The Last Dream

  “Yes,” her voice came calmly through the darkness. She had not moved.

  “Shut her up, too!” screeched the old voice. “How can we think with that gabbling?”

  “What sin was it that—” Barin raised himself suddenly on one elbow. “What’s that smell?”

  “It will be fall in a few months,” said Mikkelson’s voice, “and with the first snow, the roads—”

  “It’s goats!” screamed Barin suddenly, scrabbling to his feet. “It’s a goat pen in here! You’re not going to lock me up with goats—” He made a plunge into darkness, but the arms were around him again.

  “There’s no goats!” squawked the old voice.

  “You can’t fool me!” cried Barin, plunging and biting. “I won’t be locked up to rot in a pen with goats. I tell you I can smell them!”

  “He smells himself, now,” said the voice of Rosach in Barin’s ear. “Help me get the rope around him and tie him up.”

  Barin felt the harsh, thick fiber winding around him, but it could hardly hold him. He twisted and plunged in the darkness, butting at anything he felt close to him and bleating his terror, while his churning feet pounded and galloped to nowhere on the hard packed dirt of the ground, like hooves.

  On Earth, “men and plants increase, cheered and checked by the self-same sky.” Elsewhere they might grow even closer together.

  The Three

  When the sun went down the klantheid stirred, unfolding its “petals” until they spilled over the top of the tank in a tumbled mass of green and gold glory, and stretching its slim, fibrous body in the nutrient fluid in the tank. It had slept for a while, but not well, and it was impatient for the woman to come and feed it.

  It extended the filaments at the base of its petals, searching the house for her presence. For the filaments were the Klantheid’s perceptive organs. With them it saw, tasted, heard, felt and smelled— not as humans do, but in a deeper, more intimate way for which the human language has no words. With them it could even talk, by complex vibrations of the filament tips together—in a sort of husky thrilling whisper. And it talked with the woman often; but with the man only when it had to.

  The Klantheids were the dominant life form of Pelao, a small Arcturian planet completely devoid of anything but plant life—a garden planet, a meadow-world and a botanist’s dream.

  To protect Pelao Central Headquarters, the supreme authority of interstellar and interplanetary human civilization had early set it aside as a government preserve. It was reserved for the botanists and for the research into new fields of organic medicine that grew out of its wealth of plant life and fertile soil. The Klantheids, in particular, were awarded the highest and most strict protection, for before the perambulating, sometimes vicious animal that was man they were helpless. But in late years, the regulations had been relaxed enough to allow the lonely outposts of gardeners and watchers to “fraternize”—that is, take an occasional Klantheid into a nutrient tank in their dwelling quarters and keep it there as a companion, friend or pet.

  This, then, was one of those outposts. The man was a sort of gardener-watchman, a flower warden, responsible for several thousand square miles of the garden planet, and gone most of the time on the constant patrol that his job required during the ten-year term of his office. The woman was his wife, brought in to share his term of office with him by special permission. And the house was their home.

  All this the Klantheid knew—not as humans know it, but in an odd, personal way. For the Klantheid had senses beyond humans’ and the chiefest of these was the ability to respond to emotion.

  This, indeed, was the source of its delicateness. There were other plants men had known, on Earth as well as on other planets, who could be hurt and die from slight changes of temperature, who died in the sun, or the sudden damp, or perished at the touch of a finger. The Klantheid was not like these. In its own way it was hardy—able if the need arose to go without food or fluid for a long time, and even to drag itself painfully by great effort from one place to another. Ironically, it was extremely sensitive to smoke; and for that reason cigarettes were verboten around it. But generally speaking it was a sturdy life-form, with the single exception of emotion.

  It was for this reason that it had not slept well— not this afternoon, nor many afternoons past. This was because the woman was unhappy, with a deep and buried sorrow, and the Klantheid suffered at the touch of her sorrow and did not know what to do about it. In its own way, the Klantheid was desperate, for sorrow, like hate and anger, could kill it, where it loved—and the Klantheid loved the woman, even as it feared and disliked—dislike was the strongest emotion it could summon—the man.

  Slowly, these two conflicting emotions were tearing the Klantheid apart. Deeply and hurtingly, as it stirred in its tank and watched the blood-shot purple of the sunset on Pelao through the great curving window that backed its tank, it wished that its basic nature was different, that it did not have to love so deeply. It could ask to leave, and the law would compel them, the man and woman, to take it out into the open meadows again. But it could not bring itself to leave the woman. And it could not change its feelings toward the man. And that last was the hardest thing of all, for the Klantheid was not built to dislike, or indeed to do anything but love. Love was the deep-rooted instinct of its nature, the inner strength and meaning of its existence. Deeply, passionately, it longed to love, not merely the man and the woman, but all things, all humans, all life forms, all planets, all suns, all universes, all time and space. It knew, as humans will never know, the great thrilling sensation of being for one fleeting moment in touch, en rapport, with all life within its perceptive circle— that wonderful, ineffable sense of belonging that comes only from a great wave of love and appreciation of the beauty of all things washing out in all directions into the universe and touching response wherever it reaches. The Klantheid had had a few such moments in its life—moments when it felt in tune with all nature, and as far as that part of its existence went, it was satisfied, and ready to meet the rest of what its short dozen years of life might hand it. But it could no more ignore the sorrow around it now, than a human can ignore the killing cold of arctic snows.

  Searching, searching, its filaments located the aura of the woman coming toward it. Her heart was breaking and the filaments of the Klantheid curled in agony as it sensed the emotion. In the surge of that reaction it lost what little appetite the last few weeks of trouble had left it. It waved away in protest, with its broad leaves of green and gold, the vitamins and minerals the woman was about to add to the fluid in which it rested.

  “You are worried,” it wept to her in the soft sussurance of its whispering filaments. “You are afraid, and you hurt. Let me sing to you.”

  “No,” answered the woman, halfway between apathy and sad laughter. “My trouble’s beyond singing. You know that.”

  “Let me tell you a story, then,” begged the Klantheid. “A story of long meadows and soft skies and the bud hanging in the wind. A story of peace and contentment.”

  “No story,” said the woman. She laughed a little harshly. “You don’t happen to know of any rare old poisons growing wild around here, do you?”

  The Klantheid’s soft soul quivered in shock away from the emotion behind her words.

  “Are you broken, broken, then?” it whispered weepingly, half to itself. “Are you all beautiful gone ugly wrong? Why? Why?”

  “You’d know why, if somebody hated you and you learned to hate back,” said the woman—but then her mood changed. She became contrite. “I’m sorry, pretty,” she said tenderly. “Can’t you just shut me out when I get to feeling like this, so I won’t bother you?”

  “Yes,” whispered the Klantheid.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  The Klantheid shivered.

  “Shutting out is like dying,” it said. “Wrong. No. It is not possible for long. I cannot.”

  The woman shrugged helplessly. A little silence fell between them, plain Earth-woma
n and beautiful alien plant.

  “He’s coming back today,” the woman said finally. “His tour is up for this month. He just called me on the visiphone.”

  The Klantheid shivered and said nothing…

  The man came, at midnight. In the brilliant light of Pelao’s twin moons, his tiny flitter sank like a dying leaf to the green lawn surrounding the house; and he stepped out. He came in with instruments slung over his shoulder, scanner and official recording tape, and slung them on the coffee table in the living room, where they clattered and bounced.

  “Any news?” he asked the woman.

  She was standing by the great curved window and the tank of the Klantheid. She did not turn when he entered, nor when he spoke.

  “No,” she said.

  “The bastards!” he said bitterly. The solid shock of his anger slapped at the Klantheid, making it cower, while its filaments whispered almost noiselessly in pain. “Do they want me to rot here?”

  He glared at the interstel—the wireless communicator that connected with the huge sending station at the planet’s pole—the sending station that was his only link with the head office on Arcturus 1, the Headquarters Planet of that Solar System. Two months before he’d applied for an emergency transfer from the service for the reason that he and his wife were incompatible and the psychological situation resultant produced inefficient management of his post. For two months no reply had come.

  He turned to his wife.

  “Why don’t you message them?” he asked. “Maybe they’ll listen to you.”

  “What would I say?” she queried wearily.

  “Tell them—” he checked himself, baffled. “Hell, tell them anything. Tell them you’re sick. Tell them you’re going to have a baby.”

  “And when they check?”

  The man cursed, stalked across the room to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. He flung himself into a low chair, broodingly.

  “It’s your fault,” he muttered darkly, after a little while. “You ought to do something.”

  “My fault!”

  The woman’s voice was harsh with pain. In its tank the Klantheid whimpered, unnoticed.

  “You were the one who was going to make this hell-hole a home—you said,” he answered.

  “What could I do?” she cried, almost wildly. “What was there to do with you gone twenty days out of thirty? What did you expect?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders exasperatedly. He drank.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Forget it.”

  But the woman was wound up now.

  “Forget it!” she said, furiously, turning on him. “Do you think I don’t know what’s wrong with you? Do you think I’ve sat here day after day for the past year and watched you come home month after month just as you are now, without knowing what your trouble is? You were never built to have a home and stay in it. Your life is twenty days steady on the job and then a quick run in the flitter to Pole City and an eight day binge. That’s all you wanted before you met me on furlough back on Arcturus 1 and that’s all you want now— isn’t it?”

  He did not answer, sitting frowning at his drink.

  “I’m in your way here,” she said. “You daren’t run off to Pole City now that Headquarters knows you’re supposed to be married. They’d declare you psychologically unfit and you’d never get another job with the Botany Service. I’m in your way, aren’t I? Aren’t I?”

  He looked up, from his drink to her.

  “Yes,” he said, slowly, with bitter hatred, “you’re in my way. You’re breaking me. You’re killing me and I’m sick of the very sight of you. Now go hide yourself someplace and leave me alone, damn you!”

  The wave of cruel emotion slammed out from him, washing through the room, smothering, washing the Klantheid down through agony into unconsciousness.

  When the bruised tenderness of its psyche returned to awareness, the night was far gone, and the twin moons hung low in the sky. The woman had disappeared and the lights were out. In the low chair the man slept with drunken heaviness.

  The Klantheid came back to life with a plan, a plan born of the pain it had just endured, and therefore, for it, a plan so monstrous and horrible as to be almost unbelievable. In its own way, the Klantheid had been driven somewhat insane. The man must be gotten rid of—at least for a long enough while for the woman to be healed and mended. It was impossible for the Klantheid to bring itself to hurt or damage another living creature—but there was another way.

  Slowly, awkwardly, in the late moonlight, it began to drag itself over the side of the tank. It teetered for a moment on the edge and fell to the floor. There it rested for a second, then began slowly to pull itself toward the door leading to the lawn outside.

  It moved by coiling and uncoiling its broad petals, the weak sucker ends of its roots trailing behind it over the polished floor. Gradually it struggled to the door whose automatic mechanism swung it open before the plant. It dropped one short step down from the sill and fell on the lawn.

  Now progress was easier, for the grass of the lawn responded to the controlling will of the intelligent plant, stiffening up beneath it and lying down before it so that it half-rolled, half-slid, looking like some weird skater as it progressed away from the house it lived.

  It approached the flitter.

  Above, the entrance port of the flitter stood open in the moonlight. The Klantheid reached up with half its broad petals, hooked them over the sill of the port and, with what for it was a tremendous effort, lifted its own weight up and into the flitter. The effort involved was roughly analagous to that of a man chinning himself by two fingers—the little fingers of both hands. It tumbled at last onto the floor of the flitter, and while resting for a moment before proceeding any further, reviewed in its own mind what it must do.

  From past experience it knew what the sunrise of the following day would bring. The woman would remain shut in her room. The man, barred from taking off for Pole City and sick with a hangover, would load the flitter with enough liquor to last him for a week and take off to visit one of the other, bachelor, Flower Wardens somewhere else on the planet. To get to another like himself would require an air trip of over a thousand miles, above the park-like planet where landmarks were few and every meadow looked like the next one.

  The man would take off, set the automatic pilot and go back to his drinking, leaving to the wonderful mechanism of the airship that was the flitter, the job of bringing him safely to earth at his destination. If the automatic pilot failed him—

  The Klantheid inched itself forward. It had been in the flitter only once; but that once had been when the man and woman had first picked it up to bring it to their house, on the occasion of the woman’s arrival—and the man had explained the workings of the flitter to the woman as they flew. At the time the words had been meaningless, for the Klantheid had neither mechanical aptitude nor interest. But to a nature sensitive to the slightest whisper of a breeze or the nodding of a blossom, perfect recall was easy. Now it remembered and studied the memory.

  The man had said that the automatic pilot was connected to the controls by a single jack plug, and had pointed it out beneath the instrument panel.

  The Klantheid inched painfully forward, feeling, tasting, the cold metal all around it, vaguely sickened by it, as a human might be sickened by the taste of the metal of a fork from which the silver plating has been worn away. Memory led it to the jack plug. It closed its petals about it and pulled.

  The jack did not stir. It was firmly socketed.

  Crying soundlessly inside itself, the Klantheid wrapped its petals more tightly around the plug, pushed with its tiny, weak roots against the resilient matting of the flitter floor and strained. The roots buckled and one petal tore, sending a spasm of pain through the plant body, but it held on, and suddenly, abruptly, the jack gave, and came sliding out.

  The Klantheid collapsed, quivering, on the flitter floor.

  For several minutes it lay there, gradually
regaining its strength, its hopes brightening. The job was done and there was no harm to it. The man, with a hangover, and perhaps still drunk, would never think of checking the plug. He would set the course and leave the job of guiding the flitter to the automatic pilot. He would drink heavily and sleep again—and wake to find himself lost over the endless meadows and among the countless flowers. No harm would come to him—what harm could on a planet where there was nothing inimical—where the weather was always kind, and where food and drink could be had for the stretching out of a hand by those, who like the man, knew the flora of Pelao.

  No harm would be done to the man, but he would be kept away from the station for a long time and in that time—so the Klantheid expressed it to itself—the woman should shed the blighted petal of her emotion toward him and grow a new one. Weary, but relieved, the Klantheid began its arduous trip back to its tank…

  Something had gone dreadfully wrong.

  The Klantheid cowered in its tank, trying to understand. Desperately, it went back in its mind, reviewing over and over again the incomprehensible train of actions that had brought tragedy upon the station. Futilely, its alien mind searched for the human thought processes and could not find them—and could not understand.

  The day had begun as the Klantheid expected. The man had awakened with his hangover and stumbled around the station collecting his bottles and making ready for his trip. The woman had remained in her room—awake, for the Klantheid sensed her, but pretending sleep so that there would be no more cause for meeting the man before he left. The morning was half gone before the man finally had his gear, and was ready to climb into the flitter.

  He came out of the station with the last load, staggering. He had drunk his way up out of his hangover and was continuing now to drink himself on down into unconsciousness again. On his final trip out through the living room, he turned, set down his armload of supplies, and, moving swiftly, but somewhat awkwardly, strode over and rapped on the closed door of the woman’s room.