hy. The
whole damn place could go hysterical if you snapped your fingers.'
     He came a little closer.
     'What are you planning, Brad?'
     'I'm going down to my place. There are people down there. You want to
come along?'
     He shook his head. 'No, I was down there for a while and then I got
this call from Floyd. I'm all beat out. I'm going in to bed.'
     He turned, and started to shuffle away and then he turned back.
     'You be careful, boy,' he warned. 'There's a lot of talk about the
flowers. They say if your father hadn't raised those flowers it never would
have happened. They think it was a plot your father started and you are in
on it.'
     'I'll watch my step,' I said.

        16

     They were in the living-room. As soon as I came in the kitchen door,
Hiram Martin saw me.
     'There he is!' he bellowed, leaping up and charging out into the
kitchen.
     He stopped his rush and looked accusingly at me. 'It took you long
enough,' he said.
     I didn't answer him.
     I put the time contraption, still wrapped in my jacket, on the kitchen
table. A fold of cloth fell away from it and the many-angled lenses winked
in the light from the ceiling fixture.
     Hiram backed away a step. 'What's that?' he asked.
     'Something I brought back,' I said. 'A time machine, I guess.'
     The coffee pot was on the stove and the burner was turned low. Used
coffee cups covered the top of the kitchen sink. The sugar canister had its
lid off and there was spilled sugar on the counter top.
     The others in the living-room were crowding through the door and there
were a lot of them, more than I'd expected.
     Nancy came past Hiram and walked up to me. She put out a hand and laid
it on my arm.
     'You're all right,' she said.
     'It was a breeze,' I told her.
     She was beautiful, I thought - more beautiful than I'd remembered her,
more beautiful than back in the high school days when I'd looked at her
through a haze of stars. More beautiful, here close to me, than my memory
had made her.
     I moved closer to her and put an arm around her. For an instant she
leaned her head against my shoulder, then straightened it again. She was
warm and soft against me and I was sorry that it couldn't last, but all the
rest of them were watching us and waiting.
     'I made some phone calls,' Gerald Sherwood said. 'Senator Gibbs is
coming out to see you. He'll have someone from the State Department. On
short notice, Brad, that was the best I could do.'
     'It'll do,' I said.
     For, standing in my kitchen once again, with Nancy close beside me,
with the lamplight soft in the coming dawn, with the old familiar things all
around, that other world had retreated into the background and had taken on
a softness that half obscured its threat - if it were a threat.
     'What I want to know,' Tom Preston blurted, 'is what about this stuff
that Gerald tells us about your father's flowers.'
     'Yes,' said Mayor Higgy Morris, 'what have they to do with it?'
     Hiram didn't say anything, but he sneered at me.
     'Gentlemen,' said lawyer Nichols, 'this is not the way to go about it.
You must be fair about it. Keep the questions until later. Let Brad tell us
what he knows.'
     Joe Evans said, 'Anything he has to say will be more than we know now.'
     'OK,' said Higgy, 'we'll be glad to listen.'
     'But first,' said Hiram, 'I want to know about that thing on the table.
It might be dangerous. It might be a bomb.'
     'I don't know what it is,' I said. 'It has to do with time. It can
handle time. Maybe you would call it a time camera, some sort of time
machine.'
     Tom Preston snorted and Hiram sneered again. Father Flanagan, the
town's one Catholic priest, had been standing quietly in the doorway, side
by side with Pastor Silas Middleton, from the church across the street. Now
the old priest spoke quietly, so quietly that one could barely hear him, his
voice one with the lamplight and the dawn. 'I would be the last,' he said,
'to hold that time might be manipulated or that flowers would have anything
to do with what has happened here. These are propositions that go against
the grain of my every understanding. But unlike some of the rest of you, I'm
willing to listen before I reach a judgement.'
     'I'll try to tell you,' I said. 'I'll try to tell you just the way it
happened.'
     'Alf Peterson has been trying to call you,' Nancy said. 'He's phoned a
dozen times.'
     'Did he leave a number?'
     'Yes, I have it here.'
     'That can wait,' said Higgy. 'We want to hear this story.'
     'Perhaps,' suggested Nancy's father, 'you'd better tell us right away.
Let's all go in the living-room where we'll be comfortable.'
     We all went into the living-room and sat down.
     'Now, my boy,' said Higgy, companionably, 'go ahead and spill it.'
     I could have strangled him. When I looked at him, I imagine that he
knew exactly how I felt.
     'We'll keep quiet,' he said. 'We'll hear you out.'
     I waited until they all were quiet and then I said, 'I'll have to start
with yesterday morning when I came home, after my car had been wrecked, and
found Tupper Tyler sitting in the swing.'
     Higgy leaped to his feet. 'But that's crazy?' he shouted. 'Tupper has
been lost for years.'
     Hiram jumped up, too. 'You made fun of me,' he bellowed, 'when I told
you Tom had talked to Tupper.'
     'I lied to you,' I said. 'I had to lie to you. I didn't know what was
going on and you were on the prod.'
     The Reverend Silas Middleton asked, 'Brad, you admit you lied?'
     'Yes, of course I do. That big ape had me pinned against the wall...'
     'If you lied once, you'll lie again,' Tom Preston shrilled.
     'How can we believe anything you tell us?'
     'Tom,' I said, 'I don't give a damn if you believe me or not.'
     They all sat down and sat there looking at me and I knew that I had
been childish, but they burned me up.
     'I would suggest,' said Father Flanagan, 'that we should start over and
all of us make a heroic effort to behave ourselves.'
     'Yes, please,' said Higgy, heavily, 'and everyone shut up.'
     I looked around and no one said a word. Gerald Sherwood nodded gravely
at me.
     I took a deep breath and began.
     'Maybe,' I said, 'I should go even farther back than that - to the time
Tom Preston sent Ed Adler around to take out my telephone.'
     'You were three months in arrears,' yelped Preston. 'You hadn't
even...'
     'Tom,' said lawyer Nichols, sharply.
     Tom settled back into his chair and began to sulk.
     I went ahead and told everything - about Stiffy Grant and the telephone
I'd found in my office and about the story Alf Peterson had told me and then
how I'd gone out to Stiffy's shack. I told them everything except about
Gerald Sherwood and how he had made the phones. I somehow had the feeling
that I had no right to tell that part of it.
     I asked them, 'Are there any questions?'
     'There are a lot of them,' said lawyer Nichols, 'but go ahead and
finish. Is that all right with the rest of you?'
     Higgy Morris grunted. 'It's all right with me,' he said.
     'It's not all right with me,' said Preston, nastily. 'Gerald told us
that Nancy talked with Brad. He never told us how. She used one of them
phones, of course.'
     'My phone,' said Sherwood. 'I've had one of them for years.'
     Higgy said, 'You never told me, Gerald.'
     'It didn't occur to me,' said Sherwood, curtly.
     'It seems to me,' said Preston, 'there has been a hell of a lot going
on that we never knew about'
     'That,' said Father Flanagan, 'is true beyond all question. But I have
the impression that this young man has no more than started on his story.'
     So I went ahead. I told it as truthfully as I could and in all the
detail I could recall.
     Finally I was finished and they sat not moving, stunned perhaps, and
shocked, and maybe not believing it entirely, but believing some of it.
     Father Flanagan stirred uneasily. 'Young man,' he asked, 'you are
absolutely sure this is not hallucination?'
     'I brought back the time contraption. That's not hallucination.'
     'We must agree, I think,' said Nichols, 'that there are strange things
going on. The story Brad has told us is no stranger than the barrier.'
     'There isn't anyone,' yelled Preston, 'who can work with time. Why time
is - well, it's...'
     'That's exactly it,' said Sherwood. 'No one knows anything of time. And
it's not the only thing of which we're wholly ignorant. There is
gravitation. There is no one, absolutely no one, who can tell you what
gravitation is.'
     'I don't believe a word of it,' said Hiram, flatly. 'He's been hiding
out somewhere ...'
     Joe Evans said, 'We combed the town. There was no place be could hide.'
     'Actually,' said Father Flanagan, 'it doesn't matter if we believe all
this or not. The important thing is whether the people who are coming out
from Washington believe it.'
     Higgy pulled himself straighter in his chair. He turned to Sherwood.
'You said Gibbs was coming out. Bringing others with him.'
     Sherwood nodded. 'A man from the State Department.'
     'What exactly did Gibbs say?'
     'He said he'd be right out. He said the talk with Brad could only be
preliminary. Then he'd go back and report. He said it might not be simply a
national problem. It might be international. Our government might have to
confer with other governments. He wanted to know more about it. All I could
tell him was that a man here in the village had some vital information.'
     'They'll be out at the edge of the barrier, waiting for us. The east
road, I presume.'
     'I suppose so,' Sherwood said. 'We didn't go into it. He'll phone me
from some place outside the barrier when he arrives.'
     'As a matter of fact,' said Higgy, lowering his voice as if he were
speaking confidentially, 'if we can get out of this without being hurt,
it'll be the best thing that ever happened to us. No other town in all of
history has gotten the kind of publicity we're getting now. Why, for years
there'll be tourists coming just to look at us, just to say they've been
here.'
     'It seems to me,' said Father Flanagan, 'that if this should all be
true, there are far greater things involved than whether or not our town can
attract some tourists.'
     'Yes,' said Silas Middleton. 'It means we are facing an alien form of
life. How we handle it may mean the difference between life and death. Not
for us alone, I mean, the people in this village. But the life or death of
the human race.'
     'Now, see here,' piped Preston, 'you can't mean that a bunch of
flowers...'
     'You damn fool,' said Sherwood, 'it's not just a bunch of flowers.'
     Joe Evans said, 'That's right. Not just a bunch of flowers. But an
entirely different form of life. Not an animal life, but a plant life - a
plant life that is intelligent.'
     'And a life,' I said, 'that has stored away the knowledge of God knows
how many other races. They'll know things we've never even thought about.'
     'I don't see,' said Higgy, doggedly, 'what we've got to be afraid of.
There never was a time that we couldn't beat a bunch of weeds. We can use
sprays and...'
     'If we want to kill them off,' I said, 'I don't think it's quite as
easy as you try to make it. But putting that aside for the moment, do we
want to kill them off?'
     'You mean,' yelled Higgy, 'let them come in and take over?'
     'Not take over. Come in and co-operate with us.'
     'But the barrier!' yelled Hiram. 'Everyone forgets about the barrier!'
     'No one has forgotten about it,' said Nichols. 'The barrier is no more
than a part of the entire problem. Let's solve the problem and we can take
care of the barrier as well.'
     'My God,' groaned Preston, 'you all are talking as if you believe every
word of it.'
     'That isn't it,' said Silas Middleton. 'But we have to use what Brad
has told us as a working hypothesis. I don't say that what he has told us is
absolutely right. He may have misinterpreted, he may simply be mistaken in
certain areas. But at the moment it's the only solid information we have to
work with.'
     'I don't believe a word of it,' said Hiram, flatly. 'There's a dirty
plot afoot and I...'
     The telephone rang, its signal blasting through the room.
     Sherwood answered it.
     'It's for you,' he told me. 'It's Alf again.'
     I went across the room and took the receiver Sherwood held out to me.
     'Hello, A1f' I said.
     'I thought,' said Alf, 'you were going to call me back. In an hour, you
said.'
     'I got involved,' I told him.
     'They moved me out,' he said. 'They evacuated everybody. I'm in a motel
just east of Coon Valley. I'm going to move over to Elmore - the motel here
is pretty bad - but before I did, I wanted to get in touch with you.'
     'I'm glad you did,' I said. 'There are some things I want to ask you.
About that project down in Greenbriar.'
     'Sure. What about the project?'
     'What kind of problems did you have to solve?'
     'Many different kinds.'
     'Any of them have to do with plants?'
     'Plants?'
     'You know. Flowers, weeds, vegetables.'
     'I see. Let me think. Yes, I guess there were a few.'
     'What kind?'
     'Well, there was one: could a plant be intelligent?'
     'And your conclusion?'
     'Now, look here, Brad!'
     'This is important, Alf.'
     'Oh, all right. The only conclusion I could reach was that it was
impossible. A plant would have no motive. There's no reason a plant should
be intelligent. Even if it could be, there'd be no advantage to it. It
couldn't use intelligence or knowledge. It would have no way in which it
could apply them. And its structure is wrong. It would have to develop
certain senses it doesn't have, would have to increase its awareness of its
world. It would have to develop a brain for data storage and a thinking
mechanism. It was easy, Brad, once you thought about it. A plant wouldn't
even try to be intelligent. It took me a while to get the reasons sorted
out, but they made good solid sense.'
     'And that was all?'
     'No, there was another one. How to develop a foolproof method of
eradicating a noxious weed, bearing in mind that the weed has high
adaptability and would be able to develop immunity to any sort of threat to
its existence in a relatively short length of time.'
     'There isn't any possibility,' I guessed.
     'There is,' said A1f 'just a possibility. But not too good a one.'
     'And that?'
     'Radiation. But you couldn't count on it as foolproof if the plant
really had high adaptability.'
     'So there's no way to eradicate a thoroughly determined plant?'
     'I'd say none at all - none in the power of man. What's this all about,
Brad?'
     'We may have a situation just like that,' I said. Quickly I told him
something of the Flowers.
     He whistled. 'You think you have this straight?'
     'I can't be certain, Alf, I think so, but I can't be certain. That is,
I know the Flowers are there, but...'
     'There was another question. It ties right in with this. It wanted to
know how you'd go about contacting and establishing relations with an alien
life. You think the project. . . ?'
     'No question,' I said. 'It was run by the same people who ran the
telephones.'
     'We figured that before. When we talked after the barrier went up.'
     'Alf; what about that question? About contact with an alien?'
     He laughed, a bit uneasily. 'There are a million answers. The method
would depend upon the kind of alien. And there'd always be some danger.'
     'That's all you can think of? All the questions, I mean?'
     'I can't think of any more. Tell me more of what's happened there.'
     'I'd like to, but I can't. I have a group of people here. You're going
to Elmore now?'
     'Yeah. I'll call you when I get there. Will you be around?'
     'I can't go anywhere,' I said.
     There had been no talk among the others while I'd been on the phone.
They were, all listening. But as soon as I hung up, Higgy straightened up
importantly.
     'I figure,' he said, 'that maybe we should be getting ready to go out
and meet the senator. I think most probably I should appoint a welcoming
committee. The people in this room, of course, and maybe half a dozen
others. Doc Fabian, and maybe...'
     'Mayor,' said Sherwood, interrupting him, 'I think someone should point
out that this is not a civic affair or a social visit. This is something
somewhat more important and entirely unofficial. Brad is the one the senator
must see. He is the only one who has pertinent information and...'
     'But,' Higgy protested, 'all I was doing...'
     'We know what you were doing,' Sherwood told him.
     'What I am pointing out is that if Brad wants a committee to go along
with him, he is the one who should get it up.'
     'But my official duty,' Higgy bleated.
     'In a matter such as this,' said Sherwood, flatly, 'you have no
official duty.'
     'Gerald,' said the mayor, 'I've tried to think the best of you. I've
tried to tell myself...'
     'Mayor,' said Preston, grimly, 'there's no use of pussy-footing. We
might as well say it out. There's something going on, some sort of plot
afoot. Brad is part of it and Stiffy's part of it and...'
     'And,' said Sherwood, 'if you insist upon a plot, I'm part of it as
well. I made the telephones.'
     Higgy gulped. 'You did what?' he asked.
     'I made the telephones. I manufactured them.'
     'So you knew all about it all along.'
     Sherwood shook his head. 'I didn't know anything at all. I just made
the phones.'
     Higgy sat back weakly. He clasped and unclasped his hands, staring down
at them.
     'I don't know,' he said. 'I just don't understand.'
     But I am sure he did. Now he understood, for the first time, that this
was no mere unusual natural happening which would, in time, quietly pass
away and leave Millville a tourist attraction that each year would bring the
curious into town by the thousands. For the first time, I am sure, Mayor
Higgy Morris realized that Millville and the entire world was facing a
problem that it would take more than good luck and the Chamber of Commerce
to resolve.
     'There is one thing,' I sad.
     'What's that?' asked Higgy.
     'I want my phone. The one that was in my office. The phone, you
remember, that hasn't any dial.'
     The mayor looked at Hiram.
     'No, I won't,' said Hiram. 'I won't give it back to him. He's done harm
enough already.'
     'Hiram,' said the mayor.
     'Oh, all right,' said Hiram. 'I hope he chokes on it.'
     'It appears to me,' said Father Flanagan, 'that we are all acting quite
unreasonably. I would suggest we might take this entire matter up and
discuss it point by point, and in that way...'
     A ticking interrupted him, a loud and ominous ticking that beat a
measure, as of doom, through the entire house. And as I heard it, I knew
that the ticking had been going on for quite some time, but very softly, and
that I'd been hearing it and vaguely wondering what it was.
     But now, from one tick to another, it had grown loud and hard, and even
as we listened to it, half hypnotized by the terror of it, the tick became a
hum and the hum a roar of power.
     We all leaped to out feet, startled now, and I saw that the kitchen
walls were flashing, as if someone were turning on and off a light of
intensive brilliance, a pulsing glow that filled the room with a flood of
light, then shut off, then filled it once again.
     'I knew it!' Hiram roared, charging for the kitchen. 'I knew it when I
saw it. I knew it was dangerous!'
     I ran after him.
     'Look out!' I yelled. 'Keep away from it!'
     It was the time contraption. It had floated off the table and was
hovering in mid-air, with a pulse of tremendous power running through it in
a regular beat, while from it came the roar of cascading energy. Below it,
lying on the table, was my crumpled jacket.
     I grabbed hold of Hiram's arm and tried to haul him back, but he jerked
away and was hauling his pistol from its holster.
     With a flash of light, the time contraption moved, rising swiftly
toward the ceiling.
     'No!' I cried, for I was afraid that if it ever hit the ceiling, the
fragile lenses would be smashed.
     Then it hit the ceiling and it did not break. Without slackening its
pace, it bored straight through the ceiling. I stood gaping at the neat
round hole it made.
     I heard the stamp of feet behind me and the banging of a door and when
I turned around the room was empty, except for Nancy standing by the
fireplace.
     'Come on,' I yelled at her running for the door that led onto the
porch.
     The rest of them were grouped outside, between the porch and hedge,
staring up into the sky, where a light winked off and on, going very
rapidly.
     I glanced at the roof and saw the hole the thing had made, edged by the
ragged, broken shingles that had been displaced when the machine broke
through.
     'There it goes,' said Gerald Sherwood, standing at my side. 'I wonder
what it is.'
     'I don't know,' I said. 'They slipped one over on me. They played me
for a fool.'
     I was shaken up and angry, and considerably ashamed. They had used me
back there in that other world. They had fooled me into carrying back to my
own world something they couldn't get there by themselves.
     There was no way of knowing what it was meant to do, although in a
little while, I feared, we would all find out.
     Hiram turned to me in disgust and anger. 'You've done it now,' he
blurted. 'Don't tell us you didn't mean to do it, don't pretend you don't
know what it is. Whatever may be out there, you're hand in glove with them.'
     I didn't try to answer him. There was no way I could.
     Hiram took a step toward me.
     'Cut it out!' cried Higgy. 'Don't lay a hand on him.'
     'We ought to shake it out of him,' yelled Hiram. 'If we found out what
it was, then we might be able...'
     'I said cut it out,' said Higgy.
     'I've had about enough of you,' I said to Hiram. 'I've had enough of
you all your whole damn life. All I want from you is that phone of mine. And
I want it fast.'
     'Why, you little squirt?' Hiram bellowed, and he took another step
toward me.
     Higgy hauled off and kicked him in the shin. 'God damn it,' Higgy said,
'I said for you to stop it.'
     Hiram jigged on one leg, lifting up the other so he could rub his shin.
     'Mayor,' he complained, 'you shouldn't have done that.'
     'Go and get him his phone,' Tom Preston said. 'Let him have it back.
Then he can call them up and report how good a job he did.'
     I wanted to clobber all three of them, especially Hiram and Tom
Preston. But, of course, I knew I couldn't. Hiram had beaten me often enough
when we were kids for me to know I couldn't.
     Higgy grabbed hold of Hiram and tugged him toward the gate. Hiram
limped a little as the mayor led him off. Tom Preston held the gate for them
and then the three of them went stalking up the street, never looking back.
     And now I noticed that the rest had left as well - all of them except
Father Flanagan and Gerald Sherwood, and Nancy, standing on the porch. The
priest was standing to one side and when I looked at him, he made an
apologetic gesture.
     'Don't blame them,' he said, 'for leaving. They were embarrassed and
uneasy. They took their chance to get away.'
     'And you?' I asked. 'You're not embarrassed?'
     'Why, not at all,' he told me. 'Although I am a bit uneasy. The whole
thing, I don't mind telling you, has a whiff of heresy about it.'
     'Next,' I said, bitterly, 'you'll be telling me you think I told the
truth.'
     'I had my doubts,' he said, 'and I'm not entirely rid of them. But that
hole in your roof is a powerful argument against wholesale scepticism. And I
do not hold with the modern cynicism that seems so fashionable. There is
still, I think, much room in the world today for a dash of mysticism.'
     I could have told him it wasn't mysticism, that the other world had
been a solid, factual world, that the stars and sun and moon had shown
there, that I had walked its soil and drunk its water, that I had breathed
its air and that even now I had its dirt beneath my fingernails from having
dug a human skull from the slope above the stream.
     'The others will be back,' said Father Flanagan. 'They had to get away
for a little time to think, to get a chance to digest some of this evidence.
It was too much to handle in one gulp.
     They will be back, and so will I, but at the moment I have a mass to
think of.'
     A gang of boys came running down the street. They stopped a half a
block away and pointed at the roof. They milled around and pushed one
another playfully and hollered.
     The first edge of the sun had come above the horizon and the trees were
the burnished green of summer.
     I gestured at the boys. 'The word has gotten out,' I said.
     'In another thirty minutes we'll have everyone in town out in the
street, gawking at the roof.'

        17

     The crowd outside had grown.
     No one was doing anything. They just stood there and looked gaping at
the hole in the roof, and talking quietly among themselves - not screaming,
not shouting, but talking, as if they knew something else was about to
happen and were passing away the time, waiting for it to happen. Sherwood
kept pacing up and down the floor.
     'Gibbs should be phoning soon,' he said. 'I don't know what has
happened to him. He should have called by now.'
     'Maybe,' Nancy said, 'he got held up - maybe his plane was late. Maybe
there was trouble on the road.'
     I stood at the window watching the crowd. I knew almost all of them.
They were friends and neighbours and there was not a thing to stop them, if
they wanted to, from coming up the walk and knocking at the door and coming
in to see me.
     But now, instead, they stood outside and watched and waited. It was, I
thought, as if the house were a cage and I was some new, strange animal from
some far-off land.
     Twenty-four hours ago I had been another villager, a man who had lived
and grown up with those people watching in the street. But now I was a
freak, an oddity - perhaps, in the minds of some of them, a sinister figure
that threatened, if not their lives, their comfort and their peace of mind.
     For this village could never be the same again - and perhaps the world
could never be the same again. For even if the barrier now should disappear
and the Flowers withdraw their attention from our Earth, we still would have
been shaken from the comfortable little rut which assumed that life as we
knew it was the only kind of life and that our road of knowledge was the
only one that was broad and straight and paved.
     There had been ogres in the past, but finally the ogres had been
banished. The trolls and ghouls and imps and all the others of the tribe had
been pushed out of our lives, for they could survive only on the misty
shores of ignorance and in the land of superstition. Now, I thought, we'd
know an ignorance again (but a different kind of ignorance) and
superstition; too, for superstition fed upon the lack of knowledge. With
this hint of another world - even if its denizens should decide not to
flaunt themselves, even if we should find a way to stop them - the trolls
and ghouls and goblins would be back with us again. There'd be chimney
corner gossip of this other place and a frantic, desperate search to
rationalize the implied horror of its vast and unknown reaches, and out of
this very search would rise a horror greater than any true other world could
hold. We'd be afraid, as we had been before, of the darkness that lay beyond
the little circle of our campfire.
     There were more people in the Street; they kept coming all the time.
There was Pappy Andrews, cracking his cane upon the sidewalk, and Grandma
Jones, with her sunbonnet socked upon her head, and Charley Hutton, who
owned the Happy Hollow tavern. Bill Donovan, the garbage man, was in the
front ranks of the crowd, but I didn't see his wife, and I wondered if Myrt
and Jake had come to get the kids. And just as big and mouthy as if he'd
lived in Millville all his life and known these folks from babyhood, was
Gabe Thomas, the trucker who, after me, had been the first man to find out
about the barrier.
     Someone stirred beside me and I saw that it was Nancy. I knew now that
she had been standing there for some little time.
     'Look at them,' I said. 'It's a holiday for them. Any minute now the
parade will be along.'
     'They're just ordinary people,' Nancy said. 'You can't expect too much
of them. Brad, I'm afraid you do expect too much of them. You even expected
that the men who were here would take what you told them at face value,
immediately and unquestioningly.'
     'Your father did,' I said.
     'Father's different. He's not an ordinary man. And, besides, he had
some prior knowledge, he had a little warning. He had one of those
telephones. He knew a little bit about it.'
     'Some,' I said. 'Not much.'
     'I haven't talked with him. There's been no chance for us to talk. And
I couldn't ask him in front of all those people. But I know that he's
involved. Is it dangerous, Brad?'
     'I don't think so. Not from out there or back there or wherever that
other world may be. No danger from the alien world - not now, not yet. Any
danger that we have to face lies in this world of ours. We have a decision
we must make and it has to be the right one.'
     'How can we tell,' she 'asked, 'what is the right decision? We have no
precedent.'
     And that was it, of course, I thought. There was no way in which a
decision - any decision - could be justified.
     There was a shouting from outside and I moved closer to the window to
see farther up the street. Striding down the centre of it came Hiram Martin
and in one hand he carried a cordless telephone.
     Nancy caught sight of him and said, 'He's bringing back our phone.
Funny, I never thought he would.'
     It was Hiram shouting and he was shouting in a chant, a deliberate,
mocking chant.
     'All right, come out and get your phone. Come on out and get your God
damn phone.'
     Nancy caught her breath and I brushed past her to the door. I jerked it
open and stepped out on the porch.
     Hiram reached the gate and he quit his chanting. The two of us stood
there, watching one another. The crowd was getting noisy and surging closer.
     Then Hiram raised his arm, with the phone held above his head.
     'All right,' he yelled, 'here's your phone, you dirty...'
     Whatever else he said was drowned out by the howling of the crowd.
     Then Hiram threw the phone. It was an unhandy thing to throw and the
throw was not too good. The receiver flew out to one side, with its trailing
cord looping in the air behind it. When the cord jerked taut, the flying
phone skidded out of its trajectory and came crashing to the concrete walk,
falling about halfway between the gate and porch. Pieces of shattered
plastic sprayed across the lawn.
     Scarcely aware that I was doing it, acting not by any thought or
consideration, but on pure emotion, I came down off the porch and headed for
the gate. Hiram backed away to give me room and I came charging through the
gate and stood facing him.
     I'd had enough of Hiram Martin. I was filled up to here with him. He'd
been in my hair for the last two days and I was sick to death of him. There
was just one thought - to tear the man apart, to pound him to a pulp, to
make certain he'd never sneer at me again, never mock me, never try again to
bully me by the sole virtue of sheer size.
     I was back in the days of childhood - seeing through the stubborn and
red-shot veil of hatred that I had known then, hating this man I knew would
lick me, as he had many times before, but ready, willing, anxious to inflict
whatever hurt I could while he was licking me.
     Someone bawled, 'Give 'em room!' Then I was charging at him and he hit
me. He didn't have the time or room to take much of a swing at me, but his
fist caught me on the side of the head and it staggered me and hurt. He hit
me again almost immediately, but this one also was a glancing blow and
didn't hurt at all - and this time I connected. I got my left into his belly
just above the belt and when he doubled over I caught him in the mouth and
felt the smart of bruised, cut knuckles as they smashed against his teeth. I
was swinging again when a fist came out of nowhere and slammed into my head
and my head exploded into a pinwheel of screaming stars. I knew that I was
down, for I could feel the hardness of the street against my knees, but I
struggled up and my vision cleared. I couldn't feel my legs. I seemed to be
moving and bobbing in the air with nothing under me. I saw Hiram's face just
a foot or so away and his mouth was a gash of red and there was blood on his
shirt. So I hit his mouth again - not very hard, perhaps, for there wasn't
much steam left behind my punches. But he grunted and he ducked away and I
came boring in.
     And that was when he hit me for keeps.
     I felt myself going down, falling backwards and it seemed that it took
a long time for me to fall. Then I hit and the street was harder than I
thought it would be and hitting the street hurt me more than the punch that
put me there.
     I groped around, trying to get my hands in position to hoist myself
erect, although I wondered vaguely why I bothered. For if I got up, Hiram
would belt me another one and I'd be back down again. But I knew I had to
get up, that I had to get up each time I was able. For that was the kind of
game Hiram and I had always played. He knocked me down each time I got up
and I kept on getting up until I couldn't any more and I never cried for
quarter and I never admitted I was licked. And if, for the rest of my life,
I could keep on doing that, then I'd be the one who won, not Hiram.
     But I wasn't doing so well. I wasn't getting up. Maybe, I thought, this
is the time I don't get up.
     I still kept pawing with my hands, trying to lift myself and that's how
I got the rock. Some kid, perhaps, had thrown it, maybe days before - maybe
at a bird, maybe at a dog, maybe  just for the fun of throwing rocks. And it
had landed in the street and stayed there and now the fingers of my right
hand found it and closed around it and it fitted comfortably into my palm,
for it was exactly fist size.
     A hand, a great meaty paw of a hand, came down from above and grabbed
my shirt front and hauled me to my feet.
     'So,' screamed a voice, 'assault an officer, would you!'
     His face swam in front of me, a red-smeared face twisted with his
hatred, heavy with its meanness, gloating at the physical power he held over
me.
     I could feel my legs again and the face came clearer and the clot of
faces in the background - the faces of the crowd, pressing close to be in at
the kill.
     One did not give up, I told myself, remembering back to all those other
times I had not given up. As long as one was on his feet, he fought, and
even when he was down and could not get up, he did not admit defeat.
     Both of his hands were clutching at my shirt front, his face pushed
close toward mine, I clenched my fist and my fingers closed hard around the
rock and then I swung. I swung with everything I had, putting every ounce of
strength I could muster behind the swinging fist swinging from the waist in
a jolting upward jab, and I caught him on the chin.
     His head snapped back, pivoting on the thick, bull neck. He staggered
and his fingers loosened and he crumpled, sprawling in the street.
     I stepped back a pace and stood looking down at him and everything was
clearer now and. I knew I had a body, a bruised and beaten body that ached,
it seemed, in every joint and muscle. But that didn't matter; it didn't mean
a thing - for the first time in my life I'd knocked Hiram Martin down. I'd
used a rock to do it and I didn't give a damn. I hadn't meant to pick up
that rock - I'd just found it and closed my fingers on it. I had not planned
to use it, but now that I had it made no difference to me. If I'd had time
to plan, I'd probably have planned to use it.
     Someone leaped Out from the crowd toward me and I saw it was Tom
Preston.
     'You going to' let him get away with it?' Preston was screaming at the
crowd. 'He hit an officer! He hit him with a rock! He picked up a rock!'
     Another man pushed out of the crowd and grabbed Preston by the
shoulder, lifting him and setting him back in the forefront of the crowd.
     'You keep out of this,' Gabe Thomas said.
     'But he used a rock!' screamed Preston.
     'He should have used a club,' said Gabe. 'He should have beat his
brains out.'
     Hiram was stirring, sitting up. His hand reached for his gun.
     'Touch that gun,' I told him. 'Just one finger on it and, so help me,
I'll kill you.'
     Hiram stared at me. I must have been a sight. He'd worked me over good
and he'd mussed me up a lot and still I'd knocked him down and was standing
on my feet.
     'He hit you with a rock,' yelped Preston. 'He hit...' Gabe reached out
and his fingers fitted neatly around Preston's skinny throat. He squeezed
and Preston's mouth flapped open and his tongue came out.
     'You keep out of it,' said Gabe.
     'But Hiram's an officer of the law,' protested Chancy Hutton. 'Brad
shouldn't have hit an officer.'
     'Friend,' Gabe told the tavern owner, 'he's a damn poor officer. No
officer worth his salt goes picking fights with people.'
     I'd never taken my eyes off Hiram and he'd been watching me, but now he
flicked his eyes to one side and his hand dropped to the ground.
     And in that moment I knew that I had won - not because I was the
stronger, not because I fought the better (for I wasn't and I hadn't) but
because Hiram was a coward, because he had no guts, because, once hurt, he
didn't have the courage to chance being hurt again. And I knew, too, that I
need not fear the gun he carried, for Hiram Martin didn't have it in him to
face another man and kill him.
     Hiram got slowly to his feet and stood there for a moment. His hand
came up and felt his jaw. Then he turned his back and walked away. The
crowd, watching silently, parted to make a path for him.
     I stared at his retreating back and a fierce, bloodthirsty satisfaction
rose up inside of me. After more than twenty years, I'd beaten this
childhood enemy. But, I told myself I had not beat him fair - I'd had to
play dirty to triumph over him. But I found it made no difference. Dirty
fight or fair, I had finally licked him.
     The crowd moved slowly back. No one spoke to me. No one spoke to
anyone.
     'I guess,' said Gabe, 'there are no other takers. If there were, they'd
have to fight me, too.'
     'Thanks, Gabe,' I said.
     'Thanks, hell,' he said. 'I didn't do a thing.'
     I opened up my fist and the rock dropped to the street. In the silence,
it made a terrible clatter.
     Gabe hauled a huge red handkerchief out of his rear pocket and stepped
over to me. He put a hand back of my head to hold it steady and began to
wipe my face.
     'In a month or so,' he said, by way of comfort, 'you'll look all right
again.'
     'Hey, Brad,' yelled someone, 'who's your friend?'
     I couldn't see who it was who yelled. There were so many people.
     'Mister,' yelled someone else, 'be sure you wipe his nose.'
     'Go on!' roared Gabe. 'Go on! Any of you wisecrackers walk out here in
plain sight and I'll dust the street with you.'
     Grandma Jones said in a loud voice, so that Pappy Andrews could hear.
'He's the trucker fellow that smashed Brad's car. Appears to me if Brad has
to fight someone, he should be fighting him.'
     'Big mouth,' yelled back Pappy Andrews. 'He's got an awful big mouth.'
     I saw Nancy standing by the gate and she had the same look on her face
that she'd had when we were kids and I had fought Hiram Martin then. She was
disgusted with me. She had never held with fighting; she thought that it was
vulgar.
     The front door burst open and Gerald Sherwood came running down the
walk. He rushed over and grabbed me by the arm.
     'Come on,' he shouted. 'The senator called. He's out there waiting for
you, on the east end of the road.'

        18

     Four of them were waiting for me on the pavement just beyond the
barrier. A short distance down the road several cars were parked. A number
of state troopers were scattered about in little groups. Half a mile or so
to the north the steam shovel was still digging.
     I felt foolish walking down the road toward them while they waited for
me. I knew that I must look as if the wrath of God had hit me.
     My shirt was torn and the left side of my face felt as though someone
had sandpapered it. I had deep gashes on the knuckles of my right hand where
I'd smacked Hiram in the teeth and my left eye felt as if it were starting
to puff up.
     Someone had cleared away the windrow of uprooted vegetation for several
rods on either side of the road, but except for that, the windrow was still
there.
     As I got close, I recognized the senator. I had never met the man, but
I'd seen his pictures in the papers. He was stocky and well-built and his
hair was white and he never wore a hat. He was dressed in a double-breasted
suit and he had a bright blue tie with white polka dots.
     One of the others was a military man. He wore stars on his shoulders.
Another was a little fellow with patent leather hair and a tight, cold face.
The fourth man was somewhat undersized and chubby and had eyes of the
brightest china blue I had ever seen.
     I walked until I was three feet or so away from them and it was not
until then that I felt the first slight pressure of the barrier. I backed up
a step and looked at the senator.
     'You must be Senator Gibbs,' I said. 'I'm Bradshaw Carter. I'm the one
Sherwood talked with you about.'
     'Glad to meet you, Mr Carter,' said the senator. 'I had expected that
Gerald would be with you.'
     'I wanted him to come,' I said, 'but he felt he shouldn't. There was a
conflict of opinion in the village. The mayor wanted to appoint a committee
and Sherwood opposed it rather violently.'
     The senator nodded. 'I see,' be said. 'So you're the only one we'll
see.'
     'If you want others...'
     'Oh, not at all,' he said. 'You are the man with the information.'
     'Yes, I am,' I said.
     'Excuse me,' said the senator. 'Mr Carter, General Walter Billings.'
     'Hello, General,' I said.
     It was funny, saying hello and not shaking hands.
     'Arthur Newcombe,' said the senator.
     The man with the tight, cold face smiled frostily at me. One could see
at a glance he meant to stand no nonsense. He was, I guessed, more than a
little outraged that such a thing as the barrier could have been allowed to
happen.
     'Mr Newcombe,' said the senator, 'is from the State Department. And Dr
Roger Davenport, a biologist - I might add, an outstanding one.'
     'Good morning, young man,' said Davenport. 'Would it be out of line to
ask what happened to you?'
     I grinned at him, liking the man at once. 'I had a slight
misunderstanding with a fellow townsman.'
     'The town, I would imagine,' Billings said, 'is considerably upset. In
a little while law and order may become something of a problem.'
     'I am afraid so, sir,' I said.
     'This may take some time?' asked the senator.
     'A little time,' I said.
     'There were chairs,' the general said. 'Sergeant, where are...?'
     Even as he spoke a sergeant and two privates, who had been standing by
the roadside, came forward with some folding chairs.
     'Catch,' the sergeant said to me.
     He tossed a chair through the barrier and I caught it. By the time I
had it unfolded and set up, the four on the other side of the barrier had
their chairs as well.
     It was downright crazy - the five of us sitting there in the middle of
the road on flimsy folding chairs.
     'Now,' said the senator, 'I suppose we should get started. General, how
would you propose that we might proceed?
     The general crossed his knees and settled down. He considered for a
moment.
     'This man,' he finally said, 'has something we should hear. Why don't
we simply sit here and let him tell it to us?
     'Yes, by all means,' said Newcombe. 'Let's hear what he has to say. I
must say, Senator...'
     'Yes,' the senator said, rather hastily. 'I'll stipulate that it is
somewhat unusual. This is the first time I have ever attended a hearing out
in the open, but...'
     'It was the only way,' said the general, 'that seemed feasible.'
     'It's a longish story,' I warned them. 'And some of it may appear
unbelievable.'
     'So is this,' said the senator. 'This, what do you call it, barrier.'
     'And,' said Davenport, 'you seem to be the only man who has any
information.'
     'Therefore,' said the senator, 'let us proceed forthwith.' So, for the
second time, I told my story. I took my time and told it carefully, trying
to cover everything I'd seen. They did not interrupt me. A couple of times I
stopped to let them ask some questions, but the first time Davenport simply
signalled that I should go on and the second time all four of them just
waited until I did continue.
     It was an unnerving business worse than being interrupted. I talked
into a silence and I tried to read their faces, tried to get some clues as
to how much of it they might be accepting.
     But there was no sign from them, no faintest flicker of expression on
their faces. I began to feel a little silly over what I was telling them.
     I finished finally and leaned back in my chair.
     Across the barrier, Newcombe stirred uneasily. 'You'll excuse me,
gentlemen,' he said, 'if I take exception to this man's story. I see no
reason why we should have been dragged out here...'
     The senator interrupted him. 'Arthur,' he said, 'my good friend, Gerald
Sherwood, vouched for Mr Carter. I have known Gerald Sherwood for more than
thirty years and he is, I must tell you, a most perceptive man, a
hard-headed businessman with a tinge of imagination. Hard as this account,
or parts of it, may be to accept, I still believe we must accept it as a
basis for discussion. And, I must remind you, this is the first sound
evidence we have been offered.'
     'I,' said the general, 'find it hard to believe a word of it. But with
the evidence of this barrier, which is wholly beyond any present
understanding, we undoubtedly stand in a position where we must accept
further evidence beyond our understanding.'
     'Let us,' suggested Davenport, 'pretend just for the moment that we
believe it all. Let's try to see if there may not be some basic...'
     'But you can't!' exploded Newcombe. 'It flies in the face of everything
we know.'
     'Mr Newcombe,' said the biologist, 'man has flown in the face of
everything he knew time after time. He knew, not too many hundreds of years
ago, that the Earth was the centre of the universe. He knew, less than
thirty years ago, that man could never travel to the other planets. He knew,
a hundred years ago, that the atom was indivisible. And what have we here -
the knowledge that time never can be understood or manipulated, that it is
impossible for a plant to be intelligent. I tell you, sir...'
     'Do you mean,' the general asked, 'that you accept all this?'
     'No,' said Davenport, 'I'll accept none of it. To do so would be very
unobjective. But I'll hold judgement in abeyance. I would, quite frankly,
jump at the chance to work on it, to make observations and perform
experiments and...'
     'You may not have the time,' I said.
     The general swung toward me. 'Was there a time limit set?' he asked.
'You didn't mention it.'
     'No. But they have a way to prod us. They can exert some convincing
pressure any time they wish. They can start this barrier to moving.'
     'How far can they move it?
     'Your guess is as good as mine. Ten miles. A hundred miles. A thousand.
I have no idea.'
     'You sound as if you think they could push us off the Earth.'
     'I don't know. I would rather think they could.'
     'Do you think they would?'
     'Maybe. If it became apparent that we were delaying. I don't think
they'd do it willingly. They need us. They need someone who can use their
knowledge, who can make it meaningful. It doesn't seem that, so far, they've
found anyone who can.'
     'But we can't hurry,' the senator protested. 'We will not be rushed.
There is a lot to do. There must be discussions at a great many different
levels - at the governmental level, at the international level, at the
economic and scientific levels.'
     'Senator,' I told him, 'there is one thing no one seems to grasp. We
are not dealing with another nation, nor with other humans. We are dealing
with an alien people...'
     'That makes no difference,' said the senator. 'We must do it our way.'
     'That would be fine,' I said, 'if you can make the aliens understand.'
     'They'll have to wait,' said Newcombe, primly. And I knew that it was
hopeless, that here was a problem which could not be solved, that the human
race would bungle its first contact with an alien people. There would be
talk and argument, discussion, consultation - but all on the human level,
all from the human viewpoint, without a chance that anyone would even try to
take into account the alien point of view.
     'You must consider,' said the senator, 'that they are the petitioners,
they are the ones who made the first approach, they are asking access to our
world, not we to theirs.'
     'Five hundred years ago,' I said, 'white men came to America. They were
the petitioners then...'
     'But the Indians,' said Newcombe, 'were savages, barbarians...'
     I nodded at him. 'You make my point exactly.'
     'I do not,' Newcombe told me frostily, 'appreciate your sense of
humour.'
     'You mistake me,' I told him. 'It was not said in humour.'
     Davenport nodded. 'You may have something there, Mr Carter. You say
these plants pretend to have stored knowledge, the knowledge, you suspect,
of many different races.'
     'That's the impression I was given.'
     'Stored and correlated. Not just a jumble of data.'
     'Correlated, too,' I said. 'You must bear in mind that I cannot swear
to this. I have no way of knowing it is true. But their spokesman, Tupper,
assured me that they didn't lie...'
     'I know,' said Davenport. 'There is some logic in that. They wouldn't
need to lie.'
     'Except,' said the general, 'that they never did give back your fifteen
hundred dollars.'
     'No, they didn't,' I said.
     'After they said they would.'
     'Yes. They were emphatic on that point.'
     'Which means they lied. And they tricked you into bringing back what
you thought was a time machine.'
     'And,' Newcombe pointed out, 'they were very smooth about it.'
     'I don't think,' said the general, 'we can place a great deal of trust
in them.'
     'But look here,' protested Newcombe, 'we've gotten around to talking as
if we believed every word of it.'
     'Well,' said the senator, 'that was the idea, wasn't it? That we'd use
the information as a basis for discussion.'
     'For the moment,' said the general, 'we must presume the worst.'
     Davenport chuckled. 'What's so bad about it? For the first time in its
history, humanity may be about to meet another intelligence. If we go about
it right, we may find it to our benefit.'
     'But you can't know that,' said the general.
     'No, of course we can't. We haven't sufficient data. We must make
further contact.'
     'If they exist,' said Newcombe. 'If they exist,' Davenport agreed.
     'Gentlemen,' said the senator, 'we are losing sight of something. A
barrier does exist. It will let nothing living through it...'
     'We don't know that,' said Davenport. 'There was the instance of the
car. There would have been some micro-organisms in it. There would have had
to be. My guess is that the barrier is not against life as such, but against
sentience, against awareness. A thing that has awareness of itself...'
     'Well, anyhow,' said the senator, 'we have evidence that something very
strange has happened. We can't just shut our eyes. We must work with what we
have.'
     'All right, then,' said the general, 'let's get down to business. Is it
safe to assume that these things pose a threat?'
     I nodded. 'Perhaps. Under certain circumstances.'
     'And those circumstances?'
     'I don't know. There is no way of knowing how they think.'
     'But there's the potentiality of a threat?'
     'I think,' said Davenport, 'that we are placing too much stress upon
the matter of a threat. We should first...'
     'My first responsibility,' said the general, 'is consideration of a
potential danger...'
     'And if there were a danger?'
     'We could stop them,' said the general, 'if we moved fast enough. If we
moved before they'd taken in too much territory. We have a way to stop
them.'
     'All you military minds can think of,' Davenport said angrily, 'is the
employment of force. I'll agree with you that a thermonuclear explosion
could kill all the alien life that has gained access to the Earth, possibly
might even disrupt the time-phase barrier and close the Earth to our alien
friends...'
     'Friends!' the general wailed. 'You can't know...'
     'Of course I can't,' said Davenport. 'And you can't know that they are
enemies. We need more data; we need to make a further contact...'
     'And while you're getting your additional data, they'll have the time
to strengthen the barrier and move it...'
     'Some day,' said Davenport, angrier than ever, 'the human race will
have to find a solution to its problems that does not involve the use of
force. Now might be the time to start. You propose to bomb this village.
Aside from the moral issue of destroying several hundred innocent people...'
     'You forget,' 'said the general, speaking gruffly, 'that we'd be
balancing those several hundred lives against the safety of all the people
of the Earth. It would be no hasty action. It would be done only after some
deliberation. It would have to be a considered decision.'
     'The very fact that you can consider it,' said the biologist, 'is
enough to send a cold shiver down the spine of all humanity.' The general
shook his head. 'It's my duty to consider distasteful things like this. Even
considering the moral issue involved, in the case of necessity I would...'
     'Gentlemen,' the senator protested weakly.
     The general looked at me. I am afraid they had forgotten I was there.
     'I'm sorry, sir,' the general said to me. 'I should not have spoken in
this manner.'
     I nodded dumbly. I couldn't have said a word if I'd been paid a million
dollars for it. I was all knotted up inside and I was afraid to move.
     I had not been expecting anything like this, although now that it had
come, I knew I should have been. I should have known what the world reaction
would be and if I had failed to know, all I had to do would have been to
remember what Stiffy Grant had told me as he lay on the kitchen floor.
     They'll want to use the bomb, he'd said. Don't let them use the bomb...
     Newcombe stared at me coldly. His eyes stabbed out at me.
     'I trust,' he said, 'that you'll not repeat what you have heard.'
     'We have to trust you, boy,' said the senator.'You hold us in your
hands.'
     I managed to laugh. I suppose that it came out as an ugly laugh. 'Why
should I say anything?' I asked. 'We're sitting ducks. There would be no
point in saying anything. We couldn't get away.'
     For a moment I thought wryly that perhaps the barrier would protect us
even from a bomb Then I saw how wrong I was. The barrier concerned itself
with nothing except life - or, if Davenport were right (and he probably was)
only with a life that was aware of its own existence. They had tried to
dynamite the barrier and it had been as if there had been no barrier. The
barrier had offered no resistance to the explosion and therefore had not
been affected by it.
     From the general's viewpoint, the bomb might be the answer. It would
kill all life; it was an application of the conclusion Alf Peterson had
arrived at on the question of how one killed a noxious plant that had great
adaptability. A nuclear explosion might have no effect upon the time-phase
mechanism, but it would kill all life and would so irradiate and poison the
area that for a long, long time the aliens would be unable to re-occupy it.
     'I hope,' I said to the general, 'you'll be as considerate as you're
asking me to be. If you find you have to do it, you'll make no prior
announcement.'
     The general nodded, thin-lipped.
     'I'd hate to think,' I said, 'what would happen in this village...'
     The senator broke in. 'Don't worry about it now. It's just one of many
alternatives. For the time we'll not even consider it. Our friend, the
general, spoke a little out of turn.'
     'At least,' the general said, 'I am being honest. I wasn't
pussy-footing. I wasn't playing games.'
     He seemed to be saying that the others were.
     'There is one thing you must realize,' I told them. 'This can't be any
cloak-and-dagger operation. You have to do it honestly - whatever you may
do. There are certain minds the Flowers can read. There are minds, perhaps
many minds; they are in contact with at this very moment. The owners of
those minds don't know it and there is no way we can know to whom those
minds belong. Perhaps to one of you. There is an excellent chance the
Flowers will know, at all times, exactly what is being planned.'
     I could see that they had not thought of that. I had told them, of
course, in the telling of my story, but it hadn't registered. There was so
much that it took a man a long time to get it straightened out.
     'Who are those people down there by the cars?' asked Newcombe.
     I turned and looked.
     Half the village probably was there. They had come out to watch. And
one couldn't blame them, I told myself. They had a right to be concerned;
they had the right to watch. This was their life. Perhaps a lot of them
didn't trust me, not after what Hiram and Tom had been saying about me, and
here I was, out here, sitting on a chair in the middle of the road, talking
with the men from Washington. Perhaps they felt shut out. Perhaps they felt
they should be sitting in a meeting such as this.
     I turned back to the four across the bather.
     'Here's a thing,' I told them, urgently, 'that you can't afford to
mull. If we do, we'll fail all the other chances as they come along...'
     'Chances?' asked the senator.
     'This is our first chance to make contact with another race. It won't
be the last. When man goes into space...'
     'But we aren't out in space,' said Newcombe.
     I knew then that there was no use. I'd expected too much of the men in
my living-room and I'd expected too much of these men out here on the road.
     They would fail. We would always fail. We weren't built to do anything
but fail. We had the wrong kind of motives and we couldn't change them. We
had a built-in short-sightedness and an inherent selfishness and a
self-concern that made it impossible to step out of the little human rut we
travelled.
     Although, I thought, perhaps the human race was not alone in this.
Perhaps this alien race we faced, perhaps any alien race, travelled a rut
that was as deep and narrow as the human rut. Perhaps the aliens would be as
arbitrary and as unbending and as blind as was the human race.
     I made a gesture of resignation, but I doubt that they ever saw it. All
of them were looking beyond me, staring down the road.
     I twisted around and there, halfway up the road, halfway between the
barrier and the traffic snarl, marched all those people who had been out
there waiting. They came on silently and with great deliberation and
determination. They looked like the march of doom, bearing down upon us.
     'What do they want, do you suppose?' the senator asked, rather
nervously.
     George Walker, who ran the Red Owl butcher department, was in the
forefront of the crowd, and walking just behind him was Butch Ormsby, the
service station operator, and Charley Hutton of the Happy Hollow. Daniel
Willoughby was there, too, looking somewhat uncomfortable, for Daniel wasn't
the kind of man who enjoyed being with a mob. Higgy wasn't there and neither
was Hiram, but Tom Preston was. I looked for Sherwood, thinking it unlikely
that he would be there.
     And I was right; he wasn't. But there were a lot of others, people I
knew. Their faces all wore a hard and determined look.
     I stepped off to one side, clear of the road, and the crowd tramped
past me, paying no attention.
     'Senator,' said George Walker in a voice that was louder than seemed
necessary. 'You are the senator, ain't you?'
     'Yes,' said the senator. 'What can I do for you?'
     'That,' said Walker, 'is what we're here to find out. We are a
delegation, sort of.'
     'I see,' said the senator.
     'We got trouble,' said George Walker, 'and all of us are taxpayers and
we got a right to get some help. I run the meat department at the Red Owl
store and without no customers coming into town, I don't know what will
happen. If we can't get any out-of-town trade, we'll have to close our
doors. We can sell to the people here in town, of course, but there ain't
enough trade in town to make it worth our while and in a little while the
people here in town won't have any money to pay for the things they buy, and
our business isn't set up so we can operate on credit. We can get meat, of
course. We've got that all worked out, but we can't go on selling it and...'
     'Now, just a minute,' said the senator. 'Let's take this a little slow.
Let's not go so fast. You have problems and I know you have them and I aim
to do all I can...'
     'Senator,' interrupted a man with a big, bull voice, 'there are others
of us have problems that are worse than George's. Take myself, for example.
I work out of town and I depend on my pay cheque, every week, to buy food
for the kids, to keep them in shoes and to pay the other bills. And now I
can't get to work and there won't be any cheque. I'm not the only one. There
are a lot of others like me. It isn't like we had some money laid by to take
care of emergencies. I tell you, Senator, there isn't hardly anyone in town
got anything laid by. We all are...'
     'Hold on,' pleaded the senator. 'Let me get a word in edgewise. Give me
a little time. The people in Washington know what is going on. They know
what you folks are facing out here. They'll do what they can to help.
There'll be a relief bill in the Congress to help out you folks and I, for
one, will work unceasingly to see that it is passed without undue delay. And
that isn't all. There are two or three papers in the east and some
television stations that have started a drive for funds to be turned over to
this village. And that's just a start. There will be a lot of. . .'
     'Hell, Senator,' yelled a man with a scratchy voice, 'that isn't what
we want. We don't want relief. We don't ask for charity. We just want to be
able to get back to our jobs.'
     The senator was flabbergasted, 'You mean you want us to get rid of the
barrier?'
     'Look, Senator,' said the man with the bull-like voice, 'for years the
government has been spending billions to send a man up to the moon. With all
them scientists you got, you can spend some time and money to get us out of
here. We been paying taxes for a long time now, without getting anything...'
     'But that,' said the senator, 'will take a little time. We'll have to
find out what this barrier is and then we'll have to figure out what can be
done with it. And I tell you, frankly, we aren't going to be able to do that
overnight.'
     Norma Shepard, who worked as receptionist for Doc Fabian, wriggled
through the press of people until she faced the Senator.
     'But something has to be done,' she said. 'Has to be done, do you
understand? Someone has to find a way. There are people in this town who
should be in a hospital and we can't get them there. Some of them will die
if we can't get them there. We have one doctor in this town and he's no
longer young. He's been a good doctor for a long, long time, but he hasn't
got the skill or the equipment to take care of the people who are terribly
sick. He never has had, he never pretended that he had . . .'
     'My dear,' said the senator, consolingly. 'I recognize your concern and
I sympathize with it, and you may rest assured...'
     It was apparent that my interview with the men from Washington had come
to an end. I walked slowly down the road, not actually down the road, but
along the edge of it, walking in the harrowed ground out of which, already,
thin points of green were beginning to protrude. The seeds which had been
sown in that alien whirlwind had in that short time germinated and were
pushing toward the light.
     I wondered bitterly, as I walked along, what kind of crops they'd bear.
     And A wondered, too, how angry Nancy might be at me for my fight with
Hiram Martin. I had caught that one look on her face and then she'd turned
her back and gone up the walk.
     And she had not been with Sherwood when he had come charging down the
walk to announce that Gibbs had phoned.
     For that short moment in the kitchen, when I had felt her body pressing
close to mine, she had been once again the sweetheart out of time - the girl
who had walked hand in hand with me, who had laughed her throaty laugh and
been an unquestioned part of me, as I had been of her.
     Nancy, I almost cried aloud, Nancy, please let it be the same. But
maybe it could never be the same, I told myself. Maybe it was Millville - a
village that had come between us for she had grown away from Millville in
the years she'd been away, and I, remaining here, had grown more deeply into
it.
     You could not dig back, I thought, through the dust of years, through
the memories and the happenings and the changes in yourself- in both
yourselves - to rescue out of time another day and hour. And even if you
found it, you could not dust it clean, you could never make it shine as you
remembered it. For perhaps it never had been quite the shining thing that
you remembered, perhaps you had burnished it in your longing and your
loneliness.
     And perhaps it was only once in every lifetime (and perhaps not in
every lifetime) that a shining moment came. Perhaps there was a rule that it
could never come again.
     'Brad,' a voice said.
     I had been walking, not looking where I went, staring at the ground.
Now, at the sound of the voice, I jerked up my head, and saw that I had
reached the tangle of parked cars. Leaning against one of them was Bill
Donovan.
     'Hi there, Bill,' I said. 'You should be up there with the rest of
them.'
     He made a gesture of disgust. 'We need help,' he said. 'Sure we do. All
the help we can get. But it wouldn't hurt to wait a while before you ran
squealing for it. You can't cave in the first tune you are hit. You have to
hang onto at least a shred or two of your self-respect.'
     I nodded, not quite agreeing with him. 'They're scared,' I said.
     'Yes,' he said, 'but there isn't any call for them to act like a bunch
of bleating sheep.'
     'How about the kids?' I asked.
     'Safe and sound,' he told me. 'Jake got to them just before the barrier
moved. Took them out of there. Jake had to chop down the door to reach them
and Myrt carried on all the time he was chopping it. You never heard so much
uproar in your life about a God damn door.'
     'And Mrs Donovan?'
     'Oh, Liz - she's all right. Cries for the kids and wonders what's so
become of us. But the kids are safe and that's all that counts.'
     He patted the metal of the car with the flat of his hand. 'We'll work
it out,' he said. 'It may take a little time, but there isn't anything that
men can't do if they set their minds to it. Like as not they'll have a
thousand of them scientists working on this thing and, like I say, it may
take a while, but they'll get her figured out.'
     'Yes,' I said, 'I suppose they will.'
     If some muddle-headed general didn't push the panic button first. If,
instead of trying to solve the problem, we didn't try to smash it.
     'What's the matter, Brad?'
     'Not a thing,' I said.
     'You got your worries, too, I guess,' he said. 'What you did to Hiram,
he had it coming to him for a long time now. Was that telephone he
threw...?'
     'Yes,' I said. 'It was one of the telephones.'
     'Heard you, went to some other world or something. How do you manage to
get into another world? It sounds screwy to me, but that's what everyone is
saying.'
     A couple of yelling kids came running through the cars and went pelting
up the road toward where the crowd was still arguing with the senator.
     'Kids are having a great time,' said Donovan. 'Most excitement they've
ever had. Better than a circus.'
     Some more kids went past, whooping as they ran. 'Say,' asked Donovan,
'do you think something might have happened?'
     The first two kids had reached the crowd and were tugging at people's
arms and shouting something at them.
     'Looks like it,' I said.
     A few of the crowd started back down the road, walking to start with,
then breaking into a trot, heading back for town.
     As they came close, Donovan darted out to intercept them. 'What's the
matter?' he yelled. 'What's going on?' 'Money,' one of them shouted back at
him. 'Someone's found some money.'
     By now the whole crowd had left the barrier and was running down the
road.
     As they swept past, Mae Hutton shouted at me, 'Come on, Brad! Money in
your garden!'
     Money in my garden! For the love of God, what next? I took one look at
the four men from Washington, standing beyond the barrier. Perhaps they were
thinking that the town was crazy. They had every right to think so.
     I stepped out into the road and jogged along behind the crowd, heading
back for town.

        19

     When I came back that morning I had found that the purple flowers
growing in the swale behind my house, through the wizardry of that other
world, had been metamorphosed into tiny bushes. In the dark I had run my
fingers along the bristling branches and felt the many swelling buds. And
now the buds had broken and where each bud had been was, not a leaf, but a
miniature fifty-dollar bill!
     Len Streeter, the high school science teacher, handed one of the tiny
bills to me.
     'It's impossible,' he said.
     And he was right. It was impossible. No bush in its right mind would
grow fifty-dollar bills - or any kind of bills.
     There were a lot of people there - all the crowd that had been out in
the road shouting at the senator, and as many more. It looked to me as if
the entire village might be there. They were tramping around among the
bushes and yelling at one another, all happy and excited. They had a right
to be. There probably weren't many of them who had ever seen a fifty-dollar
bill, and here were thousands of them.
     'You've looked close at it,' I asked the teacher. 'You're sure it
actually is a bill?'
     He pulled a small magnifying glass out of his shirt pocket and handed
it to me.
     'Have a look,' he said.
     I had a look and there was no question that it looked like a
fifty-dollar bill - although the only fifty-dollar bills I had ever seen
were the thirty of them in the envelope Sherwood had given me. And I hadn't
had a chance to more than glance at those. But through the glass I could see
that the little bills had the fabric-like texture one finds in folding money
and everything else, including the serial number, looked authentic.
     And I knew, even as I squinted through the lens, that it was authentic.
For these were (how would one say it - the descendants?) of the money Tupper
Tyler had stolen from me.
     I knew exactly what had happened and the knowledge was a chill that bit
deep into my mind.
     'It's possible,' I told Streeter. With that gang back there, it's
entirely possible.'
     'You mean the gang from your other world?'
     'Not my other world,' I shouted. 'Your other world. This world's other
world. When you get it through your damn thick skulls...'
     I didn't say the rest of it. I was glad I didn't.
     'I'm sorry,' Streeter said. 'I didn't mean it quite the way it
sounded.'
     Higgy, I saw, was standing halfway up the slope that led to the house
and he was yelling for attention.
     'Listen to rue!' he was shouting. 'Fellow citizens, Won't you listen to
me.'
     The crowd was beginning to quiet down and Higgy went on yelling until
everyone was quiet.
     'Stop pulling off them leaves,' he told them. 'Just leave them where
they are.'
     Charley Hutton said, 'Hell, Higgy, all that we was doing was picking a
few of them to have a better look.'
     'Well, quit it,' said the mayor sternly. 'Every one that you pull off
is fifty dollars less. Give them leaves a little time and they'll grow to
proper size and then they'll drop off and all we need to do is to pick them
up and every one of them will be money in our pocket.'
     'How do you know that?' Grandma Jones shrilled at him.
     'Well,' the mayor said, 'it stands to reason, don't it? Here we have
these marvellous plants growing money for us. The least we can do is let
them be, so they can grow it for us.'
     He looked around the crowd and suddenly saw me.
      'Brad,' he asked me, 'isn't that correct?'
     'I'm afraid it is,' I said.
     For Tupper had stolen the money and the Flowers had used the bills as
patterns on which to base the leaves. I would have bet, without looking
further, that there were no more than thirty different serial numbers in the
entire crop of money.
     'What I want to know,' said Charley Hutton, 'is how you figure we
should divide it up - once it's ripe, that is.'
     'Why,' said the mayor, 'that's something I hadn't even thought of.
Maybe we could put it in a common fund that could be handed out to people as
they have the need of it.'
     'That don't seem fair to me,' said Charley. 'That way some people would get more of it than others. Seems to me the only way
is to divide it evenly. Everyone should get his fair share of it, to do with
as he wants.'
     'There's some merit,' said the mayor, 'in your point of view. But it
isn't something on which we should make a snap decision. This afternoon I'll
appoint a committee to look into it. Anyone who has any ideas can present
them and they'll get full consideration.'
     'Mr Mayor,' piped up Daniel Willoughby, 'there is one thing I think
we've overlooked. No matter what we say, this stuff isn't money.'
     'But it looks like money. Once it's grown to proper size, no one could
tell the difference.'
     'I know,' the banker said, 'that it looks like money. It probably would
fool an awful lot of people. Maybe everyone. Maybe no one could ever tell
that it wasn't money. But if the source of it should be learned, how much
value do you think it would have then? Not only that, but all the money in
this village would be suspect. If we can grow fifty-dollar bills, what is
there to stop us from growing tens and twenties?'
     'I don't see what this fuss is all about,' shouted Charley Hutton.
'There isn't any need for anyone to know. We can keep quiet about it. We can
keep the secret. We can pledge ourselves that we'll never say a word about
it.'
     The crowd murmured with approval. Daniel Willoughby looked as if he
were on the verge of strangling. The thought of all that phony money
shrivelled up his prissy soul.
     'That's something,' said the mayor, blandly, 'that my committee can
decide.'
     The way the mayor said it one knew there was no doubt at all in his
mind as to how the committee would decide.
     'Higgy,' said lawyer Nichols, 'there's another thing we've overlooked.
The money isn't ours.'
     The mayor stared at him, outraged that anyone could say a thing like
that.
     'Whose is it, then?' he bellowed.
     'Why,' said Nichols, 'it belongs to Brad. It's growing on his land and
it belongs to him. There is no court anywhere that wouldn't make the
finding.'
     All the people froze. All their eyes swivelled in on me. I felt like a
crouching rabbit, with the barrels of a hundred shotguns levelled at him.
     The mayor gulped. 'You're sure of this?' he asked.
     'Positive,' said Nichols.
     The silence held and the eyes were still trained upon me.
     I looked around and the eyes stared back. No one said a word.
     The poor, misguided, blinded fools, I thought. All they saw here was
money in their pockets, wealth such as not a single one of them had ever
dared to dream. They could not see in it the threat (or promise?) of an
alien race pressed dose against the door, demanding entrance. And they could
not know that because of this alien race, blinding death might blossom in a
terrible surge of unleashed energy above the dome that enclosed the town.
     'Mayor,' I said, 'I don't want the stuff...'
     'Well, now,' the mayor said, 'that's a handsome gesture, Brad. I'm sure
the folks appreciate it.'
     'They damn well should,' said Nichols.
     A woman's scream rang out - and then another scream. It seemed to come
from behind me and I spun around.
     A woman was running down the slope that led to Doc Fabian's house -
although running wasn't quite the word for it.
     She was trying to run when she was able to do little more than hobble.
Her body was twisted with the terrible effort of her running and she had her
arms stretched out so they would catch her if she fell - and when she took
another step, she fell and rolled and finally ended up a huddled shape lying
on the hillside.
     'Myra!' Nichols yelled. 'My God, Myra, what's wrong?'
     It was Mrs Fabian, and she lay there on the hillside with the whiteness
of her hair shining in the sunlight, a startling patch of brilliance against
the green sweep of the lawn. She was a little thing and frail and for years
bad been half-crippled by arthritis, and now she seemed so small and
fragile, crumpled on the grass, that it hurt to look at her.
     I ran toward her and all the others were running toward her, too.
     Bill Donovan was the first to reach her and he went down on his knees
to lift her up and bold her.
     'Everything's all right,' he told her. 'See - everything's all right.
All your friends are here.'
     Her eyes were open and she seemed to be all right, but she lay there in
the cradle of Bill's arms and she didn't try to move. Her hair had fallen
down across her face and Bill brushed it back, gently, with a big, grimed,
awkward hand.
     'It's the doctor,' she told us. 'He's gone into a coma...'
     'But,' protested Higgy, 'he was all right an hour ago. I saw him just
an hour ago.'
     She waited until he'd finished, then she said, as if he hadn't spoken,
'He's in a coma and I can't wake him up. He lay down for a nap and now, he
won't wake up.'
     Donovan stood up, lifting her, holding her like a child. She was so
little and he was so big that she had the appearance of a doll, a doll with
a sweet and wrinkled face.
     'He needs help,' she said. 'He's helped you all his life. Now he needs
some help.'
     Norma Shepard touched Bill on the arm. 'Take her up to the house,' she
said. 'I'll take care of her.'
     'But my husband,' Mrs Fabian insisted. 'You'll get some help for him?
You'll find some way to help him?'
     'Yes, Myra,' Higgy said. 'Yes, of course we will. We can't let him
down. He's done too much for us. We'll find a way to help him.'
     Donovan started up the hill, carrying Mrs Fabian. Norma ran ahead of
him.
     Butch Ormsby said, 'Some of us ought to go, too, 'and see what we can
do for Doc.'
     'Well,' asked Charley Hutton, 'how about it, Higgy? 'You were the one
who shot off his big fat face. How are you going to help him?'
     'Somebody's got to help him,' declared Pappy Andrews, thumping his cane
upon the ground by way of emphasis. 'There never was a time we needed Doc
more than we need him now. There are sick people in this village and we've
got to get him on his feet somehow.'
     'We can do what we can,' said Streeter, 'to make him comfortable. We'll
take care of him, of course, the best that we know how. But there isn't'
anyone who has any medical knowledge...'
     'I'll tell you what we'll do,' said Higgy. 'Someone can get in touch
with some medical people and tell them what's happened. We can describe the
symptoms and maybe they can diagnose the illness and then tell us what to
do. Norma is a nurse - well, sort of, she's been helping out in Doc's office
for the last four years or so - and she'd be some help to us.'
     'I suppose it's the best we can do,' said Streeter, 'but it's not very
good.'
     'I tell you, men,' said Pappy, loudly, 'we can't stay standing here.
The situation calls for action and it behooves us to get started.'
     What Streeter had said, I told myself, was right. Maybe it was the best
that we could do, but it wasn't good enough. There was more to medicine than
word-of-mouth advice or telephoned instructions. And there were others in
the village in need of medical aid, more specialized aid than a stricken
doctor, even if he could be gotten on his feet, was equipped to give them.
     Maybe, I thought, there was someone else who could help - and if they
could, they'd better, or I'd go back somehow into that other world and start
ripping up their roots.
     It was time, I told myself, that this other world was getting on the
ball. The Flowers had put us in this situation and it was time they dug us
out. If they were intent on proving what great tasks they could perform,
there were more important ways of proving it than growing fifty-dollar bills
on bushes and all their other hocus-pocus.
     There were phones down at the village hall, the ones that had been
taken from Stiffy's shack, and I could use one of those, of course, but I'd
probably have to break Hiram's skull before I could get at one of them. And
another round with Hiram, I decided, was something I could get along
without.
     I looked around for Sherwood, but he wasn't there, and neither was
Nancy. One of them might be home and they'd let me use the phone in
Sherwood's study.
     A lot of the others were heading up toward Doc's house, but I turned
and went the other way.

        20

     No one answered the bell. I rang several times and waited, then finally
tried the door and it was unlocked.
     I went inside and closed the door behind me. The sound of its closing
was muffled by the hushed solemnity of the hail that ran back to the
kitchen.
     'Anyone home?' I called.
     Somewhere a lone fly buzzed desperately, as if trying to escape,
trapped against a window perhaps, behind a fold of drape. The sun spilled
through the fanlights above the door to make a ragged pattern on the floor.
     There was no answer to my hail, so I went down the hall and walked into
the study. The phone stood on the heavy desk. The walls of books still
seemed rich and wondrous. A half. empty whisky bottle and an unwashed glass
stood on the liquor cabinet.
     I went across the carpeting to the desk and reached out, pulling the
phone toward me.
     I lifted the receiver and immediately Tupper said, in his businessman's
voice, 'Mr Carter, it's good to hear from you at last. Events are going
well, we hope. You have made, we would presume, preliminary contact.'
     As if they didn't know!
     'That's not what I called about,' I snapped.
     'But that was the understanding. You were to act for us.'
     The unctuous smugness of the voice burned me up.
     'And it was understood, as well,' I asked, 'that you were to make a
fool of me?'
     The voice was startled. 'We fail to understand. Will you please
explain?'
     'The time machine,' I said.
     'Oh, that.'
     'Yes, oh, that,' I said.
     "But, Mr Carter, if we had asked you to take it back you would have
been convinced that we were using you. You'd probably have refused.'
     'And you weren't using me?'
     'Why, I suppose we were. We'd have used anyone. It was important to get
that mechanism to your world. Once you know the pattern...'
     'I don't care about the pattern,' I said angrily. 'You tricked me and
you admit you tricked me. That's a poor way to start negotiations with
another race.'
     'We regret it greatly. Not that we did it, but the way we did it. If
there is anything we can do...'
     'There's a lot that you can do. You can cut out horsing around with
fifty-dollar bills...'
     'But that's repayment,' wailed the voice. 'We told you you'd get back
your fifteen hundred. We promised you'd get back much more than your fifteen
hundred...'
     'You've had your readers read economic texts?'
     'Oh, certainly we have.'
     'And you've observed, for a long time and at first hand, our economic
practices?'
     'As best we can,' the voice said. 'It's sometimes difficult.'
     'You know, of course, that money grows on bushes.'
     'No, we don't know that, at all. We know how money's made. But what is
the difference? Money's money, isn't it, no matter what its source?'
     'You couldn't be more wrong,' I said. 'You'd better get wised up.'
     'You mean the money isn't good?'
     'Not worth a damn,' I said.
     'We hope we've done no wrong,' the voice said, crestfallen. I said,
'The money doesn't matter. There are other things that do. You've shut us
off from the world and we have sick people here. We had just one poor
fumbling doctor to take care of them. And now the doctor's sick himself and
no other doctor can get in...'
     'You need a steward,' said the voice.
     'What we need,' I told them, 'is to get this barrier lifted so we can
get out and others can get in. Otherwise there are going to be people dying
who don't have to die.'
     'We'll send a steward,' said the voice. 'We'll send one right away. A
most accomplished one. The best that we can find.'
     'I don't know,' I said, 'about this steward. But we need help as fast
as we can get it.'
     'We,' the voice pledged, 'will do the best we can.'
     The voice clicked off and the phone went dead. And suddenly I realized
that I'd not asked the most important thing of all - why had they wanted to
get the time machine into our world?
     I jiggled the connection. I put the receiver down and lifted it again.
I shouted in the phone and nothing happened.
     I pushed the phone away and stood hopeless in the room. For all of it,
I knew, was a very hopeless mess.
     Even after years of study, they did not understand us or our
institutions. They did not know that money was symbolic and not simply
scraps of paper. They had not, for a moment, taken into consideration what
could happen to a village if it were isolated from the world.
     They had tricked me and had used me and they should have known that
nothing can arouse resentment quite so easily as simple trickery. They
should have known, but they didn't know, or if they knew, had discounted
what they knew - and that was as bad or worse than if they had not known.
     I opened the study door and went into the hall. And as I started down
the hail, the front door opened and Nancy stepped inside.
     I stopped at the foot of the stairway that rose out of the hall and for
a moment we simply stood there, looking at one another, neither of us
finding anything to say.
     'I came to use the phone,' I said.
     She nodded.
     'I suppose,' I said, 'I should say I'm sorry for the fight with Hiram.'
     'I'm sorry, too,' she said, misunderstanding me, or pretending that she
misunderstood. 'But I suppose there was no way you could help it.'
     'He threw the phone,' I told her.
     But of course it had not been the phone, not the phone alone. It had
been all the times before the phone was thrown.
     'You said the other night,' I reminded her, 'that we could go out for
drinks and dinner. I guess that will have to wait. Now there's no place we
can go.'
     'Yes,' she said, 'so we could start over.'
     I nodded, feeling miserable.
     'I was to dress up my prettiest,' she said, 'and we would have been so
gay.'
     'Like high school days,' I said.
     'Brad.'
     'Yes,' I said, and took a step toward her.
     Suddenly she was in my arms.
     'We don't need drinks and dinner,' she said. 'Not the two of us.'
     No, I thought, not the two of us.
     I bent and kissed her and held her close and there was only us. There
was no closed-off village and no alien terror. There was nothing that
mattered now except this girl who long ago had walked the street, hand in
hand with me, and had not been ashamed.

        21

     The steward came that afternoon, a little, wizened humanoid who looked
like a bright-eyed monkey. With him was another - also humanoid - but great,
lumbering and awkward, gaunt and austere, with a horse-like face. He looked,
at first sight, the perfect caricature of a career diplomat. The scrawny
humanoid wore a dirty and shapeless piece of cloth draped about him like a
robe, and the other wore a breech-clout and a sort of vest, equipped with
massive pockets that bulged with small possessions.
     The entire village was lined up on the slope behind my house and the
betting had been heavy that nothing would show up. I heard whispers,
suddenly cutoff, everywhere I went.
     Then they came, the two of them, popping out of nowhere and standing in
the garden.
     I walked down the slope and across the garden to meet them. They stood
waiting for me and behind me, on that slope covered by a crowd of people,
there was utter silence.
     As I came near, the big one stepped forward, the little wizened
character trailing close behind.
     'I speak your language newly,' said the big one. 'If you don't know,
ask me once again.'
     'You're doing well,' I told him.
     'You be Mr Carter?'
     'That is right. And you?'
     'My designation,' he told me, solemnly, 'is to you great gibberish. I
have decided you can call me only Mr Smith.'
     'Mr Smith,' I said, 'we are glad to have you here. You are the steward
I was told about?'
     'No. This other personage is he. But he has no designation I can speak
to you. He makes no noise at all. He hears and answers only in his brain. He
is a queerish thing.'
     'A telepath,' I said.
     'Oh, yes, but do not mistake me. Of much intelligence. Also very smart.
We are of different worlds, you know. There be many different worlds, many
different peoples. We welcome you to us.'
     'They sent you along as an interpreter?'
     'Interpreter? I do not share your meaning. I learn your words very fast
from a mechanism. I do not have much time. I fail to catch them all.'
     'Interpreter means you speak for him. He tells you and you tell us.'
     'Yes, indeed. Also you tell me and I tell him. But interpreter is not
all I am. Also diplomat, very highly trained.'
     'Huh?'
     'Help with negotiations with your race. Be helpful as I can. Explain
very much, perhaps. Aid you as you need.'
     'You said there are many different worlds and many different people.
You mean a long, long chain of worlds and of people, too?'
     'Not all worlds have people,' he told me. 'Some have nothing. No life
of any sort. Some hold life, but no intelligence. Some once had
intelligence, but intelligence is gone.' He made a strange gesture with his
hand. 'It is pity what can happen to intelligence. It is frail; it does not
stay forever.'
     'And the intelligences? All humanoid?' He hesitated. 'Humanoid?'
     'Like us. Two arms, two legs, one head...'
     'Most humanoid,' he said.' 'Most like you and me.'
     The scrawny little being tugged excitedly at his vest. The being I had
been talking with turned around to face him, gave him close attention.
     Then he turned back to me. 'Him much upset,' he told me. 'Says all
people here are sick. Him prostrated with great pity. Never saw such
terrible thing.'
     'But that is wrong,' I cried. 'The sick ones are at home. This bunch
here is healthy.'
     'Can't be so,' said Mr Smith. 'Him aghast at situation. Can look inside
of people, see everything that's wrong. Says them that isn't sick will be
sick in little time, says many have inactive sickness in them, others still
have garbage of ancient sicknesses still inside of them.'
     'He can fix us up?'
     'No fix. Repair complete, Make body good as new.'
     Higgy had been edging closer and behind him several others. The rest of
the crowd still stayed up on the bank, out of all harm's way. And now they
were beginning to buzz a little. At first they had been stricken silent, but
now the talk began.
     'Higgy,' I said, 'I'd like you to meet Mr Smith.'
     'Well, I'll be darned,' said Higgy. 'They got names just the same as
ours.'
     He stuck out his hand and after a moment of puzzlement, Mr Smith put
out his hand and the two men shook.
     'The other one,' I said, 'can't talk. He's a telepath.'
     'That's too bad,' said Higgy, full of sympathy. 'Which one of them's
the doctor?'
     'The little one,' I told him, 'and I don't know if you can say he's a
doctor. Seems that he repairs people, fixes them like new.'
     'Well,' said Higgy, 'that's what a doctor's supposed to do, but never
quite makes out.'
     'He says we're all sick. He wants to fix us up.'
     'Well, that's all right,' said Higgy. 'That's what I call service. We
can set up a clinic down at the village hall.'
      'But there's Doc and Floyd and all the others who are really sick.
That's what he's here for.'
     'Well, I tell you, Brad, we can take him to them first and he can get
them cured, then we'll set up the clinic. The rest of us might just as well
get in on it as long as he is here.'
     'If,' said Mr Smith, 'you but merge with the rest of us, you can
command the services of such as he whenever you have need.'
     'What's this merger?' Higgy asked of me.
     'He means if we let the aliens in and join the other worlds that the
Flowers have linked.'
     'Well, now,' said Higgy, 'that makes a lot of sense. I don't suppose
there'll be any charges for his services.'
     'Charges?' asked Mr Smith.
     'Yeah,' said Higgy. 'Pay. Fees. Money.'
     'Those be terms,' said Mr Smith, 'that ring no bell for me. But we must
proceed with swiftness, since my fellow creature has other rounds to make.
He and his colleagues have many worlds to cover.'
     'You mean that they are doctors to the other worlds?' I asked.
     'You grasp my meaning clear.'
     'Since there isn't any time to waste,' said Higgy, 'leave us be about
our business. Will you two come with me?'
     'With alacrity,' cried Mr Smith, and the two of them followed Higgy as
he went up the slope and out toward the street. I followed slowly after them
and as I climbed the bank, Joe Evans came charging out of the back door of
my house.
     'Brad,' he shouted, 'there's a call for you from the State Department.'
     It was Newcombe on the phone.
     'I'm over here at Elmore,' he told me in his cold, clipped voice, 'and
we've given the Press a rundown on what you told us. But now they're
clamouring to see you; they want to talk with you.'
     'It's all right with me,' I said. 'If they'll come out to the
barrier...'
     'It's not all right with me,' said Newcombe, sourly, 'but the pressure
is terrific. I have to let them see you. I trust you'll be discreet.'
     'I'll do my best,' I told him.
     'All right,' he said. 'There's not much I can do about it. Two hours
from now. At the place we met.'
     'OK,' I said. 'I suppose it'll be all right if I bring a friend along.'
     'Yes, of course,' said Newcombe. 'And for the love of Christ be
careful!'

        22

     Mr Smith caught onto the idea of a Press conference with very little
trouble. I explained it to him as we walked toward the barrier where the
newsmen waited for us.
     'You say all these people are communicators,' he said, making sure he
had it straight. 'We say them something and they say other people.
Interpreters, like me.'
     'Well, something like that.'
     'But all your people talk the same. The mechanism told me one language
only.'
     'That was because the one language is all that you would need. But the
people of the Earth have many languages. Although that is not the reason for
newspapermen. You see, all the people can't be here to listen to what we
have to say. 'So these newsmen spread the news...'
     'News?'
     'The things that we have said. Or that other people have said. Things
that happen. No matter where anything may happen, there are newsmen there
and they spread the word. They keep the world informed.'
     Mr Smith almost danced a jig. 'How wonderful!' he cried.
     'What's so wonderful about it?'
     'Why, the ingenuity,' said Mr Smith. 'The thinking of it up. This way
one person talks to all the persons. Everybody knows about him. Everyone
hears what he has to talk.'
     We reached the barrier and there was quite a crowd of newsmen jammed on
the strip of highway on the other side. Some of them were strung along the
barrier on either side of the road. As we walked up, the cameramen were
busy.
     When we came up to the barrier, a lot of men started yelling at us, but
someone quickly shushed them, then one man spoke to us.
     'I'm Judson Barnes, of Associated Press,' he said. 'I suppose you're
Carter.'
     I told him that I was. 'And this gentleman you have with you?'
     'His name is Smith,' I said.
     'And,' said someone else, 'he's just got home from a masquerade.'
     'No,' I told them, 'he's a humanoid from one of the alternate worlds.
He is here to help with negotiations.'
     'Howdy, sirs,' said Mr Smith, with massive friendliness.
     Someone howled from the back: 'We can't hear back here.'
     'We have a microphone,' said Barnes, 'if you don't mind.'
     'Toss it here,' I told him.
     He tossed it and I caught it. The cord trailed through the barrier. I
could see where the speakers had been set up to one side of the road.
     'And now,' said Barnes, 'perhaps we can begin. State filled us in, of
course, so we don't need to go over all that you have told them. But there
are some questions. I'm sure there are a lot of questions.'
     A dozen hands went up.
     'Just pick out one of them,' said Barnes.
     I made a motion toward a great, tall, scrawny man.
     'Thank you, sir,' he said. 'Caleb Rivers, Kansas City Star. We
understand that you represent the - how do you say it? - people, perhaps,
the people of this other world. I wonder if you would outline your position
in somewhat more detail. Are you an official representative, or an
unofficial spokesman, or a sort of go-between? It's not been made quite
clear.'
     'Very unofficial, I might say. You know about my father?'
     'Yes,' said Rivers, 'we've been told how he cared for the flowers be
found. But you'd agree, wouldn't you, Mr Carter, that this is, to say the
least, a rather strange sort of qualification for your role?'
     'I have no qualifications at all,' I told him. 'I can tell you quite
frankly that the aliens probably picked one of the poorest representatives
they could have found. There are two things to consider. First, I was the
only human who seemed available - I was the only one who went back to visit
them. Secondly, and this is important, they don't think, can't think, in the
same manner that we do. What might make good sense to them may seem silly so
far as we are concerned. On the other hand, our most brilliant logic might
be gibberish to them.'
     'I see,' said Rivers. 'But despite your frankness in saying you're not
qualified to serve, you still are serving. Would you tell us why?'
     'There's nothing else I can do,' I said. 'The situation has gotten to a
point where there had to be an attempt at some sort of intelligent contact
between the aliens and ourselves. Otherwise, things might get out of hand.'
     'How do you mean?'
     'Right now,' I said, 'the world is scared. There has to be some
explanation of what is happening. There is nothing worse than a senseless
happening, nothing worse than reasonless fear, and the aliens, so long as
they know something's being done, may leave this barrier as it is. For the
moment, I suspect, they'll do no more than they've already done. I hope it
may work out that the situation gets no worse and that in the meantime some
progress can be made.'
     Other hands were waving and I pointed to another man.
     'Frank Roberts, Washington Post,' he said. 'I have a question about the
negotiations. As I understand it, the aliens want to be admitted to our
world and in return are willing to provide us with a great store of
knowledge they have accumulated.'
     'That is right,' I said.
     'Why do they want admission?'
     'It's not entirely clear to me,' I told him. 'They need to be here so
they can proceed to other worlds. It would seem the alternate worlds lie in
some sort of progression, and they must be arrived at in a certain order. I
confess quite willingly I understand none of this. All that can be done now
is to reach proposals that we and the aliens can negotiate.'
     'You know of no terms beyond the broad proposal you have stated?'
     'None at all,' I said. 'There may be others. I am not aware of them.'
     'But now you have - perhaps you would call him an advisor. Would it be
proper to direct a question at this Mr Smith of yours?' '
     'A question,' said Mr Smith. 'I accept your question.'
     He was pleased that someone had noticed him. Not without some qualms, I
handed him the mike.
     'You talk into it,' I said.
     'I know,' he said. 'I watch.'
     'You talk our language very well,' said the Washington Post.
     'Just barely. Mechanism teach me.'
     'Can you add anything about specific conditions?'
     'I do not catch,' said Smith.
     'Are there an