“The monopoly on the music still stands?” asked Mackenzie.
“It still stands. Come whenever you want to and record my symphony. When there are others we will let you know.”
“And the propaganda in the music?”
“From now on,” Alder promised, “the propaganda is out. If, from now on, our music changes you, it will change you through its own power. It may do that, but we will not try to shape your lives.”
“How can we depend on that?”
“Certainly,” said Alder. “There are certain tests you could devise. Not that they will be necessary.”
“We’ll devise the tests,” declared Mackenzie. “Sorry, but we can’t trust you.”
“I’m sorry that you can’t,” said Alder, and he sounded as if he were.
“I was going to burn you,” Mackenzie said, snapping his words off brutally. “Destroy you. Wipe you out. There was nothing you could have done about it. Nothing you could have done to stop me.”
“You’re still barbarians,” Alder told him. “You have conquered the distances between the stars, you have built a great civilization, but your methods are still ruthless and degenerate.”
“The Encyclopedia calls it a formula of force,” Mackenzie said. “No matter what you call it, it still works. It’s the thing that took us up. I warn you. If you ever again try to trick the human race, there will be hell to pay. A human being will destroy anything to save himself. Remember that—we destroy anything that threatens us.”
Something swished out of the tractor door and Mackenzie whirled about.
“It’s the Encyclopedia!” he yelled. “He’s trying to get away! Nellie!”
There was a thrashing rustle. “Got him, boss,” said Nellie.
The robot came out of the darkness, dragging the Encyclopedia along by his leafy topknot.
Mackenzie turned back to the composers, but the composers were gone. The grass rustled eerily towards the cliff edge as dozens of tiny feet scurried through it.
“What now?” asked Nellie. “Do we burn the trees?”
Mackenzie shook his head. “No, Nellie. We won’t burn them.”
“We got them scared,” said Nellie. “Scared pink with purple spots.”
“Perhaps we have,” said Mackenzie. “Let’s hope so, at least. But it isn’t only that they’re scared. They probably loathe us and that is better yet. Like we’d loathe some form of life that bred and reared men for food—that thought of Man as nothing else than food. All the time they’ve thought of themselves as the greatest intellectual force in the universe. We’ve given them a jolt. We’ve scared them and hurt their pride and shook their confidence. They’ve run up against something that is more than a match for them. Maybe they’ll think twice again before they try any more shenanigans.”
Down in the Bowl the music began again.
Mackenzie went in to look at Smith. The man was sleeping peacefully, his blanket wrapped around him. Wade sat in a corner, head held in his hands.
Outside, a rocket murmured and Nellie yelled. Mackenzie spun on his heel and dashed through the door. A ship was swinging over the Bowl, lighting up the area with floods. Swiftly it swooped down, came to ground a hundred yards away.
Harper, right arm in a sling, tumbled out and raced toward them.
“You didn’t burn them!” he was yelling. “You didn’t burn them!”
Mackenzie shook his head.
Harper pounded him on the back with his good hand. “Knew you wouldn’t. Knew you wouldn’t all the time. Just kidding the chief, eh? Having a little fun.”
“Not exactly fun.”
“About them trees,” said Harper. “We can’t take them back to Earth, after all.”
“I told you that,” Mackenzie said.
“Earth just called me, half an hour ago,” said Harper. “Seems there’s a law, passed centuries ago. Against bringing alien plants to Earth. Some lunkhead once brought a bunch of stuff from Mars that just about ruined Earth, so they passed the law. Been there all the time, forgotten.”
Mackenzie nodded. “Someone dug it up.”
“That’s right,” said Harper. “And slapped an injunction on Galactic. We can’t touch those trees.”
“You wouldn’t have anyhow,” said Mackenzie. “They wouldn’t go.”
“But you made the deal! They were anxious to go—”
“That,” Mackenzie told him, “was before they found out we used plants for food—and other things.”
“But … but—”
“To them,” said Mackenzie, “we’re just a gang of ogres. Something they’ll scare the little plants with. Tell them if they don’t be quiet the humans will get ’em.”
Nellie came around the corner of the tractor, still hauling the Encyclopedia by his topknot.
“Hey,” yelled Harper, “what goes on here?”
“We’ll have to build a concentration camp,” said Mackenzie. “Big high fence.” He motioned with his thumb toward the Encyclopedia.
Harper stared. “But he hasn’t done anything!”
“Nothing but try to take over the human race,” Mackenzie said.
Harper sighed. “That makes two fences we got to build. That rifle tree back at the post is shooting up the place.”
Mackenzie grinned. “Maybe the one fence will do for the both of them.”
Gleaners
Sent to Horace Gold in 1959 and purchased in less than a week, this story, which was first published in the March 1960 issue of If, features two prominent themes from Clifford Simak’s fiction: time travel and religion. I was not old enough to have seen the magazine when it came out, and I missed the story for years thereafter—but when I finally discovered it, I found myself utterly charmed by its portrayal of a dignified man being targeted by a cross-time conspiracy
He went sneaking past the door.
The lettering on the door said: Executive Vice President, Projects.
And down in the lower left corner, Hallock Spencer, in very modest type.
That was him. He was Hallock Spencer.
But he wasn’t going in that door. He had trouble enough already without going in. There’d be people waiting there for him. No one in particular—but people. And each of them with problems.
He ducked around the corner and went a step or two down the corridor until he came to another door that said Private on it.
It was unlocked. He went in.
A dowdy scarecrow in a faded, dusty toga sat tipped back in a chair, with his sandaled feet resting on Hallock Spencer’s desk top. He wore a mouse-gray woolen cap upon his hairless skull and his ears stuck out like wings. A short sword, hanging from the belt that snugged in the toga, stood canted with its point resting on the carpet. There was dirt beneath his rather longish toenails and he hadn’t shaved for days. He was a total slob.
“Hello, E.J.,” said Spencer.
The man in the toga didn’t take his feet off the desk. He didn’t move at all. He just sat there.
“Sneaking in again,” he said.
Spencer put down his briefcase and hung up his hat.