 CHAPTER II PART G For some reason the committee was not attempting to get the story of the grass in chronological order. When I arrived the six distinguished gentlemen were trying to find out all about the crude oil poured, apparently without effect, in what now seems so long ago, but which actually had been less than two weeks before. Flanked on either side by his colleagues, the little black plug of his hearing aid sticking out like a misplaced unicorn's horn was the chairman, Senator Jones, his loose-skinned old fingers resting lightly on the bright table, the nails square and ridged, the flesh brown spotted. He adjusted a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, quickly found the improvement in his vision unpleasant and rumbled. What did it cost the taxpayers? On the stand the chief of police was settled in great discomfort so far forward on the rounded edge of his chair that his balance was a source of fascinated speculation to the gallery. He squirmed a perilous half-inch forward, but before he had time to reply, old Judge Robinson of the State Supreme Court, who scorned any palliation of his deafness, such as Senator Jones condescended to, cupped his left ear with his hand and shrieked, Eh? Eh? What's that? Speak up, can't ya? Don't sit there, mumbling! Assemblyman Brown, head of the legislature's anti-racketeering committee, intense concentration expressed in the forward push of his vigorous shoulders and the creased lines on his youthful forehead, asked if it were not true that the oil had been held up by a union jurisdictional dispute. There was a spattering of applause from the listeners at this adroit question, and one man in the back of the room cried, Sh!t! and then sat down quickly. Attorney General Smith wanted to know just who had ordered the oil in the first place and whether the property owners had given their consent to its application. The Attorney General's square face, softened and rounded by fat, shone on the wriggling chief like a cleagelite, his lips irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak parting into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief managed to stammer he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been out of town and hadn't even heard of the oil till this moment. He was instantly dismissed from the stand and a new witness from the mayor's office was called with no happier result. He, too, was about to be excused when Dr. Johnson, who represented science on the committee, descended from Himalayan abstraction to demand what effect the oil had had on the grass. There were excited whisperings and craning of feminine heads as Dr. Johnson propounded his question. The interest he excited was, however, largely precarious, for he was famous, not so much in his own right, as in being the husband of the intelligentser's widely-read society columnist whose malapropisms caused more rye enjoyment and fearsome anticipation than an elopement to Nevada. "'And what effect did the oil have on the grass?' he repeated. The query caused confusion, for it seemed the committee could not proceed until this fact had been ascertained. Various technicians were sent for, and the doctor, tall, solemn and benign, looked over his stiff turned-down collar and the black string tied drooping around it as though searching for some profound truth which would be readily apparent to him alone. The experts discoursed at some length in esoteric terms, one even bringing a portable blackboard on which he demonstrated with diagrams the chemical, geologic, and mathematical aspects of the problem, but no pertinent information was forthcoming till some minor clerk in the Department of Water Empower, who had only got to the stand through a confusion of names, said boldly. "'No effect, whatever,' asked Judge Robinson. "'Was the oil adulterated? Speak up, speak up, don't mumble!' Henry Miller, the Southland's best-known realtor, Los Angeles's first in-population by 1999, who had connections in the oil industry, as well as in citrus and walnut packing, frowned disapprovingly. The clerk said he didn't know, but he might venture a guess. Senator Jones informed him majestically that the committee was concerned with facts, not speculations. This created an impasse until Attorney General Smith tactfully suggested the clerk might be permitted to guess entirely off the record. After the official stenographer had been commanded sternly not to take down a single word of conjecture, the witness was allowed to advance the opinion that the oil hadn't killed the plant because it had never reached the roots. "'Aye,' questioned the learned Judge, looking as though neither his lunch nor breakfast nor, for that matter, any nourishment adsorbed since a taft administration had agreed with him. "'I'm a bit of a gardener, myself, gentlemen,' the witness assured them confidentially, settling back comfortably. I put her around my own place Saturdays and Sundays, and I know what devil-grass is like. I can well imagine a bunch of it twenty or twenty-five feet high could be coated with many, many gallons of oil without a drop seeping down into the ground. Mr. Miller said, magisterially, "'Not really good American oil,' but no one paid attention, knowing that he was commenting not as a member of the committee, but in his other capacity as the head of an organization to promote brotherhood and democracy by deporting all foreign-born and the descendants of foreign-born to their original countries. Everyone was only too happy to have the oil matter concluded at any cost, and after the stenographer was ordered to resume his labors, the next witness was called. Albert Wiener "'I hope I may never again have to submit to the scrutiny of twelve such merciless eyes. I cast my own down at the brown linoleum until every stain and ink spot was impressed ineradically on my mind.' Senator Jones finally broke the tension by asking, "'What is your name?' Judge Robinson enjoined. "'Speak up, speak up, don't mumble.' "'Albert Wiener,' I replied. There was a faint sigh through the room. Everyone who read the Daily Intelligencer had heard of me. "'And what is your occupation, Mr. Wiener?' asked Henry Miller. "'Salesman, sir,' I answered automatically, forgetting my present connection with the newspaper, and he smiled at me sympathetically. "'You belong to a so-called trades union,' inquired Assemblyman Brown. "'I will ask the Honorable Mr. Brown to modify his question by having the word so-called struck from it. "'I will inform the Honorable Attorney General that my question stands exactly as I phrased it,' rejoined Assemblyman Brown sharply. "'I remind the Attorney General I myself am a member and good-standing of a legitimate union, namely the international brotherhood of embalmers, morticians, grave diggers, and helpers. And when I asked the witness if he belonged to a so-called trades union, I was referring to any one of those groups of reg conspirators who attempt to strangle the economic body by interfering with the normal course of business and moaning honest citizens of tributary dues before they can pursue their livelihoods.' Judge Robinson cupped his ear again and glared at me. "'Speak up, man! Stop mumbling!' I don't belong to any union,' I answered as soon as there was a chance for my words to be heard. Senator Jones took a notebook from his pocket, consulted it, put it back, scribbled something on the pad in front of him, tore it up, looked at his notebook again, and asked, "'What is your connection with this, um, grass?' I applied Miss Francis' metamorphizer to it, sir,' I answered. "'Nonsense,' said Judge Robinson sharply. Explain yourself,' demanded Attorney General Smith. "'Tell us just what this stuff is and how you applied it,' suggested Henry Miller. "'Don't mumble,' ordered Judge Robinson. "'I'm sorry, gentlemen, I don't know exactly what it is. You'll have to ask Miss Francis that, but,' Senator Jones interrupted me. "'You mean to say you applied a chemical to someone's lawn, a piece of valuable property without knowing its contents?' he asked sternly. "'Well, Senator,' I began, "'do you habitually act in this irresponsible manner?' "'Senator, I don't you understand, sir, that consequences necessarily follow actions. What sort of world would this be if everyone rushed around blindly using things of whose nature they were completely unaware?' "'Don't mumble,' warned Judge Robinson. I began to feel very low indeed and could only say haltingly. I acted in good faith, gentlemen, when Mr. Miller kindly recommended that I be excused, since I had evidently given all the information at my command.' "'Subject to recall,' growled Attorney General Smith. "'Oh, certainly, sir, certainly,' agreed Mr. Miller, and I was thankfully released from my ordeal. "'Josephine! Spencer Francis!' I cannot say Miss Francis had made any concessions in her appearance in deference to the committee, for she looked as though she had come straight from her kitchen, a suspicion strengthened by the strand of grass she carried in her fingers and played with absently throughout. She appeared quite at home as she settled herself in the chair, scanning with the greatest interest the faces of the committeemen as if she were memorizing each feature for future referent. The honourable body returned her scrutiny with sharply individual emphasis. The Attorney General smiled pleasantly at her. Judge Robinson looked more sour than ever and grunted, "'Woman! Mistake!' Senator Jones bowed toward her with courtesy. Assemblyman Brown gave her a sharp once-over. Mr. Miller pursed his lips in amusement, and Dr. Johnson gazed at her in horrified fascination. Senator Jones bowed for a second time and inquired her name. He received the information and chewed it meditatively. Miss Francis took out her gold toothpick, considered the etiquette of using it, and regretfully put it away in time to hear the Attorney General's question. Misses or Miss Francis?" "'Miss,' she replied gruffly. Virgo intacta.' Senator Jones drew back as if attacked by a wasp. Attorney General Smith said, "'Hmmm,' very loudly, and looked at Assemblyman Brown who looked blank. Dr. Johnson's nose raised itself a perceptible inch, and Judge Robinson, sensing a sensation among his colleagues, shouted, "'Speak up, Madam doge mumble!' Mr. Miller, who hadn't been affected, inquired, "'What is your occupation, Miss Francis?' Agri-stological engineer, specializing in chemical research. "'How's that again?' Judge Robinson managed to put into the simple gesture of cupping his ear a devastating condemnation of Miss Francis, women in general, science, and present-day society.' She politely repeated herself. "'Astrology? What's that got to do with the grass? Do you cast horoscopes?' Agri-stology, Dr. Johnson murmured to the ceiling. "'Will you please explain in simpler terms just what you do?' requested Attorney General Smith. "'Local statutes against fortune-telling,' burst out Judge Robinson. "'I have spent my life studying reactions of plants to the lighter elements and the effects of certain compounds on their growth, reproduction, and metabolism.' Judge Robinson removed his hand from behind his ear and rubbed his skull irritably. Assemblyman Brown complained. "'There's entirely too much talk about reaction.' Dr. Johnson inspected a paneled wall with no interest whatever, and Senator Jones stated pontifically, "'You are an agricultural chemist.' Miss Francis smiled at him amiably. Agriculture is a broad field, and I farm one small corner of it.' Attorney General Smith leaned forward with interest. "'From what university did you obtain your degrees, Miss Francis?' She slouched back comfortably to look more cylindrical than ever. "'None,' she stated boldly. "'Hey, mumble!' Senator Jones said. I'm afraid I did not quite understand your reply, madam. I hold no degrees, honors, or diplomas, whatever, and I have not wasted one second of my life in any college, university, academy, or other alleged institution of learning. The degrees good enough for Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Darwin, Lavazier, Linnaeus, and Lamarck are good enough for me. I am a questioner, gentleman, a learner, not a collector of alphabetical letters, which strung together in any form your fancy pleases continue eternally to spell nothing whatever.'" Sensation. One of the experts who had been waiting patiently to testify folded his arms and said in a loud voice, "'This is what comes of tolerating women in the professions!' Another muttered, "'Charlatan, ridiculous, dangerous thing. Shameful. Sex!' Two elderly ladies in broad cloth coats with fur collars later identified as crusaders for anti-vivisection cheered feebly and were promptly ejected. Senator Jones took off his spectacles, polished them exhaustively, tried to put them on upside down, gave up, and stayed aggravely. "'This is an extraordinary admission, Missum, Francis.'" It is not an admission at all. It is a statement of fact. As for its irregularity, I take the liberty of believing we unlettered ones are in the majority rather than minority. Judge Robinson warned, "'Could be cited for contempt, Miss!' Dr. Johnson said sharply, nonsense, madame, even a tree surgeon has more respect for learning. Mr. Miller leaned slightly over the table. "'Do you realize that in your ignorant dabbling you have ruined hundreds of property owners and taxpayers?' I thought there was some law against practice and without a license, speculated Assemblyman Brown. There is apparently no law applying intelligence qualifications for members of the legislature. Remarked Miss Francis pleasantly. Senator Jones lifted his gavel idle until now and banged it on the table, smashing his spectacles thoughtlessly placed in front of him a moment before. This did nothing to appease his rising color. "'Silence, madame. We have perhaps been too lenient in deference to your sex. I'll remind you that this body is vested with all the dignity of the state of California, unless you apologize instantly I shall cite you for contempt.' I beg the committee's pardon.' The investigators held a whispered conference among themselves, evidently to determine whether this equivocal apology was to be accepted. Apparently it was, for Dr. Johnson now asked loftily and with an abstracted error as though he already knew the answer and considered it beneath notice. What was this magic formula you caused to be put on the grass? Malicious spirits averred that Dickie Johnson had flunked out of agricultural school, had an obscure European diploma, and that his fame as a professor at Creighton University was based on the gleaming granite and stainless steel building dedicated to research and agronomy, which bore the legend Johnson Foundation over the entrance. No one hearing him pronounce magic formula, putting into the word all the contempt of the scientist for the quack could ever put credence in the base lander. What was this magic formula you caused to be put on the grass? He repeated. Miss Francis reeled off a list of elements so swiftly I'm sure no one but the stenographer caught them all. I know I didn't get more than half, though I was sitting less than five feet from her. Magnesium, she stated. Iodine, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, potash, sulfur, oxygen. Dr. Johnson seemed to have known its composition since grammar school days. Senator Jones asked. And what effect did you expect this extraordinary conglomeration to have? She repeated what she had told me at first and the deductions she had made since. Dr. Johnson smiled. A true man of science, he stated, one who has labored for years to acquire those degrees you affect to despise would have been trained in selfless devotion to the service of mankind would never have made whatever gross error your ignorance heightened by projection into a sphere for which you are probably biologically unfitted, though this is perhaps controversial, has betrayed you into. For had you freely shared your work with colleagues they would have been able to correct your mistakes and this catastrophe brought on by selfish greed, a catastrophe which has already cost millions, would not have occurred. The entire committee, including Dr. Johnson himself, seemed pleased with this indictment. Attorney General Smith looked inquiringly at the witness as though inviting her to answer that if she could. Ms. Francis evidently took the invitation literally for she addressed herself directly to Dr. Johnson. I do not know, Dr., where these beautiful and eminently sensible ideals you have so eloquently outlined are practiced, where scientists, regardless of biological fitness, share with each other their advances from moment to moment and so add to the security of civilization from day to day. Is it in the great research foundations whose unlimited funds are used to lure promising young men to their staffs much as athletes used to be given scholarships by universities anxious to improve the physical qualities of American youth? Is it in the experimental laboratories of great industries where technological advances are daily suppressed, locked away in safes so profits may not be diminished by the expensive retooling necessary to put these advances into effect? Or is it in a field closer to my own in chemical research, pure science if you like, where truly secrets are shared on an international scale, in order to build up the cartels which choke production by increasing prices and promote those industries which thrive on international ill will? Assemblyman Brown rose to his feet and said in measured tones, This woman is a paid agent of the Communist International. I have heard such rantings from demagogues on street corners. I demand the committee listen to know more of this propaganda. Mr. Miller gave a polite wave of his hand toward the assemblyman indicating at once full agreement with what the legislator said and apology for pursuing his questioning of Miss Francis. He then asked the witness sternly, What is your real name? I'm afraid I don't quite understand. The only name I have is Josephine Spencer Francis and so far as I know it is thus written on my birth certificate. Birth certificate, eh? Where were you born? Speak up, don't mumble! Russia without a doubt, muttered Assemblyman Brown. You're sure it isn't Franciske or Francisco witch or say Finkelstein? My name is not Finkelstein, although I do not find myself terrified of that combination of syllables. I was born in Moscow. Another sensation. I thought so! screamed Judge Robinson triumphantly. Aha! exclaimed Senator Jones profoundly. The leopard doesn't change his spots or the red his or her. Cooler! asserted Assemblyman Brown. A saboteur! yelled several of the spectators. Only Dr. Johnson seemed unimpressed with the revelation. He smiled contentedly. In Moscow, Idaho concluded Miss Francis picking her teeth with a flourish. Judge Robinson screeched, Hey, what's all this about? Assemblyman Brown sneered. A very unlikely story. Attorney General Smith wanted it proven in black and white while Senator Jones remarked Miss Francis's taste was on a level with her scholarship. She waved the toothpick toward the chairman and politely waited for either further questions or dismissal. All the while her intense interest in each gesture of the inquisitors and every facet of the investigation had not diminished at all. As she sat there patiently, her eyes darted from one to the other as they consulted and only came to rest on Senator Jones when he spoke directly to her again. And what steps can you take to undo this? So far none, admitted Miss Francis. But since this thing has happened I have given all my time to experiment hoping in some manner to reverse the action of the metamorphizer. And evolve a formula whereby the growth it induced will be inhibited. I cannot say I am even on the right road yet for you must recall I have spent my adult life going as it were in one direction. And it is now not a matter of merely retracing my steps but of starting out for an entirely different destination in a field where there are no highway maps and few compass points. I cannot say I am even optimistic of success. But it is not for want of trying be assured of that. Another semi-silence while the committee conferred once more. Finally Senator Jones spoke in grave and measured tones. It is a customary politeness in hearings of this nature to thank the witness for his helpfulness and cooperation. This courtesy I cannot with any sincerity extend to you, Madam. It seems to me you have proven yourself the opposite of a good citizen that you have set yourself up in your arrogance against all logical authority and have presumed to look down upon the work and methods of men whose standing and ways of procedure are recognized by all sound people. By your conceit, Madam, you have caused the death of young men, the flower of our state's manhood, who gave their lives in a vain attempt to destroy what your ignorance created. If I may be permitted a rather daring and perhaps harsh aside, I think this should strike you doubly, as a woman who has not brought forth offspring to carry on the work of our forefathers, and as one who with doubtful taste boasts of that sterility. I think the results of your so-called experiment should chasten you and make you heed the words of men properly qualified in a field where you are clearly not so. Someone in the back of the room applauded the senator's eloquence. Senator Jones said Miss Francis turning her eyes on him with the attention I knew so well, the look which meant she had found an interest for the moment excluding all others. You accuse me of what amounts to crime, or at least criminal folly, and I must answer that your accusations are at once both true and false. I have been foolish, but it was not in despising the constrictions and falsity of the academic world I have flouted authority, but it was not the authority of the moving-picture heroes whose comic errors are perpetuated for generations like those of pasture, or so quietly repudiated the repudiation passes unnoticed like those of Lister in order to protect a vested interest. The authority I have flouted in my arrogance, as you call it, is that authority all scientists recognized in the days when science was scientific and called itself not boastfully by the name of all knowledge, but more humbly and decently natural philosophy. That authority is what theologians termed the will of God, others, the life force, the immaterial principle, the common unconscious, or whatever you will. When I, along with all the academic robots whom you admire, denied that authority we did not make ourselves as we thought men of pure science, but on the contrary, by deposing one master we invited in a horde of others. Since we could not submit to moral force, we submitted in our blind stupidity, we called it the rejection of metaphysical concepts, to financial force, to political force, to social force. And finally, since there was no longer any reward in itself for our speculations, we submitted to the lust for personal aggrandizement in fortune, in notoriety, in cast bound, irresponsibility, and even for the hypocritical back-slapping of our fellows. In the counter-revolution, known as the 19th century, we even repudiated the name of speculation, and it became a term of disrepute, like metaphysical. We went further than a mere disavowal of the name, we disavowed the whole process, and turned with disgust from the using of our minds to the use of our hands in a manner which would have revolted the most illiterate of carpathian peasants. We extirpated the salivary glands of dogs in order to find out if they would slobber without them. We cut off the tails of mice to discover if the operation affected their great-grandchildren. We decapitated emasculated, malnourished, and poisoned rodents, against whom we had no personal animus, for no other reason than to keep an elaborate apparatus in use. Even these past times failed to satisfy our undiscriminating appetite, someone a little stupider, a little less imaginative, though such conditions must have been difficult indeed to achieve, invented what is called the control experiment, whereby, if theory tested be correct, half the subjects are condemned without trial to execution. These are my sins, that in despising academic ends I did not despise academic means, that in repudiating the brainlessness of the professorial mind I did not attempt to use my own. Because I was proud of the integrity which made me choose not to do the will of a research foundation or industrial empire, I overlooked the vital fact that I had also chosen not to do God's will, but what I stupidly thought to be my own. It was not. It was faint-heartedness, sloth, plecation, doubt, vagueness, and romantical misconception. In a word, it was the aimlessness and falsity of the nineteenth century, coming back in the window after having been booted out the door. My folly was a failure to recognize it. I have deluded myself. I have taken half measures. I have followed false paths. Condemn me for these crimes. I am guilty. Attorney General Smith said acidly, this is neither a psychiatrist consulting room a confessional nor a court of law. I suggest the witness be excused in her last hysterical remarks expunged from the record. It is so ordered, ruled Senator Jones, and now gentlemen, we shall recess until tomorrow. End of Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Part A of Greener Than You Think. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. Chapter 3. Man-Triumphant 1. Part A. The hearings of the Committee to Investigate Dangerous Vegetation went on for five days, and Mr. LaFascissie was increasingly delighted as the proceedings went down, properly edited and embellished to excite reader interest in the columns of the Daily Intelligencer. He even unbent so far as to call me a fool without any agitival modification, which was for him the height of geniality. I don't want to give the impression the Committee stole the show as the saying goes. The show, essentially and primarily, was still the grass itself. It grew while the Honorable Body inquired, and it grew while the Honorable Body, tired by its labors, slept. It increased during the speeches of Senator Jones, through the interjections of Judge Robinson, and as Dr. Johnson added his wisdom to the deliberations. While the Committee probed, listened, and digested, the grass finally pushed its way across Hollywood Boulevard, resisting frantic efforts by the National Guard, the Fire and Police Departments, and a volunteer brigade of local merchants to stem its course. It defied alike sharpened steel, fire, chemicals, and explosives. Even the smallest runner could now be severed only with the greatest difficulty, for in its advance the weed had toughened. Some said because of its omnivorous diet, others its ability to absorb nitrogen from the air, and its rubbery quality caused it to yield to onslaught only to bound back, apparently uninjured after each blow. One of the most disquieting aspects of the advance was its variability and unpredictability. To the west it had hardly gone five blocks from the Dinkman House, while southward it had crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and was nosing toward Melrose. Its growth had been measured and checked over and over again, but the figures were never constant. Some days it traveled a foot an hour. On others it let nearly a city block between sunrise and nightfall. It is simple to put down the grass-crossed Hollywood Boulevard, as simple as saying, our troops advanced, or the man was hanged at dawn. But when I write these words less than a generation later surrounded by rolling hills, gentlebrooks, and vast lawns sedate and tame, I can close my eyes and see again the green glacier crawling down the side streets and over the low roofs of the shops to pour like a cascade upon the busy artery. Once more I can feel the crawling of my skin as I looked upon the methodical obliteration of men's work. I can see the tendrils playing out over the sidewalks choking the roadways, climbing walls, finding vulnerable chinks in masonry, bunching themselves inside apertures and bursting out, carrying with them fragments of their momentary prison as they pursued their ruthless course. Now the uproar and clamour of a disturbed public swelled to giant volume. All the disruption and distress going before have been news. This was disaster. Oh same glomons, Chinese, oh same pothonon, remarked Goots, and indeed I have heard far less outcry over the destruction of historic landmarks than was raised when the grass obscured this celebrated footprints. Recall that the mayor was demanded, and councilman's official limousines were frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the authorities, a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to procrastination marched past the city hall. Democrats blamed Republicans for inefficiency, and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her research during a democratic administration. Every means previously tried and found wanting was tried again as though it were impossible for human minds to acknowledge defeat by an insensate plant. The axes, the size, weed-burners, and reapers were brought out again only to prove their inability to cope with the relentless flow of the grass. Robot tanks loaded with explosives disappeared as had those containing the soldiers, and only the stifled sound of their explosion registered the fact that they had fulfilled their design if not their purpose. It was difficult for the man on the street to understand how the weapons successful in Normandy and Tarawa could be balked by vegetation. Like the investigating committee's pursuit of the question of the crude oil's adulteration, they wanted to know if the tanks were first-line vehicles or some surplus palmed off by the War Department. If the weed-burners were properly accredited griminicides or just a bunch of bums taken from the relief rolls. The necessary reverse of this picture was the jubilant hailing of each new instrument of attack, the brief but hysterical enthusiasm for each in turn as the ultimate saviour. Because of my unique position I witnessed the trial of them all. I saw tanks dragging rotary plows and others equipped with devices like electric fans but with blades of hardened steel sharpened to raise their keenness. The only thing this ladder gadget did was to scatter more potential nuclei to the accommodating wind. I saw the flamenwarfer, the dreadful flamethrowers which had scorched the bodies of men like burnt toast in an instant, direct their concentrated fire upon the advancing runners. I smelled the sweetly sick smell of steaming sap and saw the runners shrivel and curl back as they had done on other occasions until nothing was presented to the flamethrowers except the tangled mass of interwoven stems denuded of all foliage. Upon this involved wall the fire had no effect, the stems did not wilt, the hard membranes did not collapse, the steely network did not retreat. It seemed a drone battle in one small sector yet in that very part where the grass paused on the ground it rose higher into the air like a poisoning tidal wave, higher and higher until its crest unbalanced toppled forward to engulf its tormentors. Then the unruffled advance resumed, again some resource was interposed against it, again it was checked for an instant, and again it overcame its adversary, careless of obstacles impartially taking to itself gaudy rooming houses and pimping French provincial 17 master bedrooms, chateaus, hot dog stand in brown derby, corner grocery and pyramidal food mart undeterred by anything in its path. When you say a clump of weed a tacticity you utter an absurdity. I think everyone was aware of the fantastic discrepancy between statement of the event and the event itself. So innocent and ridiculous the grass looked as it made its first tentative thrust at the urban nerves. The green blade sloped forward like some prettily arranged but unimaginative corsage upon the concrete bosom of the street. You could not believe those fragile seeming strands would resist the impress of a careless boot, much less the entire arsenal of military and agricultural implements. It must have been this deceptive fragility which broke the spirit of so many people. From an item in the intelligentser I recalled the existence of one of Mrs. Dinkman's neighbors who had rudely refused the opportunity to have his lawn treated with a metamorphizer. He had left an incoherent suicide note. Pigeons in the grass, alas, too many pigeons, too much grass. Pigeons are doves, but Noah expressed a raven. Contradiction lies. Roses are red, violets are blue, the grass is green, and I am through two, two, two, darling kitties. He then, in full view of the helpless weed fighters, marched on into the grass and was lost to sight. In the days following, so many self-destructions had seeded this one that the grass became known in the papers as the green horror. Perhaps a peculiar sidelight on human oddity was revealed in most of these suicides, choosing to emulate themselves not in the main body of the grass, but in one of the many smaller nuclei springing up in close proximity. It was my fortune to witness the confluence of two of these descendant bodies. They had come into being only a few blocks apart. Understandably, their true character was unrecognized until they were out of control and had enveloped the neighborhoods of their origin. They crept toward each other with a sort of incestuous attraction until mere yards separated them. They paused skittishly. The runners crawled forward speculatively. The green fronds began overlapping like clasping fingers. Then with accelerating speed came together much as a pack of cards in the hands of a deaf shuffler slides edge under edge to make a compact and indivisible hole. The line of division disappeared, the two became one, and where before there had been left a narrow path for men to tread, now only a serene line of vegetation outlined itself against the unblinking sky. End of Chapter 3 Part A Chapter 3 Part B of Greener Than You Think This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore I have said Mr. Lafacic had softened his brutality toward me, but his favor did not extend so pervasive his literary jealousy to printing my own reports. He continued to subject me to the indignity of being ghosted, a thoroughly expressive term which, by a combination of bad conjugation and the suggestion of insubstantiality, defines the sort of prose produced by Jackson Goote. This arrangement, instead of giving me some freedom, shackled me to the reporter, who dashed from celebrity to celebrity, grass to nuclei, office to point of momentary interest, with unflagging energy and infuriating jocosity. I knew his repertory of tricks and accents down to the last yawn. Most of all, I resented his irregular habits. He never arrived at the intelligentser office on time, or quit after a proper day's work. He thought nothing of getting me out of bed before I'd had my eight hours sleep to accompany him on some ridiculous errand. Bertie old door mouse, the grass is knocking at the doors of NBC. All right, I answered annoyed. It started down Vine Street yesterday. It would be more surprising if it obligingly paused before the studio. Sinek, he said, pulling the bedclothes away from my face. I consider this the lowest form of horseplay I know of. How quickly your ideals have been tarnished by contact with the vulgar world of newspaper dumb. Front and center, Bertie lad, we must catch the grass making its own sound effects before they jerk out the microphones. Protests having no effect, I reluctantly went with him, but the scene was merely a repetition of hundreds of previous ones, the grass being no more or less spectacular for NBC, them for Watanabe's nursery and cut flower shop a half mile away. Its after effects, however, were immediate. The governor declared martial law in Los Angeles County and ordered the evacuation of an area five miles wide on the perimeter of the grass. Furious cries of anguish went up from those affected by the arbitrary order. What authority had any official to dispossess honest people from their homes in time of peace? The right to hold their property unmolested was a prerogative vested in the humblest American and who was the governor to abrogate the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and manifold decisions of the Supreme Court? In embittered fury, Henry Miller resigned from the Investigating Committee, now defunct anyway, its voluminous and inconclusive report buried in the State Archives. Injunctions issued from local courts like ashes from a stirring volcano, but the militia were impervious and hustled the freeholders from their homes with callous disregard for the sacred dues of property. When the reason behind this evacuation order leaked out, a still greater lamentation was evoked for the National Guard was planning nothing less than a saturation incendiary bombing of the entire area. The bludgeon which reduced the cities of Europe to mere shells must surely destroy this new invader. Even the stoutest defenders of property conceded, this must be so. But what was the point of annihilating the enemy if their holdings were to be sacrificed in the process? No, no, let the governor take whatever means he pleased to dispatch the weed, so long as the method involved left them homes to enjoy when things were, as they inevitably must be, restored to normal. So frantic were their efforts that the Supreme Court actually forced the governor to postpone his proposed bombing, though it did not discontinue the evacuation. There were few indeed who understood how the weed would digest the very wood bricks or stucco and who packed up and moved out ahead of the troops. American flags and shotguns recalled the heroic days of the frontier, and defiance of the governor's edict was the rule instead of the exception. Fear-sold ladies dared the militiamen to lay a finger on them or their possessions, and apoplectic gentlemen, eyes as glazed as those of the hunting trophies on their walls, sputtered refusals to stir. No, not for all the brutal force in the world. No one was seriously hurt in this rebellion, the commonest wound being long scratches on the cheeks of the guardsmen, inflicted by feminine nails, as with various degrees of resistance the inhabitants were carried or shooed from their dwellings. While the wrangling over its destruction went on, the grass continued its progress. Out through Cuenca Pass it flowed toward fertile San Fernando Valley. Steadily it climbed to the hilltops, masticating sage, greasewood, oak, sycamore, and manzanita with the same ease it bolted houses and pavements. Into Griffith Park it swaggered, mumbling the planetarium, Mount Hollywood and Ferndale, in successive mouth bowls, and swarmed down to the concrete-lined bed of the Los Angeles River. Here ineffectual shallow pools had preserved delusion and given tourists something at which to laugh in the dry season. The weed licked them up like a thirsty cow at a wallow. Up and down and over the river it ran each day with greater speed. It broke into the water mains. It tore down the poles bearing electric telephone and telegraph wires. It forced its way between the threaded joints of gas pipes and turned their lethal vapor loose in the air until all services in the vicinity were hastily discontinued. Short weeks after I'd inoculated Mrs. Dinkman's lawn, that part of Los Angeles known as Hollywood had disappeared from the map of civilization and had become one solid mass of green devil grass. No one refused to move for this dispossessor as they had for the governor. Thousands of homeless fled from it. Their going clogged the highways with automobiles and produced an artificial gasoline shortage reminiscent of wartime. In downtown Los Angeles, freight cars stood unloaded on their sightings, their consignees out of business and the warehouses glutted. The strain on local transportation, already enfeeble by a public service system designed for a city one twentieth its size, and a complete lack of those facilities mandatory in every other large center of population, increased by the necessary rerouting around the affected area, threatened disruption of the entire organism, and the further disintegration of the city's already weakened coordination. The values of real estate dropped, houses were sold for a song, office buildings for an aria, hotels for a chorus. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, secure in the knowledge its city suffered from nothing worse than fires, earthquakes, a miserable climate, and an invincible provincialism, invited displaced businessmen to resettle themselves in an area where improbable happenings were less likely. And the state of Oklahoma organized a border patrol to keep out Californians. I could not blame the real estatemen for attempting to unload their holdings before they suffered the fate of one tall building at Hollywood and Highland. The grass closed about its base like a false foundation, and surged on to new conquests, leaving the monolith bare and forlorn in its new surroundings. At first the weed satisfied itself with jocular and teasing ventures up the smooth sides. Then, as though rasped by the skyscraper's quiescence, it forced its way into the narrow space between the steel sash, filling the lower floor, and bursting out again in a riot of whirling tendrils. Up the sides it climbed, like some false ivy, clinging, falling back, building upon its own defeated body until it reached another story, and another, and another. At each one the tale was repeated, windows burglariously forced, a floor suffocated, egress affected, and another height of wall scaled. At the end the proud structure was a lonely obelisk furred in a green covering to the very flagpole on its peak, from which waved disappointed, yet still aspiring runners. Upward and outward continuously, empty lot, filling station, artistic billboard, all a light to the greedy fingers. Like thumb and index they formed a crescent, a threatening semi-circle reaching forward by indirection. Northward and southeastward the two aqueducts kept the desert from reclaiming its own. For fifty years the city had scraped up, bought, pilfered, or systematically robbed all the water it could get. Through the gray wet lines, siphons, open cuts, pumps, lifts, tunnels, the metropolis sucked life. Now the desert had an ally. The grassy fingers avoided the downtown district, feeling purposefully and dangerously toward the aqueducts. I spent much of my time, when not actively watching the grass, in the intelligentser office. I had now agreed to write articles for several weekly magazines, and though they edited my copy with a heavy and unappreciative hand, still they never outraged me as the fascist he did by causing another man to usurp my name. Since I was, in both senses, nominally a member of the staff, I had no qualms about using the journals, typewriters, and stationery for the construction of little essays on the grass as seen through the eyes of one who had caused to know it better than anyone else. The curse of Gary Baldi be upon the head of that evil man who controls this organization rolled out goots and pseudo-terchillian tones. The monster has woven a web. We are a summoned party. I got up resignedly and followed him to the managing editor's office. We were not greeted directly. Instead a question was thrown furiously over our heads. Where is he? What bristling and baseless egomanias sways him to affront the daily intelligentser with his contumatious and indecent umpunctuality. Who, chief? asked Goots. Lafacici ignored him. When this great newspaper condescends to shed the light of acceptance to say nothing of an obese and taxable paycheck upon the gross corpus of an illiterate movie cameraman, a false daguerre, a spurious stykin, a dubious Eisenstein, it has a right to expect a return for the good showered upon such a deceitful sluggard. Still ignoring Goots he turned to me and apparently putting the berated one from his mind went on with comparative mildness. Weiner, an unparalleled experience is to fall to your lot. You have not achieved this opportunity through any excellence of your own, for I must say, after lengthy contact no vestige of merit in you is perceptible, either to the new diet or through an ultramicroscope. Nevertheless, by pure unhappy chance you are the property of the intelligentser, and as such this illustrious organ intends to confer upon you the signal honor of being a Columbus, a Van Demon, an Amon son. You, Weiner, and your unworthy person shall be the first man to set foot upon a virgin land. This speech, being no more comprehensible to me than his excreation of an unknown individual, I can only stay silent and try to look appreciative. Yes, Weiner, you, some refugee from the busy newsroom of the Zwingle Iowa Weekly Patriot, a disdainful hand wave referred this description to Goots, some miserable cast off from a forthright quickie studio masquerading as a cameraman and a party of sheep. Perhaps I should simplify my whole sentence by saying merely a party of bloody sheep will be landed by parachute on top of the grass this very afternoon. He smacked his lips. I can see tomorrow's bannerline now. Agent of destruction views handiwork. Should you chance to survive, your ghostwritten impressions for which we pay too high a price, far too high a price, will become doubly valuable. Should you come as I confidently expect to a logical conclusion, the intelligentser will supply a suitable obituary. Now, get the bloody hell out of here and either let me see you never again, or as a triumphant Belboa who has sat, if not upon a peak in Darien, at least upon something more important than your own backside. End of chapter three part B. Chapter three part C of greener than you think. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Greener than you think by Ward Moore. Chapter three part C. The inside of the converted army bomber smelled like, exactly what it was, a barn. Ten sheep and a solitary goat were tethered to stanchions along the sides. The sheep bleated continuously. The goat looked cynically for baring, and all gave off an ammoniacal smell which was not absorbed by the bed of hay under their hooves. Enthusiasm for this venture was an emotion I found practically impossible to summon up. Even without Lafacic's sanguinary prophecies, I objected to the trip. I had never been in a plane in my life and this for no other reason than disinclination. I feared every possible consequence of the parachute jump, from instant annihilation through a broken neck in the jerk of its opening down to being smothered in its folds on the ground. I distinctly did not want to go. But caution sometimes defeats itself. I was so afraid of going that I hesitated to admit my timidity, and so I found myself herded with my two companions, the pilot and crew, in with the sheep and the goat. I was not resigned, but I was quiescent. Goots and the animals were not. While we waited he went through his entire stock of tricks, including a few new ones which were not completely successful before the cameraman, panting, arrived ten minutes after our scheduled departure. His name was Rafe Slave, which I thought an improbable combination of syllables, and he was so chubby in every part, you imagined you saw the smile which ought to have gone with such a face and figure. Before his breath had settled down to a normal routine, Goots had rushed upon him with an enthusiastic, Ah, Rafello muchacho, give to me the abrazo, como usted compañero. Slave scorned reply, pushing Goots aside with one plump hand, while with the other he tidied the sparse black hairs of his mustache, which was trimmed down to an eyebrow shading his lip. After inspecting and rejecting several identical bucket seats, he found one less to his distaste than the others and stowed his equipment, which was extensive, requiring several puffing trips back and forth next to it. Then he lowered his backside onto the unyielding surface with the same anxiety with which he might have deposited a fortune in a dubious bank. His hand started in and out of pockets, which apparently held a small pharmacopia. Pulling out a roll of absorbent cotton from which he plucked two wads, he stuck them thoughtfully in his ears. He withdrew a nasal syringe and used it vigorously, swallow gulps of a clearly labeled seasick remedy, and then sucked at pills from various boxes whose purpose was not so obvious. To conclude, he unstopped a glass vial and sniffed at it. All the while Goots hovered over him, solicitously deluging him with friendly queries in one accent or another. I lost interest in both fellow passengers for the plane after shaking us violently started forward and before I was clearly aware of it had left the ground. Looking from the windows, I regretted my first airplane ride hadn't been taken under less trying circumstances, for it was an extraordinarily pleasant experience to see the field dwindle into a miniature of itself and the ground beneath become nothing more than a large and highly colored relief map. To our right was a stagnant river, damned up behind the blockading arm of grass. Leftward, downtown, the thumb of the city hall pointed rudely upward and far beyond was the listless Pacific. Ahead, the gridiron of streets was shockingly interrupted and severed by the great green mass plumped in its center. It grew to enormous, bigness, and everything else disappeared. We were over and looked down upon it, a pasture humic magnified beyond belief, retaining its essential identity, but made ominous by its inappropriate situation and size. As we hovered above the very pinnacle, the rounded peak which poked up at us, the pilot spoke over the intercommunication system. We will circle till the load is disposed of. First the animals will be dropped, then the equipment, finally the passengers. Is that clear? Everything was clear to me except how we should escape from that green mountain once we had got upon it. This was apparently in the hands of Lafacici, a realization, remembering his grisly conversation, making me no easier in my mind. Nor did I relish the pilot's casual description of myself as part of a load to be disposed of. Slave suddenly came to life and after peering through a sort of lornette, hanging around his neck, mumbling unintelligibly to himself all the while, started his camera which went on clicking magically with no apparent help from him. Efficiently and swiftly, the crew fastened upon the helpless and bleeding sheep their parachutes and one by one dropped them through the open bomb bay. The goat went last, and she did not bleed, but dexterously butted two of her persecutors and mixtureated upon the third before being cast into space. I would have foregone the dubious honor of being the first to land upon the grass, but the crew apparently had their orders. I was courteously tapped upon the shoulder. I presumed the warders are polite when they enter the condemned cell at dawn. My chute was strapped upon me, and the instructions I had already read in their printed form at least sixty times were repeated verbally, so much to my confusion that when I was finally in the air I do not know to this day whether I counted six, sixty six hundred or six thousand before jerking the ripcord. Whatever the number it was evidently not too far wrong, for although I received a marrow-exploding shock the parachute opened and I floated down. But no sooner were my fears of the parachute's performance relieved than I was for the first time assailed with apprehension at the thought of my destination. The grass, the weed, the destroying body which had devoured so much was immediately below me. I was irrevocably committed to come upon it. Not at its edges were other men battled with it heroically, but at its very heart where there were none to challenge it. Still tormented and dejected I landed easily and safely a few feet from the goat and just behind the rear quarters of one of the shape. And now I pause in my writing to sit quite still and remember. More than remember, live through again, the sensation of that first physical contact with the heart of the grass. Ecstasy is a pale word to apply to the joy of touching and resting upon that verger. Soft. Yes it was soft, but the way sand is soft. Unyieldingly. Unlike sand, however, it did not suggest a tightly packed foundation, but rather the firmness of a good mattress resting on a well-made spring. It was resilient, like carefully tended turf, yet at the same time one thought not of the solid ground beneath, but of feathers, or even more of buoyant clouds. My parachute having landed me gently on my feet I sank naturally to my knees, and then, impelled by some other force and gravity, my body fell fully forward in complete relaxation until my face was buried in the thickly growing combs and my arms stretched out to embrace as much of the lush surfaces they could encompass. Far more complex than the mere physical reactions were the psychical ones. When a boy, I had, like every other, they dreamed of discovering new continents, of being first to climb a hitherto unscaled peak, to walk before others the shores of strange archipelagos, to bring back tales of outlandish places and unfrequented aisles. Well, I was doing these things now, long after the disillusionment adolescents brought to these childish dreams, but in addition it was in a sense my island, my mountain, my land, for I had caused it to be. A sensation of tremendous vivacity and well-being seized upon me, I could not have lain upon the grass more than half a second before I leaped to my feet. With a nimbleness quite foreign to my natural habit I detached the encumbering shoot and jumped and danced upon the sword. The goat regarded me speculatively through rectangular pupils, but did not offer in true capricious fashion to gamble with me. Her criticism did not stay me, for I felt absolutely free, extraordinarily exhilarated, inordinately stimulated. I believe I even went so far as to shout out loud and break into song. The descent of Slave, still solemnly recording the event, camera before him in the position of present arms, did not sober my intoxication, though circumspection caused me to act in a more conventional way. I freed him from his harness, for he was too busy taking views of the grass, the sky, the animals, and me to perform this service for himself. I do not know if he was affected the way I was. For his deceptively genial face showed no emotion as he went on aiming his camera here and there with sour thoroughness. Then apparently satisfied for the moment, he applied himself once more to the nasal syringe in the pillboxes. On goods, however, the consequence of the landing must have been much the same as on me. He too capered and sang, and his dialect renderings reached a new low, such as even a burlesque show comedian would have spurned. "'Tis the old sword itself,' he kept repeating. Erengobra uptev!" and he laughed innanely. We must have wasted fully an hour in this fashion before enough coolness returned to allow anything like calm observation. When it did, we unpacked the equipment, despite obstacles interposed by Goots who, still hilarious, found great delight in making the various instruments disappear and reappear unexpectedly. It was quite complete, and we, or rather, slave, recorded the thermometer and barometer readings as well as the wind direction and altitude, these to be later compared with others taken under normal conditions at the same hour. Included in the gear were telescope and binoculars, these we put to our eyes only to realize with surprise that we were located in the center of a hollow bowl perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet across, and that horizon of upsurging vegetation cut off our view of anything except the sky itself. I could have sworn we had landed on a flat plateau, if indeed the contour had not sloped upward to a cap. How, then, did we come to find ourselves in a depression? Did the grass shift like the sea it resembled? Or, incredible thought, had our weight caused us to sink imperceptibly into a soft and treacherous bed? I felt my happiness oozing away. What is man, I thought, but a pygmy trapped in a bowl bounded by an unknown beginning and headed for a concealed destination? It was sweet to be, but whether good or evil lay in the unseen who knew? Uneasiness which did not quite displace my earlier buoyancy took hold of me. The animals, in contrast, gave no signals of disquiet. They cropped at the grass without nervousness, perhaps more from habit than hunger. They did not seem to be obtaining much sustenance. Clearly they found it hard to bite off mouth-holes of forage. Rather they chewed sideways like a cat at the tough rubbery tendrils. I think I want to go home. Anyways, I think I want to get out of this hall, remarked Goots. Slave had unpacked another camera and attached various gadgets to it, pursing his lips and running his hands lovingly over the assembled product, before thrusting it downward into the stolons, where queer shocks of radiant seemed to indicate he was taking flashlight pictures of the subsurface. But the sheep and the cameraman could not distract my attention from the appearance of a trap which the basin of grass was assuming, while Goots was so volatile he couldn't even put on a simulated stoicism. In a panic I started to climb frantically, all the elation of my first encounter with the mound completely evaporated. The goat raised her head to note my undignified scrambling, but the sheep kept up their determined nibbling. The trough, as I said, could not have been more than a couple of hundred feet across, and though the loose runners impeded my progress, I must have covered twice the distance to the edge of the rim before I realized it was as far from me as when I had started. Goots, going in a direction oblique to mine, had no better success. His waving arms and struggling body indicated his awareness of his predicament. Only Slayf was undisturbed, perhaps unconscious of our efforts, for he had taken out still another camera and was lying on his back, pointing it over our heads at the boundary of grass and sky. Hysteria burned my lungs as I continued the dreamlike battle upward. Fear may have confused me, but it seemed as though the enveloping weed was now positively, rather than merely negatively hampering me. The runners whipped around my legs in clinging spirals. The surface, always soft, now developed treacherous spots like quicksands, and while one foot remained comparatively secure, the other sank deeply, tripping me. Prone, the entangling fronds caught up my arms and neck. The green blades no longer tender scratched my face and smothered my useless cries for help. I sobbed childishly, knowing myself doomed to die in this awful morass drowned in an unnatural sea. So despairing were my thoughts that I gave up all struggle and lay there weakly crying when I noticed the grass relaxing its hold. I was sinking in no further. Indeed it seemed the lightest effort would set me free. I rose to my knees and finally to my feet, but I was so shaken by my battle I made no attempt to continue forward, but stood gazing around me, marveling that I was still, if only for a few more moments, alive. Belly belonged, you walk about too much, eh? Him fella look look, no got Belly. Goots had given up his endeavor to reach the rim and apparently struggled all the way over to impart, if I understood his best to mere, this absurd and self-evident piece of information. This is hardly a time for levity, I rebuked him coldly. Couldn't think of a better. Reality is escaped through one flippancy or another. Rafe has his, he waved his hand toward the still industrious cameraman, and I have mine. I bet W.R. has a telescope or a periscope or a spectroscope somehow trained on us right now, and we'll see to it the rescue party arrives ten minutes after all life is extinct. To tell the truth, I'd forgotten our expedition was but a stunt initiated by the Daily Intelligencer to rebound to its greater publicity. Here in this isolate cup it was difficult to conceive of an anterior existence. I thought of myself as in some strange manner indigenous to and part of the weed. To recall now that we were here purposefully, the others were concerned with our venture, and that we might reasonably hope for succor extricated me from my subjective entanglement with the grass much as the relaxation of my body a short while before freed me from its physical bonds. I looked hopefully at the empty sky. Of course we would get help at any moment. Once more my spirits were raised. There was no point in trying to get out of the depression now, seeing we could as easily be rescued from one portion of the grass as from another. Again the grass was soft and pleasant to touch, and Slay's preoccupation with his pictures no longer seemed either eccentric or heroic, but rather proper and sensible. Like Alice in the Red Queen, since we had given up trying to reach a particular spot we found ourselves able to travel with comparative ease. We inspected Slay's activities with interest and responded readily to his autocratic gestures indicating positions and poses we should take in order to be incorporated in his record. But our gaiety was again succeeded by another period of despondency. We repeated all our antics, struggles, and despair. Again I fought madly against the enmeshing weed, and again I gave myself up to death, only to be revived in the moment of my resignation. The cameraman was still untouched by the successive ways of fear and joyfulness. Invincibly armored by some strange spirit he kept on and on, although by now I could not understand in those moments when I could think about anything other than the grass what new material he could find for his film. Skyward and downward to all points of the compass holding his cameras at crazy angles, burlescing all photographers, his zeal was unabated, unaffected even by the force of the grass. Our alternating moods underwent a subtle change. The spans of defeat grew longer, the moments of hope more fleeting. The sheep too at last were infected by uneasiness, bleeding piteously skyward and making no attempt to nibble any longer. The goat, like Slay was unmoved, she disdained the emotional sheep. And now, with horror, I suddenly realized that a physical change had marched alongside the fluctuations of our temper. The circumference of the bowl was the same as at first, but imperceptibly, yet swiftly, the hollow had deepened, sunk farther from the sky. The walls had become almost perpendicular, and to my terror I found myself looking upward from the bottom of a pit at the retreating sky. I suppose everyone at some time has imagined himself irrevocably imprisoned, cast into some lightless dungeon and left to die. Such visions implied human instrumentality, human whim. The most implacable jailer might relent, but this. This was an incarceration no supplication could end, a doom not to be stayed. Silently, evenly, unmeasuredly, the well deepened, and the walls became more sheer. Like kittens about to be ignominiously drowned, we slid into a huddled bunch at the bottom of the sack, men and animals equally helpless and distraught. Fortunately it was during one of the now rare periods of resurgence that we saw the helicopter, for I do not think we should have had the spiritual strength needful to help ourselves had it come during our times of dejection. Guts and I yelled and waved our arms frenziedly, while Slave, exhibiting faint excitement for the first time, contorted himself to aim the camera at the machine's belly. Evidently the pilot spotted us without difficulty, for the ship came to a hovering rest over the mouth of the well, and a Jacob's ladder unrolled its length to dangle rope sides and wooden rungs down to us. Snatched from the buzz saw as the express thundered across the switch and the water came up to our noses, chanted Guts. W. R. has a vilely melodramatic sense of timing. The ladder was near a slave, but working more furiously than ever he waved it impatiently aside, and so I grasped it and started upward. The terror of the ascent paradoxically was a welcome one, for it was the common fear which comes to men on the battlefield or in the creaking hours of the night, the natural dread of ordinary perils, and not the unmanning panic inspired by the awful unknown within the grass. The helicopter shuddered and dipped, causing the unanchored ladder to sway and twist until with each convulsive jerk I expected to be thrown off. I bruised and burned my palms with the tightness of my grip. My knees twitched in my face and back in chest were wet, but in spite of all this, waves of thankfulness surged over me. The roaring and rattling above grew louder, and I made my way finally into the open glass-running cockpit, pulling myself in with the last bit of my strength. For a long moment I lay huddled there exhausted. My eye took in every trifle, every bolthead rivet scratch dent indicator seam and panel, playing with them in my mind, making and rejecting patterns. They were artificial, made on a blessed assembly line, no terrifying product of nature. I wondered how so small a space could accommodate us all, and was devoutly grateful that I at least had achieved safety. Reminded of my companions I looked out and down. The grass walls towered upward almost within reach. Beyond the hole they so unexpectedly made in its surface the weeds stretched out levelly, peaceful and infighting. I shuddered and peered down the reverse telescope where the ladder once more hung temptingly before Slife. Again he waved it aside. Goots appeared to argue with him for he shook his head obstinately and went on using his camera. At length the reporter seized him forcibly with his strength I had not known he possessed and boosted him up the first rungs of the ladder. Slife seemed at last resigned to leave, but he pointed anxiously to his other cameras and cans of film. Goots nodded energetically and waved the photographer upward. I saw every detail of what happened then, emphasized and heightened as though revealed through a slow motion picture. I heard Slife climb on board and knew that in a few seconds now we would be free and away. I saw the bright sun reflect itself dazzlingly upon the blades of the grass, sloping imperceptibly away to merge with the city it squatted upon in the distance. The sun where we were was dazzling I say, but in the hole where Goots was now tying Slife's paraphernalia to the ladder the shadow of the walls darkened it into twilight. I squinted, telepathically urging him to hurry. He seemed slow and fumbling, and then and then the walls collapsed. Not slowly, not with warning, not dramatically or with trumpets. They came together as silently and naturally as two waves closed a trough in the ocean, but without disturbance or upheaval. They fell into an embrace into a coalescence as inevitable as the well they obliterated was fortuitous. They closed like the jaws of a trap, somehow above malevolent, leaving only the top of the ladder projecting upward from the smooth emplacid surface of the weed. Whether in some involuntary recoil the pilot pressed a wrong control or whether the action of the grass itself snatched the ladder from the ship I don't know, but that last bit attached to the machine was torn free and fell upon the green. It was the only thing to mark the spot where the bull, which it held as had been, and it lay a brown and futile tangle of roped wood, a helpless speck of artifice on an imperturbable mass of vegetation. Chapter 3 Part D of Greener Than You Think This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. Chapter 3 Part D Mr. LaFascissie removed the tube of the dictaphone from his lips as I entered. Wainer, although a rigid adherence to fact compels me to claim some acquaintance with general knowledge and a slight cognizance of abnormal psychology, I must admit bafflement at this spectacle of your model complexion once more in these rooms sacred to the perpetuation of truth and the dissemination of enlightenment. Every day you embezzle good money from this paper under pretense of giving value received, and each day your uselessness becomes more conspicuous. Almost anyone would disapprove the divine choice in the matter of taking goods and leaving you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his translation to whatever baroque noisy and entirely public hell is reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible return for his paycheck. Mr. LaFascissie, I began indignantly, but he cut me off. You unalloyed imbecile, he roared, at least have the prudent, if not the intelligence or courtesy to be silent while your betters are speaking. Goots was a bloody nave, a lazy slipshod, slack, tasteless, absurd, fawning, thieving, conniving, sloven, but even if he had the energy to make an attempt in a mind to put to it he could not in ten lifetimes become the perfect immaculate and prototypical idiot you were born. I don't know how long he would have continued in this insulting vein, but he was interrupted by the concealed telephone. What in the name of the ten thousand dubious virgins do you mean by annoying me? he bellowed into the mouthpiece. Yes. Yes. I know all about deadlines. I was a newspaper man when you were vainly suckling canine dugs. Are you ambitious to replace me? Go get with child a mandrake root you, you journalist. I will meet the intelligences deadline as I did before your father got the first tepidly lustful idea in his nullaparous head, and as I shall after you have followed your useless testes to a worthy desuitude. He replaced the receiver and picked up the mouthpiece of the dictophone again, paying no further attention to me. He enunciated clearly and precisely, speaking in an even monotone, pausing not at all as if reading from some prepared script, though his eyes were fixed upon a vacant spot where the wall and ceiling joined. In the death today of Jackson Goetz the daily intelligencer lost a son. It is an olden good custom on these solemn occasions to pause and remember the dead. Jackson Goetz was a reporter of exceptional probity, of clear understanding, of indefatigable effort, and of great native ability. His serious and straightforward approach to an occupation which to him was a labor of love, was balanced by a sunny yet thoughtful humor, a combination making his company something to be sought. Beloved of his fellow workers, no one mourns his loss more sincerely than the editor through whose hands passed. All those brilliant contributions now finally marked as all newspaper copy is dash thirty dash. But though the intelligencer has suffered a personal and deeply felt bereavement, American journalism has given another warrior on the battlefield. Not by compulsion nor arbitrary selection but of his own free will, he who serves the public through the press is a soldier, and as a soldier he is ready at the proper time to go forward and give up his life if need be. No member of a sturdy army was more worthy of a gallant and than Jackson Goetz. He died not in some burst of audacity, such as may occasionally actuate men to astonishing feats, but doggedly and calmly in the line of duty more than a mere hero, he was a good newspaper man, W. R. L. There were tears under my eyelids as the editor concluded his eulogy. Under that gruff and even overbearing exterior must be a warm and tender heart. You can't go by appearances, I always say, and I felt I would never again be hurt by whatever hasty words he chose to hurl at me. Wake up, you moon-struck simpleton, and stop beaming at some private vision. The time has passed for you to live on the bounty of the intelligencer, like the bloody mendicant you are. You have atlived your usefulness as the man who started all this fuss. It is no longer good publicity. The matter has become too serious. No winner. From now on, beneath your unearned byline, the public will know you only as the first to set foot upon this terra incognita, this verdant isle which flourishes senselessly, where only yesterday Hollywood nourished senselessly. So rest no more upon your accidental laurels, but transform yourself into what nature never intended, a useful member of the community. I will make a newspaper man of you, Wiener, if I have to beat into your head an entire tight front from four point up to and including those rare bold face letters we keep in the cellar to announce in our final page one the end of the world. You will cover the grass as before, and you will bring or send or cause in some other manner to be transmitted to me copy, without a single adjective or adverb containing nothing more lethal than verbs, nouns, prepositions, and conjunctions stating facts and only facts clearly and distinctly in the least possible number of words compatible with the usages of English grammar. You will do this daily and conscientiously, Wiener, on pain of instant dismemberment to say nothing of crucifixion and the death of a thousand cuts. The weekly ruminant and the honeycomb have found little pieces of mine written without special instructions suitable for their columns, I mentioned defensively. He threw himself back in his chair and stared at me with such concentrated fury I thought he would burst the diamond stud loose from his shirt-band. The weekly ruminant, he informed me, was founded by a parsimonious whoremaster whose sanctimonious rantings in public were equaled only by his private impieties. It was brought to greatness if inflated circulation be a synonym by a veritable journalistic pimp who pandered to the public taste for literary virgins by bribing them to commit their perverse acts in full view. It is now carried on by a spectral corporation Losing circulation at the same rate I hemophiliac loses blood. As for the honeycomb, it is enough to say that careful research proves its most absorbing reading to be the throw away your truss adds. Is it not natural, Wiener, that two such journals of taste and enlightenment should appreciate your efforts? Unfortunately, the Daily Intelligenceer demands accounts written in intelligible English above the level of fourth grade grammar school. I would have been shocked beyond measure at his libelous smirching of honored names and hurt as well by his sliding reference to myself had I not known from the revealing editorial he had dictated what a sympathetic and kindly nature was really his and how he might beneath this cynical pose have an admiration great as mine for the characters he had just slandered. You will be the new Peter Schlemiel, Wiener. From now on you will go forth without a ghost and any revision essential to your puny assault upon the Republic of Letters will be done by me and God help you if I find much to do. For my life is passing and I must have time to read the immortal Hobbes before I die. In spite of all he had said, I couldn't help but believe Mr. LaFassisi realized my true worth. Or why did he confer on me what was practically a promotion? I was therefore emboldened to suggest the cancellation of the unjust pay cut, but this innocent remark called forth such of a tupperative stream of epithet I really thought the apoplexy Gutsa predicted was about to strike and I hurried from his presence lest I be blamed for bringing it on. A little reading brought me up to date on the state of the grass as a necessary background for my new responsibility. It was now shaped like a great irregular crescent with one tip at Newhall broadening out to bury the San Fernando Road stretching over the Santa Monica Mountains from Beverly Glen to the Los Angeles River. Its fattest part was what had once been Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and a so-called Wilshire District. The right arm of the semi-circle more slender than the left curled crookedly eastward along Venice Boulevard in places only a few blocks wide. It severed the downtown district from the manufacturing area crossing the river near the Ninth Street Bridge and swallowing the great Sears-Robuck store like a capsule. The office of the Daily Intelligencer, like the Civic Center, was unthreatened and able to function, but we were without water and gas, though the electric service subject to annoying interruptions was still available. Already arrangements were being completed to move the paper to Pomona, where the mayor and the councilmenic offices also intended to continue, for there was no hiding the fact that the city was being surrendered to the weed. Eastward and southward the homeless and the alarmed journeyed carrying the tail of the city besieged and gutted in little more than the time it would have taken a human army to fight the necessary preliminaries and bring up its big guns. On trains and buses, by bicycles and on foot, the exodus moved. Those who could afford it left their ravished homes swiftly behind by air, and to these fortunate ones, the way north was not closed as it was to the earthbound by the weeds overrunning of the highways. Used car dealers sold out their stocks at inflated figures and a ceiling price had to be put on the gasoline supplied to those retreating from the grass. Though only a fragment of the city had been lost, all industry had come to a practical standstill. Workers did not care to leave homes which might be grassbound by nightfall. Employers could not manufacture without backlog of materials for a dwindling market and without transportation for their products. Services were so crippled as to be barely existent, and with the failure of the water supply, epidemics, mild at first, broke out and the diseases were carried and spread by the refugees. Cattlemen, uncertain there would be either stockyards or working butchers, held back their shipments. Truck farmers found it simpler and more profitable to supply local depots catering at fantastic prices to the needs of the fugitives than to depend on railroads which were already overstrained and might consign their highly perishable goods to rot on a siding. Los Angeles began to starve. Housewives rushed frantically to clean out the grocers' shelves, but this was living off their own fat and even the most far-sighted of hoarders could provide for no more than a few weeks of future. So even those not directly evicted or frightened by its proximity began moving away from the grass, but they still had possessions and they wanted to take them along, all of them, down to the obsolescent console, radio, and grandma's room, the busted mantle-clock, a wedding present from Aunt Minnie, in the garage, and the bridge-lamp without a shade which had so long rested in the mop-closet, all of this taxed and already overstrained transportation system. Since it was entirely a one-way traffic, charges were naturally doubled, and even then shippers were reluctant to risk the return of their equipment to the threatened zone. The greed to take along every last bit of impedimenta dwindled under the impact of necessity. Possessions were scrutinized for what would be least missed, then for what could be got along without, for the absolutely essential, and finally for things so dear it was not worth going if they were left behind. This last category proved surprisingly small, compact enough to be squeezed into the family car. Junior can sit on the box of fishing tackle, its flat, and hold the birdcage on his lap, as it made ready to join the procession crawling along the clogged highways. Time, reporting the progress of the weeds, said in part, Death, as it must to all, came last week to cold harboring movie producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest, population three million twelve thousand nine hundred and ten, died gracelessly undignifiedly as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained. Downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling south and east sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs, and liver were gone, swallowed up, Jonah-wise, by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass, time August 10th. Still at his post was sunk-eyed W, for William, R, for Rufus, Lafacici, pronounced Lafacici, prolix, wide-read editor of the Los Angeles Intelligencer. Till the last press stopped, the Intelligencer would continue to disseminate the news. Among those remaining was Lafacici's ace reporter Jackson C., for Cramon, Goots, 28. Goots' permanent beat, the heart of the menacing grass where he met his death. Under religion, time had another note about the weed. Harassed Angelinos distracted and terrified by encroaching Synodon Dactylon, time August 10th, now smothering their city, C. National Affairs, were further distracted when turning on their radios, though still working, last week. The nasal, portentous boom of the evangelist calling himself Brother Paul, real name, Algernon Night Mood, announced the second advent. It was taking place in the heart of the choking grass. What brought death and disaster to the country's third city offered hope and bliss to followers of Brother Paul. Zell, all you have, advised the radio preacher, fly to your savior who is gathering his true disciples at this moment in the very center of the grass. Do not fear, for he will sustain and comfort you in the thicket through which the unsaved cannot pass. At last report, countless followers have been forcibly restrained from self-immolation in the Synodon Dactylon, unnumbered others gone joyfully to their beatification, not yet reported as joining his savior, Brother Paul. Under people admitted to the relief rolls of San Diego County this week were Adam Dinkman and wife whose front lawn, time August 3, was the starting point of the plaguing grass, said Mrs. Dinkman. The government ought to pay, said Adam Dinkman. It's a terrible thing. I resolved to send the Dinkman some money as soon as I could possibly afford it. I made a note to this effect in a pocket memorandum book, feeling the glow of worthy sacrifice, and then went out and got in my car. It was all right to digest facts and figures about the weed from the printed page, but it was necessary to see again its physical presence before writing anything for so critical an editor as W. R. Lafacici. I drove through the Second Street Tunnel and out Beverly Boulevard. There, several miles from the most advanced runners of the grass, the certainty of its coming lay like a smothering blanket upon the unnaturally silent district. There was no traffic on my side of the street and only a few last-minute straggling jalapes, loaded down with shameless bedding and bundles coughed their way frantically eastward. Those few shops, still unaccountably open, were bare of goods, and the idle proprietors walked periodically to the front to scan the western sky to assure themselves the grass was not yet in sight. But most of the stores were closed, their windows broken, their signs already tarnished and decrepit with the age which seems to come so swiftly upon a defunct business. The sidewalks were littered with rubbish, diagonally flattened papers, broken boxes, odd shoes. Garbage cans, instead of standing decorously in alleys or shame-facedly along the curb, sprawled in lascivious abandon over the pavements, their contents strewn widely, dogs and cats deserted by fond owners, snarled and fought over choice or tidbits. I had not realized how many people in the city kept pets until the time came to leave them behind. At Vermont Avenue, I came upon what I was sure was a new nucleus, a lawn green and tall set between others withered and yellow. But I did not even bother reporting this to the police, for I knew that before long the main body would take it to its bosom. And now, looking westward, I could see the grass itself a half mile away at Normandy. It rose high in the air, dwarfing the buildings in its path, blotting out the mountains behind and giving the illusion of rushing straight at me. I turned the car north, not with the idea of further observation, but because standing still in the face of that towering palisade, seemed somehow to invite immediate destruction. I drove slowly and thoughtfully, and then at Melrose the grass came inside again, creeping down from Los Feliz. I turned back toward the Civic Center. It would not be more than a couple of days at most now, before even downtown was gone. Chapter 3 Part E During my drive, several walkers, loaded with awkward bundles, raised imploring thumbs for a ride, but knowing to what lengths desperation will drive people and not wishing to be robbed of my car, I had pressed my foot down and driven on. But now, as I went along Temple near Rampart, a beautiful woman, incongruously, for it was in the middle of a hot October, dressed in a fur coat, and with each gloved hand grasping the handle of a suitcase, stepped in front of me, and I had to jam on the brakes to avoid running over her. The car stopped, radiator almost touching her, but she made no attempt to move. A small hat with a tiny fringe of veil concealed her eyes, but her sullen mouth looked furiously at me as rigidly clutching her luggage, she barred my path. Fearing some trap, I turned off the ignition and unobtrusively slid the keys into a side pocket before getting out and going to her. Excuse me, Miss, can I help you? She threw her head back and her eyes, brown and glistening, appraised me through heavily painted lashes. I stood there stiffly, uncomfortable under her gaze, till I suddenly remembered my hat and lifted it with an awkward bow. This seemed to satisfy her, for still without speaking, she nodded and thrust the two suitcases at me. Not knowing what else to do, I took them from her, and she promptly, after smoothing her gloves, walked toward the passenger's side of the car. You want me to take you somewhere, Miss? I inquired quite superfluously. She bent her head the nearest fraction and then rested her fingers on the door handle, waiting for me to open it for her. I ran as fast as I could with the bags, they were beautifully matched, expensive luggage, to put them in the turtle, and then had to make myself still more ridiculous by running back for the forgotten key resting in the side pocket. When I had finally stowed away the baggage and opened the door for her, she got in with a barest of condescending nods for my efforts and sat staring ahead. I drove very slowly, nipping off little glances of her profile as we moved along. Her cheeks were smooth as a china doll's, her nose the chiseled replica of some lovely antique marble, her mouth a living study of rounded lines. Never had I been so close to such an alluring woman. We reached the Civic Center and I automatically headed for the Intelligencer building. But I could not bear to part company so quickly, and so I turned left instead out Macy Street. Now we found ourselves caught in the traffic snailing eastward. In low gear I drove a block, then stopped and waited till a clear ten feet ahead permitted another painfully slow forward motion. Still my passenger had no word to say, but kept staring ahead, though she could see nothing before her, except the trunk laid in rear end of a tottery ford long past its majority. You, I stumbled, I, that is, I mean, wasn't there somewhere in particular you wanted to go? She nodded, still without looking at me, and for the first time spoke. Her voice was deep and had the timber of some old bronze bell. Yuma, she said. Yuma, Arizona, I asked stupidly. Again, she nodded faintly. In a panic, I reckoned the contents of my wallet. About forty dollars, I thought. No, thirty. Would that take us to Yuma? Barely, perhaps, and I should have to wire the Intelligencer from money to return. Besides, in the present condition of the roads the journey would be a matter of days, and I knew she would accept nothing but the very best. How could I do it? Should I return to the Intelligencer office and try to get in advance on next week's salary? I had heard from more than one disgruntled reporter that it was an impossibility. Good heavens, I thought, I shall lose her. Whatever happened, I must take her as far as I could. I must not let her go before I was absolutely forced to. This resolution made my first thought was to cut the time, for poking along in this packed mass I was burning gasoline without getting anywhere. Taking advantage of my knowledge of the side roads, I turned off at the first chance, and was able to resume a normal speed as I avoided towns and main highways. Still she continued silent, until at length, passing orange groves heavy with coppery fruit, I ventured to speak myself. My name is Albert Wiener, Bert. The right rear tire kicked up some dust as I nervously edged off the road, somewhere overhead a plane ripped through the hot silk of the sky. Uh, what? Um, won't you tell me yours? Still facing ahead, she replied. It isn't necessary. After a few more miles, I ventured again. You live, we're living, in Los Angeles? She shook her head impatiently. Well, I thought, really? Then, poor thing, she's probably terribly upset. Home and family lost, perhaps? Money gone? Destitute? Going east, swallowing pride, make a new start with the help of unsympathetic relatives? She has only me to depend on. I must not fail her. Break the ice, whatever attitude her natural pride dictates, offer your services. I'm on the daily intelligence, or I said. I'm the man who first walked on top of the grass. Ten miles later, I inquired, wouldn't you be more comfortable with that heavy fur coat off? I can put it in the back with your luggage, and it won't be crushed. She shook her head more impatiently. Suddenly, I remembered the car radio installed a few days before. A little cheerful music calms the soul. I turned it on and got a band playing a brand new hit, Green as Grass. Oh no, no noise. Of course, how thoughtless of me, the very word Grass reminded her of her tragic situation. I kicked myself for my tactlessness. We skirted Riverside and joined the highway again at Beaumont, where we were unavoidably packed into the slow-moving mass. I'm sorry, I apologized, but I can take a chance again at Banning and drive up into the mountains to get away from this. An hour later, I suggested stopping for something to eat. She shook her head. But it's getting late, I said. Pretty soon we shall have to think about stopping for the night. She raised her left hand imperatively. Drive all night. This would certainly solve part of my financial problem, but I was hungry and unreasonably more irritated by her refusal to eat. I have to eat, even if you don't, I told her rudely. I'm going to stop at the next place I see. With the same left hand, she made a gesture of resignation. I pulled up before the roadside cafe. Won't you change your mind and come in, at least for a cup of coffee? No. I went in angrily and ate. Who was she? She was the one who said, I went in angrily and ate. Who was she to treat me like a hired chauffeur? A mere pick-up, I raged. A stray woman found on a street. By God she would have the courtesy at least to address me, her benefactor civilly, or else I'd abandon her here on the highway and return to Los Angeles. I finished my meal full of determination and strobe back purposefully toward the car. She was still sitting rigid, staring through the windshield. I got in. You know I began. She did not hear me. I turned on the ignition, pressed the starter button, and drove ahead. Sod and I'd with lack of sleep and outraged at her tass eternity. I breakfasted alone on the soggyest weak cakes and the muddiest coffee I have ever demeaned my stomach with. The absence of my customary morning paper added the final touch to my wretchedness. But one would have thought to look at my companion that she had been refreshed by a lengthy repose, had bathed at leisure, and eaten the most delicate of continental breakfasts. There was not a smudge on her sway gloves, nor a speck upon her small hat, and the mascara on her eyelashes might have been renewed but a moment before. The road curved through vast hummocks of sand, which for no good reason reminded me of the grass in its early stages. Reminded I wanted to know what the latest news was, how far the weed had progressed in the night. Thoughtlessly, without remembering her interdiction, I turned the knob. Squeak the radio. Please, she said, in anything but a pleading tone and turned it off. Well, I thought this is certainly going too far. I opened my mouth to voice the angry words, but a look at her stopped me. I couldn't help but feel her imperviousness was fragile, that harsh speech might shatter a calm, too taught to be anything but hysterical. I drove on without speaking, until the hummocks gave way again to smooth desert. We'll soon be in Yuma, I announced. Aren't you going to tell me your name? It is an important, she repeated. But it's important to me, I told her boldly. I want to know who the beautiful lady was, whom I drove from Los Angeles to Yuma. She shook her head irritably, and we crossed the bridge into Arizona. All right, this is Yuma, now where? Here. Right here in the middle of the road? She nodded. I looked helplessly at her, but her gaze was still fixed ahead. Resignedly, I got out, took her bags from the turtle, and set them beside the road, opened the door. She descended, smoothed her gloves, straightened the edge of her veil, brushed an immaterial speck from her coat, and, after the briefest of acknowledging nods, picked up her grips. But, can I carry them for you? She did not even answer this with her usual head shake, but began walking, resolutely, back over the way we had come. Bewildered, I watched her a moment, and then got into the car and turned it around, trying to keep her in sight in the rear view mirror, as I did so. It was an awkward procedure on a highway, heavy with traffic. By the time I had reversed my direction, she was gone.