“Don’t believe a thing he tells you, pal. Don’t fall for any of his lies.”
“Nicodemus! You know something about this?”
“It’s the trees,” said Nicodemus. “The music does something to you. It changes you. Makes you different than you were before. Wade is different. He doesn’t know it, but he is.”
“If you mean the music chains one to it, that is true,” said Wade. “I may as well admit it. I could not live without the music. I could not leave the Bowl. Perhaps you gentlemen have thought that I would go back with you. But I cannot go. I cannot leave. It will work the same with anyone. Alexander was here for a while when he ran short of serum. Doctors treated him and he was all right, but he came back. He had to come back. He couldn’t stay away.”
“It isn’t only that,” declared Nicodemus. “It changes you, too, in other ways. It can change you any way it wants to. Change your way of thinking. Change your viewpoints.”
Wade strode forward. “It isn’t true,” he yelled. “I’m the same as when I came here.”
“You heard things,” said Nicodemus, “felt things in the music you couldn’t understand. Things you wanted to understand, but couldn’t. Strange emotions that you yearned to share, but could never reach. Strange thoughts that tantalized you for days.”
Wade sobered, stared at them with haunted eyes.
“That was the way it was,” he whispered. “That was just the way it was.”
He glanced around, like a trapped animal seeking escape.
“But I don’t feel any different,” he mumbled. “I still am human. I think like a man, act like a man.”
“Of course you do,” said Nicodemus. “Otherwise you would have been scared away. If you had known what was happening to you, you wouldn’t let it happen. And you have had less than a year of it. Less than a year of this conditioning. Five years and you would be less human. Ten years and you would be beginning to be the kind of thing the trees want you to be.”
“And we were going to take some of those trees to Earth!” Smith shouted. “Seven of them! So the people of the Earth could hear them. Listen to them, night after night. The whole world listening to them on the radio. A whole world being conditioned, being changed by seven music trees.”
“But why?” asked Wade, bewildered.
“Why did men domesticate animals?” Mackenzie asked. “You wouldn’t find out by asking the animals, for they don’t know. There is just as much point asking a dog why he was domesticated as there is in asking us why the trees want to condition us. For some purpose of their own, undoubtedly, that is perfectly clear and logical to them. A purpose that undoubtedly never can be clear and logical to us.”
“Nicodemus,” said the Encyclopedia, and his thought was deadly cold, “you have betrayed your own.”
Mackenzie laughed harshly. “You’re wrong there,” he told the vegetable, “because Nicodemus isn’t a plant, any more. He’s a human. The same thing has happened to him as you want to have happen to us. He has become a human in everything but physical make-up. He thinks as a man does. His viewpoints are ours, not yours.”
“That is right,” said Nicodemus. “I am a man.”
A piece of cloth ripped savagely and for an instant the group was blinded by a surge of energy that leaped from the thicket a hundred yards away. Smith gurgled once in sudden agony and the energy was gone.
Frozen momentarily by surprise, Mackenzie watched Smith stagger, face tight with pain, hand clapped to his side. Slowly the man wilted, sagged in the middle and went down.
Silently, Nellie leaped forward, was sprinting for the thicket. With a hoarse cry, Mackenzie bent over Smith.
Smith grinned at him, a twisted grin. His mouth worked, but no words came. His hand slid away from his side and he went limp, but his chest rose and fell with a slightly slower breath. His life blanket had shifted its position to cover the wounded side.
Mackenzie straightened up, hauling the pistol from his belt. A man had risen from the thicket, was leveling a gun at the charging Nellie. With a wild yell, Mackenzie shot from the hip. The lashing charge missed the man but half the thicket disappeared in a blinding sheet of flame.
The man with the gun ducked as the flame puffed out at him and in that instant Nellie closed. The man yelled once, a long-drawn howl of terror as Nellie swung him above her head and dashed him down. The smoking thicket hid the rest of it. Mackenzie, pistol hanging limply by his side, watched Nellie’s right fist lift and fall with brutal precision, heard the thud of life being beaten from a human body.
Sickened, he turned back to Smith. Wade was kneeling beside the wounded man. He looked up.
“He seems to be unconscious.”
Mackenzie nodded. “The blanket put him out. Gave him an anesthetic. It’ll take care of him.”
Mackenzie glanced up sharply at a scurry in the grass. The Encyclopedia, taking advantage of the moment, was almost out of sight, scuttling toward a grove of rifle trees.
A step grated behind him.
“It was Alexander,” Nellie said. “He won’t bother us no more.”
Nelson Harper, factor at the post, was lighting up his pipe when the visiphone signal buzzed and the light flashed on.
Startled, Harper reached out and snapped on the set. Mackenzie’s face came in, a face streaked with dirt and perspiration, stark with fear. He waited for no greeting. His lips were already moving even as the plate flickered and cleared.
“It’s all off, chief,” he said. “The deal is off. I can’t bring in those trees.”
“You got to bring them in,” yelled Harper. “I’ve already called Earth. I got them turning handsprings. They say it’s the greatest thing that ever happened. They’re sending out a ship within an hour.”
“Call them back and tell them not to bother,” Mackenzie snapped.
“But you told me everything was set,” yelped Harper. “You told me nothing could happen. You said you’d bring them in if you had to crawl on hands and knees and pack them on your back.”
“I told you every word of that,” agreed Mackenzie. “Probably even more. But I didn’t know what I know now.”
Harper groaned. “Galactic is plastering every front page in the Solar System with the news. Earth radios right now are bellowing it out from Mercury to Pluto. Before another hour is gone every man, woman and child will know those trees are coming to Earth. And once they know that, there’s nothing we can do. Do you understand that, Mackenzie? We have to get them there!”
“I can’t do it, chief,” Mackenzie insisted, stubbornly.
“Why can’t you?” screamed Harper. “So help me Hannah, if you don’t—”
“I can’t bring them in because Nellie’s burning them. She’s down in the Bowl right now with a flamer. When she’s through, there won’t be any music trees.”
“Go out and stop her!” shrieked Harper. “What are you sitting there for! Go out and stop her! Blast her if you have to. Do anything, but stop her! That crazy robot—”
“I told her to,” snapped Mackenzie. “I ordered her to do it. When I get through here, I’m going down and help her.”
“You’re crazy, man!” yelled Harper. “Stark, staring crazy. They’ll throw the book at you for this. You’ll be lucky if you just get life—”
Two darting hands loomed in the plate, hands that snapped down and closed around Mackenzie’s throat, hands that dragged him away and left the screen blank, but with a certain blurring motion, as if two men might be fighting for their lives just in front of it.
“Mackenzie!” screamed Harper. “Mackenzie!”
Something smashed into the screen and shattered it, leaving the broken glass gaping in jagged shards.
Harper clawed at the visiphone. “Mackenzie! Mackenzie, what’s happening!”
In answer the screen exploded in a flash of violent flame, howled like a
screeching banshee and then went dead.
Harper stood frozen in the room, listening to the faint purring of the radio. His pipe fell from his hand and bounced along the floor, spilling burned tobacco.
Cold, clammy fear closed down upon him, squeezing his heart. A fear that twisted him and mocked him. Galactic would break him for this, he knew. Send him out to some of the jungle planets as the rankest subordinate. He would be marked for life, a man not to be trusted, a man who had failed to uphold the prestige of the company.
Suddenly a faint spark of hope stirred deep within him. If he could get there soon enough! if he could get to Melody Bowl in time, he might stop this madness. Might at least save something, save a few of the precious trees.
The flier was in the compound, waiting. Within half an hour he could be above the Bowl.
He leaped for the door, shoved it open and even as he did a pellet whistled past his cheek and exploded into a puff of dust against the door frame. Instinctively, he ducked and another pellet brushed his hair. A third caught him in the leg with stinging force and brought him down. A fourth puffed dust into his face.
He fought his way to his knees, was staggered by another shot that slammed into his side. He raised his right arm to protect his face and a sledge-hammer blow slapped his wrist. Pain flowed along his arm and in sheer panic he turned and scrambled on hands and knees across the threshold, kicked the door shut with his foot.
Sitting flat on the floor, he held his right wrist in his left hand. He tried to make his fingers wiggle and they wouldn’t. The wrist, he knew, was broken.
After weeks of being off the beam the rifle tree outside the compound suddenly had regained its aim and gone on a rampage.
Mackenzie raised himself off the floor and braced himself with one elbow, while with the other hand he fumbled at his throbbing throat. The interior of the tractor danced with wavy motion and his head thumped and pounded with pain.
Slowly, carefully, he inched himself back so he could lean against the wall. Gradually the room stopped rocking, but the pounding in his head went on.
Someone was standing in the doorway of the tractor and he fought to focus his eyes, trying to make out who it was.
A voice screeched across his nerves.
“I’m taking your blankets. You’ll get them back when you decide to leave the trees alone.”
Mackenzie tried to fashion words, but all he accomplished was a croak. He tried again.
“Wade?” he asked.
It was Wade, he saw.
The man stood within the doorway, one hand clutching a pair of blankets, the other holding a gun.
“You’re crazy, Wade,” he whispered. “We have to burn the trees. The human race never would be safe. Even if they fail this time, they’ll try again. And again—and yet again. And some day they will get us. Even without going to Earth they can get us. They can twist us to their purpose with recordings alone. Long distance propaganda. Take a bit longer, but it will do the job as well.”
“They are beautiful,” said Wade. “The most beautiful things in all the universe. I can’t let you destroy them. You must not destroy them.”
“But can’t you see,” croaked Mackenzie, “that’s the thing that makes them so dangerous. Their beauty, the beauty of their music, is fatal. No one can resist it.”
“It was the thing I lived by,” Wade told him, soberly. “You say it made me something that was not quite human. But what difference does that make. Must racial purity, in thought and action, be a fetish that would chain us to a drab existence when something better, something greater, is offered. And we never would have known. That is the best of it all, we never would have known. They would have changed us, yes, but so slowly, so gradually, that we would not have suspected. Our decisions and our actions and our way of thought would still have seemed to be our own. The trees never would have been anything more than something cultural.”
“They want our mechanization,” said Mackenzie. “Plants can’t develop machines. Given that, they might have taken us along a road we, in our rightful heritage, never would have taken.”
“How can we be sure,” asked Wade, “that our heritage would have guided us aright?”
Mackenzie slid straighter against the wall. His head still throbbed and his throat still ached.
“You’ve been thinking about this?” he asked.
Wade nodded. “At first there was the natural reaction of horror. But, logically, that reaction is erroneous. Our schools teach our children a way of life. Our press strives to formulate our adult opinion and belief. The trees were doing no more to us than we do to ourselves. And perhaps, for a purpose no more selfish.”
Mackenzie shook his head. “We must live our own life. We must follow the path the attributes of humanity decree that we should follow. And anyway, you’re wasting your time.”
“I don’t understand,” said Wade.
“Nellie already is burning the trees,” Mackenzie told him. “I sent her out before I made the call to Harper.”
“No, she’s not,” said Wade.
Mackenzie sat bolt upright. “What do you mean?”
Wade flipped the pistol as Mackenzie moved as if to regain his feet.
“It doesn’t matter what I mean,” he snapped. “Nellie isn’t burning any trees. She isn’t in a position to burn any trees. And neither are you, for I’ve taken both your flamers. And the tractor won’t run, either. I’ve seen to that. So the only thing that you can do is stay right here.”
Mackenzie motioned toward Smith, lying on the floor. “You’re taking his blanket, too?”
Wade nodded.
“But you can’t. Smith will die. Without that blanket he doesn’t have a chance. The blanket could have healed the wound, kept him fed correctly, kept him warm—”
“That,” said Wade, “is all the more reason that you come to terms directly.”
“Your terms,” said Mackenzie, “are that we leave the trees unharmed.”
“Those are my terms.”
Mackenzie shook his head. “I can’t take the chance,” he said.
“When you decide, just step out and shout,” Wade told him. “I’ll stay in calling distance.”
He backed slowly from the door.
Smith needed warmth and food. In the hour since his blanket had been taken from him he had regained consciousness, had mumbled feverishly and tossed about, his hand clawing at his wounded side.
Squatting beside him, Mackenzie had tried to quiet him, had felt a wave of slow terror as he thought of the hours ahead.
There was no food in the tractor, no means for making heat. There was no need for such provision so long as they had had their life blankets—but now the blankets were gone. There was a first-aid cabinet and with the materials that he found there, Mackenzie did his fumbling best, but there was nothing to relieve Smith’s pain, nothing to control his fever. For treatment such as that they had relied upon the blankets.
The atomic motor might have been rigged up to furnish heat, but Wade had taken the firing mechanism control.
Night was falling and that meant the air would grow colder. Not too cold to live, of course, but cold enough to spell doom to a man in Smith’s condition.
Mackenzie squatted on his heels and stared at Smith.
“If I could only find Nellie,” he thought.
He had tried to find her—briefly. He had raced along the rim of the Bowl for a mile or so, but had seen no sign of her. He had been afraid to go farther, afraid to stay too long from the man back in the tractor.
Smith mumbled and Mackenzie bent low to try to catch the words. But there were no words.
Slowly he rose and headed for the door. First of all, he needed heat. Then food. The heat came first. An open fire wasn’t the best way to make heat, of course, but it was better than nothing.
The uprooted mu
sic tree, balled roots silhouetted against the sky, loomed before him in the dusk. He found a few dead branches and tore them off. They would do to start the fire. After that he would have to rely on green wood to keep it going. Tomorrow he could forage about for suitable fuel.
In the Bowl below, the music trees were tuning up for the evening concert.
Back in the tractor, he found a knife, carefully slivered several of the branches for easy lighting, piled them ready for his pocket lighter.
The lighter flared and a tiny figure hopped up on the threshold of the tractor, squatting there, blinking at the light.
Startled, Mackenzie held the lighter without touching it to the wood, stared at the thing that perched in the doorway.
Delbert’s squeaky thought drilled into his brain.
“What you doing?”
“Building a fire,” Mackenzie told him.
“What’s a fire?”
“It’s a … it’s a … say, don’t you know what a fire is?”
“Nope,” said Delbert.
“It’s a chemical action,” Mackenzie said. “It breaks up matter and releases energy in the form of heat.”
“What you building a fire with?” asked Delbert, blinking in the flare of the lighter.
“With branches from a tree.”
Delbert’s eyes widened and his thought was jittery.
“A tree?”
“Sure, a tree. Wood. It burns. It gives off heat. I need heat.”
“What tree?”
“Why—” And then Mackenzie stopped with sudden realization. His thumb relaxed and the flame went out.
Delbert shrieked at him in sudden terror and anger. “It’s my tree! You’re building a fire with my tree!”
Mackenzie sat in silence.
“When you burn my tree, it’s gone,” yelled Delbert. “Isn’t that right? When you burn my tree, it’s gone?”
Mackenzie nodded.
“But why do you do it?” shrilled Delbert.
“I need heat,” said Mackenzie, doggedly. “If I don’t have heat, my friend will die. It’s the only way I can get heat.”
“But my tree!”