I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories (15 page)

Nellie handed it over.

“How come you were so good pegging those rocks?” asked Smith.

Nellie's eyes gleamed with pride. “Back on Earth I was on a baseball team,” she said. “I was the pitcher.”

Alexander's car was undamaged except for a few dents and a smashed vision plate where Wade's first bolt had caught it, blasting the glass and startling the operator so that he swerved sharply, spinning the treads across a boulder and upsetting it.

The music tree was unharmed, its roots still well moistened in the burlap-wrapped, water-soaked ball of earth. Inside the tractor, curled in a tight ball in the darkest corner, unperturbed by the uproar that had been going on outside, they found Delbert, the two-foot high, roly-poly conductor that resembled nothing more than a poodle dog walking on its hind legs.

The Groombridgians were dead, their crushed chitinous armor proving the steam behind Nellie's delivery.

Smith and Wade were inside the tractor, settle down for the night. Nellie and the Encyclopedia were out in the night, hunting for the gun Alexander had dropped when he fled. Mackenzie, sitting on the ground, Nicodemus pulled snugly about him, leaned back against the car and smoked a last pipe before turning in.

The grass behind the tractor rustled.

“That you, Nellie?” Mackenzie called, softly.

Nellie clumped hesitantly around the corner of the car.

“You ain't sore at me?” she asked.

“No, I'm not sore at you. You can't help the way you are.”

“I didn't find the gun,” said Nellie.

“You knew where Alexander dropped it?”

“Yes,” said Nellie. “It wasn't there.”

Mackenzie frowned in the darkness. “That means Alexander managed to come back and get it. I don't like that. He'll be out gunning for us. He didn't like the company before. He'll really be out for blood after what we did today.”

He looked around. “Where's the Encyclopedia?”

“I sneaked away from him. I wanted to talk to you about him.”

“O.K.,” said Mackenzie. “Fire away.”

“He's been trying to read my brain,” said Nellie.

“I know. He read the rest of ours. Did a good job of it.”

“He's been having trouble,” declared Nellie.

“Trouble reading your brain? I wouldn't doubt it.”

“You don't need to talk as if my brain—” Nellie began, but Mackenzie stopped her.

“I didn't mean it that way, Nellie. Your brain is all right, far as I know. Maybe even better than ours. But the point is that it's different. Ours are natural brains, the orthodox way for things to think and reason and remember. The Encyclopedia knows about those kinds of brains and the minds that go with them. Yours isn't that kind. It's artificial. Part mechanical, part chemical, part electrical, Lord knows what else; I'm not a robot technician. He's never run up against that kind of brain before. It probably has him down. Matter of fact, our civilization probably has him down. If this planet ever had a real civilization, it wasn't a mechanical one. There's no sign of mechanization here. None of the scars machines inflict on planets.”

“I been fooling him,” said Nellie quietly. “He's been trying to read my mind, but I been reading his.”

Mackenzie started forward. “Well, I'll be—” he began. Then he settled back against the car, dead pipe hanging from between his teeth. “Why didn't you ever let us know you could read minds?” he demanded. “I suppose you been sneaking around all this time, reading our minds, making fun of us, laughing behind our backs.”

“Honest, I ain't,” said Nellie. “Cross my heart, I ain't. I didn't even know I could. But, when I felt the Encyclopedia prying around inside my head the way he does, it kind of got my dander up. I almost hauled off and smacked him one. And then I figured maybe I better be more subtle. I figured that if he could pry around in my mind, I could pry around in his. I tried it and it worked.”

“Just like that,” said Mackenzie.

“It wasn't hard,” said Nellie. “It come natural. I seemed to just know how to do it.”

“If the guy that made you knew what he'd let slip through his fingers, he'd cut his throat,” Mackenzie told her.

Nellie sidled closer. “It scares me,” she said.

“What's scaring you now?”

“That Encyclopedia knows too much.”

“Alien stuff,” said Mackenzie. “You should have expected that. Don't go messing around with an alien mentality unless you're ready for some shocks.”

“It ain't that,” said Nellie. “I knew I'd find alien stuff. But he knows other things. Things he shouldn't know.”

“About us?”

“No, about other places. Places other than the Earth and this planet here. Places Earthmen ain't been to yet. The kind of things no Earthman could know by himself or that no Encyclopedia could know by himself, either.”

“Like what?”

“Like knowing mathematical equations that don't sound like anything we know about,” said Nellie. “Nor like he'd know about if he'd stayed here all his life. Equations you couldn't know unless you knew a lot more about space and time than even Earthmen know.

“Philosophy, too. Ideas that make sense in a funny sort of way, but make your head swim when you try to figure out the kind of people that would develop them.”

Mackenzie got out his pouch and refilled his pipe, got it going.

“Nellie, you think maybe this Encyclopedia has been at other minds? Minds of other people who may have come here?”

“Could be,” agreed Nellie. “Maybe a long time ago. He's awful old. Lets on he could be immortal if he wanted to be. Said he wouldn't die until there was nothing more in the universe to know. Said when that time came there'd be nothing more to live for.”

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.