Nan couldn’t believe there was nothing irrevocably wrong with the fellow. He used his eight fingers as dexterously as anyone used ten; more so, it seemed. He wouldn’t feed the pigs, but he caught on fast to gathering eggs, reaching under the hens without disturbing them at all. He couldn’t milk but he stood by Sherry’s side while Nan did. The cow’s production was still up; there was a lot more than yesterday morning.
After the chores he returned to the orchard—without the ax. Nan sent Josey to see what he was up to. “He’s going to every tree on the place,” Josey reported; “just looking at them and touching them. Not doing anything useful. And you know what? He eats grass and weeds.”
“Chews on them, you mean.”
“No, I don’t. He eats them, honest. Handfuls. And he touched my—the thing on my face. I ran right away to look in the mirror, and you can hardly see it in the shade.”
“I’m glad it’s fading,” said Nan. “Only don’t be disappointed if it comes back. It’s nothing to worry about. And I’m sure his touching you had nothing to do with it. Just coincidence.”
It took the fellow three days to go through the orchard, fooling around with every one of the old trees. By the end of the third day Sherry was giving two full gallons of milk, they were gathering more eggs than usual in the season when laying normally fell off, and Josey’s birthmark had practically disappeared, even in full sunlight. Malcolm Maxill grumbled at the fellow’s uselessness but he never said straight out that he had to move on, so everything was all right.
After the orchard (the girls went, separately and collectively, to see what he was doing; they returned no wiser) he started on the cornfield. Maxill had planted late, not merely from lack of enthusiasm for husbandry but, possessing no tractor or plow, he had to wait till those who hired out their rigs finished their own sowing. The ground had been dry; the seed had taken overlong to swell and germinate; when the tender gray-green sheaves spiraled through the hard earth, the hot sun had scorched and warped them. While the neighboring fields were already in pale tassel, his dwarfed rows barely revealed the beginning of stunted spikes.
The fellow took even longer with the corn than the orchard. By now Nan realized his humming wasn’t tunes at all, just his way of talking. It was a little disheartening, making him seem more alien than ever. If he’d been Italian or Portugee she could have learned the language; if he’d been a Chinaman she could have found out how to eat with chopsticks. A man who spoke notes instead of words was a problem for a girl.
Just the same, after a couple of weeks she began to understand him a little. By this time they were getting four gallons a day from the cow, more eggs than they ever had in early spring, and Josey’s complexion was like a baby’s. Maxill brought home a radio someone traded in at his son-in-law’s store and they had fun getting all sorts of distant stations. When the fellow came close and they weren’t tuned in, it played the same kind of music the fiddle had the first night. They were getting used to it now; it didn’t seem so strange or even—Malcolm Maxill’s words—so long-haired. It made them feel better, stronger, kinder, more loving.
She understood—what? That he was not as other men, born in places with familiar names, speaking familiar speech, doing things in customary ways? All this she knew already. The humming told her where he came from and how; it was no more comprehensible and relevant afterward than before. Another planet, another star, another galaxy—what were these concepts to Nan Maxill, the disciplinary problem of Henryton Union High, who had read novels in her science class? His name, as near as she could translate the hum, was Ash; what did it matter if he was born on Alpha Centauri, Mars, or an unnamed earth a billion light-years off?
He was humble, conscious of inferiority. He could do none of the things in which his race was so proficient. Not for him were abstract problems insoluble by electronic brains, philosophical speculation reaching either to lunacy or enlightenment, the invention of new means to create or transmute matter. He was, so he admitted and her heart filled the gaps her intellect failed to bridge, a throwback, ad atavism, a creature unable to catch the progress of his kind. In a world of science, of synthetic foods and telekinesis, of final divorce from the elementary processes of nature, he had been born a farmer.
He could make things grow—in a civilization where that talent was no longer useful. He could combat sickness —in a race that had developed congenital immunity to disease. His gifts were those his species had once needed; they had outgrown the need a million generations back.
He did not pour out his confusion to Nan in a single steady flow. Only as he acquired words and she began to distinguish between his tones did their communication reach toward comprehension. Even when he was thoroughly proficient in her language and she could use his crudely, there remained so much beyond her grasp. He explained patiently over and over the technique of controlling sounds without directly touching the instrument as he had done with the fiddle and radio; she could not follow him. What he had done to Josey’s face might as well have been expounded in Sanskrit.
It was still more impossible for her to envision the ways in which Ash was inferior to his fellows. That his humming—any music he produced—so beguiling and ethereal to her, was only a dissonance, a childish babble, a lisping, stuttering cacophony, was preposterous. Spaceships she could imagine, but not instantaneous transmission of unharmed living matter through a void millions of parsecs across.
While they learned from each other the corn ripened. This was no crop to plow under or let blacken with mildew in the field. The blighted sheaves now stood head-high, the broad leaves sickling gracefully downward, exposing and protecting the two ears on every stalk. And what ears they were! Twice as long and twice as fat as any grown in Evarts County within memory, full of perfect kernels right to the bluntly rounded tips, without a single dry or wormy row. The county agricultural agent, hearing rumors, drove over to scotch them; he walked through the field for hours, shaking his head, mumbling to himself, pinching his arm. Maxill sold the crop for a price that was unbelievable, even with the check in his hand.
The meager scattering of fruit ripened. Since the coming of Ash, the trees had sent forth new wood at a great rate. Young leaves hid the scars of age: the dead wood thrusting jaggedly, nakedly upward, the still-living but sterile boughs. Under the lush foliage the girls discovered the fruit. Ash’s touch had been too late for the cherries, apricots, plums, early peaches, though those trees were flourishing in their new growth with abundant promise for the coming year. But the apples, pears and winter peaches were more astonishing than the corn.
There were few; nothing could have added new blossoms, fertilized them, or set the fruit, but the few were enormous. The apples were large as cantaloupes, the pears twice the size of normal pears, the peaches bigger than any peach could be. (Maxill exhibited specimens at the County Fair and swept all the first prizes.) They were so huge everyone assumed they must be mealy and tasteless, easily spoiled. Juice spurted from them at the bite, their flesh was firm and tangy, their taste and plumpness kept through the winter.
Nan Maxill faced the problem. Ash was properly a gift to all the people of the world. There was none who couldn’t learn from him; all would benefit by what they learned. Scientists could understand what she couldn’t; piece together the hints of matters above Ash’s own head. The impetus he could give to technology would make the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries seem stagnant periods. Musicians and philologists could be pushed to amazing discoveries. Farmers could benefit most of all. Under his guidance dead sands and unused spaces would be rich with food; many if not all wars might be avoided; To keep him on the farm in Evarts County would be cheating humanity.