or maybe I mean multiplied a hundredtimes--or maybe more--and coming at you as if it was an enemy--only thecold steel of the fireman's ax saving you from it.

  "While we're waiting for some action, folks--well, not exactly that--thegrass is giving us plenty of action all right--I'll try to bring yousome impressions of the people in the street. Literally in the street,because the sidewalk is covered with grass. Pardon me, sir--would youlike to say a few words to the unseen audience of Station KPAR? Speakright into the microphone, sir. Let's have your name first. Don't bebashful. Haha. Gentleman doesnt care to give his name. Well, that's allright, quite all right. Just what do you think of this phenomenon? Howdoes it impress you? Are you disturbed by the sight of this riot ofvegetation? Right into the microphone...."

  "Uh ... hello ... well, I guess I havent ... uh anything much to say ...pretty color ... bad stuff, I guess. Gladsnotgrowing myyard...."

  "Yes, go right on, sir. Oh ... the gentleman is through. Veryinteresting and thank you.

  "Theyre bringing up a whole crew of weedburners now--going to try andget this thing under control. The men all have tanks of oil or keroseneon their backs. Wait a minute, folks, I want to find out for surewhether it's oil or kerosene. Mumble. Mumble. Well, folks, I'm sorry,but this gentleman doesnt know exactly what's in the tanks. Anyway it'skerosene or oil and there are long hoses with wide nozzles at the end.Something like vacuumcleaners. Well, that's not quite right. Any
waytheyre lighting the nozzles now. Makes a big whoosh. Now I'll bring themicrophone closer and maybe you can catch the noise of the flame. Hearit? That's quite a roar. I guess old Mr Grass is cooked now.

  "Now these boys are advancing in a straight line from the street up overthe curb, holding their fiery torches in front of them. The devilgrassis shriveling up. Yessir, it's shriveling right up--like a gob oftobaccojuice on a hot stove. Theyve burned about two feet of it awayalready. Nothing left but some smoking stems. Quite a lot of smokingstems--a regular compact mass of them--but all the green stuff has beenburned right off. Yes, folks, burned clean off; I wish we had televisionhere so I could show you how that thick pad of stems lies there withouta bit of life left in it.

  "Now theyre uncovering the sidewalk. I'm following right behind with themicrophone--maybe you can hear the roar of the weedburners again. NowI'd like to have you keep in mind the height of this grass. You neversaw grass as tall as this unless youve been in the jungle or SouthAmerica or someplace where grass grows this high. I mean high. Even hereat the sidewalk it's well over a man's head, seven or eight feet. Andthis crew is carving right into it, cutting it like steel with anacetylenetorch. Theyre making big holes in it. You hear that hissing?That noise like a steamhose? Well, that's the grass shriveling. Think ofit--grass with so much sap inside it hisses. It's drying right up in aone-two-three! Now the top part is falling down--topplingforward--coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay.... It put out one ofthe torches by smothering it. Drowned it in grass. Nothing serious--theboy's got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks--youve got torealize this stuff's about ten feet high. Further in it's anyway sixteenfeet. Fighting it's like battling an octopus with a million arms. Thestuff writhes around and grows all the time. It's terrific. Imaginetangles of barbedwire, hundreds and hundreds of bales or rolls orhowever barbedwire comes, covering your frontyard and house--only itisnt barbedwire at all, but green, living grass.... Just a minute,folks, I'm having a little trouble with my microphone cable. Nothingserious, you understand--tangled a bit in the grass behind me. Thoseburnt stems. Stand by for just a minute...."

  "This is KPAR, The Voice of Edendale. Due to mechanical difficultiesthere will be a brief musical interlude until contact is resumed withour portable transmitter bringing you an onthespot account of theunusual grass...."

  "Kirk, Quork, krrmp--AR's portable transmitter. Here I am again, folks,in the street in front of the Dinkman residence--a little out of breath,but none the worse off, ready to resume the blowbyblow story of thefight against the devilgrass. That was a little trouble back there, butit's all right now. Seems the weedburners hadnt quite finished off thegrass in the parkwaystrip between the curb and the sidewalk and after Idragged my microphone cable across it, it sort of--well, it sort of cameto life again and tangled up the cable. It's all right now though.Everything under control. The boys with the weedburners have come backand are going over the parkwaystrip again, just to make sure.

  "I want to tell you--this stuff really can grow. It's amazing, simplyamazing. Youve heard of plants growing while you look at them; well,this grows while you don't look at it. It grows while your back isturned. Just to give you an example: while the boys have been busy asecond time with the parkwaystrip, the grass has come back and grownagain over all they burned up beyond the sidewalk. And now it's startingto come back over the concrete. You can actually see it move. Thecreepers run out in front and crawl ahead like thousands of little greensnakes. Imagine seeing grass traveling forward like an army of worms. Anarmy you can't stop. Because it's alive. Alive and coming at you. It'salive. It's alive. It's al--"

  "This is Station KPAR. We will resume our regular programs immediatelyfollowing the timesignal. Now we bring you a message from themanufacturers of Chewachoc, the Candy Laxative with the Hole...."

  I continued thoughtfully down the street. The _Daily Intelligencer_ wasspread on a newsstand, a smudgy black bannerhead fouling its pure bosom.CITY COUNCIL MEETS TO END GRASS MENACE.

  I trusted so. Quickly. I was tired of Mrs Dinkman's lawn.

  _13._ "Weener sahib, fate has tied us together."

  I hoped not. I was weary of Gootes and his phony accents.

  "On account of your female Burbank, your scientess (scientistess is atwister. Peder Piber et a peg of piggled pebbers) won't play ball with WR. The chief offered her a fabulous sum--'much beer in little kegs, manydozen hardboiled eggs, and goodies to a fabulous amount'--fabulous for WR, that is--to act as special writer on the grass business. J S Francis,World Renowned Chemist, exclusively in the _Intelligencer_. You know.Suppress her unfortunate sex. ORIGINATOR OF WILD GRASS TELLS ALL.

  "Anyway she didnt grasp her chance. Practically told W R to go to hell.Practically told him to go to hell," he repeated, evidently tornbetween reprehension at the sacrilege and admiration of the daring.

  Miss Francis plainly had what might be described as talent that way. Idebated whether to inform Gootes of my discovery of her craziness anddecided against it on the bare possibility it would be unwise to lowerthe value of my connection with the Metamorphizer's discoverer. I wassoon rewarded for my caution.

  "O Weeneru san," continued Gootes, evidently in an oriental veintraveling westward, "not too hard for you to be picking up few yen. Youdo not hate fifty potatoes from Editor san yesterday?"

  "Forty," I corrected.

  "Forty, fifty--what's the difference so long as youre healthy?" Heproduced a card, showed it, tore it in half, waved his hand andexhibited it whole and unharmed. "No kidding, chum; the old man has thebug to make _you_ a special correspondent--on my adviceyunderstand--always looking out for my pals."

  Well, why not? The wheel of Fortune had been a long time turning beforestopping at the proper spot. I had never had any doubt I'd someday be ina position to prove my writing ability. Now all those who had sneered atme years before--my English teachers and editors who had been toojealous to recognize my existence by anything more courteous than aprinted rejection--would have to acknowledge their injustice. And in themeantime all my accumulated experience had been added to enhance myoriginal talent. I'd sold everything that could be sold doortodoor and aman acquires not only an ease with words but a wide knowledge of humannature this way. Certainly I was better equipped all around than many ofthese highly advertised magazine or newspaper authors.

  "Well ... I don't know if I could spare the time...."

  "O K, bigshot. Let me know if the market goes down and I'll come aroundand put up more margin."

  "How much will Mr Le ffacase--"

  "How the hell do I know? More than youre worth--more than I'm getting,because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grassand sent it nuts. Less than he'd have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and getit straight from the horse's mouth."

  My only previous visits to newspaper offices had been to placeadvertisements, but I was prepared to find the _Daily Intelligencer_ averitable hive of activity. Perhaps some part of the big building whichhoused the paper did hum, but not the floor devoted to the editorialstaff. That simply dozed. Gootes led me from the elevator through anenormous room where men and an occasional woman sat indolently beforetypewriters, stared druggedly into space or flew paper airplanes out ofopen windows. The only sign of animation I saw as we walked what mightwell have been a quartermile was one reporter (I judged him such by theundersized hat on the back of his head) who enthusiastically munched asandwich while perusing a magazine containing photographs of women withuncovered breasts. Even the nipples showed.

  Beyond the cityroom was a battery of private offices. I will certainlynot conceal the existence of my extreme nervousness as we neared theproximity of the famous editor. I hung back from the groundglass doorinscribed in shabby, peeling letters--in distinction to its neighbors,newly and brightly painted--W.R. Le ffacase. Gootes, noting mytrepidation, put on the brogue of a burlesque Irishman.

  "Is it afraid of Himself you are, me boy? Sure, think no more of it.Faith, and wasnt he born Billy Casey; no better than the rest o
f us forall his mother was a Clancy and related to the Finnegans? He's writtenso often about coming from noble Huguenot stock he almost believes ithimself, but the Huguenots were dirty Protestants and when his timecomes W R'll send for the priest and take the last sacraments like thetrue son of the Church he is in his heart. So buck up, me boy, and comein and view the biggest faker in journalism."

  But Gootes' flippancy reassured me no more than did the bare sunlitoffice behind the door. I had somehow, perhaps from the movies, expectedto see an editor's desk piled with copypaper while he himself usedhalfadozen telephones at once, simultaneously making incomprehensiblegestures at countless underlings. But Mr Le ffacase's desk was nudeexcept for an enameled snuffbox and a signed photograph of a presidentwhose administration had been subjected daily to the editor's bitterestjabs. On the walls hung framed originals of the more famous politicalcartoons of the last quartercentury, but neither telephone nor scrap ofmanuscript was in evidence.

  But who could examine that office with detached scrutiny while WilliamRufus Le ffacase occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he openedtiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered.Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whoseneckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor tiecompeted with the brilliance of this flashing gem resting in a shavenstubblefold of his draped neck. His face was remarkably long, hisupperlip stretching interminably from a mouth looking to have beenfreshly smeared with vaseline to a nose not unlike a golfclub in shape.From the snuffbox on his desk, which I'd imagined a pretty ornament orreceptacle for small objects, he scooped with a flat thumb a conicalmound of graybrown dust and this, with a sweeping upward motion, hepushed into a gaping nostril.

  "Chief, this is Albert Weener."

  "How do, Mr Weener. Gootes, who the bloody hell is Weener?"

  "Why, Chief, he's the guy who put the stuff on the grass."

  "Oh." He surveyed me with the attention due a worthy but notparticularly valuable specimen. "You bit the dog, ay, Weener?"

  Gootes burst into a high, appreciative cackle. Le ffacase turned thedeathray of his left eye on him. "Youre a syncophant, Gootes," he statedflatly, "a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthedchickenhearted toadeating arselicking, slobbering syncophant."

  I couldnt see how we were ever to reach the point this way, so Iventured, "I understand in view of the fact that I inoculated MrsDinkman's lawn you want me to contribute--"

  "Desires grow smaller as intelligence expands," growled Le ffacase. "Iwant nothing except to find a few undisturbed moments in which to readthe work of the immortal Hobbes."

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I understood you wished me to report the progressof the wildly growing grass."

  "Cityeditor's province," he declared uninterestedly.

  "No such thing on the _Intelligencer_," Gootes informed me in a loudwhisper. Le ffacase, who evidently heard him, glared, reached down andretrieved the telephone from its concealment under the desk and snarledinto the mouthpiece, "I hate to interrupt your crapgame with the trivialconcerns of this organ men called a newspaper till you got on thepayroll. I'm sending you a man who knows something about the crazygrass. Divorce yourself from whatever pornography youre gloating over atthe moment to see if we can use him."

  His immediate obliviousness to our presence was so insulting that ifGootes had not made the first move to leave I should have done somyself. I don't know what vast speculations swept upon him as he hung upthe telephone, but I thought he might at least have had the courtesy tonod a dismissal.

  "Youre hired, bejesus," proclaimed Gootes, and of course I was, forthere was no doubt a brilliantly successful figure like Leffacase--whatever my opinion of his intemperate language or failure inthe niceties of deportment, he was a forceful man--had sized me up in aflash and sensed my ability before I'd written a single line for hispaper.

  _14._ The wage offered by the _Daily Intelligencer_--even assuming, asthey undoubtedly did, that the affair of the grass would be over shortlyand my service ended--was high enough to warrant my buying a secondhandcar. A previous unpleasantness with a financecompany made thetransaction difficult, with as little cash as I had on hand, but aphonecall to the paper established my bonafides and I was soon drivingout Sunset Boulevard in a tomatocolored roadster, meditating on thelongdelayed upsurge of my fortunes.

  The street was closed off by a road barrier quite some distance away andtightly parked cars testified to the attraction of the expanding grass.Scorning these idle sightseers, I pushed and shoved my way forward towhat had now become the focus of all my interests.

  The Dinkmans had lived in a city block, an urban entity. It was nopretentious group of houses, nor was it a repetitive design out of somesubdividing contractor's greedy mind. Moderatesized, mediumpriced,middleclass bungalows; these were the homes of the Dinkmans and theirneighbors; a sample from a pattern which varied but was basically thesame here and in Oakland, Seattle and St. Louis; in Chicago,Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland.

  But now I looked upon no city scene, no picture built upon thesubstantial foundation of daddy at the office all day, fixing a leakyfaucet of an evening, painting the woodwork during his summer vacation;or mom, after a pleasant afternoon with the girls, unstintedly openingcans for supper and harassedly watching the cleaning woman who came inonce a week. An alien presence, a rude fist through the canvas negatedthe convention that this was a picture of reality. A coneshaped hillrose to a blurred point, marking the burialplace of the Dinkman house.It was a child's drawing of a coneshaped hill, done in green crayon; toosymmetrical, too evenly and heavily green to be a spontaneous product ofnature; man's unimaginative hand was apparent in its composition.

  The sides of the cone flowed past the doors and windows of the adjacenthouses, blocking them as it had previously blocked the Dinkmans', buttheir inhabitants, forewarned, had gone. More than mere desertion wasimplied in their going; there was an implicit surrender, abandonment tothe invader. The base of the cone, accepting capitulation and stillaggressive, had reached to the lawns beyond, warning these householderstoo to be ready for flight; over backfences to dwellings frontinganother street, and establishing itself firmly over the concretepavement before the Dinkmans' door.

  I would be suppressing part of the truth if I did not admit that for thesmallest moment some perverted pride made me cherish this hill as mywork, my creation. But for me it would not have existed. I had donesomething notable, I had caused a stir; it was the same kind ofsensation, I imagine, which makes criminals boast of their crimes.

  I quickly dismissed this morbid thought, but it was succeeded by onealmost equally unhealthy, for I was ridden by a sudden wild impulse totouch, feel, walk on, roll in the encroaching grass. I tried to controlmyself, but no willing of mine could prevent me from going up andletting the long runners slip through my half open hands. It was likereceiving some sort of electric shock. Though the blades were soft andtender, the stems communicated to my palms a feeling of surgingvitality, implacable life and ineluctable strength. I drew back from thegreen mass as though I had been doing something venturesome.

  For, no matter what botanists or naturalists may tell us to thecontrary, we habitually think of plantlife as fixed and stolid,insensate and quiescent. But this abnormal growth was no passive lawn,no sleepy patch of vegetation. As I stood there with fascinatedattention, the thing moved and kept on moving; not in one place, but inthousands; not in one direction, but toward all points of the compass.It writhed and twisted in nightmarish unease, expanding, extending,increasing; spreading, spreading, spreading. Its movement, by humanstandards, was slow, but it was so monstrous to see this great mass ofverdure move at all that it appeared to be going with express speed,inexorably enveloping everything in its path. A crack in the roadwaydisappeared under it, a shrub was swallowed up, a patch of wallvanished.

  The eye shifted from whole to detail and back again. The overrun crackwas duplicated by an untouched one a few inches away--it too went; t
hefine tentacles on top of the mound reached upward, shimmering like theair on a hot summer's day, and near my feet hundreds of runners creptever closer, the pale stolons shiny and brittle, supporting theominously bristling green leaves.

  I hope Ive not given the impression there was no human activity all thiswhile, that nothing was being done to combat the living glacier. On thecontrary, there was tremendous bustle and industry. The weedburning crewwas still fighting a rearguard action, gaining momentary successes hereand there, driving back the invading tendrils as they wriggled overconcrete sidewalk and roadway, only to be defeated as the main mass,piling higher and ever higher, toppled forward on the temporarilyredeemed areas. For on this vastly thicker bulk the smoky fingers offlame had no more effect than did the exertions of the scythemen,hacking futilely away at the tough intricacies, or the rattling reapersentangling themselves to become like waterlogged ships.

  But greatest hopes were now being pinned on a new weapon. A dozen blackand sootylooking tanktrucks had come up and from them, like the arms ofa squid, thick hoses lazily uncoiled. Hundreds of gallons of darkcrudeoil were being poured upon the grass. At least ten bystanderseagerly explained to any who would listen the purpose and value of thismaneuver. Petroleum, deadly enemy of all rooted things, wouldunquestionably kill the weed. They might as well call off all the othersilly efforts, for in a day or two, as soon as the oil soaked into theground, the roots would die, the monster collapse and wither away. Iwanted with all my heart to believe in this hope, but when I comparedthe feeble brown trickle to the vast green body I was gravely doubtful.

  Shaken and thoughtful, I went back to my car and drove homeward,reflecting on the fortuitousness of human actions. Had I not answeredMiss Francis' ad someone else would have been the agent of calamity; hadMrs Dinkman been away from home that day another place than hers, orperhaps no place at all, might have been engulfed.

  On the other hand, I might still be searching for a chance to prove mymerit to the world. It seemed to me suddenly man was but a helplesscreature afterall.

  _15._ It wasnt until I was almost at my own frontdoor I remembered thepurpose of my visit, which was not to draw philosophic conclusions, butto order my impressions so the columns of the _Daily Intelligencer_might benefit by the reactions of one so closely connected with thespread of the devilgrass. I began tentatively putting sentences togetherand by the time I got to my room and sat down with pencil and paper, Iwas in a ferment of creative activity.

  Now I cannot account for this, but the instant I took the pencil in myfingers all thought of the grass left my mind. No effort to summon backthose fine rolling sentences was of the least avail. I slapped myforehead and muttered, "Grass, grass, Bermuda, _Cynodon dactylon_"aloud, varying it with such key words as "Dinkman, swallowing up, greenhill" and the like, but all I could think of was buying a tire (700 x16) for the left rear wheel, paying my overdue rent, Gootes' infuriatingbuffoonery, the possibilities for a man of my caliber in Florida or NewYork, and with a couple of thousand dollars a nice mailorder businesscould be established to bring in a comfortable income....

  I left the chair and walked up and down the cramped room until thelodger below rapped spitefully on his ceiling. I went to the bathroomand washed my hands. I came back and inspected my teeth in the mirror.Then I resumed my seat and wrote, "The Grass--" After a moment I crossedthis out and substituted, "Today, the grass--"

  I decided the whole approach was unimaginative and unworthy of me. Iturned the paper over and began, "Like a dragon springing--" Good,good--this was the way to start; it would show the readers at once theywere dealing with a man of imagination. "Like a dragon springing."Springing from what? What did dragons spring from anyway? Eggs, likesnakes? Dragons were reptiles werent they? Or werent they? Give up themetaphor? I set my teeth with determination and began again. "Not unlikea fierce and belligerently furious dragon or some other ferocious,blustery and furious chimerical creature, a menacing and comminatorydebacle is burning fierily in the heart of our fair and increasinglypopulous city. As one with an innocent yet cardinal part in theunleashing of this dire menace, I want to describe how the exposure ofthis threatening menace affected me as I looked upon its menacing andmalevolent advance today...."

  I sat back, not dissatisfied with my beginning, and thought about theneat little bachelor apartment I could rent on what the _Intelligencer_was paying me. Of course in a few days this hullabaloo would be allover--for though I had little faith in the efficacy of the crudeoil Iknew really drastic measures would be taken soon and the whole businessstopped--but even in so short a time there could be no doubt Mr Leffacase would realize he needed me permanently on his staff and I wouldbe assured of a living in my own proper sphere. Thus fired with thethoughts of accomplishment, I returned to my task, but I cannot say itwent easily. I remembered many great writers indulged in stimulants inthe throes of composition, but I decided such a course might blunt thekeen edge of my mind and afterall there was no better stimulant thanplain oldfashioned perseverance. I picked up the pencil again anddoggedly went on to the next sentence.

  _16._ "What the hell's this?" demanded the cityeditor, looking at myneatly rolled pile of manuscript.

  I disdained to bandy words with an underling too lazy to make an effortto get at what was probably the finest piece of writing ever brought tohim, so I unrolled my story, flattening it out so he might read it themore easily.

  "By the balls of Benjamin Franklin and the little white fringe on HoraceGreeley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Arent thereany typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington commit suicide unbeknownstto me?"

  "I'm sorry," I said stiffly. "I didnt think youd have any difficulty inreading my handwriting." And in fact the whole business was absurd, forif there's anything I pride myself on it's the gracefulness andlegibility of my penmanship. Typewriters might well be mandatory for theephemeral news item, but I had been hired as a special correspondent andsomeday my manuscript would be a valuable property.

  The cityeditor eyed me in a most disagreeable fashion. "I'm an educatedman," he stated. "Groton, Harvard and the WPA. No doubt with time andcare I could decipher this bid for next year's Pulitzer prize. But Imust consider the more handicapped members of the staff: compositors,layoutmen and proofreaders; without my advantages and broadmindednessthey might be so startled by this innovation as to have their usefulnesspermanently crippled. No; I'm afraid, Mr Weener, I must ask you to putthis in more orthodox form and type it up."

  Just another example of pettish bureaucracy, the officiousness of thejack-in-office. Except for the nuisance, it didnt particularly matter.When Mr Le ffacase read my contribution I knew there would be no concernin future whether it was handwritten, typewritten, or engraved inBabylonic cuneiform on a freshly baked brick.

  Nevertheless I went over to one of the unoccupied desks and began tocopy what I had written on the machine. I must say I was favorablyimpressed by the appearance of my words in this form, for they somehowlooked more important and enduring. While still engaged in this task Iwas slapped so heartily on the back I was knocked forward against thetypewriter and Gootes perched himself on a corner of the desk.

  "Working the jolly old mill, what? I say, the old bugger wants to knowwhere your stuff is. Fact of the matter, he wants to know with quite abit of deuced bad language. Not a softspoken chap, you know, W R."

  "I'll be through in a minute or two."

  He gathered his pipe apparently out of my left ear and his tobacco pouchfrom the air and very rudely, without asking my permission, picked upthe top sheet and started to read it. A thick eyebrow shot upimmediately and he allowed his pipe to hang slackly from his mouth.

  "Purple," he exclaimed, "magenta, violet, lavender, mauve. Schmaltz,real copperriveted, brassbound, steeljacketed, castiron schmaltz. Ihavent seen such a genuine sample since my kid sister wrote up Jack theRipper back in 1889."

  The manifest discrepancy in these remarks so confused me my fingersstumbled over the typewriter keys. Evidently he inte
nded some kind ofhumor or sarcasm, but I could make nothing of it. How could his youngersister...?

  "Bertie boy," he said, after I had struggled to get another paragraphdown, "it breaks my heart to see you toil so. Let's take in as much asyouve done to the chief and either he'll be so impressed he'll put astenographer to transcribing the rest or else--"

  "Or else?" I prompted.

  "Or else he won't. Come on."

  Mr Le ffacase had apparently not stirred since last we were in hisoffice. He opened his eyes, thumbed a pinch of snuff and asked Gootes,"Where the bloody hell is that stuff on the grass?"

  "Here it is, Chief. No date, no who what when and where, but very litry.Very, very litry."

  The editor picked up my copy and I could not help but watch himanxiously for some sign of his reaction. It came forth promptly andexplosively.

  "What the ingenious and delightfully painful hell is this, Gootes?"

  "'As Reported by Our Special Writer, Albert Weener, The Man WhoInoculated the Loony Grass.'"

  "Gootes, you are the endproduct of a long line of incestuous idiots, thewinner of the boobyprize in any intelligencetest, but you have outdoneyourself in bringing me this verminous and maggoty ordure," said Leffacase, throwing my efforts to the floor and kicking at them. Theoutrage made me boil and if he had not been an older man I might havedone him an injury. "As for you, Weener, I doubt if you will ever beelevated to the ranks of idiocy. Get the sanguinary hell out of hereand do humanity the favor to step in front of the first tentontruckdriving by."

  "One minute, Chief," urged Gootes. "Don't be hasty. Seen the latest onthe grass? Well, the mayor's asked the governor to call out the NationalGuard; the _Times_'ll have an interview with Einstein tomorrow and the_Examiner_'s going to run a symposium of what Herbert Hoover, BernardShaw and General MacArthur think of the situation. Don't suppose perhapswe could afford to ghost Bertie here?"

  Was I never to escape from the malice inspired by the envy my literarytalent aroused? I had certainly expected that a man of the famouseditor's reputation would be above such pettiness. I was too dismayedand downcast by the meanness of human nature to speak.

  Le ffacase snuffed again and looked malevolently at the wall. A framedcaricature of himself returned the stare. "Very well," he grudginglyconceded at length, "youre on the grass anyway, so you might as welltake this on too. Leave you only twentytwo hours a day to sleep in. You,Weener, are still on the payroll--at half the agreedupon figure."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he turned on me with a snarl; baringyellow and twisted teeth, unpleasant to see. "Weener, you look like acriminal type to me; Lombroso couldve used you for a model to advantage.Have you a policerecord or have you so far evaded the law? Let me tellyou, the _Intelligencer_ is the evildoers' nemesis. Is your conscienceclear, your past unsullied as a virgin's bed, your every deed open tosearch? Do you know what a penitentiary's like? Did you ever hear theclang of a celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you tothink and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched bya yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? Back to thecityroom, you dabbling booby, you precious simpleton, addlepated dunce,and be thankful my boundless generosity permits you to draw a weeklypaycheck at all and doesnt condemn you to labor forever unrewarded inthe subterranean vaults where the old files are kept."

  First Miss Francis and now Le ffacase. Were all these greatintelligences touched? Was the world piloted by unbalanced minds? Itseemed incredible, impossible it should be so, but two such similarexperiences in so short a time apparently supported this gloomy view.Horrible, I thought as I preceded Gootes out of the maniac's office,unbelievably horrible.

  "Son," advised Gootes, "never argue with the chief. He has the makingsof a firstclass apoplexy--I hope. You just keep squawking to thebookkeeping department and youll get further than coming up against theOld Man. Now let's go out and look at nature in the raw."

  "But my copy," I protested.

  "Oh, that," he said airily, "I'll run that off when we come back.Deadlines mean nothing to Jacson Gootes, the compositors' companion, theproofreaders' pardner, the layoutman's love. Come, Senor Veener, we takelook at el grasso grosso by the moonlight."

  _17._ However, it was not moonlight illuminating the weird tumulus, butthe glare of a battery of searchlights, suggesting, as Gootesirreverently remarked, the opening of a new supermarket. During myabsence the National Guard had arrived and focused the greatincandescent beams on the mound which now covered five houses and whosethreat had driven the inhabitants from as many more. The powdery bluelights gave the grass an uncanny yellowish look, as though it had beenstricken by a disease.

  The rays, directed low, were constantly being interrupted by the bodiesof the militiamen hurrying back and forth to accomplish some definitetask. "What goes on?" inquired Gootes.

  The officer addressed had two gleaming silver bars on his shoulder. Heseemed very young and nervous. "Sorry--no one allowed this far withoutspecial authorization."

  "Working press." Gootes produced a reporter's badge from the captain'sbars.

  "Oh. Excuse me. Say, that was a sharp little stunt, Mr--"

  "Name of Jacson Gootes. _Intelligencer_."

  "Captain Eltwiss. How did you learn stuff like that?"

  I looked at him, for the name was somehow vaguely familiar. But to thebest of my knowledge I had never seen that smooth, boyish face before.

  "Talent. Natural talent. What did you say all the shootin was about?"

  "Getting ready to tunnel under," answered the officer affably. "Blow thething skyhigh from the middle and get rid of it right now. Not going tolet any grass grow under our feet."

  "But I read an article saying neither dynamite, TNT nor nitroglycerinwould be effective against the grass; might even do more harm thangood."

  "Writers." Captain Eltwiss dismissed literature without even resortingto an exclamationpoint. "Writers." To underline his confidence theboneshaking chatter of pneumatic chisels began a syncopated rattle.Military directness would accomplish in one swift, decisive stroke atthe heart of things what civilian fumbling around the edges had failedto do.

  I looked with almost sentimental regret at the great conical heap. I hadbrought it into being; in a few hours it would be gone and whatever fameits brief existence had given me would be gone with it.

  With swift method the guardsmen started burrowing. In ordered relays,fresh workers replaced tired, and the pile of excavated dirt grew. Sincetheir activity, except for its urgency and the strangeness of thesituation, didnt differ from labors observable any time a street wasrepaired or a foundation laid, I saw no point in watching, hour afterhour. I thought Gootes' persistence less a devotion to duty than theidle curiosity which makes grown men gape at a steamshovel.

  My hints being lost on him, I ascertained the hour they expected to befinished and went home. Excitement or no excitement, I saw no reason toabandon all routine. My forethought was proven when I returned refreshedin midmorning as the last shovelfuls of dirt came from the tunnel andthe explosive charges were hurried to their place.

  There was reason for haste. While the tunneling had been going on, allthe grassfighting activity had ceased, for the militia had orderedweedburners, reapers, bulldozers and the rest off the scene. The weed,unhampered for the first time since Mrs Dinkman attacked it with herlawnmower, responded by growing and growing until more and moreguardsmen had to be detached to the duty of keeping it back from theexcavation--by the very means they had scorned so recently. Even theirmost frantic efforts could not prevent the grass from sending its mostadvanced tendrils down into the gaping hole where the wires were beinglaid to detonate the charge.

  There was so much dashing to and fro, so many orders relayed, so manydispatches delivered that I thought I might have been witnessing anoutofdate Civilwar play instead of a peacetime action of the CaliforniaNational Guard. Captain Eltwiss--I kept wondering where I'd heard thename--was constantly being interrupted in what was apparently a veryfriendly
conversation with Gootes by the arrival of officiallookingenvelopes which he immediately stuffed into his pocket with everyindication of vexation. "Silly old fools," he muttered, each time theincident happened.

  Quick inspections made, plans checked, an order was rasped to clear thevicinity. Gootes' agonized protest that he had to report the occasionfor the _Intelligencer_'s readers was ignored. "Can't start makingexceptions," explained Captain Eltwiss. Everyone--workingpress, militia,sightseers and all, had to move back a couple of blocks whereintervening trees and houses cut us off from any view of the green hill.

  "This is terrible," exclaimed Gootes frantically. "Tragic. Howll I liveit down? Howm I going to face W R? Godlike wrath. 'What poolhall wereyou dozing in, Gootes? Asleep on your bloody feet, ay, somnambulisticoffspring of a threetoed sloth?' Wait all night for a story and then notget it, like the star legman on the Jackson Junior Highschool_Jive-Jitterbug_. I'll never be able to hold my head up again. Saysomething, say something, Weener--Ive _got_ to get this."

  "We'll be able to hear the explosion from here," I remarked to consolehim, for his distress was genuine.

  "Oh," he groaned. "Hear the explosion. Albert, Albert ... you have afertile mind. Why didnt I hide myself before they told us to clear out?Why didnt I get W R to hire a plane? Why didnt I foresee this and do anyof a hundred things? A microphone and automatic moviecamera ... GoonyGootes, they called him, the man who missed all bets.... A captiveballoon, now.... Hay! What about a roof?"

  "Trees," I objected, with a mental picture of him bursting into thenearest house and demanding entrance to the roof.

  "Bushwa. Zair's no tree in z' way of z' old box over zair--allons!"

  It wasnt till he had urged me inside and up a flight of stairs that Irealized the "box" was Miss Francis' apartmenthouse. It had been alogical choice, since its height and ugliness distinguished it even fromits unhandsome neighbors. Less than a week had gone by since I had comehere for the first time. As I followed Gootes' grasshopper leaps upwardat a more dignified pace, I reflected how strangely my circumstances hadchanged.

  The shoddily carpeted halls were musty and still as we climbed, exceptfor the unheeded squeaking of a radio someone had forgotten to turn off.You could always tell when a radio was being listened to, for whendisregarded it sulkily gave off painfully listless noises in frustrationand loneliness.

  I wasnt at all surprised to find Miss Francis among the spectatorscrowded on the roof in evidence of having no more important occupation."I somehow expected you. Have you any new tricks?" she asked Gootescoaxingly.

  "Ecod, your worship, wot time ave I for legerdemain? Wif your elp, now,I'd be a fine gentleman-journalist, stead of a noverworked ack."

  "Ha," she said genially, busy with the toothpick, "youll find enoughrespectable laboratory mechanics eager to cooperate. How long will it bebefore they shoot, do you know?"

  Gootes shook his head and I strained my eyes toward the grass.Symmetrical and shimmeringly green, removed as it now was from allconnotations of danger by distance and the promise of immediatedestruction, it showed serenely beautiful and unaffected by themachinations of its attackers. I could almost have wept as I traced itssloping sides upward to the rounded peak on top. Reversing all previousimpressions, it now appeared to be the natural inhabitant and all thehouses, roadways, pavements, fences, automobiles, lightpoles and therest of the evidences of civilization the intruders.

  But even as I looked at it so eagerly it moved and wavered and I heardthe muffled boom of explosion. The roof trembled and windows rattledwith diminishing echoes. The noise was neither a great nor terrifyingone and I distinctly remember thinking it quite inadequate to theoccasion.

  I believe all of us there, when we heard the report, expected to see avast hole where the grass had been. I'm sure I did. When it was clearthis hadnt happened, I continued to stare hard, thinking, since myhighschool physics was so hazy, I had somehow reversed the relativespeed of sight and sound and we had heard the noise before seeing thedestruction.

  But the green bulk was still there.

  Oh, not unchanged, by any means. The smooth, picturebook slope hadbecome jagged and bruised while the regular, evenlyrounded apex hadturned into a sort of phrygian cap with its pinnacle woundedly askew.The outlines which had been sharp were now blurred, its evenness hadbecome scraggly. The placid surface was vexed; the attempt on its beinghad hurt. But not mortally, for even with outline altered, it remained;defiant, certain, inexorable.

  The air was filled with small green particles whirling and floatingdownward. Feathery, yet clumsy, they refused to obey gravity and seekthe earth urgently, but instead shifted and changed direction, coylyspiraling upward and sideways before yielding to the inevitableattraction.

  "At least there's less of it," observed Gootes. "This much anyway," headded, holding a broken stolon in his fingers.

  "_Cynodon dactylon_," said Miss Francis, "like most of the familyGramineae, is propagated not only by seed, but by cuttings as well. Thatis to say, any part of the plant (except the leaves or flowers)separated from the parent whole, upon receiving water and nourishmentwill root itself and become a new parent or entity. The dispersion ofthe mass, far from making the whole less, as our literary friend soingenuously assumes, increases it to what mathematicians call the _n_thpower because each particle, finding a new restingplace unhampered bythe competition for food it encountered when integrated with the parentmass, now becomes capable of spreading infinitely itself unless checkedby factors which deprive it of sustenance. These facts have beenrepeated a hundred times in letters, telegrams and newspaper articlessince the project of attempting to blow up the inoculated batch wasknown. In spite of warnings the authorities chose to go ahead. No, makeno mistake, this fiasco has not set _Cynodon dactylon_ back amillimeter; rather it has advanced it tremendously."

  There was silence while we absorbed this unpleasant bit of information.Gootes was the first to regain his usual cockiness and he asked, "Yousay fiasco, professor. O K--can you tell us just why it was a fiasco? Iknow they stuck enough soup under it to blow the whole works and when itwent off it gave out with a good bang."

  "Certainly. _Cynodon dactylon_ spreads in what may be called jumps. Thatis, the stems are short and jointed. Those aboveground, the true stems,are called stolons, and those below, from which the roots spread, arerhizomes. Conceive if you will twoinch lengths of stiff wire--and thisplant is vulgarly called wiregrass in some regions just as it is calleddevilgrass here--bent on either end at rightangles. Now take these bitsand weave them horizontally into a thick mass. Then add, vertically,more of the wires, breaking the pattern occasionally and putting in morein odd places, just to be sure there are no logical fracturepoints.Cover this involved web--not forgetting it has three dimensions despitemy instructions treating it as a plane--with earth, eight, ten, ortwelve inches deep. Then try to blow it up with dynamite ortrinitrotoluene and see if you havent--in a much lesserdegree--duplicated and accounted for the situation in hand."

  Everything now seemed unusually and, perhaps because of the contrast,unreasonably quiet. Downstairs the radio, which had been monotonouslysoothing a presumptive audience of unsatisfied housewives with languidballads, raised its pitch several tones as though for the first time ithad become interested in what it purveyed.

  "... Yes, unseen friends, God is preparing His vengeance for wickednessand sin, even as you are listening. You have been warned many times ofthe wrath to come, but I say to you, the wrath is at hand. Even now Godis giving you a sign of His displeasure; a cloud no bigger than a man'shand. But, O my unseen friends, that cloud has within it all the storms,cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes and tornadoes necessary to destroy youand yours. Unless you repent of your pride and sloth, Judgment willsurely come upon you. The Lord has taken a simple and despised weed andcaused it to multiply in defiance of all your puny powers and efforts. Omy friends, do not fight this grass, but cherish it; do not allow it tobe cut down for it is full of significance for you. Call off all yourminions and repe
nt, lest if the holy messenger be injured a moreterrible one is sent. But now, my friends, I see my time is up; pleasesend your contributions so urgently needed to carry on the Divine Workto Brother Paul care of the station to which you are listening."

  "That's one way of looking at it," said Gootes. "Adios amigos."

  He went down the stairs at an even more breakneck pace than he had comeup. Almost in front of the apartmenthouse door we nearly collided withtwo officers in angry dispute.

  "You mean to tell me, Captain, that not one of the urgent orders tosuspend operations came through to you?"

  "Colonel, I havent seen a thing against the project except some foolarticles in a newspaper."

  Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen the name Eltwiss. It was on thefinancial page, not far away from the elusive quotation on ConsolidatedPemmican and Allied Concentrates for which I'd been idly searching."Eltwiss Explosives Cut Melon." Funny how things come back to you assoon as you put them out of your mind.

  Miss Francis, who had followed us down was busy collecting some of thestolons which were still floating lazily downward.

  _18._ An illiterate patchwork of lifeless and uninteresting scribblingappeared under my byline day after day in the _Intelligencer_. Not aword, not a thought of my own was left. I was not restrained fromprotest by the absurd threats of Le ffacase, but prudence dictated notthrowing away dirty water before I got clean, and the money from thepaper, while negligible of course, yet provided my most pressing needs.

  As I was being paid for my name while my talents went to waste, I wasfree to go anywhere I pleased, but I had little desire to leave thevicinity of the grass. It exerted upon me, more understandably, the samefascination as on the merely curious.

  But I was not permitted unmolested access to the phenomenon with which Iwas so closely concerned. An officious young guardsman warned me awaybrusquely and I was not allowed to come near until I swallowed my prideand claimed connection with the _Intelligencer_. Even then it wasnecessary for me to explain myself to several nervous soldiers on painof being ordered from the spot.

  I was struck as I had not been before by the dynamic quality of thegrass; never the same for successive instants. Constant movement andstruggle as the expanding parts fought for room among themselves,pushing upward and outward, seemed to indicate perceptible sentiencepermeating the whole body. Preparing, brooding, it was disturbed,searching, alert.

  Its external aspect reflected the change. The proportions of height tobreadth had altered since the explosion. The peak had disappeared,flattening out into an irregular plateau. Its progress across theground, however, had been vastly accelerated; it had crossed the streetson all sides of the block and was spreading with great rapidity over thewhole district. For the moment no new effort was apparently being madeto halt its progress, the activities of the militia being confined topatrolling the area and shooing decent citizens away. I wondered if anew strategy contemplated allowing the thing to exhaust itself. Since itlooked more vigorous with each passing hour, I saw myself on the payrollof the _Intelligencer_ for a long time to come.

  Captain Eltwiss walked by and I asked him if this were so. "Don'tworry," he reassured me. "We're hep now, with the actual, unbeatablemccoy. Park the body and watch what happens to old Mr Grass."

  I had every intention of staying and I thought it advisable to remainclose to the captain in order, if his boast were wellfounded, to be inon the kill. He was in excellent spirits and although I did not think ittactful to refer to it, it was evident his little difference with thecolonel about the unreceived orders had not affected him. We chattedamiably. I mentioned what Miss Francis had said about the weed springingup in new places from each of the shreds dispersed by the explosion, buthe merely shrugged and laughed.

  "I know these longbearded scientific nuts. They can find calamity aroundthe corner quicker than a drunk can find a bar."

  "The discoverer of the Metamorphizer is a woman, so her long beard isdoubtful," I told him, just a little irritated by his cocksureness.

  He laughed with as much ease at himself as at anything else. "A womanscientist, ay? Funny things womenll do when they can't get a man. Butlongbearded or flatchested it's all the same. Gruesome, that's whatthey are, gruesome. Forget it. After we get this cleaned up we'll takecare of any others that start, but personally I don't think therell beany. Sounds like a lot of theory to me."

  I looked contemptuously at him, for he had that unimaginative approachwhich disdains Science and so holds Civilization back on its upwardpath. If the world's future rested with people like this, I thought, weshould never have had dynamite or germtheories or airplanes capable ofdestroying whole cities at a blow.

  But Captain Eltwiss was a servant to the Science he looked down on. Theanswer he had bragged about now appeared and it was a scientificcontribution if ever there was one. A division of tanks, twenty orthirty of them with what appeared to be sledrunners invertedly attachedto their fronts, rolled into sight. "Wirecutters," he explained withpride. "Same equipment used for barbedwire on the Normandy beachhead. Gothrough anything like cheese."

  The tanks drew up in a semicircle and the drivers came out of theirvehicles for lastminute preparations. A final check was made of gas,oil, and the positions of the wirecutters. Maps, showing the location ofeach house now covered by the grass, were studied and compasspointschecked against them. I admired the thoroughness and efficiency of thearrangements. So did the captain.

  "The idea is simple. These tanks are shocktroops. Theyll cut their wayinto the middle of the stuff. This will give us entranceways and acentral operating point, besides hitting the grass where its strength isgreatest. From there--" he paused impressively--"from there we'll throweverything in the book at it and a few that arent. All the stuff theyused before we came. Only we'll use it efficiently. And everything else.Even hush-hush stuff. Just got the release from Washington. The minuteone of these stems shows we'll stamp it out. We'll fight it and fight ituntil we beat it and we won't leave a bit of it, no, sir, not one bit ofit, alive."

  He looked at me triumphantly. Behind his triumph was a hint of the vastresources and the slowmoving but unassailable force his uniformrepresented. It sounded as though he had been correct in his boast andsomething drastic indeed would "happen to Mr. Grass."

  The tanks were ready to go at last and the drivers climbed back intothem and disappeared, leaving the steel monsters looking as though theydswallowed the men. Like bubbles of air in a narrow glass tube they beganto jerk backward and forward, until at some signal--I presume given byradio--they jumped ahead, their exhausts bellowing defiance of the grassmauled and torn by their treads.

  They went onward with careless scorn, leaving behind a bruised andtrampled pathway. The captain followed in the track and I after him,though I must admit it was not without some trepidation I put my feetupon the battered and now lifeless mass packed into a hard roadbed, forI recalled clearly how the grass had wrenched the ladder from thefiremen and how it had impishly attacked the broadcaster's equipment.

  The tanks moved ahead steadily until the slope of the mound began torise sharply and the runners of grass, instead of flattening obedientlybehind, curled and twisted grotesquely as the tracks passed over them,lightly slapping at the impervious steel sides. Small bunches, mutilatedand crushed, sprang back into erectness, larger ones flopped limply astheir props were pushed aside.

  Then, suddenly, the tank we were trailing disappeared. There was nowarning; one second it was pursuing its way, an implacable executioner,the next it had plunged into the weed and was lost to sight. The ends ofthe grass came together spitefully behind it, weaving themselvestogether, knitting, as we watched, an opaque blanket. It closed over andaround so that the smooth track ended abruptly, bitten by a wiry greenportcullis.

  I was dismayed, but the captain seemed happy. "Now we're gettingsomewhere," he exclaimed. "The little devils are eating right into theheart of the old sonofabitch."

  We stood there gaping stupidly after our lost champion,
but the grassmound was enigmatic and offered us no information as to its progress. Asurvey of the other tracks showed their tanks, too, had burrowed intothe heart of the weed like so many hounds after a rabbit.

  "Well," said the captain, who by now had apparently accepted me as hisconfidant, "let's go and see what's coming in over the radio."

  I was glad to be reminded the tanks werent lost, even temporarily, andthat we would soon learn of their advance. Field headquarters had beenset up in a house about two blocks away and there, after exchangingsalutes, passwords, and assorted badinage, the captain led. The men incontact with the tanks, shoulders hunched, fingers rapid with pad andpencil, were sitting in a row by a wall on which had been tacked a largeand detailed map of the district.

  In addition to their earphones, a loudspeaker had also been thoughtfullyset up, apparently to take care of any such curious visitors asourselves. The disadvantage, soon manifest, was that no plan had beendevised to unscramble the reports from the various tanks. As aconsequence, whenever two or three came in together, the reportsoverlapped, resulting in a jumble of unintelligible sounds from theloudspeaker.

  "Brf brf brm," it was saying as we entered the room. "Rrr rrr aboutthree hundred meters khorof khorof khorof north by northeast. Can youhear me, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."

  There was a further muddle of words, then, "I think my motor's going toconk out. Shall I backtrack, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."

  "Rugged place to stall," commented captain Eltwiss sympathetically, "butwe can pull him out in halfashake soons we get things under control."

  The loudspeaker, after a great deal of gibberish, condescended toclarity again. "... about five hundred meters. Supposed to join SMT5 atthis point. Can't raise him by radio. What do you have on SMT5, FHQ?Come in, FHQ."

  I was still speculating as to what had happened to SMT5 when theloudspeaker once more became intelligible. "... and the going's gettingtougher all the time. I don't believe these goddamned wirecutters areworth a pissinasnowhole. Just fouled up, that's what they are, justfouled up. Got further if theyd been left off."

  His grumbling was blotted out. For a moment there was complete babel,then "... if I can guess, it's somehow got in the motor and shorted theignition. Ive got to take a chance and get out to look at it. This isSMT3 reporting to FHQ. Now leaving the transmitter."

  "... stalled so I turned on my lights. Can you hear me, FHQ? Come inFHQ, O K, O K, don't get sore. So I turned on my lights. I'm not goingto do a Bob Trout, but I want to tell you it's pretty creepy. I guessthis stuff looks pretty and green enough on top, especially in daylight,but from where I am now it's like an illustration out of Grimm's _FairyTales_--something about the place where the wicked ogre lived. Not a bitof green. Not a bit of light except from my own which penetrate abouttwo feet ahead and stop. Dead. Yellow and reddishbrown stems. Thick.Interlaced. How the hell I ever got this far I'd like to know. But notas much as how I'm going to get out.

  "I'm sticking my head out of the turret now. As far as these stemsll letme. Which isnt far. Theyre a solid mass on top of the machine. Andbeside it. I'm going to take a few tools and make for the engine. Onlything to do. Can't sit here and describe grassroots to you dogrobbersall day long. See if I can't get her running and back out. Then I resignfrom the state of California. Right then. This is SMT7 leaving thetransmitter for essential repairs and signing off."

  For hours the reports kept coming in, all in identically the same vein:rapid progress followed by a slowdown, then either engine trouble or afailure to keep rendezvous by another tank, all messages concludingalike: "Now leaving transmitter." It was no use for field headquartersfrantically to order them to stay in their tanks no matter whathappened. They were young, ablebodied, impatient men and when somethingwent wrong they crawled out to fight their way through a few feet ofgrass to fix it. Afterall they were in the heart of a great city. Theirmachines had burrowed straightforwardly into the grass and no threats ofcourtmartial could make them sit and look silly till help arrived andthey were tamely rescued. So one by one they wormed their way out to fixthe ignition, adjust the carburetor, or hack free the cogs which movedthe tracks. And one by one their radios became silent and were not heardagain.

  The captain went from cockiness to doubt, from doubt to anxiety, andthen to anguished fury. He had been so completely confident of themaneuver's outcome that its failure drove him, not to despair, but toanger. He knew most of the tankdrivers personally and the picture ofthese friends trapped in their tiny, evernarrowing pockets of green senthim into a frenzy. "SMT1--that's Lew Brown. Don't get out, Lew--staywhere you are, you jackass. Stay where you are, Lew," he bellowed intothe unresponsive loudspeaker.

  "Jake White. Jake White's in four. Said I'd buy him a drink afterwards.Joke. He's a cocacola boy. Why can't you stay inside, Jake? Why can'tyou stay put?"

  Unable to bear it longer, he rushed from field headquarters shouting,"Let's get'm out, boys, let's get'm out," and would personally have leda volunteer party charging on foot into the grass if he had not beenforcibly restrained and sympathetically led away, sobbing hysterically,toward hospitalization and calming treatment.

  The captain's impulse, though impractical, was shared by all hiscomrades. For the moment the destruction of the grass became secondaryto the rescue of the trapped tankmen. If field headquarters had bustledbefore, it now turned into a veritable beehive, with officers shouting,exhorting, complaining, and men running backwards and forwards as thoughthere were no specific for the situation except unlimited quantities oftheir own sweat.

  _19._ It would be futile to relate, even if I could recall them, all thevarious methods and devices which were suggested and rejected or triedand proved failures in the attempt to rescue the tankdrivers. Press andradio followed every daring essay and carefully planned endeavor untilthe last vicarious quiver had been wrung from a fascinated public. Fortwentyfour hours there was no room on the front pages of the newspapersfor anything but the latest on the "prisoners of the grass," as theywere at first called. Later, when hope for their rescue had diminishedand they were forced from the limelight to make way for laterdevelopments, they were known simply as "heroes in the fight against theweird enemy."

  For the grass had not paused chivalrously during the interval. On thecontrary, it seemed to take renewed vigor from the victims it hadentombed. House after house, block after block were engulfed. The namesof those forced from their homes were no longer treated individually andwritten up as separate stories, but listed in alphabetical order, likebattle casualties. Miss Francis, frantically trying to get all herspecimens and equipment moved from her kitchen in time, had been oustedfrom the peeling stucco and joined those who were finding shelter (withsome difficulty) in other parts of the city.

  The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard whereevery effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmostwandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrushand greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, thegreat artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, wasthreatened with disruption.

  But while the parent body was spreading out, its offspring, as MissFrancis foresaw, had come into existence. Dozens of nuclei werereported, some close at hand, others far away as the Sunset Strip andHollywoodland. These smaller bodies were vigorously attacked as soon asdiscovered but of course they had in every case made progress too greatto be countered, for they were at first naturally indistinguishablefrom ordinary devilgrass and by the time their true character wasdetermined so rapid was their growth they were already beyond allpossibility of control.

  The grass was now everyone's primary thought, replacing the moon (amonglovers), the incometax (among individuals of importance), the weather(among strangers), and illness (among ladies no longer interested in themoon), as topics of conversation. Old friends meeting casually aftermany years' lapse greeted each other with "What's the latest on thegrass?" Radiocomedians fired gagmen with weeks of service behind themfor failure to provide botanical quips
, or, conversely, hired rawwriters who had inhabited the fringes of Hollywood since Mack Sennettdays on the strength of a single agrostological illusion. Newspapers ranlong articles on _Cynodon dactylon_ and the editors of their gardensections were roused from the somnolence into which they had sunk uponreceiving their appointment and shoved into doubleleaded boldfacedposition.

  Textbooks on botany began outselling popular novels and a mere work offiction having the accidental title _Greener Than You Think_ wascatapulted onto the bestseller list before anyone realized it wasnt anacademic discussion of the family Gramineae. Contributors toscientifiction magazines burst bloodvessels happily turning out tenthousand words a day describing their heroes' adventures amid the redgrass of Mars or the blue grass of Venus after they hadsinglehanded--with the help of a deathray and the heroine's purelove--conquered the green grass of Tellus.

  Professors, shy and otherwise, were lured from their classrooms tolecture before ladies' clubs hitherto sacred to the accents oftransoceanic celebrities and Eleanor Roosevelt. There they competed onalternate forums with literate gardeners and stuttering horticulturalamateurs. Stolon, rhizome and culm became words replacing crankshaft andpiston in the popular vocabulary; the puerile reports Gootes fabricatedunder my name as the man responsible for the phenomenon were syndicatedin newspapers from coast to coast, and a query as to rates was receivedfrom the _Daily Mail_.

  Brother Paul's exhortations on the radio increased in both length andintensity as the grass spread. Pastors of other churches and conductorsof similar programs denounced him as misled; realestate operators,fearful of all this talk about the grass bringing doom and sodepreciating the value of their properties, complained to the FederalCommunications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Yearand hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked bytheir own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alikewas to buy up more radiotime.

  No one doubted the government would at length awaken from its apathy andcounter the menace swiftly and efficiently, as always before in criseswhen the country was threatened. The nation with the highest rate ofproduction per manhour, the greatest efficiency per machine, thegreatest wealth per capita, and the greatest vision per mindseye was notgoing to be defeated by a mere weed, however overgrown. While waitingthe inevitable action and equally inevitable solution the public had allthe excitement of war without suffering the accompanying privations andbereavements. The grass was a nuisance, but a nuisance with titillatingcompensations; most people felt like children whose schoolhouse hadburned down; they were sorry, they knew there'd be a new one, they werequite ready to help build it--but in the meantime it was fun.

  The _Daily Intelligencer_ was gorged with letters from its readers onthe subject of the grass. Many of them wanted to know what a newspaperof its standing meant by devoting so much space to an ephemeralhappening, while many more asked indignantly why more space wasnt givento something affecting their very lives and fortunes. Communistpartymembers, using improbable pennames, asked passionately if this wasnot a direct result of the country's failure to come to a thoroughunderstanding with the Soviet Union? Terrified propertyholders iratelydemanded that something, SOMETHING be done before realestate became asvalueless in Southern California as it already was in Red Russia.

  Technocrats demanded the government be immediately turned over to acommittee of engineers and competent agronomists who would deal with thesituation as it deserved after harnessing the wasted energy of thepopulace. Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the resultof a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen--inconspiracy with A Cohen, Notions--was at the bottom of the grass.Brother Paul wrote--and his letter was printed, for he now advertisedhis radioprograms in the columns of the _Intelligencer_--thatCaesar--presumably the state of California--had been chastened forarrogating to itself things not to be rendered unto Caesar and thetankmen had deservedly perished for their sacrilege. The letter arousedfury--the followers of Brother Paul either didnt read the _Intelligencer_or were satisfied their leader needed no championing, if they did--andother letters poured in calling for various expressions of populardisapproval, from simple boycott up through tarring and feathering toplain and elaborated--with gasoline and castration--lynching. The grasswas a hot topic.

  With its acute perception of the popular taste Le ffacase's paperprinted not only most of the communications--the unprintable ones werecirculated among the staff till they wore out or disappearedmysteriously in the Gents Room--but maps showing the daily progress ofthe weed, guesses as to the duration of the plague by local prophets,learned articles by scientists, opinions of statesmen, views ofprominent entertainers, in fact anything having any remote connectionwith the topic of the day. The paper even went further and offered areward of ten thousand dollars to anyone advancing a suggestion leadingto the destruction of the intruder. Its circulation jumped at theexpense of less perspicacious rivals and the incoming mail, already manytimes normal, swelled to staggering proportions.

  The contest was taken with deadly seriousness, for the livelihood ofmany of the paper's readers was suddenly threatened by its subject andfrom a new quarter. In the same issue as the offered reward thereappeared an interview with the accredited head of the organizedmotionpicture producers. This retiring gentleman was rumored to becompletely illiterate, an unquestionable slander, for he had writtenchecks to support every cause dedicated to keeping wages where theybelonged and seeing the wage earners didnt waste the money sobenevolently supplied by their employers.

  I got the details of the interview from the interviewer himself. Themagnate--he had no objection to the description--had been irritable andminced no words. The grass was bad alike for production and boxoffice,taking everyone's mind off the prime business of making and viewingmotionpictures. It was injuring The Industry and he couldnt conceal thefact that The Industry, speaking through his mouth and with hisvocabulary, was annoyed.

  "Unless this disgraceful episode ends within ten days," he had saidsternly, "the Motion Picture Industry will move to Florida."

  It was an ultimatum; Southern Californians heard and trembled. The lasttime this dread interdiction had been invoked--in the midst of a bitterelection fight--it had sent them scurrying to the polls to do theirbenefactor's bidding. Now indeed the grass menace would be takenseriously.

  The next day's paper had news of more immediate concern to me. Thegovernor had appointed a special committee to investigate the situationand the first two witnesses to be called were Josephine Spencer Francisand Albert Weener.

  _20._ William Rufus Le ffacase was as enthusiastic as his phlegmaticnature permitted. He called me into his office and half raised thesnuffbox off the desk as though to offer me an unwelcome pinch. "Youre amade man now, Weener," he said, thinking better of his generosity andputting the snuffbox back. "Your name will be in headlines from Alabamato Alberta--and all due to the _Intelligencer_."

  I would have resented this as a gross misappropriation of credit--forsurely all obligation was on the other side--had I not been deeplydisturbed by the prospect of being haled before this committee like acriminal before the bar of justice.

  "I'd much rather avoid this unpleasant notoriety, Mr. Le ffacase," Iprotested. "Since the _Intelligencer_, for reasons best known to itself,chooses not to avail itself of my contributions, but prints my name overwords I have not written, there could be no possible objection to myslipping away to Nevada until this investigation ends."

  His face became a pretty shade of plum. "Weener, youre a thief, a petty,cadging, sly, larcenous, pilfering, bloody thief. You take the _DailyIntelligencer_'s honest dollars without a qualm, aye, with a smirk onyour imbecile face, proposing with the cool impudence of the bornembezzler to return no value for them. Weener, you forget yourself. The_Intelligencer_ picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspatteredand thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, youfeebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for yourfutile, lecherous pawings at th
e chastity of the English language, butout of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soulcan have. And what do you propose to do in gratitude? To run, to flee,to hide from the expression of authority, to bring disgrace upon thevery newspaper whose munificence pumps life into your boneless,soulless, gutless carcass. Not another word, not a sound, not a ghoulishsyllable from your ineffective vocabulary. Out of my presence before Ilose my temper. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelesslydecorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it isin session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whosepossession I gravely doubt. You hear me, Weener?"

  For some reason the committee was not attempting to get the story of thegrass in chronological order. When I arrived, the six distinguishedgentlemen were trying to find out all about the crudeoil poured,apparently without effect, in what now seemed so long ago, but whichactually had been less than two weeks before.

  Flanked on either side by his colleagues, the little black plug of hishearingaid sticking out like a misplaced unicorn's horn, was thechairman, Senator Jones, his looseskinned old fingers resting lightly onthe bright table, the nails square and ridged, the flesh brownspotted.He adjusted a pair of goldrimmed spectacles, quickly found theimprovement in his vision unpleasant, and rumbled, "What did it cost thetaxpayers?"

  On the stand, the chief of police was settled in great discomfort, sofar forward on the rounded edge of his chair that his balance was asource of fascinated speculation to the gallery. He squirmed a periloushalf inch forward, but before he had time to reply, old Judge Robinsonof the State Supreme Court, who scorned any palliation of his deafnesssuch as Senator Jones condescended to, cupped his left ear with his handand shrieked, "Ay? Ay? What's that? Speak up, can't you? Don't sit theremumbling."

  Assemblyman Brown, head of the legislature's antiracketeering committee,intense concentration expressed in the forward push of his vigorousshoulders and the creased lines on his youthful forehead, asked if itwere not true that the oil had been held up by a union jurisdictionaldispute? There was a spattering of applause from the listeners at thisadroit question and one man in the back of the room cried "Sha--" andthen sat down quickly.

  Attorney General Smith wanted to know just who had ordered the oil inthe first place and whether the propertyowners had given their consentto its application. The attorney general's square face, softened androunded by fat, shone on the wriggling chief like a klieglight; hislips, irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, partinginto a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other twomembers of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chiefmanaged to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had beenout of town and hadnt even heard of the oil till this moment.

  He was instantly dismissed from the stand and a new witness, from themayor's office, was called, with no happier results. He, too, was aboutto be excused when Dr Johnson, who represented Science on the committee,descended from Himalayan abstraction to demand what effect the oil hadhad on the grass.

  There were excited whisperings and craning of feminine heads as DrJohnson propounded his question. The interest he excited was, however,largely vicarious. For he was famous, not so much in his own right, asin being the husband of the _Intelligencer_'s widely read societycolumnist whose malapropisms caused more wry enjoyment and fearsomeanticipation than an elopement to Nevada.

  "And what effect did the oil have on the grass?" he repeated.

  The query caused confusion, for it seemed the committee could notproceed until this fact had been ascertained. Various technicians weresent for, and the doctor, tall, solemn and benign, looked over hisstiff, turned-down collar and the black string tie drooping around it,as though searching for some profound truth which would be readilyapparent to him alone.

  The experts discoursed at some length in esoteric terms--one evenbringing a portable blackboard on which he demonstrated, with diagrams,the chemical, geologic and mathematical aspects of the problem--but nopertinent information was forthcoming till some minor clerk in theDepartment of Water and Power, who had only got to the stand through aconfusion of names, said boldly, "No effect whatever."

  "Why not?" asked Judge Robinson. "Was the oil adulterated? Speak up,speak up; don't mumble."

  Henry Miller, the Southland's bestknown realtor ("Los Angeles First inPopulation by Nineteen Ninety Nine"), who had connections in the oilindustry, as well as in citrus and walnut packing, frowneddisapprovingly. The clerk said he didnt know, but he might venture aguess--

  Senator Jones informed him majestically that the committee was concernedwith facts, not speculations. This created an impasse until AttorneyGeneral Smith tactfully suggested the clerk might be permitted to guess,entirely off the record. After the official stenographer had beencommanded sternly not to take down a single word of conjecture, thewitness was allowed to advance the opinion that the oil hadnt killed theplant because it had never reached the roots.

  "Ay?" questioned the learned judge, looking as though neither his lunchnor breakfast nor, for that matter, any nourishment absorbed since theTaft administration, had agreed with him.

  "I'm a bit of a gardener myself, gentlemen," the witness assured themconfidentially, settling back comfortably. "I putter around my own placeSaturdays and Sundays and I know what devilgrass is like. I can wellimagine a bunch of it twenty or twentyfive feet high could be coatedwith many, many gallons of oil without a drop seeping down into theground."

  Mr Miller said magisterially, "Not really good American oil," but no onepaid attention, knowing that he was commenting, not as a member of thecommittee, but in his other capacity as the head of an organization topromote Brotherhood and Democracy by deporting all foreignborn and thedescendants of foreignborn to their original countries. Everyone wasonly too happy to have the oil matter concluded at any cost; and afterthe stenographer was ordered to resume his labors, the next witness wascalled.

  "Albert Weener!"

  I hope I may never again have to submit to the scrutiny of twelve suchmerciless eyes. I cast my own down at the brown linoleum until everystain and inkspot was impressed ineradicably on my mind. Senator Jonesfinally broke the tension by asking, "What is your name?"

  Judge Robinson enjoined, "Speak up, speak up. Don't mumble."

  "Albert Weener," I replied.

  There was a faint sigh through the room. Everyone who read the _DailyIntelligencer_ had heard of me.

  "And what is your occupation, Mr Weener?" asked Henry Miller.

  "Salesman, sir," I answered automatically, forgetting my presentconnection with the newspaper, and he smiled at me sympathetically.

  "You belong to a socalled tradesunion?" inquired Assemblyman Brown.

  "I will ask the honorable Mr Brown to modify his question by having theword 'socalled' struck from it."

  "I will inform the honorable attorney general that my question standsexactly as I phrased it," rejoined Assemblyman Brown sharply. "I'llremind the attorney general I myself am a member in good standing of alegitimate union, namely the International Brotherhood of Embalmers,Morticians, Gravediggers and Helpers, and when I asked the witness if hebelonged to a socalled tradesunion I was referring to any one of thosegroups of Red conspirators who attempt to strangle the economic body byinterfering with the normal course of business and mulcting honestcitizens of tributary dues before they can pursue their livelihoods."

  Judge Robinson cupped his ear again and glared at me. "Speak up man;stop mumbling."

  "I don't belong to any union," I answered as soon as there was a chancefor my words to be heard. Senator Jones took a notebook from his pocket,consulted it, put it back, scribbled something on the pad in front ofhim, tore it up, looked at his notebook again and asked, "What is yourconnection with this ... um ... grass?"

  "I applied Miss Francis' Metamorphizer to it, sir," I answered.

  "Nonsense," said Judge Robinson sharply.

  "Explain yourself," demanded Attorney General Smith.

  "Tell us ju
st what this stuff is and how you applied it," suggestedHenry Miller.

  "Don't mumble," ordered Judge Robinson.

  "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I don't know exactly what it is. Youll have toask Miss Francis that. But--"

  Senator Jones interrupted me. "You mean to say you applied a chemical tosomeone's lawn, a piece of valuable property, without knowing itscontents?" he asked sternly.

  "Well, Senator----" I began.

  "Do you habitually act in this irresponsible manner?"

  "Senator, I----"

  "Don't you understand, sir, that consequences necessarily followactions? What sort of world would this be if everyone rushed aroundblindly using things of whose nature they were completely unaware?"

  "Don't mumble," warned Judge Robinson.

  I began to feel very low indeed and could only say haltingly, "I actedin good faith, gentlemen," when Mr Miller kindly recommended that I beexcused since I had evidently given all the information at my command.

  "Subject to recall," growled Attorney General Smith.

  "Oh, certainly, sir, certainly," agreed Mr Miller, and I was thankfullyreleased from my ordeal.

  "Josephine Spencer Francis."

  I cannot say Miss Francis had made any concessions in her appearance indeference to the committee, for she looked as though she had comestraight from her kitchen, a suspicion strengthened by the strand ofgrass she carried in her fingers and played with absently throughout.She appeared quite at home as she settled herself in the chair, scanningwith the greatest interest the faces of the committeemen as if she werememorizing each feature for future reference.

  The honorable body returned her scrutiny with sharply individualemphasis. The attorney general smiled pleasantly at her; Judge Robinsonlooked more sour than ever and grunted, "Woman; mistake"; Senator Jonesbowed toward her with courtesy; Assemblyman Brown gave her a sharponceover; Mr Miller pursed his lips in amusement; and Dr Johnson gazedat her in horrified fascination.

  Senator Jones bowed for a second time and inquired her name. Hereceived the information and chewed it meditatively. Miss Francis tookout her gold toothpick, considered the etiquette of using it andregretfully put it away in time to hear the attorney general's question,"Mrs or Miss Francis?"

  "Miss," she replied gruffly. "_Virgo intacta._"

  Senator Jones drew back as if attacked by a wasp. Attorney General Smithsaid, "Hum," very loudly and looked at Assemblyman Brown who lookedblank. Dr Johnson's nose raised itself a perceptible inch and JudgeRobinson, sensing a sensation among his colleagues, shouted, "Speak up,madam, don't mumble."

  Mr. Miller, who hadnt been affected, inquired, "What is your occupation,Miss Francis?"

  "Agrostological engineer, specializing in chemical research."

  "How's that again?" Judge Robinson managed to put into the simplegesture of cupping his ear a devastating condemnation of Miss Francis,women in general, science and presentday society. She politely repeatedherself.

  "Astrology--what's that got to do with the grass? Do you casthoroscopes?"

  "Agrostology," Dr Johnson murmured to the ceiling.

  "Will you explain please in simpler terms, just what you do?" requestedAttorney General Smith.

  "Local statutes against fortunetelling," burst out Judge Robinson.

  "I have spent my life studying reactions of plants to the lighterelements and the effects of certain compounds on their growth,reproduction, and metabolism."

  Judge Robinson removed his hand from behind his ear and rubbed his skullirritably. Assemblyman Brown complained, "There's entirely too much talkabout reaction." Dr Johnson inspected a paneled wall with no interestwhatever and Senator Jones stated pontifically, "You are an agriculturalchemist."

  Miss Francis smiled at him amiably. "Agriculture is a broad field and Ifarm one small corner of it."

  Attorney General Smith leaned forward with interest. "From whatuniversity did you obtain your degrees, Miss Francis?"

  She slouched back comfortably, to look more cylindrical than ever."None," she stated baldly.

  "Hay? ... mumble!"

  Senator Jones said, "I'm afraid I did not quite understand your reply,madam."

  "I hold no degrees, honors, or diplomas whatever, and I have not wastedone second of my life in any college, university, academy, or otheralleged institution of learning. The degrees good enough for RogerBacon, Erasmus Darwin, Lavoisier, Linnaeus and Lamarck are good enoughfor me. I am a questioner, gentlemen, a learner, not a collector ofalphabetical letters which, strung together in any form your fancypleases, continue eternally to spell nothing whatever."

  Sensation. One of the experts who had been waiting patiently to testify,folded his arms and said in a loud voice, "This is what comes oftolerating women in the professions." Another muttered, "Charlatan ...ridiculous ... dangerous thing ... shameful ... sex ..." Two elderlyladies in broadcloth coats with fur collars, later identified ascrusaders for antivivisection, cheered feebly and were promptly ejected.

  Senator Jones took off his spectacles, polished them exhaustively, triedto put them on upside down, gave up and stated gravely, "This is anextraordinary admission, Miss, um, Francis."

  "It is not an admission at all; it is a statement of fact. As for itsirregularity, I take the liberty of believing we unlettered ones are inthe majority rather than minority."

  Judge Robinson warned, "Could be cited for contempt, Miss Harrumph."

  Dr Johnson said sharply, "Nonsense, madam, even a--even a tree surgeonhas more respect for learning."

  Mr Miller leaned slightly over the table. "Do you realize that in yourignorant dabbling you have ruined hundreds of propertyowners andtaxpayers?"

  "I thought there was some law against practicing without a license,"speculated Assemblyman Brown.

  "There is apparently no law applying intelligence qualifications formembers of the legislature," remarked Miss Francis pleasantly.

  Senator Jones lifted his gavel, idle until now, and banged it on thetable, smashing his spectacles thoughtlessly placed in front of him amoment before. This did nothing to appease his rising choler. "Silence,madam! We have perhaps been too lenient in deference to your, um, sex.I'll remind you that this body is vested with all the dignity of thestate of California. Unless you apologize instantly I shall cite you forcontempt."

  "I beg the committee's pardon."

  The investigators held a whispered conference among themselves,evidently to determine whether this equivocal apology was to beaccepted. Apparently it was, for Dr Johnson now asked loftily and withan abstracted air, as though he already knew the answer and consideredit beneath notice, "What was this magic formula you caused to be put onthe grass?"

  Malicious spirits averred that Dickie Johnson had flunked out ofagricultural school, had an obscure European diploma, and that his fameas a professor at Creighton University was based on the gleaming graniteand stainless steel building dedicated to research in agronomy whichbore the legend "Johnson Foundation" over the entrance. No one hearinghim pronounce "magic formula" putting into the word all the contempt ofthe scientist for the quack, could ever put credence in the baseslander. "What was this 'magic formula' you caused to be put on thegrass?" he repeated.

  Miss Francis reeled off a list of elements so swiftly I'm sure no onebut the stenographer caught them all. I know I didnt get more than half,though I was sitting less than five feet from her. "Magnesium," shestated, "iodine, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, potash, sulphur,oxygen ..."

  Dr Johnson seemed to have known its composition since grammarschooldays. Senator Jones asked, "And what effect did you expect thisextraordinary conglomeration to have?"

  She repeated what she had told me at first and the deductions she hadmade since. Dr Johnson smiled. "A true Man of Science," he stated, "onewho has labored for years to acquire those degrees you affect todespise, would have been trained in selfless devotion to the service ofmankind, would never have made whatever gross error your ignorance,heightened by projection into a sphere for which you are p
robablybiologically unfitted--though this is perhaps controversial--hasbetrayed you into. For had you freely shared your work with colleaguesthey would have been able to correct your mistakes and this catastrophebrought on by selfish greed--a catastrophe which has already costmillions--would not have occurred."

  The entire committee, including Dr Johnson himself, seemed pleased withthis indictment. Attorney General Smith looked inquiringly at thewitness as though inviting her to answer _that_ if she could. MissFrancis evidently took the invitation literally, for she addressedherself directly to Dr Johnson.

  "I do not know, Doctor, where these beautiful and eminently sensibleideals you have so eloquently outlined are practiced, where scientists,regardless of biological fitness, share with each other their advancesfrom moment to moment and so add to the security of civilization fromday to day. Is it in the great research foundations whose unlimitedfunds are used to lure promising young men to their staffs, much asathletes used to be given scholarships by universities anxious toimprove the physical qualities of American youth? Is it in theexperimental laboratories of great industries where technologicaladvances are daily suppressed, locked away in safes, so profits may notbe diminished by the expensive retooling necessary to put these advancesinto effect? Or is it in a field closer to my own, in chemicalresearch--pure science, if you like--where truly secrets are shared onan international scale in order to build up the cartels which chokeproduction by increasing prices and promote those industries whichthrive on international illwill?"

  Assemblyman Brown rose to his feet and said in measured tones, "Thiswoman is a paid agent of the Communist International. I have heard suchrantings from demagogues on streetcorners. I demand the committee listento no more of this propaganda."

  Mr Miller gave a polite wave of his hand toward the assemblyman,indicating at once full agreement with what the legislator said andapology for pursuing his questioning of Miss Francis. He then asked thewitness sternly, "What is your real name?"

  "I'm afraid I don't quite understand. The only name I have is JosephineSpencer Francis and so far as I know it is thus written on my birthcertificate."

  "Birth certificate, ay? Where were you born? Speak up, don't mumble."

  "Russia, without a doubt," muttered Assemblyman Brown.

  "Youre sure it isnt Franciski or Franciscovitch? Or say, Finklestein?"

  "My name is not Finkelstein, although I do not find myself terrified ofthat combination of syllables. I was born in Moscow--"

  Another sensation. "I thought so!" screamed Judge Robinson triumphantly.

  "Aha!" exclaimed Senator Jones profoundly.

  "The leopard doesnt change his spots or the Red his (or her) color,"asserted Assemblyman Brown.

  "A sabatoor," yelled several of the spectators. Only Dr Johnson seemedunimpressed with the revelation; he smiled contentedly.

  "--in Moscow, Idaho," concluded Miss Francis, picking her teeth with aflourish.

  Judge Robinson screeched, "Ay? Ay? What's all this hubbub?" AssemblymanBrown sneered, "A very unlikely story." Attorney General Smith wanted itproven in blackandwhite while Senator Jones remarked Miss Francis' tastewas on a level with her scholarship.

  She waved the toothpick toward the chairman and politely waited foreither further questions or dismissal. All the while her intenseinterest in each gesture of the inquisitors and every facet of theinvestigation had not diminished at all. As she sat there patiently, hereyes darted from one to the other as they consulted and only came torest on Senator Jones when he spoke directly to her again.

  "And what steps can you take to undo, hum, this?"

  "So far, none," admitted Miss Francis, "but since this thing hashappened I have given all my time to experiment hoping in some manner toreverse the action of the Metamorphizer and evolve a formula whereby thegrowth it induced will be inhibited. I cannot say I am even on the rightroad yet, for you must recall I have spent my adult life going, as itwere, in one direction and it is now not a matter of merely retracing mysteps, but of starting out for an entirely different destination in afield where there are no highwaymaps and few compasspoints. I cannot sayI am even optimistic of success, but it is not for want of trying--beassured of that."

  Another semisilence while the committee conferred once more. FinallySenator Jones spoke in grave and measured tones: "It is a customarypoliteness in hearings of this nature to thank the witness for hishelpfulness and cooperation. This courtesy I cannot with any sincerityextend to you, madam. It seems to me you have proven yourself theopposite of a good citizen, that you have set yourself up, in yourarrogance, against all logical authority and have presumed to look downupon the work and methods of men whose standing and ways of procedureare recognized by all sound people. By your conceit, madam, you havecaused the death of young men, the flower of our state's manhood, whogave their lives in a vain attempt to destroy what your ignorancecreated. If I may be permitted a rather daring and perhaps harsh aside,I think this should strike you doubly, as a woman who has not broughtforth offspring to carry on the work of our forefathers and as onewho--with doubtful taste--boasts of that sterility. I think the resultsof your socalled experiments should chasten you and make you heed thewords of men properly qualified in a field where you are clearly notso."

  Someone in the back of the room applauded the senator's eloquence.

  "Senator Jones," said Miss Francis, turning her eyes on him with theattention I knew so well, the look which meant she had found an interestfor the moment excluding all others, "you accuse me of what amounts tocrime or at least criminal folly and I must answer that your accusationsare at once both true and false. I have been foolish, but it was not indespising the constrictions and falsity of the academic world. I _have_flouted authority, but it was not the authority of the movingpictureheroes, whose comic errors are perpetuated for generations, like thoseof Pasteur, or so quietly repudiated their repudiation passes unnoticed,like those of Lister, in order to protect a vested interest. Theauthority I have flouted, in my arrogance as you call it, is thatauthority all scientists recognized in the days when science wasscientific and called itself, not boastfully by the name of allknowledge, but more humbly and decently, natural philosophy. Thatauthority is what theologians term the Will of God; others, the lifeforce, the immaterial principle, the common unconscious, or whatever youwill. When I, along with all the academic robots whom you admire, deniedthat authority, we did not make ourselves, as we thought, men of purescience, but, on the contrary, by deposing one master we invited in ahorde of others. Since we could not submit to moral force we submittedin our blind stupidity--we called it the rejection of metaphysicalconcepts--to financial force, to political force, to social force; andfinally, since there was no longer any reward in itself for ourspeculations, we submitted to the lust for personal aggrandizement infortune, in notoriety, in castebound irresponsibility, and even for thehypocritical backslapping of our fellows.

  "In the counterrevolution known as the nineteenth century we evenrepudiated the name of speculation and it became a term of disrepute,like metaphysical. We went further than a mere disavowal of the name; wedisavowed the whole process and turned with disgust from the using ofour minds to the use of our hands in a manner which would have revoltedthe most illiterate of Carpathian peasants. We extirpated the salivaryglands of dogs in order to find out if they would slobber without them.We cut off the tails of mice to discover if the operation affected theirgreatgrandchildren. We decapitated, emasculated, malnourished, andpoisoned rodents against whom we had no personal animus for no otherreason than to keep an elaborate apparatus in use.

  "Even these pastimes failed to satisfy our undiscriminating appetite.Someone a little stupider, a little less imaginative--though suchconditions must have been difficult indeed to achieve--invented what iscalled the Control Experiment whereby, if theory tested be correct, halfthe subjects are condemned without trial to execution.

  "These are my sins: that in despising academic ends I did not despiseacademic means, that in rep
udiating the brainlessness of theprofessorial mind I did not attempt to use my own. Because I was proudof the integrity which made me choose not to do the will of a researchfoundation or industrial empire, I overlooked the vital fact that I hadalso chosen not to do God's Will, but what I stupidly thought to be myown. It was not. It was faintheartedness, sloth, placation, doubt,vagueness and romantical misconception. In a word, it was theaimlessness and falsity of the nineteenth century coming back in thewindow after having been booted out the door; my folly was the failureto recognize it. I have deluded myself, I have taken halfmeasures, Ihave followed false paths. Condemn me for these crimes. I am guilty."

  Attorney General Smith said acidly, "This is neither a psychiatrist'sconsulting room, a confessional, nor a court of law. I suggest thewitness be excused and her last hysterical remarks expunged from therecord."

  "It is so ordered," ruled Senator Jones. "And now, gentlemen, we shallrecess until tomorrow."

 

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