“You see,” said Alder to Mackenzie, “what he is like.”
“Why, yes,” agreed Mackenzie, “but there are times when new ideas have some values. Perhaps he may be—”
Alder leveled an accusing finger at Wade. “He was all right until you took to hanging around,” he screamed. “Then he picked up some of your ideas. You contaminated him. Your silly notions about music—” Alder’s thoughts gulped in sheer exasperation, then took up again. “Why did you come? No one asked you to. Why don’t you mind your own business?”
Wade, red faced behind his beard, seemed close to apoplexy.
“I’ve never been so insulted in all my life,” he howled. He thumped his chest with a doubled fist. “Back on Earth I wrote great symphonies myself. I never held with frivolous music. I never—”
“Crawl back into your hole,” Delbert shrilled at Alder. “You guys don’t know what music is. You saw out the same stuff day after day. You never lay it in the groove. You never get gated up. You all got long underwear.”
Alder waved knotted fists above his head and hopped up and down in rage. “Such language!” he shrieked. “Never was the like heard here before.”
The whole Bowl was yammering. Yammering with clashing thoughts of rage and insult.
“Now, wait,” Mackenzie shouted. “All of you, quiet down!”
Wade puffed out his breath, turned a shade less purple. Alder squatted back on his haunches, unknotted his fists, tried his best to look composed. The clangor of thought subsided to a murmur.
“You’re sure about this?” Mackenzie asked Alder. “Sure you don’t want Delbert back.”
“Mister,” said Alder, “there never was a happier day in Melody Bowl than the day we found him gone.”
A rising murmur of assent from the other conductors underscored his words.
“We have some others we’d like to get rid of, too,” said Alder.
From far off across the Bowl came a yelping thought of derision.
“You see,” said Alder, looking owlishly at Mackenzie, “what it is like. What we have to contend with. All because this … this … this—”
Glaring at Wade, thoughts failed him. Carefully he settled back upon his haunches, composed his face again.
“If the rest were gone,” he said, “we could settle down. But as it is, these few keep us in an uproar all the time. We can’t concentrate, we can’t really work. We can’t do the things we want to do.”
Mackenzie pushed back his hat and scratched his head.
“Alder,” he declared, “you sure are in a mess.”
“I was hoping,” Alder said, “that you might be able to take them off our hands.”
“Take them off your hands!” yelled Smith. “I’ll say we’ll take them! We’ll take as many—”
Mackenzie nudged Smith in the ribs with his elbow, viciously. Smith gulped into silence. Mackenzie tried to keep his face straight.
“You can’t take them trees,” said Nellie, icily. “It’s against the law.”
Mackenzie gasped. “The law?”
“Sure, the regulations. The company’s got regulations. Or don’t you know that? Never bothered to read them, probably. Just like you. Never pay no attention to the things you should.”
“Nellie,” said Smith savagely, “you keep out of this. I guess if we want to do a little favor for Alder here—”
“But it’s against the law!” screeched Nellie.
“I know,” said Mackenzie. “Section 34 of the chapter on Relations with Extraterrestrial Life. ‘No member of this company shall interfere in any phase of the internal affairs of another race.’”
“That’s it,” said Nellie, pleased with herself. “And if you take some of these trees, you’ll be meddling in a quarrel that you have no business having anything to do with.”
Mackenzie flipped his hands. “You see,” he said to Alder.
“We’ll give you a monopoly on our music,” tempted Alder. “We’ll let you know when we have anything. We won’t let the Groomies have it and we’ll keep our prices right.”
Nellie shook her head. “No,” she said.
Alder bargained. “Bushel and a half instead of two bushel.”
“No,” said Nellie.
“It’s a deal,” declared Mackenzie. “Just point out your duds and we’ll haul them away.”
“But Nellie said no,” Alder pointed out. “And you say yes. I don’t understand.”
“We’ll take care of Nellie,” Smith told him, soberly.
“You won’t take them trees,” said Nellie. “I won’t let you take them. I’ll see to that.”
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Mackenzie said. “Just point out the ones you want to get rid of.”
Alder said primly: “You’ve made us very happy.”
Mackenzie got up and looked around. “Where’s the Encyclopedia?” he asked.
“He cleared out a minute ago,” said Smith. “Headed back for the car.”
Mackenzie saw him, scuttling swiftly up the path towards the cliff top.
It was topsy-turvy and utterly crazy, like something out of that old book for children written by a man named Carroll. There was no sense to it. It was like taking candy from a baby.
Walking up the cliff path back to the tractor, Mackenzie knew it was, felt that he should pinch himself to know it was no dream.
He had hoped—just hoped—to avert relentless, merciless war against Earthmen throughout the planet by bringing back the stolen music tree. And here he was, with other music trees for his own, and a bargain thrown in to boot.
There was something wrong, Mackenzie told himself, something utterly and nonsensically wrong. But he couldn’t put his finger on it.
There was no need to worry, he told himself. The thing to do was to get those trees and get out of there before Alder and the others changed their minds.
“It’s funny,” Wade said behind him.
“It is,” agreed Mackenzie. “Everything is funny here.”
“I mean about those trees,” said Wade. “I’d swear Delbert was all right. So were all the others. They played the same music the others played. If there had been any faulty orchestration, any digression from form, I am sure I would have noticed it.”
Mackenzie spun around and grasped Wade by the arm. “You mean they weren’t lousing up the concerts? That Delbert, here, played just like the rest?”
Wade nodded.
“That ain’t so,” shrilled Delbert from his perch on Smith’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t play like the rest of them. I want to kick the stuff around. I always dig it up and hang it out the window. I dream it up and send it away out wide.”
“Where’d you pick up that lingo?” Mackenzie snapped. “I never heard anything like it before.”
“I learned it from him,” declared Delbert, pointing at Wade.
Wade’s face was purple and his eyes were glassy.
“It’s practically prehistoric,” he gulped. “It’s terms that were used back in the twentieth century to describe a certain kind of popular rendition. I read about it in a history covering the origins of music. There was a glossary of the terms. They were so fantastic they stuck in my mind.”
Smith puckered his lips, whistling soundlessly. “So that’s how he picked it up. He caught it from your thoughts. Same principle the Encyclopedia uses, although not so advanced.”
“He lacks the Encyclopedia’s distinction,” explained Mackenzie. “He didn’t know the stuff he was picking up was something that had happened long ago.”
“I have a notion to wring his neck,” Wade threatened.
“You’ll keep your hands off him,” grated Mackenzie. “This deal stinks to the high heavens, but seven music trees are seven music trees. Screwy deal or not, I’m going through with it.”