Clifford D. Simak by All Flesh is Grass

Author:All Flesh is Grass [Grass, All Flesh is]
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780727400260
Publisher: London ; White Lion, 1976.
Published: 2010-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

13.

I sighted the small glowing of the fire before I reached the camp. When I stumbled down the hillside, I could see that Tupper had finished with his nap and was cooking supper.

'Out for a walk?' he asked.

'Just a look around,' I said. 'There isn't much to see.’

'The Flowers is all,' said Tupper.

He wiped his chin and counted the fingers on one hand, then counted them again to be sure he'd made no mistake.

'Tupper?’

'What is it, Brad?’

'Is it all like this? All over this Earth, I mean? Nothing but the Flowers?’

'There are others come sometimes.’

'Others?’

'From other worlds,' he said. 'But they go away.’

'What kind of others?’

'Fun people. Looking for some fun.' 'What kind of fun?’

'I don't know,' he said. 'Just fun, is all.’

He was surly and evasive.

'But other than that,' I said, 'there's nothing but the Flowers?’

'That's all,' he said.

'But you haven't seen it all.’

'They tell me,' Tupper said. 'And they wouldn't lie. They aren't like people back in Millville. They don't need to lie.’

He used two sticks to move the earthen pot off the hot part of the fire.

'Tomatoes,' he said. 'I hope you like tomatoes.’

I nodded that I did and he squatted down beside the fire to watch the supper better.

'They don't tell nothing but the truth,' be said, going back to the question I had asked. 'They couldn't tell nothing but the truth. That's the way they're made. They got all this truth wrapped up in them and that's what they live by. And they don't need to tell nothing but the truth. It's afraid of being hurt that makes people lie and there is nothing that can hurt them.’

He lifted his face to stare at me, daring me to disagree with him.

'I didn't say they lied,' I told him. 'I never for a moment questioned anything they said. By this truth they're wrapped up in, you mean their knowledge, don't you?’

'I guess that's what I mean. They know a lot of things no one back in Millville knows.’

I let it go at that. Millville was Tupper's former world. By saying Millville, he meant the human world.

Tupper was off on his finger-counting routine once again. I watched him as he squatted there, so happy and content, in a world where he had nothing, but was happy and content.

I wondered once again at his strange ability to communicate with the Flowers, to know them so well and so intimately that he could speak for them. Was it possible, I asked myself, that this slobbering, finger-counting village idiot possessed some sensory perception that the common run of mankind did not have? That this extra ability of his might be a form of compensation, to make up in some measure for what he did not have?

After all, I reminded myself, man was singularly limited in his perception, not knowing what he lacked, not missing what he lacked by the very virtue of not being able to imagine himself as anything other than he was. It was entirely possible that Tupper,

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