Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to face me. "I forgot," he said. "Thanks for the pants and shirt."

12.

My hunch had been correct. Tupper was a key, or at least one of the keys, to what was happening. And the place to look for clues, crazy as it had sounded, had been the patch of flowers in the garden down below the greenhouse.

For the flower patch had led, not alone to Tupper, but to all the rest of it-to that second self that had helped out Gerald Sherwood, to the phone set-up and the reader service, to the ones who employed Stiffy Grant and probably to the backers of that weird project down in Mississippi. And to how many other projects and endeavours I had no idea.

It was not only now, I knew, that this was happening, but it had been happening for years. For many years, they'd told me, the Flowers had been in contact with many minds of Earth, had been stealing the ideas and the att.i.tudes and knowledge which had existed in those minds, and even in those instances in which the minds were unaware of the prowlers in them, had persisted in the nudging of those minds, as they had nudged the mind of Sherwood.

For many years, they'd said, and I had not thought to ask them for a better estimate. For several centuries, perhaps, and that seemed entirely likely, for when they spoke of the lifetime of their intelligence they spoke of a billion years.

For several hundred years, perhaps, and could those centuries, I wondered, have dated from the Renaissance? Was it possible, I asked myself, that the credit for the flowering of man's culture, that the reason for his advancement might be due, at least in part, to the nudging of the Flowers? Not, of course, that they themselves would have placed their imprint upon the ways of man, but theirs could have been the nagging force which had driven man to much of his achievement.

In the case of Gerald Sherwood, the busybody nudging had resulted in constructive action. Was it too much to think, I wondered, that in many other instances the result had been the same-although perhaps not as p.r.o.nounced as it had been in Sherwood's case? For Sherwood had recognized the otherness that had come to live with him and had learned that it was to his benefit to co-operate. In many other cases there would not have been awareness, but even with no awareness, the drive and urge were there and, in part, there would have been response.

In those hundreds of years, the Flowers must have learned a great deal of humanity and have squirrelled away much human knowledge. For that had been their original purpose, to serve as knowledge storage units. During the last several years man's knowledge had flowed to them in a steady stream, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of readers busily engaged in pouring down their mental gullets the acc.u.mulated literary efforts of all of humankind.

I got off the ground where I was sitting and found that I was stiff and cramped. I stretched and slowly turned and there, on every side, reaching to the near horizons of the ridges that paralleled the river, swept the purple tide.

It could not be right, I told myself. I could not have talked with flowers. For of all the things on Earth, plants were the one thing that could never talk.

And yet this was not the Earth. This was another Earth-only one, they'd said, of many billion earths.

Could one measure, I asked myself, one earth by another? And the answer seemed to be one couldn't. The terrain appeared to be almost identical with the terrain I had known back on my own Earth, and the terrain itself might remain the same for all those multi-billion earths. For what was it they had said-that earth was a basic structure?

But when one considered life and evolution, then all the bets were off. For even if the life of my own Earth and this other Earth on which I stood had started out identically (and they might well have started out identically) there still would be, along the way, millions of little deviations, no one of which perhaps, by itself, would be significant, but the c.u.mulative effects of all these deviations eventually would result in a life and culture that would bear no resemblance to any other Earth.

Tupper had begun to snore-great wet, s...o...b..ring snores, the very kind of snores that one might guess he'd make. He was lying on his back inside the hut, on a bed of leaves, but the hut was so small that his feet stuck out the doorway. They rested on his calloused heels and his spraddled toes pointed at the sky and they had a raw and vulgar look about them.

I picked up the plates and spoons from where they rested on the ground and tucked the bowl in which Tupper had cooked our meal underneath my arm. I found the trail that led down to the water's edge and followed it. Tupper had cooked the food; the least I could do, I told myself; was to wash the dishes.

I squatted by the river's edge and washed the awkward plates and pot, sluiced off the spoons and rubbed them clean between my fingers. I was careful with the plates, for I had the feeling they'd not survive much wetting. On both of them and on the pot there still were the marks of Tupper's great splayed fingers, where he had pressed them into shape.

For ten years he had lived and been happy here, happy with the purple flowers that had become his friends, secure at last from the unkindness and the cruelty of the world into which he was born. The world that had been unkind and cruel because he had been different, but which was capable of unkindness and of cruelty even when there was no difference.

To Tupper, I knew, this must seem a fairyland, for real. Here was the beauty and the simplicity to which his simple soul responded. Here he could live the uncomplicated and undisturbed sort of life for which he'd always yearned, perhaps not knowing that he yearned for it.

I set the plates and pot on the river bank and stooped above the water, scooping it up in my two hands, clasped together, drinking it. It had a smooth, clean taste and despite the heat of the summer sun, it had a touch of coldness.

As I straightened up, I heard the faint sound of crinkling paper and, with a sinking heart, suddenly remembered. I put my hand into my inside jacket pocket and pulled out the long, white envelope. I flipped back the flap and there was the sheaf of money, the fifteen hundred dollars that Sherwood had put on the desk for me.

I squatted there, with the envelope in my hand and I thought what a d.a.m.n fool thing to do. I had meant to hide it somewhere in the house, since I intended leaving on the fishing trip with Alf before the bank had opened, and then, in the rush of events, had forgotten it. How in the world, I wondered, could one forget fifteen hundred dollars!

With a cold sweat breaking out on me, I ran through my mind all the things that could have happened to that envelope. Except for plain fool luck, I'd have lost it a dozen times or more. And yet, aghast as I might be that I should so utterly forget such a handsome sum of cash, as I sat there and looked at it, it seemed to have lost some of its significance.

Perhaps it was, I thought, a condition of Tupper's fairyland that I should not think so highly of it as I had at one time. Although I knew that if it were possible to get back into my world again it would a.s.sume its old importance. But here, for this little moment, a crude piece of pottery made out of river day was an important thing, a hut made out of sticks and a bed made out of leaves. And more important than all the money in the world, the necessity to keep a little campfire burning once the matches were gone.

Although, I told myself, this was not my world. This was Tupper's world, his soft, short-sighted world-and tied in with it was his utter failure to grasp the overwhelming implications of this world of his.

For this was the day about which there had been speculation-although far too little speculation and too little done about it because it seemed so distant and so improbable. This was the day that the human race had come into contact (or perhaps, collision) with an alien race.

All the speculation, of course, had concerned an alien out of s.p.a.ce, an alien on, or from, some other world in s.p.a.ce. But here was the alien, not out of s.p.a.ce, but time or at least from behind a barrier in time.

It made no difference, I told myseIf. Out of either s.p.a.ce or time, the involvement was the same. Man at this moment finally faced his greatest test, and one he could not fail.

I gathered up the pottery and went back up the trail again.

Tupper was still sleeping, but no longer snoring. He had not changed position and his toes still pointed at the sky.

The sun had moved far down the west, but the heat still held and there was no hint of breeze. The purple of the flowers lay unstirring on the hillsides.

I stood and looked at them and they were innocent and pretty and they held no promise and no threat. They were just a field of flowers, like a field of daisies or of daffodils. They were the sort of thing that we had taken for granted all our years on earth. They had no personality and they stood for nothing except a splotch of colour that was pleasing to the eye.

That was the hard thing about all this, I thought-the utter impossibility of thinking of the Flowers as anything but flowers. It was impossible to think of them as beings, as anything that had even a symbol of importance. One could not take them seriously and yet they must be taken seriously, for in their right they were as intelligent, perhaps more intelligent than the human race.

I put the dishes down beside the fire and slowly climbed the hill. My moving feet brushed the flowers aside and I crushed some of them, but there was no chance of walking without crushing some of them.

I'd have to talk to them again, I told myself. As soon as Tupper could get rested, I'd talk to them again. There were a lot of things that must be clarified, much to be explained. If the Flowers and the human race were to live together, there must be understanding. I ran through the conversation I'd had with them, trying to find the gentle threat that I knew was there. But from what I could remember, there had been no threat.

I reached the top of the hill and stopped there, gazing out across the undulating purple swales. At the bottom of the slope, a small creek ran between the hills to reach the river. From where I was I could hear the silver babble of it as it ran across the stones.

Slowly I made my way down the hill toward it and as I moved down the slope I saw the mound that lay across the creek, at the foot of the opposite slope. I had not seen it before and I supposed that my failure to see it was because it had been masked by the slant of light across the land.

There was nothing special about it except that it appeared slightly out of character. Here, in this place of flowing swales, it stood by itself, like a hump-backed monstrosity left over from another time.

I came down to the creek and waded across a shallow place where the water ran no deeper than three inches over a shining gravel bar.

At the water's edge a large block of stone lay half-buried in the sharp rise of the bank. It offered a ready seat and I sat down upon it, looking down the stream. The sun glanced off the water, making diamonds out of every ripple, and the air was sprayed with the silver tinkle of the singing brook.

There was no creek here in the world where Millville lay, although there was a dry run in Jack d.i.c.kson's pasture, through which the swamp that lay back of Stiffy's shack sometimes drained. Perhaps there had been such a creek as this, I thought, in Millville's world before the farmer's plough and resultant erosion had reshaped the terrain.

I sat entranced by the flashing diamonds of the water and the tinkle of the stream. It seemed that a man could sit there forever, warm in the last rays of the sun and guarded by the hills.

I had put my hands on either side of me and had been idly rubbing them back and forth across the surface of the stone on which I sat. My hands must have told me almost instantly that there was something strange about the surface, but I was so engrossed with the sensations of sun and water that it took some minutes before the strangeness broke its way into my consciousness.

When it did, I still remained sitting there, still rubbing the surface of the stone with the tips of my fingers, but not looking at it, making sure that I had not been wrong, that the stone had the feel of artificial shaping.

When I got up and examined the block, there was no doubt of it. The stone had been squared into a block and there were places where the chisel marks could still be seen upon it. Around one corner of it still clung a brittle substance that could be nothing else than some sort of mortar in which the block had once been set.

I straightened up from my examination and stepped away, back into the stream, with the water tugging at my ankles.

Not a simple boulder, but a block of stone! A block of stone bearing chisel marks and with a bit of mortar still sticking to one edge.

The Flowers, then, were not the only ones upon this planet. There were others-or there had been others. Creatures that knew the use of stone and had the tools to chip the stone into convenient form and size.

My eyes travelled from the block of stone up the mound that stood at the water's edge, and there were other blocks of stone protruding from its face. Standing frozen, with the glint of water and the silver song forgotten, I traced out the blocks and could see that once upon a time they had formed a wall.

This mound, then, was no vagary of nature. It was the evidence of a work that at one time had been erected by beings that knew the use of tools.

I left the stream and clambered up the mound. None of the stones was large, none was ornamented; there were just the chisel marks and here and there the bits of mortar that had lain between the blocks. Perhaps, a building had stood here at one time. Or it may have been a wall. Or a monument.

I started down the mound, choosing a path a short way downstream from where I had crossed the creek, working my way along slowly and carefully, for the slope was steep, using my hands as brakes to keep myself from sliding or from fal1ing.

And it was then, hugged close against the slope, that I found the piece of bone. It had weathered out of the ground, perhaps not too long ago, and it lay hidden there among the purple flowers. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, I probably would have missed it. I could not see it well at first, just the dull whiteness of it lying on the ground. I had slid past it before I saw it and crawled back to pick it up.

The surface of it powdered slightly at the pressure of my fingers, but it did not break. It was slightly curved and white, a ghostly, chalky white. Turning it over in my hand, I made out that it was a rib bone and the shape and size of it was such that it could be human, although my knowledge was too slight to be absolutely sure. If it were really humanoid, I told myself, then it meant that at one time a thing like man had lived here. And could it mean that something very similar to the human race still resided here?

A planet full of flowers with nothing living on it except the purple flowers, and more lately Tupper Tyler. That was what I'd thought when I had seen the flowers spreading to the far horizons, but it had been supposition only. It was a conclusion I had jumped to without too much evidence. Although it was in part supported by the seeming fact that nothing else existed in this particular place-no birds, no insects or animals, not a thing at all, except perhaps some bacteria and viruses and even these, I thought, might be essential to the well-being of the Flowers.

Although the outer surface of the bone had chalked off when I picked it up, it seemed sound in structure. Not too long ago, I knew, it had been a part of a living thing. Its age probably would depend to a large extent upon the composition and the moistness of the soil and probably many other factors. It was a problem for an expert and I was no expert.

Now I saw something else, a little spot of whiteness just to the right of me. It could have been a white stone lying on the ground, but even as I looked at it I didn't think it was. It had that same chalky whiteness of the rib I had picked up.

I moved over to it and as I bent above it I could see it was no stone. I let the rib drop from my fingers and began to dig.

The soil was loose and sandy and although I had no tools, my fingers served the purpose.

As I dug, the bone began to reveal its shape and in a moment I knew it was a skull-and only a little later that it was a human skull.

I dug it loose and lifted it and while I might have failed to identify the rib, there was no mistaking this.

I hunkered on the slope and felt pity well inside of me, pity for this creature that once had lived and died-and a growing fear, as well.

For by the evidence of the skull I held within my hands, I knew for a certainty that this was not the home world of the Flowers. This was-this must be a world that they had conquered, or at least had taken over. They might, indeed, I thought, be very far in time from that old home where another race (by their description of it, a non-human race) had trained them to intelligence.

How far back, I wondered, lay the homeland of the Flowers? How many conquered earths lay between this world and the one where they had risen? How many other earths lay empty, swept clean of any life that might compete with the Flowers?

And that other race, the race that had raised and elevated them above their vegetable existence where was that old race today?

I put the skull back into the hole from which I'd taken it. Carefully, I brushed back the sand and dirt until it was covered once again, this time entirely covered, with no part of it showing. I would have liked to take it back to camp with me so I could have a better look at it. But I knew I couldn't, for Tupper must not know what I had found. His mind was an open book to his friends the Flowers, and I was sure mine wasn't, for they had had to use the telephone to get in touch with me. So long as I told Tupper nothing, the Flowers would never know that I had found the skull. There was the possibility, of course, that they already knew, that they had the sense of sight, or perhaps some other sense that was as good as sight. But I doubted that they had; there was so far no evidence they had. The best bet was that they were mental symbionts, that they had no awareness beyond the awareness they shared with minds in other kinds of life.

I worked my way around and down the mound and along the way I found other blocks of stone. It was becoming evident to me that at some other time a building had stood upon this site. A city, I wondered, or a town? Although whatever form it might have taken, it had been a dwelling place.

I reached the creek at the far end of the mound, where it ran close against the cutbank it had chewed out of the mound, and started wading back to the place where I had crossed.

The sun had set and with it had gone the diamond sparkle of the water. The creek ran dark and tawny in the shadow of the first twilight.

Teeth grinned at me out of the blackness of the bank that rose above the stream, and I stopped dead, staring at that row of snaggled teeth and the whiteness of the bone that arched above them. The water, tugging at my ankles, growled a little at me and I shivered in the chill that swept down from the darkening hills.

For, staring at that second skull, grinning at me out of the darkness of the soil that stood poised above the water, I knew that the human race faced the greatest danger it had ever known. Except for man himself, there had been, up to this moment, no threat against the continuity of humanity. But here, finally, that threat lay before my eyes.

13.

I sighted the small glowing of the fire before I reached the camp. When I stumbled down the hillside, I could see that Tupper had finished with his nap and was cooking supper.

"Out for a walk?" he asked.

"Just a look around," I said. "There isn't much to see."

"The Flowers is all," said Tupper.

He wiped his chin and counted the fingers on one hand, then counted them again to be sure he'd made no mistake.

"Tupper?"

"What is it, Brad?"

"Is it all like this? All over this Earth, I mean? Nothing but the Flowers?"

"There are others come sometimes."

"Others?"

"From other worlds," he said. "But they go away."

"What kind of others?"

"Fun people. Looking for some fun. " "What kind of fun?"

"I don't know," he said. "Just fun, is all."

He was surly and evasive.

"But other than that," I said, "there's nothing but the Flowers?"

"That's all," he said.

"But you haven't seen it all."

"They tell me," Tupper said. "And they wouldn't lie. They aren't like people back in Millville. They don't need to lie."

He used two sticks to move the earthen pot off the hot part of the fire.

"Tomatoes," he said. "I hope you like tomatoes."

I nodded that I did and he squatted down beside the fire to watch the supper better.