“All right,” yelled Mackenzie. “All right. I know I took too long again. Just calm yourself. I’ll be right out.”
Nicodemus settled down, still wriggling with the news he had to tell, heard Mackenzie swabbing out the tub.
With Nicodemus wrapped happily about him, Mackenzie strode into the office and found Nelson Harper, the factor, with his feet up on the desk, smoking his pipe and studying the ceiling.
“Howdy, lad,” said the factor. He pointed at a bottle with his pipestem. “Grab yourself a snort.”
Mackenzie grabbed one.
“Nicodemus has been out chewing fat with the moss,” he said. “Tells me a conductor by the name of Alder has composed a symphony. Moss says it’s a masterpiece.”
Harper took his feet off the desk. “Never heard of this chap, Alder,” he said.
“Never heard of Kadmar, either,” Mackenzie reminded him, “until he produced the Red Sun symphony. Now everyone is batty over him. If Alder has anything at all, we ought to get it down. Even a mediocre piece pays out. People back on Earth are plain wacky over this tree music of ours. Like that one fellow … that composer—”
“Wade,” Harper filled in. “J. Edgerton Wade. One of the greatest composers Earth had ever known. Quit in mortification after he heard the Red Sun piece. Later disappeared. No one knows where he went.”
The factor nursed his pipe between his palms. “Funny thing. Came out here figuring our best trading bet would be new drugs or maybe some new kind of food. Something for the high-class restaurants to feature, charge ten bucks a plate for. Maybe even a new mineral. Like out on Eta Cassiop. But it wasn’t any of those things. It was music. Symphony stuff. High-brow racket.”
Mackenzie took another shot at the bottle, put it back and wiped his mouth. “I’m not so sure I like this music angle,” he declared. “I don’t know much about music. But it sounds funny to me, what I’ve heard of it. Brain-twisting stuff.”
Harper grunted. “You’re O.K. as long as you have plenty of serum along. If you can’t take the music, just keep yourself shot full of serum. That way it can’t touch you.”
Mackenzie nodded. “It almost got Alexander that time, remember? Ran short of serum while he was down in the Bowl trying to dicker with the trees. Music seemed to have a hold on him. He didn’t want to leave. He fought and screeched and yelled around. … I felt like a heel, taking him away. He never has been quite the same since then. Doctors back on Earth finally were able to get him straightened out, but warned him never to come back.”
“Alexander’s back again,” said Harper. “Grant spotted him over at the Groombridge post. Throwing in with the Groomies, I guess. Just a yellow-bellied renegade. Going against his own race. You boys shouldn’t have saved him that time. Should have let the music get him.”
“What are you going to do about it?” demanded Mackenzie.
Harper shrugged his shoulders. “What can I do about it? Unless I want to declare war on the Groombridge post. And that is out. Haven’t you heard it’s all sweetness and light between Earth and Groombridge 34? That’s the reason the two posts are stuck away from Melody Bowl. So each one of us will have a fair shot at the music. All according to some pact the two companies rigged up. Galactic’s got so pure they wouldn’t even like it if they knew we had a spy planted on the Groomie post.”
“But they got one planted on us,” declared Mackenzie. “We haven’t been able to find him, of course, but we know there is one. He’s out there in the woods somewhere, watching every move we make.”
Harper nodded his head. “You can’t trust a Groomie. The lousy little insects will stoop to anything. They don’t want that music, can’t use it. Probably don’t even know what music is. Haven’t any hearing. But they know Earth wants it, will pay any price to get it, so they are out here to beat us to it. They work through birds like Alexander. They get the stuff, Alexander peddles it.”
“What if we run across Alexander, chief?”
Harper clicked his pipestem across his teeth. “Depends on circumstances. Try to hire him, maybe. Get him away from the Groomies. He’s a good trader. The company would do right by him.”
Mackenzie shook his head. “No soap. He hates Galactic. Something that happened years ago. He’d rather make us trouble than turn a good deal for himself.”
“Maybe he’s changed,” suggested Harper. “Maybe you boys saving him changed his mind.”
“I don’t think it did,” persisted Mackenzie.
The factor reached across the desk and drew a humidor in front of him, began to refill his pipe.
“Been trying to study out something else, too,” he said. “Wondering what to do with the Encyclopedia. He wants to go to Earth. Seems he’s found out just enough from us to whet his appetite for knowledge. Says he wants to go to Earth and study our civilization.”
Mackenzie grimaced. “That baby’s gone through our minds with a fine-toothed comb. He knows some of the things we’ve forgotten we ever knew. I guess it’s just the nature of him, but it gets my wind up when I think of it.”
“He’s after Nellie now,” said Harper. “Trying to untangle what she knows.”
“It would serve him right if he found out.”
“I’ve been trying to figure it out,” said Harper. “I don’t like this brain-picking of his any more than you do, but if we took him to Earth, away from his own stamping grounds, we might be able to soften him up. He certainly knows a lot about this planet that would be of value to us. He’s told me a little—”
“Don’t fool yourself,” said Mackenzie. “He hasn’t told you a thing more than he’s had to tell to make you believe it wasn’t a one-way deal. Whatever he has told you has no vital significance. Don’t kid yourself he’ll exchange information for information. That cookie’s out to get everything he can get for nothing.”
The factor regarded Mackenzie narrowly. “I’m not sure but I should put you in for an Earth vacation,” he declared. “You’re letting things upset you. You’re losing your perspective. Alien planets aren’t Earth, you know. You have to expect wacky things, get along with them, accept them on the basis of the logic that makes them the way they are.”
“I know all that,” agreed Mackenzie, “but honest, chief, this place gets in my hair at times. Trees that shoot at you, moss that talks, vines that heave thunderbolts at you—and now the Encyclopedia.”
“The Encyclopedia is logical,” insisted Harper. “He’s a repository for knowledge. We have parallels on Earth. Men who study merely for the sake of learning, never expect to use the knowledge they amass. Derive a strange, smug satisfaction from being well informed. Combine that yearning for knowledge with a phenomenal ability to memorize and co-ordinate that knowledge and you have the Encyclopedia.”
“But there must be a purpose to him,” insisted Mackenzie. “There must be some reason at the back of this thirst for knowledge. Just soaking up facts doesn’t add up to anything unless you use those facts.”
Harper puffed stolidly at his pipe. “There may be a purpose in it, but a purpose so deep, so different, we could not recognize it. This planet is a vegetable world and a vegetable civilization. Back on earth the animals got the head start and plants never had a chance to learn or to evolve. But here it’s a different story. The plants were the ones that evolved, became masters of the situation.”
“If there is a purpose, we should know it,” Mackenzie declared, stubbornly. “We can’t afford to go blind on a thing like this. If the Encyclopedia has a game, we should know it. Is he acting on his own, a free lance? Or is he the representative of the world, a sort of prime minister, a state department? Or is he something that was left over by another civilization, a civilization that is gone? A kind of living archive of knowledge, still working at his old trade even if the need of it is gone?”