Mackenzie shrugged. “I need a fire, see? And I’m getting it any way I can.”
He flipped his thumb again and the lighter flared.
“But I never did anything to you,” Delbert howled, rocking on the metal door sill. “I’m your friend, I am. I never did a thing to hurt you.”
“No?” asked Mackenzie.
“No,” yelled Delbert.
“What about that scheme of yours?” asked Mackenzie. “Trying to trick me into taking trees to Earth?”
“That wasn’t my idea,” yipped Delbert. “It wasn’t any of the trees’ ideas. The Encyclopedia thought it up.”
A bulky form loomed outside the door. “Someone talking about me?” it asked.
The Encyclopedia was back again.
Arrogantly, he shouldered Delbert aside, stepped into the tractor.
“I saw Wade,” he said.
Mackenzie glared at him. “So you figured it would be safe to come.”
“Certainly,” said the Encyclopedia. “Your formula of force counts for nothing now. You have no means to enforce it.”
Mackenzie’s hand shot out and grasped the Encyclopedia with a vicious grip, hurled him into the interior of the tractor.
“Just try to get out this door,” he snarled. “You’ll soon find out if the formula of force amounts to anything.”
The Encyclopedia picked himself up, shook himself like a ruffled hen. But his thought was cool and calm.
“I can’t see what this avails you.”
“It gives us soup,” Mackenzie snapped.
He sized the Encyclopedia up. “Good vegetable soup. Something like cabbage. Never cared much for cabbage soup, myself, but—”
“Soup?”
“Yeah, soup. Stuff to eat. Food.”
“Food!” The Encyclopedia’s thought held a tremor of anxiety. “You would use me as food.”
“Why not?” Mackenzie asked him. “You’re nothing but a vegetable. An intelligent vegetable, granted, but still a vegetable.”
He felt the Encyclopedia’s groping thought-fingers prying into his mind.
“Go ahead,” he told him, “but you won’t like what you find.”
The Encyclopedia’s thoughts almost gasped. “You withheld this from me!” he charged.
“We withheld nothing from you,” Mackenzie declared. “We never had occasion to think of it … to remember to what use Men at one time put plants, to what use we still put plants in certain cases. The only reason we don’t use them so extensively now is that we have advanced beyond the need of them. Let that need exist again and—”
“You ate us,” strummed the Encyclopedia. “You used us to build your shelters! You destroyed us to create heat for your selfish purposes!”
“Pipe down,” Mackenzie told him. “It’s the way we did it that gets you. The idea that we thought we had a right to. That we went out and took, without even asking, never wondering what the plant might think about it. That hurts your racial dignity.”
He stopped, then moved closer to the doorway. From the Bowl below came the first strains of the music. The tuning up, the preliminary to the concert, was over.
“O.K.,” Mackenzie said, “I’ll hurt it some more. Even you are nothing but a plant to me. Just because you’ve learned some civilized tricks doesn’t make you my equal. It never did. We humans can’t slur off the experiences of the past so easily. It would take thousands of years of association with things like you before we even began to regard you as anything other than a plant, a thing that we used in the past and might use again.”
“Still cabbage soup,” said the Encyclopedia.
“Still cabbage soup,” Mackenzie told him.
The music stopped. Stopped dead still, in the middle of a note.
“See,” said Mackenzie, “even the music fails you.”
Silence rolled at them in engulfing waves and through the stillness came another sound, the clop, clop of heavy, plodding feet.
“Nellie!” yelled Mackenzie.
A bulky shadow loomed in the darkness.
“Yeah, chief, it’s me,” said Nellie. “I brung you something.”
She dumped Wade across the doorway.
Wade rolled over and groaned. There were skittering, flapping sounds as two fluttering shapes detached themselves from Wade’s shoulders.
“Nellie,” said Mackenzie, harshly, “there was no need to beat him up. You should have brought him back just as he was and let me take care of him.”
“Gee, boss,” protested Nellie. “I didn’t beat him up. He was like that when I found him.”
Nicodemus was clawing his way to Mackenzie’s shoulder, while Smith’s life blanket scuttled for the corner where his master lay.
“It was us, boss,” piped Nicodemus. “We laid him out.”
“You laid him out?”
“Sure, there was two of us and only one of him. We fed him poison.”
Nicodemus settled into place on Mackenzie’s shoulders.
“I didn’t like him,” he declared. “He wasn’t nothing like you, boss. I didn’t want to change like him. I wanted to stay like you.”
“This poison?” asked Mackenzie. “Nothing fatal, I hope.”
“Sure not, pal,” Nicodemus told him. “We only made him sick. He didn’t know what was happening until it was too late to do anything about it. We bargained with him, we did. We told him we’d quit feeding it to him if he took us back. He was on his way here, too, but he’d never have made it if it hadn’t been for Nellie.”
“Chief,” pleaded Nellie, “when he gets so he knows what it’s all about, won’t you let me have him for about five minutes?”
“No,” said Mackenzie.
“He strung me up,” wailed Nellie. “He hid in the cliff and lassoed me and left me hanging there. It took me hours to get loose. Honest, I wouldn’t hurt him much. I’d just kick him around a little, gentle-like.”
From the cliff top came the rustling of grass as if hundreds of little feet were advancing upon them.
“We got visitors,” said Nicodemus.
The visitors, Mackenzie saw, were the conductors, dozens of little gnomelike figures that moved up and squatted on their haunches, faintly luminous eyes blinking at them.
One of them shambled forward. As he came closer, Mackenzie saw that it was Alder.
“Well?” Mackenzie demanded.
“We came to tell you the deal is off,” Alder squeaked. “Delbert came and told us.”
“Told you what?”
“About what you do to trees.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“But you made the deal,” Mackenzie told him. “You can’t back out now. Why, Earth is waiting breathless—”
“Don’t try to kid me,” snapped Alder. “You don’t want us any more than we want you. It was a dirty trick to start with, but it wasn’t any of our doing. The Encyclopedia talked us into it. He told us we had a duty. A duty to our race. To act as missionaries to the inferior races of the Galaxy.
“We didn’t take to it at first. Music, you see, is our life. We have been creating music for so long that our origin is lost in the dim antiquity of a planet that long ago has passed its zenith of existence. We will be creating music in that far day when the planet falls apart beneath our feet. You live by a code of accomplishment by action. We live by a code of accomplishment by music. Kadmar’s Red Sun symphony was a greater triumph for us than the discovery of a new planetary system is for you. It pleased us when you liked our music. It will please us if you still like our music, even after what has happened. But we will not allow you to take any of us to Earth.”
“The monopoly on the music still stands?” asked Mackenzie.
“It still stands. Come whenever you want to and record my symphony. When there are others
we will let you know.”
“And the propaganda in the music?”
“From now on,” Alder promised, “the propaganda is out. If, from now on, our music changes you, it will change you through its own power. It may do that, but we will not try to shape your lives.”
“How can we depend on that?”
“Certainly,” said Alder. “There are certain tests you could devise. Not that they will be necessary.”
“We’ll devise the tests,” declared Mackenzie. “Sorry, but we can’t trust you.”
“I’m sorry that you can’t,” said Alder, and he sounded as if he were.
“I was going to burn you,” Mackenzie said, snapping his words off brutally. “Destroy you. Wipe you out. There was nothing you could have done about it. Nothing you could have done to stop me.”
“You’re still barbarians,” Alder told him. “You have conquered the distances between the stars, you have built a great civilization, but your methods are still ruthless and degenerate.”
“The Encyclopedia calls it a formula of force,” Mackenzie said. “No matter what you call it, it still works. It’s the thing that took us up. I warn you. If you ever again try to trick the human race, there will be hell to pay. A human being will destroy anything to save himself. Remember that—we destroy anything that threatens us.”
Something swished out of the tractor door and Mackenzie whirled about.
“It’s the Encyclopedia!” he yelled. “He’s trying to get away! Nellie!”
There was a thrashing rustle. “Got him, boss,” said Nellie.
The robot came out of the darkness, dragging the Encyclopedia along by his leafy topknot.
Mackenzie turned back to the composers, but the composers were gone. The grass rustled eerily towards the cliff edge as dozens of tiny feet scurried through it.
“What now?” asked Nellie. “Do we burn the trees?”
Mackenzie shook his head. “No, Nellie. We won’t burn them.”
“We got them scared,” said Nellie. “Scared pink with purple spots.”
“Perhaps we have,” said Mackenzie. “Let’s hope so, at least. But it isn’t only that they’re scared. They probably loathe us and that is better yet. Like we’d loathe some form of life that bred and reared men for food—that thought of Man as nothing else than food. All the time they’ve thought of themselves as the greatest intellectual force in the universe. We’ve given them a jolt. We’ve scared them and hurt their pride and shook their confidence. They’ve run up against something that is more than a match for them. Maybe they’ll think twice again before they try any more shenanigans.”
Down in the Bowl the music began again.
Mackenzie went in to look at Smith. The man was sleeping peacefully, his blanket wrapped around him. Wade sat in a corner, head held in his hands.
Outside, a rocket murmured and Nellie yelled. Mackenzie spun on his heel and dashed through the door. A ship was swinging over the Bowl, lighting up the area with floods. Swiftly it swooped down, came to ground a hundred yards away.
Harper, right arm in a sling, tumbled out and raced toward them.
“You didn’t burn them!” he was yelling. “You didn’t burn them!”
Mackenzie shook his head.
Harper pounded him on the back with his good hand. “Knew you wouldn’t. Knew you wouldn’t all the time. Just kidding the chief, eh? Having a little fun.”
“Not exactly fun.”
“About them trees,” said Harper. “We can’t take them back to Earth, after all.”
“I told you that,” Mackenzie said.
“Earth just called me, half an hour ago,” said Harper. “Seems there’s a law, passed centuries ago. Against bringing alien plants to Earth. Some lunkhead once brought a bunch of stuff from Mars that just about ruined Earth, so they passed the law. Been there all the time, forgotten.”
Mackenzie nodded. “Someone dug it up.”
“That’s right,” said Harper. “And slapped an injunction on Galactic. We can’t touch those trees.”
“You wouldn’t have anyhow,” said Mackenzie. “They wouldn’t go.”
“But you made the deal! They were anxious to go—”
“That,” Mackenzie told him, “was before they found out we used plants for food—and other things.”
“But … but—”
“To them,” said Mackenzie, “we’re just a gang of ogres. Something they’ll scare the little plants with. Tell them if they don’t be quiet the humans will get ’em.”
Nellie came around the corner of the tractor, still hauling the Encyclopedia by his topknot.
“Hey,” yelled Harper, “what goes on here?”
“We’ll have to build a concentration camp,” said Mackenzie. “Big high fence.” He motioned with his thumb toward the Encyclopedia.
Harper stared. “But he hasn’t done anything!”
“Nothing but try to take over the human race,” Mackenzie said.
Harper sighed. “That makes two fences we got to build. That rifle tree back at the post is shooting up the place.”
Mackenzie grinned. “Maybe the one fence will do for the both of them.”
Gleaners
Sent to Horace Gold in 1959 and purchased in less than a week, this story, which was first published in the March 1960 issue of If, features two prominent themes from Clifford Simak’s fiction: time travel and religion. I was not old enough to have seen the magazine when it came out, and I missed the story for years thereafter—but when I finally discovered it, I found myself utterly charmed by its portrayal of a dignified man being targeted by a cross-time conspiracy
—dww
I
He went sneaking past the door.
The lettering on the door said: Executive Vice President, Projects.
And down in the lower left corner, Hallock Spencer, in very modest type.
That was him. He was Hallock Spencer.
But he wasn’t going in that door. He had trouble enough already without going in. There’d be people waiting there for him. No one in particular—but people. And each of them with problems.
He ducked around the corner and went a step or two down the corridor until he came to another door that said Private on it.
It was unlocked. He went in.
A dowdy scarecrow in a faded, dusty toga sat tipped back in a chair, with his sandaled feet resting on Hallock Spencer’s desk top. He wore a mouse-gray woolen cap upon his hairless skull and his ears stuck out like wings. A short sword, hanging from the belt that snugged in the toga, stood canted with its point resting on the carpet. There was dirt beneath his rather longish toenails and he hadn’t shaved for days. He was a total slob.
“Hello, E.J.,” said Spencer.
The man in the toga didn’t take his feet off the desk. He didn’t move at all. He just sat there.
“Sneaking in again,” he said.
Spencer put down his briefcase and hung up his hat.
“The reception room’s a trap,” he said.
He sat down in the chair behind the desk and picked up the project schedule and had a look at it.
“What’s the trouble, E.J.?” he asked. “You back already?”
“Haven’t started yet. Not for another couple hours.”
“It says here,” said Spencer, flicking the schedule with a finger, “that you’re a Roman trader.”
“That’s what I am,” said E.J. “At least, Costumes says so. I hope to God they’re right.”
“But the sword—”
“Pardner,” said E.J., “back in Roman Britain, out on a Roman road, with a pack train loaded down with goods, a man has got to carry steel.”
He reached down and hoisted the sword into his lap. He regarded it with disfavor. “But I don’t mind telling you it’s no great shakes of
a weapon.”
“I suppose you’d feel safer with a tommy gun.”
E.J. nodded glumly. “Yes, I would.”
“Lacking that,” said Spencer, “we do the best we can. You’ll pack the finest steel in the second century. If that is any comfort.”
E.J. just sat there with the sword across his lap. He was making up his mind to say something—it was written on his face. He was a silly-looking soul, with all those wiry whiskers and his ears way out to either side of him and the long black hairs that grew out of the lobes.
“Hal,” said E.J., finally making up his mind, “I want out of this.”
Spencer stiffened in his chair. “You can’t do that!” he yelled. “Time is your very life. You’ve been in it for a lot of years!”
“I don’t mean out of Time. I mean out of Family Tree. I am sick of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Spencer protested. “Family Tree’s not tough. You’ve been on a lot of worse ones. Family Tree’s a snap. All you have to do is go back and talk to people or maybe check some records. You don’t have to snitch a thing.”
“It’s not the work,” said E.J. “Sure, the work is easy. I don’t mind the work. It’s after I get back.”
“You mean the Wrightson-Graves.”
“That is what I mean. After every trip, she has me up to that fancy place of hers and I have to tell her all about her venerable ancestors …”
Spencer said, “It’s a valuable account. We have to service it.”
“I can’t stand much more of it,” E.J. insisted, stubbornly.
Spencer nodded. He knew just what E.J. meant. He felt much the same.
Alma Wrightson-Graves was a formidable old dowager with a pouter-pigeon build and the erroneous conviction that she still retained much of her girlish charm. She was loaded down with cash, and also with jewels that were too costly and gaudy to be good taste. For years she’d shrieked down and bought off everyone around her until she firmly believed there was nothing in the world she couldn’t have—if she was willing to pay enough for it.
And she was paying plenty for this family tree of hers. Spencer had often asked himself just why she wanted it. Back to the Conquest, sure—that made at least some sense. But not back to the caves. Not that Past, Inc., couldn’t trace it that far for her if her cash continued to hold out. He thought, with a perverted satisfaction, that she couldn’t have been happy with the last report or two, for the family had sunk back to abject peasantry.
I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories Page 16
