lp. I run the meat department at the Red Owl
store and without no customers coming into town, I don't know what will
happen. If we can't get any out-of-town trade, we'll have to close our
doors. We can sell to the people here in town, of course, but there ain't
enough trade in town to make it worth our while and in a little while the
people here in town won't have any money to pay for the things they buy, and
our business isn't set up so we can operate on credit. We can get meat, of
course. We've got that all worked out, but we can't go on selling it and...'
     'Now, just a minute,' said the senator. 'Let's take this a little slow.
Let's not go so fast. You have problems and I know you have them and I aim
to do all I can...'
     'Senator,' interrupted a man with a big, bull voice, 'there are others
of us have problems that are worse than George's. Take myself, for example.
I work out of town and I depend on my pay cheque, every week, to buy food
for the kids, to keep them in shoes and to pay the other bills. And now I
can't get to work and there won't be any cheque. I'm not the only one. There
are a lot of others like me. It isn't like we had some money laid by to take
care of emergencies. I tell you, Senator, there isn't hardly anyone in town
got anything laid by. We all are...'
     'Hold on,' pleaded the senator. 'Let me get a word in edgewise. Give me
a little time. The people in Washington know what is going on. They know
what you folks are facing out here. They'll do what they can to help.
There'll be a relief bill in the Congress to help out you folks and I, for
one, will work unceasingly to see that it is passed without undue delay. And
that isn't all. There are two or three papers in the east and some
television stations that have started a drive for funds to be turned over to
this village. And that's just a start. There will be a lot of. . .'
     'Hell, Senator,' yelled a man with a scratchy voice, 'that isn't what
we want. We don't want relief. We don't ask for charity. We just want to be
able to get back to our jobs.'
     The senator was flabbergasted, 'You mean you want us to get rid of the
barrier?'
     'Look, Senator,' said the man with the bull-like voice, 'for years the
government has been spending billions to send a man up to the moon. With all
them scientists you got, you can spend some time and money to get us out of
here. We been paying taxes for a long time now, without getting anything...'
     'But that,' said the senator, 'will take a little time. We'll have to
find out what this barrier is and then we'll have to figure out what can be
done with it. And I tell you, frankly, we aren't going to be able to do that
overnight.'
     Norma Shepard, who worked as receptionist for Doc Fabian, wriggled
through the press of people until she faced the Senator.
     'But something has to be done,' she said. 'Has to be done, do you
understand? Someone has to find a way. There are people in this town who
should be in a hospital and we can't get them there. Some of them will die
if we can't get them there. We have one doctor in this town and he's no
longer young. He's been a good doctor for a long, long time, but he hasn't
got the skill or the equipment to take care of the people who are terribly
sick. He never has had, he never pretended that he had . . .'
     'My dear,' said the senator, consolingly. 'I recognize your concern and
I sympathize with it, and you may rest assured...'
     It was apparent that my interview with the men from Washington had come
to an end. I walked slowly down the road, not actually down the road, but
along the edge of it, walking in the harrowed ground out of which, already,
thin points of green were beginning to protrude. The seeds which had been
sown in that alien whirlwind had in that short time germinated and were
pushing toward the light.
     I wondered bitterly, as I walked along, what kind of crops they'd bear.
     And A wondered, too, how angry Nancy might be at me for my fight with
Hiram Martin. I had caught that one look on her face and then she'd turned
her back and gone up the walk.
     And she had not been with Sherwood when he had come charging down the
walk to announce that Gibbs had phoned.
     For that short moment in the kitchen, when I had felt her body pressing
close to mine, she had been once again the sweetheart out of time - the girl
who had walked hand in hand with me, who had laughed her throaty laugh and
been an unquestioned part of me, as I had been of her.
     Nancy, I almost cried aloud, Nancy, please let it be the same. But
maybe it could never be the same, I told myself. Maybe it was Millville - a
village that had come between us for she had grown away from Millville in
the years she'd been away, and I, remaining here, had grown more deeply into
it.
     You could not dig back, I thought, through the dust of years, through
the memories and the happenings and the changes in yourself- in both
yourselves - to rescue out of time another day and hour. And even if you
found it, you could not dust it clean, you could never make it shine as you
remembered it. For perhaps it never had been quite the shining thing that
you remembered, perhaps you had burnished it in your longing and your
loneliness.
     And perhaps it was only once in every lifetime (and perhaps not in
every lifetime) that a shining moment came. Perhaps there was a rule that it
could never come again.
     'Brad,' a voice said.
     I had been walking, not looking where I went, staring at the ground.
Now, at the sound of the voice, I jerked up my head, and saw that I had
reached the tangle of parked cars. Leaning against one of them was Bill
Donovan.
     'Hi there, Bill,' I said. 'You should be up there with the rest of
them.'
     He made a gesture of disgust. 'We need help,' he said. 'Sure we do. All
the help we can get. But it wouldn't hurt to wait a while before you ran
squealing for it. You can't cave in the first tune you are hit. You have to
hang onto at least a shred or two of your self-respect.'
     I nodded, not quite agreeing with him. 'They're scared,' I said.
     'Yes,' he said, 'but there isn't any call for them to act like a bunch
of bleating sheep.'
     'How about the kids?' I asked.
     'Safe and sound,' he told me. 'Jake got to them just before the barrier
moved. Took them out of there. Jake had to chop down the door to reach them
and Myrt carried on all the time he was chopping it. You never heard so much
uproar in your life about a God damn door.'
     'And Mrs Donovan?'
     'Oh, Liz - she's all right. Cries for the kids and wonders what's so
become of us. But the kids are safe and that's all that counts.'
     He patted the metal of the car with the flat of his hand. 'We'll work
it out,' he said. 'It may take a little time, but there isn't anything that
men can't do if they set their minds to it. Like as not they'll have a
thousand of them scientists working on this thing and, like I say, it may
take a while, but they'll get her figured out.'
     'Yes,' I said, 'I suppose they will.'
     If some muddle-headed general didn't push the panic button first. If,
instead of trying to solve the problem, we didn't try to smash it.
     'What's the matter, Brad?'
     'Not a thing,' I said.
     'You got your worries, too, I guess,' he said. 'What you did to Hiram,
he had it coming to him for a long time now. Was that telephone he
threw...?'
     'Yes,' I said. 'It was one of the telephones.'
     'Heard you, went to some other world or something. How do you manage to
get into another world? It sounds screwy to me, but that's what everyone is
saying.'
     A couple of yelling kids came running through the cars and went pelting
up the road toward where the crowd was still arguing with the senator.
     'Kids are having a great time,' said Donovan. 'Most excitement they've
ever had. Better than a circus.'
     Some more kids went past, whooping as they ran. 'Say,' asked Donovan,
'do you think something might have happened?'
     The first two kids had reached the crowd and were tugging at people's
arms and shouting something at them.
     'Looks like it,' I said.
     A few of the crowd started back down the road, walking to start with,
then breaking into a trot, heading back for town.
     As they came close, Donovan darted out to intercept them. 'What's the
matter?' he yelled. 'What's going on?' 'Money,' one of them shouted back at
him. 'Someone's found some money.'
     By now the whole crowd had left the barrier and was running down the
road.
     As they swept past, Mae Hutton shouted at me, 'Come on, Brad! Money in
your garden!'
     Money in my garden! For the love of God, what next? I took one look at
the four men from Washington, standing beyond the barrier. Perhaps they were
thinking that the town was crazy. They had every right to think so.
     I stepped out into the road and jogged along behind the crowd, heading
back for town.

        19

     When I came back that morning I had found that the purple flowers
growing in the swale behind my house, through the wizardry of that other
world, had been metamorphosed into tiny bushes. In the dark I had run my
fingers along the bristling branches and felt the many swelling buds. And
now the buds had broken and where each bud had been was, not a leaf, but a
miniature fifty-dollar bill!
     Len Streeter, the high school science teacher, handed one of the tiny
bills to me.
     'It's impossible,' he said.
     And he was right. It was impossible. No bush in its right mind would
grow fifty-dollar bills - or any kind of bills.
     There were a lot of people there - all the crowd that had been out in
the road shouting at the senator, and as many more. It looked to me as if
the entire village might be there. They were tramping around among the
bushes and yelling at one another, all happy and excited. They had a right
to be. There probably weren't many of them who had ever seen a fifty-dollar
bill, and here were thousands of them.
     'You've looked close at it,' I asked the teacher. 'You're sure it
actually is a bill?'
     He pulled a small magnifying glass out of his shirt pocket and handed
it to me.
     'Have a look,' he said.
     I had a look and there was no question that it looked like a
fifty-dollar bill - although the only fifty-dollar bills I had ever seen
were the thirty of them in the envelope Sherwood had given me. And I hadn't
had a chance to more than glance at those. But through the glass I could see
that the little bills had the fabric-like texture one finds in folding money
and everything else, including the serial number, looked authentic.
     And I knew, even as I squinted through the lens, that it was authentic.
For these were (how would one say it - the descendants?) of the money Tupper
Tyler had stolen from me.
     I knew exactly what had happened and the knowledge was a chill that bit
deep into my mind.
     'It's possible,' I told Streeter. With that gang back there, it's
entirely possible.'
     'You mean the gang from your other world?'
     'Not my other world,' I shouted. 'Your other world. This world's other
world. When you get it through your damn thick skulls...'
     I didn't say the rest of it. I was glad I didn't.
     'I'm sorry,' Streeter said. 'I didn't mean it quite the way it
sounded.'
     Higgy, I saw, was standing halfway up the slope that led to the house
and he was yelling for attention.
     'Listen to rue!' he was shouting. 'Fellow citizens, Won't you listen to
me.'
     The crowd was beginning to quiet down and Higgy went on yelling until
everyone was quiet.
     'Stop pulling off them leaves,' he told them. 'Just leave them where
they are.'
     Charley Hutton said, 'Hell, Higgy, all that we was doing was picking a
few of them to have a better look.'
     'Well, quit it,' said the mayor sternly. 'Every one that you pull off
is fifty dollars less. Give them leaves a little time and they'll grow to
proper size and then they'll drop off and all we need to do is to pick them
up and every one of them will be money in our pocket.'
     'How do you know that?' Grandma Jones shrilled at him.
     'Well,' the mayor said, 'it stands to reason, don't it? Here we have
these marvellous plants growing money for us. The least we can do is let
them be, so they can grow it for us.'
     He looked around the crowd and suddenly saw me.
      'Brad,' he asked me, 'isn't that correct?'
     'I'm afraid it is,' I said.
     For Tupper had stolen the money and the Flowers had used the bills as
patterns on which to base the leaves. I would have bet, without looking
further, that there were no more than thirty different serial numbers in the
entire crop of money.
     'What I want to know,' said Charley Hutton, 'is how you figure we
should divide it up - once it's ripe, that is.'
     'Why,' said the mayor, 'that's something I hadn't even thought of.
Maybe we could put it in a common fund that could be handed out to people as
they have the need of it.'
     'That don't seem fair to me,' said Charley. 'That way some people would get more of it than others. Seems to me the only way
is to divide it evenly. Everyone should get his fair share of it, to do with
as he wants.'
     'There's some merit,' said the mayor, 'in your point of view. But it
isn't something on which we should make a snap decision. This afternoon I'll
appoint a committee to look into it. Anyone who has any ideas can present
them and they'll get full consideration.'
     'Mr Mayor,' piped up Daniel Willoughby, 'there is one thing I think
we've overlooked. No matter what we say, this stuff isn't money.'
     'But it looks like money. Once it's grown to proper size, no one could
tell the difference.'
     'I know,' the banker said, 'that it looks like money. It probably would
fool an awful lot of people. Maybe everyone. Maybe no one could ever tell
that it wasn't money. But if the source of it should be learned, how much
value do you think it would have then? Not only that, but all the money in
this village would be suspect. If we can grow fifty-dollar bills, what is
there to stop us from growing tens and twenties?'
     'I don't see what this fuss is all about,' shouted Charley Hutton.
'There isn't any need for anyone to know. We can keep quiet about it. We can
keep the secret. We can pledge ourselves that we'll never say a word about
it.'
     The crowd murmured with approval. Daniel Willoughby looked as if he
were on the verge of strangling. The thought of all that phony money
shrivelled up his prissy soul.
     'That's something,' said the mayor, blandly, 'that my committee can
decide.'
     The way the mayor said it one knew there was no doubt at all in his
mind as to how the committee would decide.
     'Higgy,' said lawyer Nichols, 'there's another thing we've overlooked.
The money isn't ours.'
     The mayor stared at him, outraged that anyone could say a thing like
that.
     'Whose is it, then?' he bellowed.
     'Why,' said Nichols, 'it belongs to Brad. It's growing on his land and
it belongs to him. There is no court anywhere that wouldn't make the
finding.'
     All the people froze. All their eyes swivelled in on me. I felt like a
crouching rabbit, with the barrels of a hundred shotguns levelled at him.
     The mayor gulped. 'You're sure of this?' he asked.
     'Positive,' said Nichols.
     The silence held and the eyes were still trained upon me.
     I looked around and the eyes stared back. No one said a word.
     The poor, misguided, blinded fools, I thought. All they saw here was
money in their pockets, wealth such as not a single one of them had ever
dared to dream. They could not see in it the threat (or promise?) of an
alien race pressed dose against the door, demanding entrance. And they could
not know that because of this alien race, blinding death might blossom in a
terrible surge of unleashed energy above the dome that enclosed the town.
     'Mayor,' I said, 'I don't want the stuff...'
     'Well, now,' the mayor said, 'that's a handsome gesture, Brad. I'm sure
the folks appreciate it.'
     'They damn well should,' said Nichols.
     A woman's scream rang out - and then another scream. It seemed to come
from behind me and I spun around.
     A woman was running down the slope that led to Doc Fabian's house -
although running wasn't quite the word for it.
     She was trying to run when she was able to do little more than hobble.
Her body was twisted with the terrible effort of her running and she had her
arms stretched out so they would catch her if she fell - and when she took
another step, she fell and rolled and finally ended up a huddled shape lying
on the hillside.
     'Myra!' Nichols yelled. 'My God, Myra, what's wrong?'
     It was Mrs Fabian, and she lay there on the hillside with the whiteness
of her hair shining in the sunlight, a startling patch of brilliance against
the green sweep of the lawn. She was a little thing and frail and for years
bad been half-crippled by arthritis, and now she seemed so small and
fragile, crumpled on the grass, that it hurt to look at her.
     I ran toward her and all the others were running toward her, too.
     Bill Donovan was the first to reach her and he went down on his knees
to lift her up and bold her.
     'Everything's all right,' he told her. 'See - everything's all right.
All your friends are here.'
     Her eyes were open and she seemed to be all right, but she lay there in
the cradle of Bill's arms and she didn't try to move. Her hair had fallen
down across her face and Bill brushed it back, gently, with a big, grimed,
awkward hand.
     'It's the doctor,' she told us. 'He's gone into a coma...'
     'But,' protested Higgy, 'he was all right an hour ago. I saw him just
an hour ago.'
     She waited until he'd finished, then she said, as if he hadn't spoken,
'He's in a coma and I can't wake him up. He lay down for a nap and now, he
won't wake up.'
     Donovan stood up, lifting her, holding her like a child. She was so
little and he was so big that she had the appearance of a doll, a doll with
a sweet and wrinkled face.
     'He needs help,' she said. 'He's helped you all his life. Now he needs
some help.'
     Norma Shepard touched Bill on the arm. 'Take her up to the house,' she
said. 'I'll take care of her.'
     'But my husband,' Mrs Fabian insisted. 'You'll get some help for him?
You'll find some way to help him?'
     'Yes, Myra,' Higgy said. 'Yes, of course we will. We can't let him
down. He's done too much for us. We'll find a way to help him.'
     Donovan started up the hill, carrying Mrs Fabian. Norma ran ahead of
him.
     Butch Ormsby said, 'Some of us ought to go, too, 'and see what we can
do for Doc.'
     'Well,' asked Charley Hutton, 'how about it, Higgy? 'You were the one
who shot off his big fat face. How are you going to help him?'
     'Somebody's got to help him,' declared Pappy Andrews, thumping his cane
upon the ground by way of emphasis. 'There never was a time we needed Doc
more than we need him now. There are sick people in this village and we've
got to get him on his feet somehow.'
     'We can do what we can,' said Streeter, 'to make him comfortable. We'll
take care of him, of course, the best that we know how. But there isn't'
anyone who has any medical knowledge...'
     'I'll tell you what we'll do,' said Higgy. 'Someone can get in touch
with some medical people and tell them what's happened. We can describe the
symptoms and maybe they can diagnose the illness and then tell us what to
do. Norma is a nurse - well, sort of, she's been helping out in Doc's office
for the last four years or so - and she'd be some help to us.'
     'I suppose it's the best we can do,' said Streeter, 'but it's not very
good.'
     'I tell you, men,' said Pappy, loudly, 'we can't stay standing here.
The situation calls for action and it behooves us to get started.'
     What Streeter had said, I told myself, was right. Maybe it was the best
that we could do, but it wasn't good enough. There was more to medicine than
word-of-mouth advice or telephoned instructions. And there were others in
the village in need of medical aid, more specialized aid than a stricken
doctor, even if he could be gotten on his feet, was equipped to give them.
     Maybe, I thought, there was someone else who could help - and if they
could, they'd better, or I'd go back somehow into that other world and start
ripping up their roots.
     It was time, I told myself, that this other world was getting on the
ball. The Flowers had put us in this situation and it was time they dug us
out. If they were intent on proving what great tasks they could perform,
there were more important ways of proving it than growing fifty-dollar bills
on bushes and all their other hocus-pocus.
     There were phones down at the village hall, the ones that had been
taken from Stiffy's shack, and I could use one of those, of course, but I'd
probably have to break Hiram's skull before I could get at one of them. And
another round with Hiram, I decided, was something I could get along
without.
     I looked around for Sherwood, but he wasn't there, and neither was
Nancy. One of them might be home and they'd let me use the phone in
Sherwood's study.
     A lot of the others were heading up toward Doc's house, but I turned
and went the other way.

        20

     No one answered the bell. I rang several times and waited, then finally
tried the door and it was unlocked.
     I went inside and closed the door behind me. The sound of its closing
was muffled by the hushed solemnity of the hail that ran back to the
kitchen.
     'Anyone home?' I called.
     Somewhere a lone fly buzzed desperately, as if trying to escape,
trapped against a window perhaps, behind a fold of drape. The sun spilled
through the fanlights above the door to make a ragged pattern on the floor.
     There was no answer to my hail, so I went down the hall and walked into
the study. The phone stood on the heavy desk. The walls of books still
seemed rich and wondrous. A half. empty whisky bottle and an unwashed glass
stood on the liquor cabinet.
     I went across the carpeting to the desk and reached out, pulling the
phone toward me.
     I lifted the receiver and immediately Tupper said, in his businessman's
voice, 'Mr Carter, it's good to hear from you at last. Events are going
well, we hope. You have made, we would presume, preliminary contact.'
     As if they didn't know!
     'That's not what I called about,' I snapped.
     'But that was the understanding. You were to act for us.'
     The unctuous smugness of the voice burned me up.
     'And it was understood, as well,' I asked, 'that you were to make a
fool of me?'
     The voice was startled. 'We fail to understand. Will you please
explain?'
     'The time machine,' I said.
     'Oh, that.'
     'Yes, oh, that,' I said.
     "But, Mr Carter, if we had asked you to take it back you would have
been convinced that we were using you. You'd probably have refused.'
     'And you weren't using me?'
     'Why, I suppose we were. We'd have used anyone. It was important to get
that mechanism to your world. Once you know the pattern...'
     'I don't care about the pattern,' I said angrily. 'You tricked me and
you admit you tricked me. That's a poor way to start negotiations with
another race.'
     'We regret it greatly. Not that we did it, but the way we did it. If
there is anything we can do...'
     'There's a lot that you can do. You can cut out horsing around with
fifty-dollar bills...'
     'But that's repayment,' wailed the voice. 'We told you you'd get back
your fifteen hundred. We promised you'd get back much more than your fifteen
hundred...'
     'You've had your readers read economic texts?'
     'Oh, certainly we have.'
     'And you've observed, for a long time and at first hand, our economic
practices?'
     'As best we can,' the voice said. 'It's sometimes difficult.'
     'You know, of course, that money grows on bushes.'
     'No, we don't know that, at all. We know how money's made. But what is
the difference? Money's money, isn't it, no matter what its source?'
     'You couldn't be more wrong,' I said. 'You'd better get wised up.'
     'You mean the money isn't good?'
     'Not worth a damn,' I said.
     'We hope we've done no wrong,' the voice said, crestfallen. I said,
'The money doesn't matter. There are other things that do. You've shut us
off from the world and we have sick people here. We had just one poor
fumbling doctor to take care of them. And now the doctor's sick himself and
no other doctor can get in...'
     'You need a steward,' said the voice.
     'What we need,' I told them, 'is to get this barrier lifted so we can
get out and others can get in. Otherwise there are going to be people dying
who don't have to die.'
     'We'll send a steward,' said the voice. 'We'll send one right away. A
most accomplished one. The best that we can find.'
     'I don't know,' I said, 'about this steward. But we need help as fast
as we can get it.'
     'We,' the voice pledged, 'will do the best we can.'
     The voice clicked off and the phone went dead. And suddenly I realized
that I'd not asked the most important thing of all - why had they wanted to
get the time machine into our world?
     I jiggled the connection. I put the receiver down and lifted it again.
I shouted in the phone and nothing happened.
     I pushed the phone away and stood hopeless in the room. For all of it,
I knew, was a very hopeless mess.
     Even after years of study, they did not understand us or our
institutions. They did not know that money was symbolic and not simply
scraps of paper. They had not, for a moment, taken into consideration what
could happen to a village if it were isolated from the world.
     They had tricked me and had used me and they should have known that
nothing can arouse resentment quite so easily as simple trickery. They
should have known, but they didn't know, or if they knew, had discounted
what they knew - and that was as bad or worse than if they had not known.
     I opened the study door and went into the hall. And as I started down
the hail, the front door opened and Nancy stepped inside.
     I stopped at the foot of the stairway that rose out of the hall and for
a moment we simply stood there, looking at one another, neither of us
finding anything to say.
     'I came to use the phone,' I said.
     She nodded.
     'I suppose,' I said, 'I should say I'm sorry for the fight with Hiram.'
     'I'm sorry, too,' she said, misunderstanding me, or pretending that she
misunderstood. 'But I suppose there was no way you could help it.'
     'He threw the phone,' I told her.
     But of course it had not been the phone, not the phone alone. It had
been all the times before the phone was thrown.
     'You said the other night,' I reminded her, 'that we could go out for
drinks and dinner. I guess that will have to wait. Now there's no place we
can go.'
     'Yes,' she said, 'so we could start over.'
     I nodded, feeling miserable.
     'I was to dress up my prettiest,' she said, 'and we would have been so
gay.'
     'Like high school days,' I said.
     'Brad.'
     'Yes,' I said, and took a step toward her.
     Suddenly she was in my arms.
     'We don't need drinks and dinner,' she said. 'Not the two of us.'
     No, I thought, not the two of us.
     I bent and kissed her and held her close and there was only us. There
was no closed-off village and no alien terror. There was nothing that
mattered now except this girl who long ago had walked the street, hand in
hand with me, and had not been ashamed.

        21

     The steward came that afternoon, a little, wizened humanoid who looked
like a bright-eyed monkey. With him was another - also humanoid - but great,
lumbering and awkward, gaunt and austere, with a horse-like face. He looked,
at first sight, the perfect caricature of a career diplomat. The scrawny
humanoid wore a dirty and shapeless piece of cloth draped about him like a
robe, and the other wore a breech-clout and a sort of vest, equipped with
massive pockets that bulged with small possessions.
     The entire village was lined up on the slope behind my house and the
betting had been heavy that nothing would show up. I heard whispers,
suddenly cutoff, everywhere I went.
     Then they came, the two of them, popping out of nowhere and standing in
the garden.
     I walked down the slope and across the garden to meet them. They stood
waiting for me and behind me, on that slope covered by a crowd of people,
there was utter silence.
     As I came near, the big one stepped forward, the little wizened
character trailing close behind.
     'I speak your language newly,' said the big one. 'If you don't know,
ask me once again.'
     'You're doing well,' I told him.
     'You be Mr Carter?'
     'That is right. And you?'
     'My designation,' he told me, solemnly, 'is to you great gibberish. I
have decided you can call me only Mr Smith.'
     'Mr Smith,' I said, 'we are glad to have you here. You are the steward
I was told about?'
     'No. This other personage is he. But he has no designation I can speak
to you. He makes no noise at all. He hears and answers only in his brain. He
is a queerish thing.'
     'A telepath,' I said.
     'Oh, yes, but do not mistake me. Of much intelligence. Also very smart.
We are of different worlds, you know. There be many different worlds, many
different peoples. We welcome you to us.'
     'They sent you along as an interpreter?'
     'Interpreter? I do not share your meaning. I learn your words very fast
from a mechanism. I do not have much time. I fail to catch them all.'
     'Interpreter means you speak for him. He tells you and you tell us.'
     'Yes, indeed. Also you tell me and I tell him. But interpreter is not
all I am. Also diplomat, very highly trained.'
     'Huh?'
     'Help with negotiations with your race. Be helpful as I can. Explain
very much, perhaps. Aid you as you need.'
     'You said there are many different worlds and many different people.
You mean a long, long chain of worlds and of people, too?'
     'Not all worlds have people,' he told me. 'Some have nothing. No life
of any sort. Some hold life, but no intelligence. Some once had
intelligence, but intelligence is gone.' He made a strange gesture with his
hand. 'It is pity what can happen to intelligence. It is frail; it does not
stay forever.'
     'And the intelligences? All humanoid?' He hesitated. 'Humanoid?'
     'Like us. Two arms, two legs, one head...'
     'Most humanoid,' he said.' 'Most like you and me.'
     The scrawny little being tugged excitedly at his vest. The being I had
been talking with turned around to face him, gave him close attention.
     Then he turned back to me. 'Him much upset,' he told me. 'Says all
people here are sick. Him prostrated with great pity. Never saw such
terrible thing.'
     'But that is wrong,' I cried. 'The sick ones are at home. This bunch
here is healthy.'
     'Can't be so,' said Mr Smith. 'Him aghast at situation. Can look inside
of people, see everything that's wrong. Says them that isn't sick will be
sick in little time, says many have inactive sickness in them, others still
have garbage of ancient sicknesses still inside of them.'
     'He can fix us up?'
     'No fix. Repair complete, Make body good as new.'
     Higgy had been edging closer and behind him several others. The rest of
the crowd still stayed up on the bank, out of all harm's way. And now they
were beginning to buzz a little. At first they had been stricken silent, but
now the talk began.
     'Higgy,' I said, 'I'd like you to meet Mr Smith.'
     'Well, I'll be darned,' said Higgy. 'They got names just the same as
ours.'
     He stuck out his hand and after a moment of puzzlement, Mr Smith put
out his hand and the two men shook.
     'The other one,' I said, 'can't talk. He's a telepath.'
     'That's too bad,' said Higgy, full of sympathy. 'Which one of them's
the doctor?'
     'The little one,' I told him, 'and I don't know if you can say he's a
doctor. Seems that he repairs people, fixes them like new.'
     'Well,' said Higgy, 'that's what a doctor's supposed to do, but never
quite makes out.'
     'He says we're all sick. He wants to fix us up.'
     'Well, that's all right,' said Higgy. 'That's what I call service. We
can set up a clinic down at the village hall.'
      'But there's Doc and Floyd and all the others who are really sick.
That's what he's here for.'
     'Well, I tell you, Brad, we can take him to them first and he can get
them cured, then we'll set up the clinic. The rest of us might just as well
get in on it as long as he is here.'
     'If,' said Mr Smith, 'you but merge with the rest of us, you can
command the services of such as he whenever you have need.'
     'What's this merger?' Higgy asked of me.
     'He means if we let the aliens in and join the other worlds that the
Flowers have linked.'
     'Well, now,' said Higgy, 'that makes a lot of sense. I don't suppose
there'll be any charges for his services.'
     'Charges?' asked Mr Smith.
     'Yeah,' said Higgy. 'Pay. Fees. Money.'
     'Those be terms,' said Mr Smith, 'that ring no bell for me. But we must
proceed with swiftness, since my fellow creature has other rounds to make.
He and his colleagues have many worlds to cover.'
     'You mean that they are doctors to the other worlds?' I asked.
     'You grasp my meaning clear.'
     'Since there isn't any time to waste,' said Higgy, 'leave us be about
our business. Will you two come with me?'
     'With alacrity,' cried Mr Smith, and the two of them followed Higgy as
he went up the slope and out toward the street. I followed slowly after them
and as I climbed the bank, Joe Evans came charging out of the back door of
my house.
     'Brad,' he shouted, 'there's a call for you from the State Department.'
     It was Newcombe on the phone.
     'I'm over here at Elmore,' he told me in his cold, clipped voice, 'and
we've given the Press a rundown on what you told us. But now they're
clamouring to see you; they want to talk with you.'
     'It's all right with me,' I said. 'If they'll come out to the
barrier...'
     'It's not all right with me,' said Newcombe, sourly, 'but the pressure
is terrific. I have to let them see you. I trust you'll be discreet.'
     'I'll do my best,' I told him.
     'All right,' he said. 'There's not much I can do about it. Two hours
from now. At the place we met.'
     'OK,' I said. 'I suppose it'll be all right if I bring a friend along.'
     'Yes, of course,' said Newcombe. 'And for the love of Christ be
careful!'

        22

     Mr Smith caught onto the idea of a Press conference with very little
trouble. I explained it to him as we walked toward the barrier where the
newsmen waited for us.
     'You say all these people are communicators,' he said, making sure he
had it straight. 'We say them something and they say other people.
Interpreters, like me.'
     'Well, something like that.'
     'But all your people talk the same. The mechanism told me one language
only.'
     'That was because the one language is all that you would need. But the
people of the Earth have many languages. Although that is not the reason for
newspapermen. You see, all the people can't be here to listen to what we
have to say. 'So these newsmen spread the news...'
     'News?'
     'The things that we have said. Or that other people have said. Things
that happen. No matter where anything may happen, there are newsmen there
and they spread the word. They keep the world informed.'
     Mr Smith almost danced a jig. 'How wonderful!' he cried.
     'What's so wonderful about it?'
     'Why, the ingenuity,' said Mr Smith. 'The thinking of it up. This way
one person talks to all the persons. Everybody knows about him. Everyone
hears what he has to talk.'
     We reached the barrier and there was quite a crowd of newsmen jammed on
the strip of highway on the other side. Some of them were strung along the
barrier on either side of the road. As we walked up, the cameramen were
busy.
     When we came up to the barrier, a lot of men started yelling at us, but
someone quickly shushed them, then one man spoke to us.
     'I'm Judson Barnes, of Associated Press,' he said. 'I suppose you're
Carter.'
     I told him that I was. 'And this gentleman you have with you?'
     'His name is Smith,' I said.
     'And,' said someone else, 'he's just got home from a masquerade.'
     'No,' I told them, 'he's a humanoid from one of the alternate worlds.
He is here to help with negotiations.'
     'Howdy, sirs,' said Mr Smith, with massive friendliness.
     Someone howled from the back: 'We can't hear back here.'
     'We have a microphone,' said Barnes, 'if you don't mind.'
     'Toss it here,' I told him.
     He tossed it and I caught it. The cord trailed through the barrier. I
could see where the speakers had been set up to one side of the road.
     'And now,' said Barnes, 'perhaps we can begin. State filled us in, of
course, so we don't need to go over all that you have told them. But there
are some questions. I'm sure there are a lot of questions.'
     A dozen hands went up.
     'Just pick out one of them,' said Barnes.
     I made a motion toward a great, tall, scrawny man.
     'Thank you, sir,' he said. 'Caleb Rivers, Kansas City Star. We
understand that you represent the - how do you say it? - people, perhaps,
the people of this other world. I wonder if you would outline your position
in somewhat more detail. Are you an official representative, or an
unofficial spokesman, or a sort of go-between? It's not been made quite
clear.'
     'Very unofficial, I might say. You know about my father?'
     'Yes,' said Rivers, 'we've been told how he cared for the flowers be
found. But you'd agree, wouldn't you, Mr Carter, that this is, to say the
least, a rather strange sort of qualification for your role?'
     'I have no qualifications at all,' I told him. 'I can tell you quite
frankly that the aliens probably picked one of the poorest representatives
they could have found. There are two things to consider. First, I was the
only human who seemed available - I was the only one who went back to visit
them. Secondly, and this is important, they don't think, can't think, in the
same manner that we do. What might make good sense to them may seem silly so
far as we are concerned. On the other hand, our most brilliant logic might
be gibberish to them.'
     'I see,' said Rivers. 'But despite your frankness in saying you're not
qualified to serve, you still are serving. Would you tell us why?'
     'There's nothing else I can do,' I said. 'The situation has gotten to a
point where there had to be an attempt at some sort of intelligent contact
between the aliens and ourselves. Otherwise, things might get out of hand.'
     'How do you mean?'
     'Right now,' I said, 'the world is scared. There has to be some
explanation of what is happening. There is nothing worse than a senseless
happening, nothing worse than reasonless fear, and the aliens, so long as
they know something's being done, may leave this barrier as it is. For the
moment, I suspect, they'll do no more than they've already done. I hope it
may work out that the situation gets no worse and that in the meantime some
progress can be made.'
     Other hands were waving and I pointed to another man.
     'Frank Roberts, Washington Post,' he said. 'I have a question about the
negotiations. As I understand it, the aliens want to be admitted to our
world and in return are willing to provide us with a great store of
knowledge they have accumulated.'
     'That is right,' I said.
     'Why do they want admission?'
     'It's not entirely clear to me,' I told him. 'They need to be here so
they can proceed to other worlds. It would seem the alternate worlds lie in
some sort of progression, and they must be arrived at in a certain order. I
confess quite willingly I understand none of this. All that can be done now
is to reach proposals that we and the aliens can negotiate.'
     'You know of no terms beyond the broad proposal you have stated?'
     'None at all,' I said. 'There may be others. I am not aware of them.'
     'But now you have - perhaps you would call him an advisor. Would it be
proper to direct a question at this Mr Smith of yours?' '
     'A question,' said Mr Smith. 'I accept your question.'
     He was pleased that someone had noticed him. Not without some qualms, I
handed him the mike.
     'You talk into it,' I said.
     'I know,' he said. 'I watch.'
     'You talk our language very well,' said the Washington Post.
     'Just barely. Mechanism teach me.'
     'Can you add anything about specific conditions?'
     'I do not catch,' said Smith.
     'Are there an