I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories (16 page)

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.

“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.