"But if they were alive?"
"Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the storage of a universal data and its correlation."
"That perhaps is right," they said. "We are living computers."
"Then there is no end for you. You'll keep on forever."
"We are not sure," they said.
"But…"
"Data," they told me, pontifically, "is the means to one end only arrival at the truth. Perhaps we do not need a universal data to arrive at truth."
"How do you know when you have arrived?"
"We will know," they said.
I gave up. We were getting nowhere. "So you want our Earth," I said.
"You state it awkwardly and unfairly. We do not want your Earth. We want to be let in, we want some living space, we want to work with you. You give us your knowledge and we will give you ours."
"We'd make quite a team," I said.
"We would, indeed," they said.
"And then?"
"What do you mean?" they asked.
"After we've swapped knowledge, what do we do then?"
"Why, we go on," they said. "Into other worlds. The two of us together."
"Seeking other cultures? After other knowledge?"
"That is right," they said.
They made it sound so simple. And it wasn't simple; it couldn't be that simple. There was nothing ever simple.
A man could talk with them for days and still be asking questions, getting no more than a bare outline of the situation.
"There is one thing you must realize," I said. "The people of my Earth will not accept you on blind faith alone. They must know what you expect of us and what we can expect of you. They must have some assurance that we can work together."
"We can help," they said, "in many different ways. We need not be as you see us now. We can turn ourselves into any kind of plant you need. We can provide a great reservoir of economic resources. We can be the old things that you have relied upon for years, but better than the old things ever were. We can be better foodstuff and better building material; better fibre. Name anything you need from plants and we can be that thing."
"You mean you'd let us eat you and saw you up for lumber and weave you into cloth? And you would not mind?"
They came very close to sighing. "How can we make you understand? Eat one of us and we still remain. Saw one of us and we still remain. The life of us is one life — you could never kill us all, never eat us all. Our life is in our brains and our nervous systems, in our roots and bulbs and tubers. We would not mind your eating us if we knew that we were helping."
"And we would not only be the old forms of economic plant life to which you are accustomed. We could be different kinds of grain, different kinds of trees — ones you have never heard of. We could adapt ourselves to any soils or climates. We could grow anywhere you wanted. You want medicines or drugs. Let your chemists tell us what you want and we'll be that for you. We'll be made-to-order plants."
"All this," I said, "and your knowledge, too."
"That is right," they said.
"And in return, what do we do?"
"You give your knowledge to us. You work with us to utilize all knowledge, the pooled knowledge that we have. You give us an expression we cannot give ourselves. We have knowledge, but knowledge in itself is worthless unless it can be used. We want it used, we want so badly to work with a race that can use what we have to offer, so that we can feel a sense of accomplishment that is denied us now. And, also, of course, we would hope that together we could develop a better way to open the time-phase boundaries into other worlds."
"And the time dome that you put over Millville — why did you do that?
"To gain your world's attention. To let you know that we were here and waiting."
"But you could have told some of your contacts and your contacts could have told the world. You probably did tell some of them. Stiffy Grant, for instance."
"Yes, Stiffy Grant. And there were others, too."
"They could have told the world."
"Who would have believed them? They would have been thought of as how do you say it — crackpots?"
"Yes, I know," I said. "No one would pay attention to anything Stiffy said. But surely there were others."
"Only certain types of minds," they told me, "can make contact with us. We can reach many minds, but they can't reach back to us. And to believe in us, to know us, you must reach back to us."
"You mean only the screwballs…"
"We're afraid that's what we mean," they said.
It made sense when you thought about it. The most successful contact they could find had been Tupper Tyler and while there was nothing wrong with Stuffy as a human being, he certainly was not what one would call a solid citizen.
I sat there for a moment, wondering why they'd contacted me and Gerald Sherwood. Although that was a little different. They'd contacted Sherwood because he was valuable to them; he could make the telephones for them and he could set up a system that would give them working capital. And me?
Because my father had taken care of them? I hoped to heaven that was all it was.
"So, OK," I said. "I guess I understand. How about the storm of seeds?"
"We planted a demonstration plot," they told me. "So your people could realize, by looking at it, how versatile we are." You never won, I thought. They had an answer for everything you asked.
I wondered if I ever had expected to get anywhere with them or really wanted to get anywhere with them. Maybe, subconsciously, all I wanted was to get back to Millville.
And maybe it was all Tupper. Maybe there weren't any Flowers. Maybe it was simply a big practical joke that Tupper had dreamed up in his so-called mind, sitting here ten years and dreaming up the joke and getting it rehearsed so he could pull it off.
But, I argued with myself it couldn't be just Tupper, for Tupper wasn't bright enough. His mind was not given to a concept of this sort. He couldn't dream it up and he couldn't pull it off. And besides, there was the matter of his being here and of my being here, and that was something a joke would not explain.
I came slowly to my feet and turned so that I faced the slope above the camp and there in the bright moonlight lay the darkness of the purple flowers. Tupper still sat where he had been sitting, but now he was hunched forward, almost doubled up, fallen fast asleep and snoring very softly.
The perfume seemed stronger now and the moonlight had taken on a trembling and there was a Presence out there somewhere on the slope. I strained my eyes to see it, and once I thought I saw it, but it faded out again, although I still knew that it was there.
There was a purpleness in the very night and the feel of an intelligence that waited for a word to come stalking down the hill to talk with me, as two friends might talk, with no need of an interpreter, to squat about the campfire and yarn the night away.
Ready? asked the Presence.
A word, I wondered, or simply something stirring in my brain — something born of the purpleness and moonlight?
"Yes," I said, "I'm ready. I will do the best I can." I bent and wrapped the time contraption in my jacket and tucked it underneath my arm and then went up the slope. I knew the Presence was up there, waiting for me, and there were quivers running up and down my spine.
It was fear, perhaps, but it didn't feel like fear.
I came up to where the Presence waited and I could not see it, but I knew that it had fallen into step with me and was walking there beside me.
"I am not afraid of you," I told it.
It didn't say a word. It just kept walking with me. We went across the ridge and down the slope into the dip where in another world the greenhouse and garden were.
A little to your left, said the thing that walked the night with me, and then go straight ahead.