Mackenzie clicked his pipestem against his teeth. “He could be, too,” he said. “Immortal, I mean. Plants haven’t got all the physiological complications animals have. Given any sort of care, they theoretically could live forever.”
Grass rustled on the hillside above them and Mackenzie settled back against the car, kept on smoking. Nellie hunkered down a few feet away.
The Encyclopedia waddled down the hill, starlight glinting from his shell-like back. Ponderously he lined up with them beside the car, pushing his taproot into the ground for an evening snack.
“Understand you may be going back to Earth with us,” said Mackenzie, conversationally.
The answer came, measured in sharp and concise thought that seemed to drill deep into Mackenzie’s mind. “I should like to. Your race is interesting.”
It was hard to talk to a thing like that, Mackenzie told himself. Hard to keep the chatter casual when you knew all the time it was hunting around in the corners of your mind. Hard to match one’s voice against the brittle thought with which it talked.
“What do you think of us?” he asked and knew, as soon as he had asked it, that it was asinine.
“I know very little of you,” the Encyclopedia declared. “You have created artificial lives, while we on this planet have lived natural lives. You have bent every force that you can master to your will. You have made things work for you. First impression is that, potentially, you are dangerous.”
“I guess I asked for it,” Mackenzie said.
“I do not follow you.”
“Skip it,” said Mackenzie.
“The only trouble,” said the Encyclopedia, “is that you don’t know where you’re going.”
“That’s what makes it so much fun,” Mackenzie told him. “Cripes, if we knew where we were going there’d be no adventure. We’d know what was coming next. As it is, every corner that we turn brings a new surprise.”
“Knowing where you’re going has its advantages,” insisted the Encyclopedia.
Mackenzie knocked the pipe bowl out on his boot heel, tramped on the glowing ash.
“So you have us pegged,” he said.
“No,” said the Encyclopedia. “Just first impressions.”
The music trees were twisted gray ghosts in the murky dawn. The conductors, except for the few who refused to let even a visit from the Earthmen rouse them from their daylight slumber, squatted like black imps on their podia.
Delbert rode on Smith’s shoulder, one clawlike hand entwined in Smith’s hair to keep from falling off. The Encyclopedia waddled along in the wake of the Earthman party. Wade led the way towards Alder’s podium.
The Bowl buzzed with the hum of distorted thought, the thought of many little folk squatting on their mounds—an alien thing that made Mackenzie’s neck hairs bristle just a little as it beat into his mind. There were no really separate thoughts, no one commanding thought, just the chitter-chatter of hundreds of little thoughts, as if the conductors might be gossiping.
The yellow cliffs stood like a sentinel wall and above the path that led to the escarpment, the tractor loomed like a straddled beetle against the early dawn.
Alder rose from the podium to greet them, a disreputable-looking gnome on gnarly legs.
The Earth delegation squatted on the ground. Delbert, from his perch on Smith’s shoulder, made a face at Alder.
Silence held for a moment and then Mackenzie, dispensing with formalities, spoke to Alder. “We rescued Delbert for you,” he told the gnome. “We brought him back.”
Alder scowled and his thoughts were fuzzy with disgust. “We do not want him back,” he said.
Mackenzie, taken aback, stammered. “Why, we thought … that is, he’s one of you … we went to a lot of trouble to rescue him—”
“He’s a nuisance,” declared Alder. “He’s a disgrace. He’s a no-good. He’s always trying things.”
“You’re not so hot yourself,” piped Delbert’s thought. “Just a bunch of fuddy-duddies. A crowd of corn peddlers. You’re sore at me because I want to be different. Because I dust it off—”
“You see,” said Alder to Mackenzie, “what he is like.”
“Why, yes,” agreed Mackenzie, “but there are times when new ideas have some values. Perhaps he may be—”
Alder leveled an accusing finger at Wade. “He was all right until you took to hanging around,” he screamed. “Then he picked up some of your ideas. You contaminated him. Your silly notions about music—” Alder’s thoughts gulped in sheer exasperation, then took up again. “Why did you come? No one asked you to. Why don’t you mind your own business?”
Wade, red faced behind his beard, seemed close to apoplexy.
“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life,” he howled. He thumped his chest with a doubled fist. “Back on Earth I wrote great symphonies myself. I never held with frivolous music. I never—”
“Crawl back into your hole,” Delbert shrilled at Alder. “You guys don’t know what music is. You saw out the same stuff day after day. You never lay it in the groove. You never get gated up. You all got long underwear.”
Alder waved knotted fists above his head and hopped up and down in rage. “Such language!” he shrieked. “Never was the like heard here before.”
The whole Bowl was yammering. Yammering with clashing thoughts of rage and insult.
“Now, wait,” Mackenzie shouted. “All of you, quiet down!”
Wade puffed out his breath, turned a shade less purple. Alder squatted back on his haunches, unknotted his fists, tried his best to look composed. The clangor of thought subsided to a murmur.
“You’re sure about this?” Mackenzie asked Alder. “Sure you don’t want Delbert back.”
“Mister,” said Alder, “there never was a happier day in Melody Bowl than the day we found him gone.”
A rising murmur of assent from the other conductors underscored his words.
“We have some others we’d like to get rid of, too,” said Alder.
From far off across the Bowl came a yelping thought of derision.
“You see,” said Alder, looking owlishly at Mackenzie, “what it is like. What we have to contend with. All because this … this … this—”
Glaring at Wade, thoughts failed him. Carefully he settled back upon his haunches, composed his face again.
“If the rest were gone,” he said, “we could settle down. But as it is, these few keep us in an uproar all the time. We can’t concentrate, we can’t really work. We can’t do the things we want to do.”
Mackenzie pushed back his hat and scratched his head.
“Alder,” he declared, “you sure are in a mess.”
“I was hoping,” Alder said, “that you might be able to take them off our hands.”
“Take them off your hands!” yelled Smith. “I’ll say we’ll take them! We’ll take as many—”
Mackenzie nudged Smith in the ribs with his elbow, viciously. Smith gulped into silence. Mackenzie tried to keep his face straight.
“You can’t take them trees,” said Nellie, icily. “It’s against the law.”
Mackenzie gasped. “The law?”
“Sure, the regulations. The company’s got regulations. Or don’t you know that? Never bothered to read them, probably. Just like you. Never pay no attention to the things you should.”
“Nellie,” said Smith savagely, “you keep out of this. I guess if we want to do a little favor for Alder here—”
“But it’s against the law!” screeched Nellie.
“I know,” said Mackenzie. “Section 34 of the chapter on Relations with Extraterrestrial Life. ‘No member of this company shall interfere in any phase of the internal affairs of another race.’”
“That’s it,” said Nellie, pleased with herself. “And if you take some of these trees, you’ll be meddling
in a quarrel that you have no business having anything to do with.”
Mackenzie flipped his hands. “You see,” he said to Alder.
“We’ll give you a monopoly on our music,” tempted Alder. “We’ll let you know when we have anything. We won’t let the Groomies have it and we’ll keep our prices right.”
Nellie shook her head. “No,” she said.
Alder bargained. “Bushel and a half instead of two bushel.”
“No,” said Nellie.
“It’s a deal,” declared Mackenzie. “Just point out your duds and we’ll haul them away.”
“But Nellie said no,” Alder pointed out. “And you say yes. I don’t understand.”
“We’ll take care of Nellie,” Smith told him, soberly.
“You won’t take them trees,” said Nellie. “I won’t let you take them. I’ll see to that.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Mackenzie said. “Just point out the ones you want to get rid of.”
Alder said primly: “You’ve made us very happy.”
Mackenzie got up and looked around. “Where’s the Encyclopedia?” he asked.
“He cleared out a minute ago,” said Smith. “Headed back for the car.”
Mackenzie saw him, scuttling swiftly up the path towards the cliff top.
It was topsy-turvy and utterly crazy, like something out of that old book for children written by a man named Carroll. There was no sense to it. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Walking up the cliff path back to the tractor, Mackenzie knew it was, felt that he should pinch himself to know it was no dream.
He had hoped—just hoped—to avert relentless, merciless war against Earthmen throughout the planet by bringing back the stolen music tree. And here he was, with other music trees for his own, and a bargain thrown in to boot.
There was something wrong, Mackenzie told himself, something utterly and nonsensically wrong. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.
There was no need to worry, he told himself. The thing to do was to get those trees and get out of there before Alder and the others changed their minds.
“It’s funny,” Wade said behind him.
“It is,” agreed Mackenzie. “Everything is funny here.”
“I mean about those trees,” said Wade. “I’d swear Delbert was all right. So were all the others. They played the same music the others played. If there had been any faulty orchestration, any digression from form, I am sure I would have noticed it.”
Mackenzie spun around and grasped Wade by the arm. “You mean they weren’t lousing up the concerts? That Delbert, here, played just like the rest?”
Wade nodded.
“That ain’t so,” shrilled Delbert from his perch on Smith’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t play like the rest of them. I want to kick the stuff around. I always dig it up and hang it out the window. I dream it up and send it away out wide.”
“Where’d you pick up that lingo?” Mackenzie snapped. “I never heard anything like it before.”
“I learned it from him,” declared Delbert, pointing at Wade.
Wade’s face was purple and his eyes were glassy.
“It’s practically prehistoric,” he gulped. “It’s terms that were used back in the twentieth century to describe a certain kind of popular rendition. I read about it in a history covering the origins of music. There was a glossary of the terms. They were so fantastic they stuck in my mind.”
Smith puckered his lips, whistling soundlessly. “So that’s how he picked it up. He caught it from your thoughts. Same principle the Encyclopedia uses, although not so advanced.”
“He lacks the Encyclopedia’s distinction,” explained Mackenzie. “He didn’t know the stuff he was picking up was something that had happened long ago.”
“I have a notion to wring his neck,” Wade threatened.
“You’ll keep your hands off him,” grated Mackenzie. “This deal stinks to the high heavens, but seven music trees are seven music trees. Screwy deal or not, I’m going through with it.”
“Look, fellows,” said Nellie. “I wish you wouldn’t do it.”
Mackenzie puckered his brow. “What’s the matter with you, Nellie? Why did you make that uproar about the law down there? There’s a rule, sure, but in a thing like this it’s different. The company can afford to have a rule or two broken for seven music trees. You know what will happen, don’t you, when we get those trees back home. We can charge a thousand bucks a throw to hear them and have to use a club to keep the crowds away.”
“And the best of it is,” Smith pointed out, “that once they hear them, they’ll have to come again. They’ll never get tired of them. Instead of that, every time they hear them, they’ll want to hear them all the more. It’ll get to be an obsession, a part of the people’s life. They’ll steal, murder, do anything so they can hear the trees.”
“That,” said Mackenzie, soberly, “is the one thing I’m afraid of.”
“I only tried to stop you,” Nellie said. “I know as well as you do that the law won’t hold in a thing like this. But there was something else. The way the conductors sounded. Almost as if they were jeering at us. Like a gang of boys out in the street hooting at someone they just pulled a fast one on.”
“You’re batty,” Smith declared.
“We have to go through with it,” Mackenzie announced, flatly. “If anyone ever found we’d let a chance like this slip through our fingers, they’d crucify us for it.”
“You’re going to get in touch with Harper?” Smith asked.
Mackenzie nodded. “He’ll have to get hold of Earth, have them send out a ship right away to take back the trees.”
“I still think,” said Nellie, “there’s a nigger in the woodpile.”
Mackenzie flipped the toggle and the visiphone went dead.
Harper had been hard to convince. Mackenzie, thinking about it, couldn’t blame him much. After all, it did sound incredible. But then, this whole planet was incredible.
Mackenzie reached into his pocket and hauled forth his pipe and pouch. Nellie probably would raise hell about helping to dig up those other six trees, but she’d have to get over it. They’d have to work as fast as they could. They couldn’t spend more than one night up here on the rim. There wasn’t enough serum for longer than that. One jug of the stuff wouldn’t go too far.
Suddenly excited shouts came from outside the car, shouts of consternation.
With a single leap, Mackenzie left the chair and jumped for the door. Outside, he almost bumped into Smith, who came running around the corner of the tractor. Wade, who had been down at the cliff’s edge, was racing toward them.
“It’s Nellie,” shouted Smith. “Look at that robot!”
Nellie was marching toward them, dragging in her wake a thing that bounced and struggled. A rifle-tree grove fired a volley and one of the pellets caught Nellie in the shoulder, puffing into dust, staggering her a little.
The bouncing thing was the Encyclopedia. Nellie had hold of his taproot, was hauling him unceremoniously across the bumpy ground.
“Put him down!” Mackenzie yelled at her. “Let him go!”
“He stole the serum,” howled Nellie. “He stole the serum and broke it on a rock!”
She swung the Encyclopedia toward them in a looping heave. The intelligent vegetable bounced a couple of times, struggled to get right side up, then scurried off a few feet, root coiled tightly against its underside.
Smith moved toward it threateningly. “I ought to kick the living innards out of you,” he yelled. “We need that serum. You knew why we needed it.”
“You threaten me with force,” said the Encyclopedia. “The most primitive method of compulsion.”
“It works,” Smith told him shortly.
The Encyclopedia’s thoughts were unruffled, almost serene, as
clear and concise as ever. “You have a law that forbids your threatening or harming any alien thing.”
“Chum,” declared Smith, “you better get wised up on laws. There are times when certain laws don’t hold. And this is one of them.”
“Just a minute,” said Mackenzie. He spoke to the Encyclopedia. “What is your understanding of a law?”
“It is a rule you live by,” the Encyclopedia said. “It is something that is necessary. You cannot violate it.”
“He got that from Nellie,” said Smith.
“You think because there is a law against it, we won’t take the trees?”
“There is a law against it,” said the Encyclopedia. “You cannot take the trees.”
“So as soon as you found that out, you lammed up here and stole the serum, eh?”
“He’s figuring on indoctrinating us,” Nellie explained. “Maybe that word ain’t so good. Maybe conditioning is better. It’s sort of mixed up. I don’t know if I’ve got it straight. He took the serum so we would hear the trees without being able to defend ourselves against them. He figured when we heard the music, we’d go ahead and take the trees.”
“Law or no law?”
“That’s it,” Nellie said. “Law or no law.”
Smith whirled on the robot. “What kind of jabber is this? How do you know what he was planning?”
“I read his mind,” said Nellie. “Hard to get at, the thing that he was planning, because he kept it deep. But some of it jarred up where I could reach it when you threatened him.”
“You can’t do that!” shrieked the Encyclopedia. “Not you! Not a machine!”
Mackenzie laughed shortly. “Too bad, big boy, but she can. She’s been doing it.”
Smith stared at Mackenzie.
“It’s all right,” Mackenzie said. “It isn’t any bluff. She told me about it last night.”
“You are unduly alarmed,” the Encyclopedia said. “You are putting a wrong interpretation—”
A quiet voice spoke, almost as if it were a voice inside Mackenzie’s mind.