"The Metamorphizer?"

He nodded.

"You want the chemical formula?"

"Wouldnt do me or my readers the least bit of good and you wouldnt give it to me if I asked. Why should you? No, enlighten me in English."

"It is a compound on the order of colchicine, acting through the somaplasm of the plant. It is apparently effective only on the family Gramineae, producing a const.i.tutional metabolic change. I have no means of knowing as yet whether this change is transmissible through seed to offspring--"

"Hay, wait a minute. 'Producing a const.i.tutional metabolic change.' How do you spell metabolic--never mind, the proofreaders'll catch it. What const.i.tutional change?"

"Are you a botanist, young man?" Gootes shook his head. "An agrostologist? Even an agronomist? Then you can't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about."

"Maybe not," retorted Gootes, "but one of my readers might. Just give me a rough idea."

"Plants absorb certain minerals in suspension. That is, they absorb some and reject others. The Metamorphizer seems to give them the ability to break down even the most stable compound, select what they need, and also fix the inert nitrogen of the air to nourish themselves."

"'Themselves,'" repeated Gootes, writing rapidly. "O K. If I get you--which is doubtful--so far it sounds just like a good new fertilizer."

"Really? I tried to make myself clear."

"Now don't get sore, Professor. Just give out on what made the gra.s.s go wild."

"I can only hazard a guess. As I told Weener, if you create a capacity, you engender an appet.i.te. I imagine that patch of _Cynodon dactylon_ just couldnt stop absorbing once it had been inoculated."

"Aha. Like giving a man a taste for bourbon."

"If it pleases you to put it that way."

"O K. O K. Now let's have an idea how this growth can be stopped.

Theoretical, you know."

"As far as I know," said Miss Francis, "it cannot be stopped."

TWO

_Consequences of a Discovery_

_11._ "But it's got to be stopped," exclaimed Gootes.

Miss Francis turned silently back to her flowerpot as though she'd forgotten us. Gootes coursed the kitchenfloor like a puzzled yet anxious hound. "d.a.m.n it, it's got to be stopped." He halfway extracted his pack of cards, then hastily withdrew his hand as though guarding the moment's gravity.

"Otherwise ... why, otherwise itll swallow the house." He decided on the cards afterall and balanced four of them edgewise on the back of his hand. Miss Francis immediately abandoned the flowerpot to stare childishly at the feat. "In fact, if what you say is true, it will literally swallow up the house. Digest it. Convert it into devilgra.s.s."

"_Cynodon dactylon._ What I say is true. How much elementary physics is involved in that trick?"

"But that's terrible," protested Gootes. He regarded a bowl of algae as if about to make it disappear. Mentally I agreed; one of the greatest potential moneymakers of the age lost and valueless.

"Yes," she agreed, "it is terrible. Terrible as the starvation in a hive when the apiarist takes out the winter honey; terrible as the daily business in an abattoir; terrible as the appet.i.te of grown fish at sp.a.w.ning time."

"Poo. Fate. Kismet. Nature."

"Ah; you are unconcerned with catastrophes which don't affect man."

"Local man," subst.i.tuted Gootes. "Los Angeles man. _Pithecanthropus moviensis._ Stiffs in Constantinople are strictly AP stuff."

"It seems to me," I broke in, "that you are both a.s.suming too much. I don't know of anything that calls for the word catastrophe. I'm sure I'm sorry if the d.i.n.kmans' house is swallowed up as Gootes suggests, but it hasnt been and I'm sure the possibility is exaggerated. The authorities will do something or the gra.s.s will stop growing. I don't see any point in looking at the blackest side of things."

Gootes opened his mouth in pretended astonishment. "Wal, I swan. Boy's a philosopher."

"You are not particularly concerned, Weener?"

"I don't know any reason why I should be," I retorted. "I sold your product in good faith and I am not responsible--"

"Oh, blind, blind. Do you imagine one man can suffer and you not suffer?

Is your name Simeon Stylites? Do you think for an instant what happens to any man doesnt happen to everyman? Are you not your brother's keeper?" She twisted her hands together. "Not responsible! Why, you are responsible for every brutality, execution, meanness and calamity in the world today!"

I had often heard that the borderline between profundity and insanity was thin and inexact and it was now clear on which side she stood. I looked at Gootes to see how he was taking her hysterical outburst, but he had found a batch of empty testtubes which he was building into a perilously swaying structure.

"Of course, of course," I agreed soothingly, backing away. "Youre quite right."

She walked the floor as if her awkward body were a burden. "Is the instant response to an obvious truth--plat.i.tude even--always a diagnosis of lunacy? I state a thought so old no one knows who first expressed it and a hearer feels bound to choose between offense to himself and contempt for the speaker. Believe me, Weener, I was offering no exclusive indictment: I too am guilty--infinitely culpable. Even if I had devoted my life to pure science--perhaps even more certainly then--patterning myself on a medieval monastic, faithful to vows of poverty and singleness of purpose; even if I had not, for an apparently laudable end, betrayed my efforts to a base greed; even if I had never picked for a moment's use such an unworthy--do not be insulted again, Weener, unworthiness is a fact, insofar as there are any facts at all--such an unworthy tool as yourself; even if I had never compounded the Metamorphizer; even if I had been a biologist or an astronomer--even then I should be guilty of ruining the d.i.n.kmans and making them homeless, just as you are guilty and the reporter here is guilty and the garbageman is guilty and the pastor in his pulpit is guilty."

"Guilty," exclaimed Gootes suddenly, "guilty! What kind of a lousy newspaperman am I? Worrying about guilt and solutions in the face of impending calamity instead of serving it redhot to a palpitating public.

Guilty--h.e.l.l, I ought to be fired. Or anyway shot. Where's the phone?"

"I manage a minimum of privacy in spite of inquiring reporters and unemployed canva.s.sers. I have no telephone."

"Hokay. Hole everythings. I return immediate."

I followed him for I had no desire to be left alone with someone who might prove dangerous. But his long legs took him quickly out of sight before I could catch him, even by running, and so I fell into a more sedate pace. All Miss Francis' metaphysical talk was beyond me, but what little I could make of it was pure nonsense. Guilty. Why, I had never done anything illegal in my life, unless taking a gla.s.s of beer in dry territory be so accounted. All this talk about guilt suggested some sort of inverted delusions of persecution. How sad it was the eccentricity of genius so often turned its possessors into cranks. I was thankful to be of mere normal intelligence.

_12._ But I wasted no more thought on her, putting the whole episode of the Metamorphizer behind me, for I now had some liquid capital. It was true it didnt amount to much, but it existed, crinkled in my pocket, and I was sure with my experience and native ability I could turn the _Daily Intelligencer_'s forty dollars into a much larger sum.

But a resolve to forget the Metamorphizer didnt enable me to escape Mrs d.i.n.kman's lawn. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard, formulating, rejecting and reshaping plans for my future, I pa.s.sed a radioshop and from a loudspeaker hung over the door with the evident purpose of inducing suggestible pedestrians to rush in and purchase sets, the latest report of the devilgra.s.s's advance was blared out at me.

"... Station KPAR, The Voice of Edendale, reaching you from a portable transmitter located in the street in front of what was formerly the residence of Mr and Mrs d.i.n.kman. I guess youve all heard the story of how their lawn was allegedly sprinkled with some chemical which made the gra.s.s run wild. I don't know anything about that, but I want to tell you this gra.s.s is certainly running wild. It must be fifteen or sixteen feet high--think of that, folks--nearly as high as three men standing on each other's shoulders. It's covered the roof halfway to the peak and it's choking the windows and doorways of the houses on either side. It's all over the sidewalk--looks like an enormous green woolly rug--no, that's not quite right--anyway, it's all over the sidewalk and it would be right out here in the street where I'm talking to you from if the firedepartment wasnt on the job constantly chopping off the creeping ends as they come over the curb. I want to tell you, folks, it's a frightening sight to see gra.s.s--the same kind of gra.s.s growing in your backyard or mine--magnified or maybe I mean multiplied a hundred times--or maybe more--and coming at you as if it was an enemy--only the cold steel of the fireman's ax saving you from it.

"While we're waiting for some action, folks--well, not exactly that--the gra.s.s is giving us plenty of action all right--I'll try to bring you some impressions of the people in the street. Literally in the street, because the sidewalk is covered with gra.s.s. Pardon me, sir--would you like to say a few words to the unseen audience of Station KPAR? Speak right into the microphone, sir. Let's have your name first. Don't be bashful. Haha. Gentleman doesnt care to give his name. Well, that's all right, quite all right. Just what do you think of this phenomenon? How does it impress you? Are you disturbed by the sight of this riot of vegetation? Right into the microphone...."

"Uh ... h.e.l.lo ... well, I guess I havent ... uh anything much to say ...

pretty color ... bad stuff, I guess. Gladsnotgrowing myyard...."