 CHAPTER IV PART I The first snows of this ominous winter halted progress of the grass. It went sluggish and then dormant, first in the far north, where only the quick growing season, once producing cabbages big as hogs' heads, had allowed it to spread at a rate at all comparable to its progress farther south. But by now there could be no doubt left that Synodon Dactilon, once so sensitive to cold that it had covered itself, even in the indistinguishable Southern California winter, with a protective sheath, had become enured to frost and chill, hibernating throughout the severest cold and coming back vigorously in the spring. It now extended from Alaska to Hudson Bay, covering all Manitoba and parts of Ontario. It had taken to itself Minnesota, the northern peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, a great chunk of Illinois, and stood baffled on the western bank of the Mississippi from Cairo to its mouth. The northwestern, underpopulated half of Mexico was overrun, the grass moving but sluggishly into the estados bordering the Gulf Coast. I cannot say this delusive safety was enjoyed, for there was unbelievable hardship. In spite of the great bulk of the country's coal fields lying east of the grass and the vast quantities of oil and natural gas from Texas, there was a fuel famine due largely to the breakdown of the transportation system. People warmed themselves after a fashion by burning furniture and rubbish in improvised stows. Of course this put an additional strain on fire departments, themselves suffering from the same lack of new equipment, tires, and gasoline, afflicting the general public, and great conflagration swept through Akron, Buffalo, and Hartford. Large collection systems broke down and no attempt was made to clear the streets of snow. Broken water mains, gas pipes, and sewers were followed by typhus and typhoid, and smallpox, flux, cholera, and bubonic plague. The hundreds of thousands of deaths relieved only in small degree the overcrowding. For the epidemics displaced those refugees sheltered in the schoolhouses long since closed, when these were made auxiliary to the inadequate hospitals. The strangely inappropriate flowering of culture so profusely year before no longer bloomed. A few invincible enthusiasts, muffled and rank-coded, still bore the icy chill of the concert hall. A quorum of painters besieged the artist's supply stores for the precious remaining tubes of burnt umber and scarlet lake, while it was presumed that in traditionally unheated garret's orthodox poets nourished their muse on pencil erasers. But all enthusiasm was individual property, the reaction of single persons with excess adrenaline. No common interests united doctor and stockbroker, steel-worker and truck-driver, laborer and laundryman, except common fear of the grass, briefly dormant, but ever in the background of all minds. The stream of novels, plays and poems dried up. Publishers amazed that what had been profitable the year before was no longer so were finally convinced and stopped printing anything remotely literate. Even the newspapers limped along crippledly, their presses breaking down hourly, their circulation and coverage alike dubious. The streets were no more safe at night than in sixteenth century London. Even in the greatest cities the lighting was erratic, and in the smaller ones it had been abandoned entirely. Holdups by individuals had been practically given up, perhaps because of the uncertainty of any footbag getting away with his loot before being hijacked by another, but small, compact gains made life and property unsafe at night. Tempers were extraordinarily short. A surprised housebreaker was likely to add battery, mayhem and arson to his crimes, and altercations which commonly would have terminated in nothing more violent than lurid epithets now frequently ended in murder. Since too many of the homeless took advantage of the law to commit petty offenses and so secure some kind of shelter for themselves, all law enforcement below the level of capital crimes went by default. Tempers were tried quickly, often in batches, rarely acquitted, and sentences of death were executed before nightfall so as to conserve both prison space and rations. In rural life the dissent was neither so fast nor so far. There was no gasoline to run cars or tractors, but carefully husband and storage batteries still provided enough electricity to catch the news on the radio or allow the washing machine to do the week's laundry. To a great extent the farmer gave up his dependence on manufactured goods, except when he could barter his surplus eggs or milk for them, and instead went back to the practices of his forefather, becoming for all intents and purposes practically self-sufficient. Soap from wood ashes and leftover kitchen grease might scratch his skin, and a jacket of rabbit or wolverine hide make him self-conscious, but he went neither cold nor hungry nor dirty while his urban counterpart for the most part did. One contingency the country-dweller prepared grimly against, roaming hordes of the hungry from the towns driven to plunder by starvation which they were too shiftless to alleviate by purchasing concentrates for sale everywhere. Shotguns were loaded, corn-cribs made tight stock zealously guarded, but except rarely the danger had been overestimated. The undernourished proletariat lacked the initiative to go out where the food came from. Generations had conditioned them to an instinctive belief that bread came from the bakery, meat from the butcher, butter from the grocer. Driven by desperation they broke into scantily supplied food depots, but seldom ventured beyond the familiar pavements. Famine took its victims in the streets. The farmers continued to eat. I arrived in New York on the clipper from London in mid-January of this dreadful winter. I had boarded the plane at Croydon, only subconsciously aware of the drive from London through the traditionally neat hedgerows of the completely placid and law-abiding England around me, the pleasant officials, the helpful yet not-survile porters. Long Island shocked me by contrast. It had come to its present condition by slow degrees, but to the returning traveller the collapse was so woefully abrupt it seemed to have happened overnight. Tension and hysteria made everyone volatile. The customs officials, careless of the position of those whom they dealt with, either inspected every cubic inch of luggage with boorish suspicion and resultant damage, or else waved the proffered handbags eerily aside with false geniality. The highways, repeating a pattern I had caused to know so well, were nearly impassable with broken-down cars and other litter. The streets of Queens, cluttered with wreckage and refuge, were bounded by houses in a state of apathetic disrepair whose filthy windows refused to look upon the scene before them. The great bridges over the East River were not being properly maintained as an occasional snapped cable hanging over the water like a drunken snake showed. It was dangerous to cross them, but there was no other way. The ferry boats had long since broken down. At the door of my hotel, where I had long been accustomed to just the right degree of courteous attention, a screaming mob of men and boys wrapped in careless rags to keep out the cold, their unwashed skins showing where the coverings had slipped begged abjectly for the privilege of carrying my bags. The carpet in the lobby was wrinkled and soiled and in the great chandeliers half the bulbs were blackened. Though the building was served by its own power station, the elevators no longer ran and the hot water was rationed as in a fifth-rate French pension. The coverlet on the bed was far from fresh, the window was dusty and there was but one towel in the bathroom. I was glad I had not brought my man along for him to sneer silently at an American luxury hotel. I picked up the telephone, but it was dead. I think nothing gave me the feeling that civilization as we knew it had ended so much as the blank silence coming from the dull black earpiece. This even more than the automobile had been the symbol of American life and activity, the essential means of communication which had promoted every business deal, every social function, every romance. It had been the first palliation of the sick bed and the last admission of the mourner. Without telephones, we were not even in the horse-and-buggy days. We had returned to the ox cart. I replaced the receiver slowly in its cradle and looked at it a long minute before going back downstairs. I had come home on a quixotic and more or less on business-like mission. It had long been the belief of consolidated Pemicon's chemists that the grass might possibly furnish raw material for food concentrates and we had come to modify our opinion about the necessity for a processing plant in close proximity. However, at second hand, no practicable formula had been evolved. First laws against the transportation of any specimens and even stricter ones, barring them from every foreign country, made experiment in our main research laboratories infeasible. But we still maintained a skeleton staff in our Jacksonville plant and I had come to arrange the collection of a large enough sample for them to get to work in earnest. It was a tricky business and I had no one beside myself whom I could trust to undertake it except General Thario, and he was fully occupied. In addition to being illegal, it also promised little profit. For while dislocation of the normal food supply made the United States our main market for concentrates, American currency had fallen so low. The franc stood at five dollars, the pound sterling at two hundred and fifty dollars. It was hardly worthwhile to import our products. Of course, as a good citizen, I didn't send America money abroad. Like to purchase Rembrandt's, Botticelli's, Titian's, or El Greco's, or when I couldn't find masterpieces holding a stable price on the world market to change my dollars into some of the gold from Fort Knox, now only a useless bulk of heavy metal. My first thought was Miss Francis. Though she had more or less dropped from public site, my staff had ascertained she was living in a small South Carolina town. By telegrams remaining unanswered, there was nothing for me to do but undertake a trip there. Despite strict instructions, my planes had not been kept in proper condition, and I had great difficulty getting mechanics to service them. There were plenty of skilled men unemployed, and though they were not eager to earn dollars, they were willing to work for other rewards. But the pervading atmosphere of tension and anxiety made concentration difficult. They bungled out of impatience, committed stupidities they would normally be incapable of. They quit without cause, flew into rages at the machines, the tools their fellows fate at or without the slightest provocation. My pilot was surly and hilarious by turn, and I suspected him of drinking, which didn't add to my confidence in our safety. We flew low over railroad tracks stretching an empty length to the horizon over smokeless factory chimneys, airports whose runways were broken and whose landing lights were dark. The land was green and rich. The industrial life imposed upon it till yesterday had vanished, leaving behind it the bleaching skeleton of its being. The field upon which we came down seemed in slightly better repair than others we had sighted. The only other ship was an antique biplane which deserved housing in a museum. As I looked around the deserted landing strip, a tall negro emerged leisurely from one of the buildings and walked toward us. Where are the airport officials, I asked rather sharply, for I didn't relish being greeted by a janitor. I am the chief dispatcher, in fact I am the entire personnel at the moment. My pilot standing behind me broke in. Boy, where are the white folks around here? The chief dispatcher looked at him steadily a long moment before answering. I imagine you will find people of various shades all over town, including those allegedly white. Was there anyone in particular you were interested in, or are you solely concerned with pigmentation? Why you god damn! I thought it advisable to prevent a possible altercation. I recalled Lafacici's articles on the black south which I had considered vastly overdrawn. Evidently they were not, for the chocolate-colored man spoke with all the ease and assurance of unquestioned authority. I want to get to a Miss Francesette. I consulted my notes and gave him the address. Can you get me a taxi or a car? We are without such luxuries at present, I regret to say. But there will be a bus along in about twenty minutes. It had been a long time since I suffered the wasted time and inconvenience of public transportation. However there was no help for it, and I resigned myself philosophically. I walked with the chief dispatcher into the airport waiting room, dull with the listless air, not of an occupancy, but disuse. Not much air travel, I remarked idly. There is a first plane in a month. I wonder you bothered to keep the airport open at all. We do what we can to preserve the forms of civilization. The substance, unfortunately, cannot be affected by transportation, production, distribution, education, or any other such niceties. I smiled inwardly. What children these black people were, after all. I was relieved from further ramblings by the arrival of the bus, which was as laughable as the chief dispatchers philosophizing. The dented and rusty vehicle had been disencumbered of its motor, and was hitched to four mules who seemed less than enthusiastic over their lot. I got in and seated myself gingerly on one of the dilapidated seats, noting that the warning signs, for white and for colored, had been smeared over with just enough paint to make the intent of obliteration clear without actually doing so. How Miss Francis contrived to make every place she lived in, apartment, chicken-house, or cottage, look exactly alike was remarkable. Nothing is more absurd than the notion that so-called intellectual workers are always alert, as Miss Francis demonstrated by her greeting to me. Well, Weiner, what is it this time, selling on commission or an interview? It was inconceivable any literate person in the United States could be ignorant of my position. It is neither, I returned with some dignity. I am here to do you a favor, to help you in your work, and I explained my proposition. She squatted back on her heels and gave me that old familiar searching look. So, you have made a good thing out of the metamorphizer after all, she said irrelevantly and untruthfully. Weiner, you are a consistent character, a beautifully consistent character. Please come to the point, Miss Francis. I am a busy man, and I have come down here simply to see you. Will you accept? No. I doubt if I could combine my research with your attempt to process the inoculated synodon dactylon. However, that would not prevent me from taking you up and using you in order to further a good cause. But I am not yet ready. I shall not be ready for some time to go directly to the grass. That must come later. No, Weiner. I was exasperated at the softness of my impulse, which it made me seek out this mad woman to do her a favour. I could not regret my charitable nature, but I am mentally resolved to be more discriminating in future. Besides the thought of Miss Francis for the work of inshere sentimentality, the sort of false reasoning which would make of every mother an obstetrician or every hen an urologist, as I sauntered through the drowsy streets, killing time till the driver of the ridiculous bus should decide to guide his mules back to the airport, I was struck by the lack of tension, of apprehension and anxiety so apparent in New York. Evidently the black south suffered little from the brooding fear and terror. I put it down to their childish thoughtlessness. Walking thus reflectively head down, I looked up suddenly, straight into the face of the strange lady I had driven from Los Angeles to Yuma. I'm sure I opened my mouth, but no words came out. She was hurrying rapidly along, paying no attention either to me or to her surroundings aloof and exquisite. I think I put out my hand, or made some other reflexive gesture to stop her, but either she failed to notice or misunderstood. When I finally recovered myself and set out after her she had vanished. I waited for the bus, wondering if I had been victim of an elucination. Chapter 4 Part J 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 4 Part J In spite of Miss Francis' blindness to her own interest I still had a prospective superintendent for the gathering and shipping of the grass—George Thoreo!—unless his obsession had sent him down into Mississippi or Louisiana I expected to find him in Indianapolis. The short journey west was tedious and uncomfortable, repeating the pattern of the one southward. At the end of it there was no guerrilla's chief dispatcher, for the airport was completely deserted, and I was thankful for an ample stock of gas for the return flight. I had no difficulty locating Joe in an immense high-ceiling furnished room in one of the ugliest gray weather-boarded houses of which the city never celebrated for its architecture could boast. The first thing to impress me was the room's warmth. For the first time since landing I did not shiver. A wood fire burned in an open grate, and a kerosene heater smelled obstinately in an opposite corner. A grand piano stood in front of the long, narrow windows, and on it slouched several thick piles of curly-edged paper. He greeted me with something resembling affection. The tycoon himself, workers of the world, resumed your chains. A-W, it's a pleasure to see you, and looking so smooth and ordinary and unharassed, too, at the moment everyone else is tearing himself with panic or anguish. How do you do it? I look on the bright side of things, Joe, I answered. Wray never helped anybody accomplish anything, and it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. You hear that, Florence? I had not noticed her when I came in, the original of the snapshot, sitting placidly in a corner, darning socks. I must say the photograph had done her less than justice, for though she was undoubtedly common-looking and sloppy, with heavy breasts and coarse-red cheeks and unconcealedly dyed hair, there was yet about her an air of great vitality, kindness, and good nature. Parenthetically, she acknowledged my presence with a pleasant smile. You hear that? Remind me the next time I am troubled by a transposition or a solo passage that it takes less muscles to smile than to frown. For I have got to work at last, A-W, the loafing and inviting of my soul is past. My soul has responded to my invitation. You remember Crisad's Devil Grass Symphony? A horrible misconception, if ever there was one. A personal insult to anyone who ever saw the grass. A dull, unintentional joke. Bad Schoenberg, if that isn't a tautology. Combined with faint memories of the most vulgar Wagner, if that isn't another tautology, threaded together on mighty like a rose and Alexander's ragtime band. But what am I saying, A-W, to you who are so free from the virus of culture? What the hell interest of you in Crisad's symphony, or my symphony, or anybody's symphony, except the polyphony of prophets? I hope no one thinks I'm a narrow-minded man, Joe, I reproved him. I venture to say I have as much interest in art as the next person. I've done a bit of writing myself, you know, and literature. Oh, sure. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You did not. But while I believe music is a fine thing in its place, I came to discuss a different subject. If you mean taking Joe back to Europe with you, you're out of luck, Mr. Wiener, put in Florence placidly. He's almost finished the first movement, and will never leave the grass till it's all done. You mistake me, Mrs. Thario. I have a proposition for your husband, but far from taking him away from the grass, it will bring him closer to it. Impossible, exclaimed Joe. I am the grass, and the grass is me. In mystical union we have become a single entity. I speak with its voice, and in the great cadences which come from its heart you can hear Thario's first transfigured and magnified a hundred thousand times. I was sorry to note his speech, always so simple and unaffected in contrast to his letters, was infected with an unbecoming pomposity. Looking at him closely, I saw he had lost weight. His flesh had shrunk closer to his big frame, and the lines of his skull stood out sharply in his cheek and jaw. There was the faintest touch of gray in his hair, and his fingers played nervously with the ragged and ill-advised beard on his chin. He hardly looked the man who had evaded serious work in order to encourage a silly obsession comfortably supported all the while by a sizable remittance from his father. I outlined to them my plans for gathering samples of the weed. Florence tucked her still-threaded needle between her teeth and inspected the current pair of socks critically. Joe walked over to the piano and struck several discordant notes. I understand there are several parties making expeditions onto the grass, I said. Lots, confirmed Joe. There's a group sent out by Brother Paul on some very mysterious mission. It's called the Sanctification of the Forerunner. God knows how many thousands he's made as suckers cough up, for they're equipped with all the latest gadgets for polar exploration, skis and dog sleds, moon picture cameras, radios, and unheard-of quantities of your very best pemmican. They started as soon as the snow was thick enough to bear their weight, and if we have an untimely thaw they'll go to join the Russians. Then there's the government bunch, the Disruptions Commission having finally and reluctantly produced an idea, but exactly what it is they haven't confided to an eager citizenry. Smaller groups, too. Scientists and near-scientists. Enthusiasts who have got the notion somehow that animals or migratory game are roaming the snow on top of the grass. Exactly how they got there is not explained, planning to photograph, hunt, or trap, and just plain folk making the trip for the hell of it. We might have gone ourselves if it hadn't been for the symphony. Your symphony is concerned with the grass, I asked politely. It's concerned with combinations of sound. He looked at me sharply and banged out harsher discords, with life if you want to talk like a program note. If you go on this expedition it will give you an opportunity to gather new material, I pointed out. If I look out the window or consult my navel or meditate while that stool or cut my finger I will get new material with much less hardship. The last thing a composer or writer or painter needs is material. It is from excess of material he is the besotted creature he is. May lack leisure or energy or ability or an act of colon but no masterpiece ever was or conceivably could be thwarted from lack of material. Yet you have tied yourself to the grass. Not to prostitute it to whatever talents I have but because it is the most magnificent thing on earth. Then of course she'll go, I said. Why don't you go yourself, A.W.? Do you good to live out in the open? I can't afford the time, Joe. I have too many things that need my personal attention. He struck a series of great thumping notes. And so have I, A.W. So have I. I'm afraid you'll have to get somebody else. I could neither understand nor shake his obstinacy, and when I left them I had almost determined to abandon the whole project, for I could not think whom else trustworthy I could get. His idea of my own participation was fantastic. I had long since come to the point where it was necessary to delegate all such duties to subordinate. Perhaps it was Joe's sly remark about it doing me good to be out in the open or the difficulty of getting a convent but I decided to walk to my hotel. Taxis of course disappeared with gasoline but ingenious men unwilling to be pauperized by accepting the dull had devised rickshaws and bicycle carriages which were the only means of local transportation. The night was clear and cold, the stars gleaming in distant purity, but all around the offensive smell of the disheveled city played on my disgusted nostrils. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Brother, are you saved? When the figure had come out from the shadow of a building to accost me, my first thought had been of a holdup, but the odd salutation made this seem unlikely. What do you want? I asked. Brother, are you a Christian man? I resented the impertinence and started to walk on. He followed close beside me. Harden not your heart, miserable sinner, but let Jesus dissolve your pride as he washes away your other sins. Be not high and mighty for the high shall be low in the mighty powerless. In a short time you will be food for grass. The grass is food for the ox, the divine ox with seven horns which shall come upon the world with a great trumpeting ambellowing soon after the forerunner. I knew of the great multiplication of insanity and hoped I could reach the hotel before he grew violent. What is your name, I temporized? Call me brother Paul, for I was once saw the worldly. Now I am your brother in Christ. Brother Paul? The radio preacher? We are all members one of another and he who watches the sparrow fall makes no distinction between one man made label and another. All of us who have found Christ Jesus with the help of brother Paul are called brother Paul. Come to the loving arms, oh miserable sinner, and be brother Paul also. I thought it might be very confusing. I have always been interested in religion. Oh puny man, interested in life and interested in death, interested in being and interested in being getting, interested in religion and interested in dung. Turn from those interests which the devil pays upon your soul's mortgage, your savior resides in the heart of the grass, withhold not your precious soul from him. At this very moment the forerunner is being sanctified and after her there will come the ox to eat the grass and then the end of the world. Give brother Paul your worthless earthly possessions. Give your soul to Jesus and hasten that glorious day. Hallelujah. The fervid jumble ended in a near scream. What a waste of oratorical and perhaps organizational energy I'm used as I strode along rapidly, still intent on escaping the fanatic. Under different circumstances I thought a man like this might turn out to be a capable clerk or minor executive. Suddenly I had a hunch. Mr. Brother Paul, I have no earthly name. I wish you'd come with me for a few minutes. I have a proposition which might interest you. In the darkness I could see him peering at me suspiciously. Is this some worldly seduction from the Christian path? I think you will find what I have to offer a material aid to your church. I have no church, he said. We are Christians and recognize no man-made institution. Well then to your movement or whatever you call it. In spite of his reluctance which was now as great as mine had been originally I persuaded him to accompany me. He sat uneasily forward while I told him who I was and sketched the plan for collecting some of the grass. What is this to me? I have long ago put aside all material thoughts and now care only for the life of the spirit. This must be true, I thought, noting his shabby clothes, sweat greasy muffler at once hiding and revealing lack of neck-tie, and crack shoes, one sock brown, the other black. It is this to you. If you don't want the salary and bonus attached to organizing and superintending the expedition, and I am prepared to be generous, you can turn it over to Brother Paul. I imagine it will be acceptable. He shook his head muttering, Satan, Satan. The lower part of his face was wide and divided horizontally like an inverted jelly mold. It tapered up into bracketing ears supporting jingery eaves. I pressed home my argument. I will put your proposition to Brother Paul, he conceded at length. I thought distinctions between one man and another were worldly and trivial, I prodded him. Aren't you, Brother Paul? Satan. Satan, he repeated. I'm sure it could have been nothing but one of those flashes of intuition for which successful executives are noted which caused me to pick this man in spite of his absurd ranting and ill-favored appearance. Not intuition, really, but an ability to evaluate and classify personalities instantly. I had always had this faculty. It helped me in my early experiences as a salesman and blossomed out when I entered my proper field. Anthony Preblescham, for that was his worldly name, did not disappoint my judgment, for he proved one of the most aggressive men I ever hired. The brother Paul Hocus Pocus, which he quickly dropped, had merely caught and canalized an abounding energy which would otherwise have flowed aimlessly in a stagnant world. In consolidated pemicin he found his true faith. His zeal for our products proved as great if not greater than his former hysteria for the salvation of mankind. It was no fault of his that the expedition he led proved fruitless. The men Tony Preblescham took with him were all brother Paul's, who, since they disdained them, had not been told of material rewards but given the impression they were furthering their fanatical creed. They built a camp upon the grass, or rather upon the snow which overlayed the grass, near what had once been Springfield, Illinois. Digging down through the snow to the weed, they discovered it to have lost most of its rubbery qualities of resistance in dormancy, and cut with comparative ease more than four tons, which were transported with the greatest difficulty to the Florida plant. Here to anticipate, their work came to nothing, for no practicable method was found for reducing the grass to a form in which its nutritive elements could be economically extracted. The secrecy surrounding the government expedition could not be maintained, and it was soon learned that what was planned was nothing less than an attempt to burn great areas of the weed while in its dormant state. All previous attempts to fire the grass had been made when the sap was running, and it was thought that in its drier condition some measure of success might be obtained. The public instantly translated possibility into probability, and probability into virtual certainty their enthusiastic optimism making the winter more bearable. The party proceeded not more than a couple of miles beyond the eastern edge, dragging with them a flexible pipeline through which was pumped fuel oil, now priceless in the freezing cities. Methodically they sprayed a square mile and set it afire, feeding the flames with the oil. The burning area sank neatly through the snow, exposing the grass beneath, dry yellow and brittle. The stiff interwoven stolons caught, oil was applied unstintedly, the cracking and roaring and snapping could be heard by those well beyond the perimeter of the grass, and the terrific heat forced the temporary abandonment of the work. The spot broadcasters in emotional voices gave the news to those whose radios still functioned. Reporters flashed their editors, burning successful, will stop grass if multiplied. All over the country volunteer crews were instantly formed to repeat the experiment. When the flames died down the men crept closer to inspect the result. The heat had melted the snow for many yards outside the orbit of fire, revealing a border of dull and sudden grass. Beyond this border a blackened crater had eaten its way straight down to the reclaimed earth below. Shouting and rejoicing greeted this evidence of triumph. What if the grass could advance at will in summer? It could be subdued in winter, and thus kept in check till the ingenuity which devised this one victory could win another. Working furiously the oil was again sprayed, this time over a still larger piece, and again the flames lit the sky. The President issued a proclamation of thanksgiving. The American dollar rose by one hundred and seventy-five dollars to the pound, and several prominent expatriates began to think seriously of returning home. The second fire burned through the night and aided by a slight change in the weather thawed the snow over a great area. Eagerly the expedition, now swollen into a small army, returned to continue their triumphant labors. The bright sun shone upon the dirtied snow, upon naked muddy earth in the center of the crater, upon the network of burnt and blackened stems, and upon the wide band of grayish-green grass the retreating snow had laid open to its rays. Grayish-green, but changing in color at every moment as the work of spraying began again. Changing color, becoming more verdant, thrusting blades into the air, moving its long runners upward and sideways and downward into the destroyed part. Revived by the heat, relieved of the snow, the grass fighting for its life with the same intensity which animated its attackers burst into a fury of growth. It covered the evidences of destruction in less time than the burning had taken. It tore the pipeline from its tormentors' hands and drove them away with threats of swift emulation. Defiantly, it rose to a pinnacle, hiding its mutilation, and flaunted its vivid tendrils to bear witness to its invulnerability till a killing frost followed by another snowfall covered it again. Since the delusive hope had been so high, the disappointment threw the public into a despair greater than ever before. The nervous tension of anxiety was replaced by a listlessness of resignation and the suicide rate, high before, now doubled. For the first time a general admission was to be heard that no solution would be found, and in another season the end would come for the United States. Facing the prospect squarely, an exodus of the little people as distinguished from the earlier flight of men of wealth and foresight from the country began. This was the first countermeasure attempted since the grass crossed the Mississippi, and in reaction to its collapse the return of Brother Paul's expedition passed almost unnoticed. Every time, now published in Paris, bothered to report it for general circulation. Last week, from some undisclosed spot in mid-U.S., returned Mother, the forerunner, Joan, real name unknown, and Party. Dispatched grassward by Brother Paul, doom-predicting, advent-prophesying, grimenophile evangelist, the purpose of Mother Joan's expedition had been her sanctification, above the exact spot where the Saviour was waiting in the midst of the grass to receive his faithful disciples. Said Brother Paul to reporters after embracing the forerunner enthusiastically, the expedition has been successful. Said Mother Joan off the record, my feet hurt. Chapter 4 Part K 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 4 Part K The coming of spring was awaited with grim foreboding, but the grass was not bound by any man-made almanac, and unable to contain itself till the melting of the snow again leaped the barrier of the Mississippi, this time near Natchez, and ran through the south-like water from a sloshed dishpan. The prized reforms of the black legislatures were wiped out more quickly even than their great-grandfathers had been in 1877. The worn-out cotton and tobacco lands offered hospitable soil, while cypress swamps and winter swollen creeks pumped vitality into the questing runners. Southward and eastward it spread, waiting only the opening of the first pussy willow and the showing of the first crocus to jump northward and meet the western advance there. The dwindling remnants of cohesion and self-control existing before now disappeared completely. The capital was moved to Portland, Maine. Local law and order vanished. The great gangs took over the cities and extracted what tribute they could from the impoverished inhabitants. Utilities ceased functioning entirely. What little goods remained were obtainable only by barter, and epidemic after epidemic decreased the population to fit the shrinking boundaries. Elder Paul, deprived of the radio, now multiplied himself infinitely in the person of his disciples, preaching unremittingly against resistance even by thought to the oncoming grass. Mother Jones, in frequent public appearances, attracted enormous crowds as she proclaimed, Oh, be joyful! Give your souls to Jesus and your bodies to the grass. I am the forerunner, and after me will come the ox. Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for this is the end of all your suffering and misery. On foot or rarely with the aid of a horse or mule the panic-stricken population marched northward and eastward. Canadian officials anxious to apply immigration controls with the greatest possible latitude were thrust aside as though their existence were an irrelevance. Along the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence the refugees came like locusts to devour the substance of the habitants. Into empty Angava, an almost equally empty Labrador the hardier ones pushed, armed like their forebears with only axe and shotgun. Northward and eastward, beyond the arctic circle and onto the polar ice they trickled, seeking some place which promised security from the grass. Passenger rates to Europe or South America, formerly at a premium, now shot to unparalleled heights. I wound up my own affairs, disappointed at the failure to find a use for the grass but still keeping it in view as a future objective and arranged for the removal of the Florida factory to Brazzaville. Heating the cabled importunities of Stuart Thario I risked my life to travel once more into the interior to see Joe and persuade him to come back with me. I found them in a small Pennsylvania town in the Alleghenies once a company-owned mining village. The grass, advancing rapidly, was just beyond the nearest mountain ridge, replacing the jagged Appalachian horizon with a softer and more ominous one. They appeared serene and content. Joe's haggard look of the winter erased. I'm in the middle of the third movement, AW, he told me, like a man who had no time to waste on preliminaries or indirections. Here! He thrust an enormous Manila envelope at me. Here are the first two movements. There are no copies, and I cannot trust the males or any other messenger to get them out. If possible, I'll send the old man the third movement as soon as it's finished. And the fourth, if I have time. But take the first two, anyway. At least I'll know they're preserved. Joe! Florence! I exclaimed. This is ridiculous! Insane! Come back with me! Silence! You can compose just as well in Europe if it's so important to you. In France, say, or England, away from this danger and discomfort, there is no doubt that country is finished. Come to safety while you can! Florence was busy with a stack of music paper and offered no comment. Joe put his hand for a second on my shoulder, and then turned away, talking with his eyes fixed out the window in the direction of the grass. General Herkimer had both legs shut off at the Battle of Uruscany. He made his men put his back to a tree stump and with a flintlock rifle fired at the enemy until he bled to death. Commodore Lawrence, mortally wounded, had only one order. Schoolbooks hold the words of John Paul, self-named Jones, and of Hiram Ulysses Grant. Even yesterday the old tradition was alive. Enemy landing, issue in doubt. If I finish my symphony, when you finish your symphony, I encouraged. If you finish your symphony, said Florence quietly, if I finish my symphony it must be in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont. His speech took on a hushed, abstracted tone. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, his voice rose higher, Maryland, Virginia, or West Virginia. His shoulders shook and he seemed to be crying. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. I left them, convinced the madness of the country had found still another victim. That night I thankfully boarded the European Clipper for the last time. The next day I sank back into civilization as into a comfortable bed. The United States, July 4th, N-A-N-A. A decent respect for the opinion of mankind dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries passed a small group of smugglers, merchants, and planters united in an insurrection, which in its course gathered to itself such an accretive riffraff, debtors, convicts, adventurers, careerists, foreigners, theoreticians, idealists, revolutionary soldiers of fortune and restless men, that at the height of their numbers they composed with their sympathizers, perhaps a third of the people in the country. After seven years of inept war in which they had all the breaks, including that of a half-hearted enemy, they established upon this continent a new nation. Some of the phrases thrown off in the heat of propaganda were taken seriously and despite shocked opposition written in the basic law. The cryptogram is readable backward or forward, straight away or upside down. Unparalleled resources, the fortuitous historical moment, the tide of immigration drawing on the best of the world, the implicit good and conception necessarily resulting in the explicit best of being, high purpose, inventive genius, exploratory urge, competitive spirit, fraternal enthusiasm. What does the inscription matter if the end product was clear for all to see? Is it not fitting that a nation calling itself lightly God's country, meaning a land abundantly favored by nature, should find its dispatch through an act of the benefactor become understandably irritable? This is not to pose the editorial question of justice, but to remember and passing the girdled forests, abused prairies, gullied lands, the stupidly harnessed planes, wasted coal gas petroleum, the millions of tons of rich mud denied hungry soil by Mississippi levies and forced profitlessly into the salt sea. A small part, a heartbreakingly small part of the United States remains at this moment. In a matter of weeks even this little must be overrun, stilled and covered green as all graves are. Scattered through the world there will be Americans, participants in a bitter diaspora. For them and for their children to be instructed zealously in the formalities of an antique civilization there can be no Fourth of July, no Thanksgiving. Only one holiday will remain and that continue through all the year. Its name, of course, is Memorial Day, W-R-L. This was the last dispatch from the once great editor. It was assumed generally that he had perished with so many others. It was only some time later I heard a curious story, for whose authenticity I cannot vouch. True to the flippant prediction of Jackson Goetz, the fascist he returned to the church into which he had been born, he went further and became a lay brother taking upon himself the obligation of silence. Though an old man he stayed close to the advancing grass, giving what assistance and comfort he could to the refugees. The antidotes of his sudden appearance in typhus-ridden camps, mute and gaunt, hastening with water for the feverish, quieting the terrified with a light touch, praying silently beside the dying, sound improbable to me, but I mention them for what they are worth. When winter came again the Canadian government petitioned the parliament at Westminster for crown colony status, and the assent of the Queen's Privy Council was given to the ending of the Premier Dominion. All that was left of the largest land mass within the British Commonwealth was eastern and northern Quebec, the Maritime provinces and part of the Northwest Territories. The United States and more than half of Mexico had been wiped from the map. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Gnome to Veracruz, stretched a new Sargasso sea of Synodon d'Actalon. A hundred and eighty million men, women and children had been thrust from their homes by a despised weed. I cannot say life on the other continents, and I could call any of them except possibly Africa my home, was undisturbed by the disappearance of the United States. American competition gone, the tempo of business life seemed to run slower and slower. Production dwindled, prices rose, luxury articles were made in abundance, but manufacturers hesitated to adopt American methods of mass production for necessities. Russia, after her new revolution, was a quiet backwater economically, although politically she caused turmoil by giving a home to the fourth international. Germany became the leading iron and steel country, but it was not an aggressive leadership, rather it was a lackadaisical acceptance of a fortuitous role. While Britain, often on deathbed but never a corpse, without question took the lead in international affairs. The United Pemicon and Allied Industries was now, if not the largest, certainly one of the largest companies in the world. We purchased sheep in Australia, beef and wheat and corn in South America, rice and millet and eggs in Asia, fruit and sugar and Milo in Africa, and what the farmers of Europe could spare to process and ship back impalatable concentrated form to a world which now constituted our market. Besides all this we had of course our auxiliary concerns, many of which dominated their respective fields. Ministers of finance consulted me before proposing new budgets, and there was not a statesman outside the Socialist Union who didn't listen respectfully to my suggestions. Tony Preblescham had proved an invaluable find. Never the type to whom authority in the largest matters could be delegated, nevertheless he was extremely handy as troubleshooter, exploiter of new territory or negotiator with competitors or troublesome labour leaders. The pioneers who had fled to the North had little to offer in payment for the vast quantities of food concentrates they required, but the land was rich in furs, timbers and other resources. With permission of the Danish authorities I sent Preblescham to Yulianahop. There he established our headquarters for Greenland, Iceland and all that was left of North America. From Yulianahop immediately radiated a network of posts where our products were traded for whatever the refugees could bring in. But the Americans who had gone into the icy wastes were not seeking subsistence. They were striving mightily to reach some place of sanctuary where they could no longer be menaced by the grass. Beyond the Arctic Circle, here they might learn to imitate the Inuit living on fish and seals and an occasional obligingly beeched whale. But could they be sure on territory contiguous or very nearly contiguous to that supporting the weed that they could count on immunity? They did not believe so. They filled up Newfoundland in the hope that the narrow Gulf of St. Lawrence and the narrow where straits of Belle Isle might offer protective barriers. They crossed on sleds to Baffin Island and in homemade boats to Greenland. Before the grass had wiped out their families and their less hardy compatriots left behind in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, these pioneers abandoned the continent of their origin, the only effect of their passage having been to exterminate the last of the Inuit by the propagation of the manifold diseases they had brought with them. In the south the tempo was slower, the striving for escape less hysterical and more philosophic. When the Mexican peon heard the grass was in the next village, he packed his few belongings and moved farther away. From Tampico to Chiapas the nation journeyed easily south, not regretting too loudly the lands left behind, not crowding or jostling rudely on the highways, not failing to pause for siestas when the sun was hot, but traveling steadily in a quiet resignation that seemed beyond resignation, the extension of a gracious will. But the rest of the world, even in the lethargy which had come upon it in viewing the loss of most of North America, could not afford to leave the grass to its own devices, content to receive the refugees it drove out or watch them die. A world congress to combat the grass was hastily called in London. It was a distinguished body of representatives from all the nations and resembled at its best the now functionless Federal Disruptions Committee. At the opening sitting, a delegation with credentials from the President of the United States attempted to join in the proceedings. One of the French members rose to inquire of the Chairman, where was the United States? He the Delegate had read of such a country had heard it spoken of, and none too favorably. But did it exist, de facto? The Delegate from Haiti asked for the floor and wished to assure his distinguished colleague from the motherland of culture, especially did he wish to assure this learned gentleman bound as they were by the same beautiful and meticulous language that his country had good reason to know the United States actually existed, or had done so at one time, his glorious land bore scars inflicted by the barbarians. His own grandfather, a great patriot, had been hunted down by the United States Marines as a bandit. He implored a congress with humanitarian designs to refuse admission to the delegates of the so-called United States. One of the German delegates, after wiping the perspiration from the three folds on the back of his neck, said he spoke with great diffidence for fear of being misunderstood. The formerly existent country had twice defeated or apparently defeated his own in a war, and his distinguished colleagues might misinterpret the spirit which moved him. Nevertheless he could not refrain from remarking that it appeared to him that a just Providence had wiped out the United States, and therefore it would be illogical, if not blasphemous, for this august body to admit a delegation from a non-existent country. The American delegation attempted to point out feebly that Hawaii still remained, and Puerto Rico, and Guam. The members from the various sections of the British Commonwealth, arguing the precedents of the governments in exile, urged the acceptance of their credentials. The representative of Switzerland called for a vote, and the credentials were rejected. This controversy being settled, the body, in high good humor, selected a governing committee to take whatever measures it deemed necessary to protect the rest of the world from the menace. After lengthy debate and much conflicting testimony from experts, a bold plan was endorsed. It was decided to complete the digging of the Nicaragua Canal and blow up that part of Central America lying between it and the Isthmus of Panama. It was a colossal feat of engineering which would cost billions of pounds and untold manpower, but the nations of the world, not without some grumbling, finally agreed to the expenditure. While technicians from all over the world directed labor gangs and steam shovels, ammunition ships loaded with tons of explosives sailed from every port for Panama and Cologne. Though at first reluctant with their contributions, the countries had reconsidered and poured forth their shares without stint. All obsolete war materials were shipped to the scene of action. Prisons were emptied to supply the needed manpower, and when this measure fell short, all without visible means of support were added to the role. Short-sightedly, Costa Rica protested vigorously the proposed destruction of its entire territory, and there were even momentary uprisings of patriots who proposed to defend their nation with the last drop of blood, but common sense and international amity prevailed, especially when Costa Ricans were promised a territory twice as big as their native country in the hinterland between Colombia and Venezuela, a valueless tract both nations had been trying in vain to settle for decades. Night and day the detonations of high explosives killed fish on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Central America, and brought stunned birds plummeting down from the skies to their death. The coastal plains fell into the sea, great mountains were reduced to powder, and little by little the gap between North and South America widened. But the progress of the work was infinitesimal compared with the advance of the grass. It swept over the ancient Aztec Empire down to the Isthmus of Tuantepek. The ruins of Mayan civilization, excavated once, were buried anew. The demolition engineers measured their daily progress in feet, the grass, in miles. When the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific met in Lake Nicaragua, the grass was in Yucatan. When the first green runners invaded Guatemala, a bare twenty miles of northern Panama had been demolished, and hardly a start had been made in the destruction of Costa Rica. Fleets of airplanes bombed the connecting strip in the area left by engineers to the last, but as their flights went on the grass crept into British Honduras. The workers sent another twenty miles of Panama into nothingness, and the grass completed the conquest of Guatemala. They blew up another ten miles, and the grass took over El Salvador. It widened the Nicaragua canal to a ridiculously thin barrier as the grass overran Honduras. They stood now, almost face to face, the width of one pitiful little banana republic between them. On one hand the grass funneled and constricted to a strip of land absurdly inadequate to support its gargantuan might, on the other the combined resources of man desperately determined to destroy the bridge before the invader. In tropical heat the work was kept up at superhuman pace. Gangs of native laborers fainting under their loads were blown sky high by impatient technicians unwilling to waste the time necessary to revive them. In self-defense the South American states doubled their contributions. At the edge of the weed all the offensive weapons of the world were massed to stay it as long as possible for even a day's, even an hour's delay might be invaluable. But the grass overbore the heavy artillery, the flamethrowers, the bombs, the radium and all the devices in its path. The inventions of war, whose constant improvement was the pride of the human race, offered no more obstacle to the grass than a few anthills might to a herd of stampeding elephant. It swept down to the edge of the ditch and paused at the fifty-mile stretch of salt water between it and the shapeless island still offering the temptation of a foothold in front of the now vastly enlarged Panama Canal. If those engaged in the task from coordinator in chief down to the sweating water-boys had worked like madmen before, they worked like triple madmen now, for the wind might blow a single seed onto what had been Costa Rica and undo all they had so far accomplished. The explosions were continuous, rocking the diminished territory with ceaseless earthquakes. After an hour on the job men reeled away, deafened, blinded and shocked. On the South American side as had been planned great super-cyclone fans were set up to blow back any errant seed. By vast hydroelectric plants in the Colombian highlands, the noise of their revolving blades drowned out the sounds of the explosions for all those nearby. The oceans became interested participants and enormously high tides, possibly caused by the difference in level between the Atlantic and Pacific, clawed away great hunks of land. The great island became a small island, the small island in Islet. At last nothing but ruffling blue water lay between the grass and South America. Over this stretch of sea the great fans blew their steady breath, protecting the continent behind from the fate of its northern twin. The passage between was forbidden to all ships for fear they might inadvertently act as carriers of the seed. The lost continent was not only isolated, it was sealed off. From the sharp apex of the inverted triangle to its broad base in the arctic ice, the grass flourished in one undisputed prairie. The sole legatee of all the hopes, trials, afflictions, dreams and victories of the men and women who had lived there since the first alien foot was set upon its soil. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 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 5 The South Pacific Sailing Directory I cannot say the world greeted the end of the North American continent with either rejoicing or regret. Relief, yes. When the news of the last demolition was given and it was clear the grass was unable to bridge the gap, the imaginative could almost hear mankind emit a vast sigh. The world was saved. They could go about their business now, having written off a sixth of themselves. I was reminded of Miss Francis's remark that if you cut off a man's leg, you'll bestow upon him a crippled mentality. For approximately two centuries the United States had been a leg of the global body, a limb so constantly inflicted with growing pains it caused the other parts to writhe in sympathy. Now the member was cut off, and everyone thought that with the troublesome appendage gone life would be pleasanter and simpler. Deader nations expanded their chests when they remembered Uncle Shylock was no more. Several countries looked eagerly to enlarge their markets in those places where Americans formerly sold goods. Small states whose inhabitants were occasionally addicted to carrying off tourists and holding them for ransom now felt they could dispense with those foreign undersecretaries whose sole business it had been to write diplomatic notes of apology. But it was a crippled world, and the lost leg still twitched spectrally. I don't think I speak now as a native of the United States, for with my international interest I believe I have become completely a cosmopolitan, but for everyone—Englishman, Italian, Afro-Candor or citizen of Liberia—the disappearance of America created a revolution in their lives, a change perhaps not immediately apparent, but eventually to be recognized by all. It was the trivial things we Americans had taken for granted as part of our daily lives and taught the rest of the world to appreciate which were most quickly missed—the substitution of English, Turkish, Egyptian or Russian cigarettes for good old camels or luckies, the impossibility of buying a bottle of Coca-Cola at any price, the disappearance of the solace enwad of chewing gum, the pulsing downbeat of a hot band. These were the first things whose loss was noticed. For a long time I have been too busy to attend moving pictures except rarely, but a man, especially a man with much on his mind, needs relaxation, and I would not choose the foreign movies with their morbid emphasis on problems and crime and sex, in preference to the clean-cut American product which always satisfied the nobler feelings by showing the reward of the honest, the downfall of evil doers and the purity of love and motherhood. Art is all very well, but need it be sorted? As I told George Thario, I am no Philistine. I think the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal are lovely buildings, but I would not care to have an office in either of them. Give me Radio City. I don't mind the high-brow programs the British Broadcasting Corporation put on. I myself am quite capable of understanding and enjoying them, but I imagine there are thousands of housewives who would prefer a good cereal to bring romance into their lives. I don't object to a commercial world in which competitors go through the formality of pretending to be scrupulously fair and talking about each other's products, but I must admit I miss the good old American slap-dash advertising which yelled, Buy my deodorant or you'll stink, wash your mouth with my antiseptic or you'll lose your job, brush your teeth with my dentifrice or no one will kiss you, powder your face with my lead arsenate or you'll keep your maiden head. I would give a lot of money to hear a singing commercial once more or watch the neon lights north of Times Square urge me to buy something for which I have no possible use. Everything within your income is fine, but the world lacks a good you to have bought on the installment plan. Getting what you need is sound policy, but how many lives were lightened by the young men working their way through college or the fuller brushmen? I think there was a subconscious realization of this which came gradually to the top. In the beginning the almost universal opinion was that the loss of the aching limb was for the better. I have heard so-called cultured foreigners discuss the matter in my presence, doubtless unaware I was an American. No more tourists, they gloated, to stand with their backs to the temple of heaven and peaking and explain the superior construction of the Masonic Hall at Cedar Rapids. No more visitors to the champagne caves at Reams to inquire where they could get a shot of real bourbon. No more music lovers at Salzburg or Glenburn to regret audibly the lack of a peppy swing-tune. No more gourmetes in Vienna demanding thick steaks rare and smothered in onions. But this period of smug self-congratulation was soon succeeded by a strange nostalgia which took the form of romanticizing the lost land. American books were reprinted in vast quantities in the English-speaking nations and translated anew in other countries. American movies were revived and imitated. Local speech was powdered with what were conceived to be Yankee expressions and a southern drawl was assiduously cultivated. Best-selling historical novels were laid in the United States and popular operas were written about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson. Men told their growing sons to work hard for now there was left no land of opportunity to which they could emigrate, no country where they could become rich overnight with little effort. Out of fairytales children demanded stories of forty-niners and the wedding of the rails, and on the streets of Bombay and Cairo, urchins, probably quite unaware of the memorial gesture, could be heard whistling Casey Jones. But hand in hand with this newfound romantic love when a completely practical attitude towards those Americans still existing in the flush, the earliest expatriates being generally men of substance were well received. The thousands who had crossed by small boats from Canada to Greenland and from Greenland to Iceland to Europe were by definition in a different category and found the quota system their fathers and grandfathers had devised used to deny their own entrance. They were as bewildered and hurt as children that any nation could be at once so short-sighted and so heartless as to bar homeless wanderers. We bring you knowledge and skills in our own need, they said in effect. We will be an asset to your country if you admit us. The Americans could not understand. They themselves have been fair to all and only kept out undesirable immigrants. Gradually the world geared itself to a slower tempo. The go-getter followed the Brontosaurus to extinction and we Americans with the foresight to carry on our businesses from new bases profited by the un-American backwardness of our competitors. At this time I daresay I was among the hundred most important figures of the world. In the marketing and packaging of our original products I had been forced to acquire paper mills and large interest in aluminum and steel. From there the progression to tin mines and rolling mills to coal fields and railroads to shipping lines and machine shops was not far. I expanded horizontally and vertically, delighted to show my competitors that Americans, even when deprived of America, were not robbed of the traditional American enterprise. It was at this time, many months after we had given up all hope of hearing from Joe again, that General Thario received a long-delayed package from his son. It contained the third movie of the year, which was the first movie of the year long-delayed package from his son. It contained the third movement of the symphony and a covering letter. Dear Father, Stuart Thario, General, I shall not finish this letter tonight. It will be sent with as much of the first symphony as makes a worthy essence when it goes. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but there is a place, perhaps not in life, but somewhere, for the imperfect, for the incomplete, the great and small alike achieve fulfillment, satisfaction. Must this be a ruthless denial of all between? I have always despised musicologists, makers of program notes, little men who tell you the opening chords of Opa 67, describe fate knocking at the door or the call of the yellow hammer. A child draws a picture and writes on it, this is a donkey. And when groan proves it to be a self-portrait by translating the Jupiter Symphony into words, having said this, let me stultify myself but for privateers alone as a bit of personal history not an explanation to be appended to the score. I started out to express in terms of strings and winds the emotions roused in me by the sights and thoughts of the grass, much as LVB took a mistaken idealization of his youth as a starting point for Opus 55, but just as no man is an island, so no theme stands alone. There is a chord binding the lesser to the greater, a mystic union between all things. The grass is not an entity but an aspect. I thought I was writing about my country, conceived of myself in a reversed snobbishness, a haughty humility, a proud abasement, as a sort of superior smetana. Did you know that as a boy I dreamed of the day when I should receive my commission as second lieutenant? Boston, Massachusetts. I interrupted this letter to sketch some of the middle section of the fourth movement, and I have wasted a precious week following a false trail, and of course the thought persists that it may not have been a false trail at all, but the right one. The business of saying something is a perpetual wrestle with doubt. He leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination, Portsmouth probably, and then somewhere in Maine hoping to wrench from fate the time to finish the score. It seems more than a little pompous to continue my explanation. The grass, the United States humanity, God, whatever we write about, we write about the same things. Still there is a limit to individual perception, and it seems to me my concern, at least my musical concern, is enclosed by Canada and Mexico, the Pacific and Atlantic. So rightly or wrongly, even if the miracle occur and I do finish in time, I cannot leave. A short distance, such a short distance from where I scribble these words, Vanzetti died. No more childish thought than atonement was ever conceived. It is a base and baseless gratification. Evil is not recalled. So I do not sentence myself for the murder of Vanzetti or for my manifold crimes. Who am I to pass judgment even on me? But all of us, accusers and accused, condemners and condemned, will remain forever indistinguishable. If the requiem for our faults and our virtues, if the celebration of our past and the prayer for our resurrection can be orchestrated, then the fourth movement will be finished. If not, Erustic Main. By the best calculations we have about three more days. I do not think the symphony can be finished, but the thought no longer disturbs me. It would be a good thing to complete it, just as it would be a good thing to sit on fleecy clouds and enjoy eternal, never-melting, never-cloying ice-cream-cones celestially flavored. The man who is to carry this letter waits impatiently. I must finish quickly before his conviction of my insanity outweighs the promises I have made of reward from you and causes him to run from me. My love to Mama, the siblings and yourself, and kindly regards to the great magnet Joe. About the same time I also received a letter which somehow got through the protective screening of my secretaries. Albert Wiener, Savoy Hotel, Thames Embankment, WC-1 Sir, you may recall making an offer I considered premature. It is now no longer so. I am at home afternoons from one until six, set fourteen, Little Bow Street, EC-3, third floor rear. Josephine, Spencer, Francis. In spite of her rudeness at our last meeting, my good nature caused me to send a cab for her. She wore the identical gray suit of years before and her face was still unlined and dubiously clean. How do you do, Miss Francis? I'm glad to find you among the lucky ones. Nowadays, if we don't hear from old friends, we automatically assume their loss. She looked at me as one scans an acquaintance whose name has been embarrassingly forgotten. There is no profit for you in this politeness, Wiener, she said abruptly. I am here to beg a favour. Anything I can do for you, Miss Francis, will be a pleasure, I assured her. She began using a toothpick, but it was not the old-fashioned gold one, just an ordinary wooden splinter. You remember asking me to superintend gathering specimens of Synodon Dactylon? Circumstances have greatly altered since then, I answered. They have a habit of doing so. I merely mentioned your offer because you coupled it with a chance to advance my own research as an inducement. I am on the way to develop the counter-agent, but to advance further I need to make tests upon the living grass itself. The World Control Congress has refused me permission to use specimens. I have no private means of evading their fiat. An excellent thing. The decrees of the Congress are issued for the protection of all. Hypocrisy as well as unctuousness. What do you expect me to do? You have a hundred Hyaline chemists, all of them with a string of degrees at your service. I want to borrow two of them and be landed on some American mountain above the snowline where I can continue to work. Besides being illegal to mention such a thing is apparently hypocritical, such a hazardous and absurd venture is hardly in the nature of a business proposition, Miss Francis. Philanthropic, then. I have given fifty thousand pounds to set up nursery schools right here in London so the mothers of the little brats will be free to work in your factories. I have donated ten thousand pounds to Indian famine relief so that you might cut the wages of your Hindu workers. I have subscribed five thousand pounds for sanitation in Seshwan, thereby lessening absenteeism from sickness among your coolies. I will not stoop to answer your insinuations, I said. I merely mentioned my guests to show that my charities are on a worldwide scale and there is little room in them for the relief of individuals. Do you think I come to you for a personal sinecure? I don't ask if you have no concern outside selfish interest, for the answer is immediate and obvious, but isn't it to that same selfish interest to protect what remains of the world? If the other continents go as North America has gone, will you alone be divinely translated to some extraterrestrial sphere? And if so, will you take your wealth and power with you? I am supporting three laboratories devoted exclusively to anti-grammarist research, and anyway, the rest of the world is amply protected by the oceans. She removed the toothpick in order to laugh unpleasantly. Once a salesman, always a salesman, Weiner, lie to yourself, deny facts, brazen it out. The world was safe behind the salt-band, too, in the days when Josephine Francis was a quack into charlatan. Admitting your great attainments, Miss Francis, the fact remains that you are a woman and the adventure you propose is hardly one for a lady to undertake. Weiner, you are ineffable. I'm not a lady, I'm a chemist. The conversation deadlocked as I waited for her to go. Oddly enough, in spite of her sex and the illegality of her proposal, I was inclined to help her, if she had approached me in a reasonable manner and not with the uncouth bearing of a superior toward an inferior. If she could find a counter-age, and I thought, if she could find a weapon, then the possibility of utilizing the grass as a raw material for food concentrates, a design still tantalizingly just beyond the reach of our research workers, might be realized. Labor costs would be cut to a minimum. I could not let the woman be her own worst enemy. I was big enough to overlook her unfortunate attitudes and see through the cranky exterior to the worthy idealist and true woman beneath. I was interrupted in my thoughts by Miss Francis speaking again. North American land titles have no value right now, but a man with money who knew ahead of time the grass could be destroyed. How clumsy I thought, trying to appeal to a cupidity I don't possess, as if I would cheat people by buying up their very homes for sordid speculation. Miss Francis, I said, purely out of generosity and in remembrance of old times, I am inclined to consider helping you. I suppose you have the details of the equipment you will need, the qualifications of your assistants, and a rough idea of what mountain you might prefer as a location. Of course, and she began rattling off a catalog of items, grabbing the air with her toothpick as a sort of running punctuation. I stopped her with a raised hand. Please, reduce your list to writing and leave it with my secretary. I will see what can be done. As soon as she had gone, I picked up the phone and cabled Tony Preblesham to report to me immediately. The decision to send him with Miss Francis had been instantaneous, but had I thought about it for hours no happier design could have been conceived. Instead of General Thario, there was not another man in my organization I could trust so implicitly. The expedition required double, no triple secrecy and Preblesham could not only guard against any ulterior and selfish aims Miss Francis might entertain, to say nothing of the erratic or purely feminine impulses which could possibly operate to the disadvantage of all concerned, but take the opportunity to give the continent a general survey, both to keep in view the utilization of the weed, whether or not it could be conquered, and whatever possibilities a lay observer might see as to the grass perishing of itself. Chapter 5 Part B of Greener Than You Think 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 5 Part B. Mr. Albert Weiner, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Perth, Western Australia, A.C., Dear Sir, According to your instructions our party left Paramaribo on the ninth instant for Madeleine, giving out that we were going to see possible tin deposits near there. At Madeleine I checked with our men and was told that work gangs with the stuff needed to make landing fields, together with caches of gas and oil, enough for three times the flying required had been dropped both at Mount Whitney and on Banks Island. A.W., I tell you the boys down there are on their toes. Of course I did not tell them this, but gave them a real old fashioned pep talk and told them if they really made good they might be moved up to Rio, or Copenhagen, or maybe even London. Everything being OK in Madeleine we left on the twelfth instant, heading at first south to fool any nosy cops and then straight west so as to be out of range of the patrol boats. It was quite late before we could head north and the navigator was flying by instruments so it was not until dawn that we saw land. You can snare all you like at Brother Paul and of course he has not had the benefits of an education like you, A.W., but I want to tell you that when I looked out of the port and saw nothing but green grass, warehouses and trees, and mountains ought to have been, I remembered that I was a backslider and sinful man, however this is beside the point. The Lady Professor, Miss Frances I mean, and Mr. White and Mr. Black were both so excited they could hardly eat, but kept making funny remarks in some foreign language which I do not understand. However, I do not think there was anything wrong or disloyal to you in their conversation. You would have thought that flying over so much green would have got tiresome after some time, but you would have been wrong. I am sorry I cannot describe it to you, but I can only say again that it made me think of my account with my maker. While I think of it, although it does not belong here, in Paramaribo I had to fire our local man as he got into trouble with the police there and was given consolidated pemicin a bad name. He said it was on the firm's account, but I told him you did not approve of breaking the law at all. We had no trouble siding the party at Mount Whitney, and I want to tell you, AW, it was a great relief to get rid of the scientists, although they are no doubt all right in their own way. Some of the work gang kicked at being left behind, although that was in our agreement. They said they were sick of the snow and the sight of the grass beyond. I said we only had room in the transport for the Bank's Island gang, and anyway, they would have company now. I promised them we would pick them up on our next trip. Miss Francis and the two others acted like crazy. They kept shaking each other's hands and saying, We are here, we are here, although anybody but a nut would have thought saying it was a waste of time as even a small child could have seen that they were. And anyway, why anybody should want to be there is something beyond me. We took off from Whitney on the 14th instant, flying back southwest. There were no landmarks, but the navigator told me when we were over the side of LA. I have to report that the grass looked no different in this area where it is the oldest. Then we flew northeast, looking for the Great Salt Lake according to your instructions. I am sorry to say that we could not find it, although we flew back and forth for some time, searching while the instruments were checked. The lake has disappeared in the grass. We headed northeast by east, finding no landmarks except a few peaks above the snow on the Rocky Mountains. I am very glad to say that the Great Lakes are still there, although much smaller, and Lake Erie and Lake Ontario so shrunk I might have missed them if the pilot had not pointed them out. The St. Lawrence River is, of course, gone. We followed the line of the big Canadian lakes north, but except for depressions, which may be swamps, in the latitudes of the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes there is nothing but grass. We stayed overnight at Banks Island and it was very cold and miserable, but we were happy to remember that there was no grass underneath the snow below us. Next morning, the 16th, after fueling up, we took off with the ground crew for the homeward trip. Stopping at Whitney, everything was okay, except that I did not see the lady professor, Miss Francis, I mean. As Mr. White and Mr. Black said, she was too busy. I will be in London to meet you on the first, as arranged, and give you any further news you want. Until then, I remain yours truly. A Prebelsham, Vice President in Charge of Field Operations, Consolidated Pemmican. I cannot say Prebelsham's report was particularly enlightening, but it at least squelched any notion the grass might be dying of itself. I did not expect any great results from the scientist's expedition, but I felt it worth a gamble. In the meantime, I dismissed the lost continent from my mind and turned to more immediate concerns. The disappearance of American foundries and the withdrawal of the Russian products from export after their second revolution had forced a boom in European steel. English, French, and German manufacturers of automobiles, rails, and locomotives, anticipating tremendously enlarged outlets for their output, even if those new markets still fell short of the demands formerly drawing upon the American factories, had earmarked the entire world supply for a long time to come. Since I owned large blocks of stock, not only in the industries, but in the rolling mills as well, this boom was profitable to me. I had long since passed the point where it was necessary, no matter how great my expenses are philanthropies, for me to exert myself further. But as I have always felt anyone who gains wealth without effort is no better than a parasite, I was contracting for new plants in Bohemia, Poland, Northern Italy, and France. I did not neglect buying heavily into the Braye Basin and into the Swedish ore mines to ensure the further supply of these mills. In spite of the able assistance of Stuart Thario and the excellent spade work of Preblescham, I was so busy at this time for in addition to everything else, the sale of concentrates diagrammed an ever ascending spiral that food and sleep seemed to be only irritating curtailments of the working day. It was the fashion when I was a youth for novelists to sneer at businessmen and proclaimed that the conduct of industry was a simple affair, such as any half-wit could attend to with but a portion of his mind. I wish these cynics could have come to know the delicate workings and balances of my intricate empire. We in responsible positions, and myself most of all, were on a constant alert, ready for instant decision or personal attention to a massive new detail at any moment. On one of the occasions when I had to fly to Copenhagen, it was Winifred and not General Thario who met me at the airport. General T is so upset, she explained in her vivacious way, that I had to come instead, but perhaps I should have sent Pauline. I assured her I was pleased to see her and hastened to express concern for her father. Oh, it's not him at all really, she said. It's Mama, she's all bothered about Joe. I lowered my voice respectfully and said I was sure Mrs. Thario was overcome with grief and perhaps I had better not intrude at such a time. Poo, descended Winifred, Mama doesn't know what grief is. She's simply delighted at Joe's doing a custer, but she's awfully bothered about his music. In what way, I asked, do you mean getting it performed? Getting it performed, nothing, getting it suppressed, that a long line of generals and admirals should wind up in a composer is to her a disgrace which will need a great deal of living down. It preys on her mind. Pearl Stewart is home now reading her choice passages from the Winning of the West by Theodore Roosevelt to soothe her nerves. I had been more than a little apprehensive of meeting Mama again, but Winifred's report seemed to reassure me that she would be confined, if not to her bed, at least to her own apartment. I was sadly disillusioned to find her ensconced in a comfortable armchair beside a brightly burning fire, the general with a book held open by his thumb. He greeted me with his usual affection. Albert, I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to the airport. I shook his hand and turned to his wife. I regret to hear you are indisposed, Mrs. Thario. Spare me your damned crocodile tears. Where is my son? In his last letter, he suggested he would remain in our country as long as it existed. However, it is possible, even probable he escaped. Let us hope so, Mrs. Thario. That's a sort of damned hogwash you feed to green troops, not to veterans. My son is dead in action. My grandfather went the same way at Chancellorsville. Do you think me some whimpering broom pusher to weep at the loss of a son on the battlefield? Stuart Thario put his hand on her arm. Easy, low pressure, no excitement. Not in regimentals, said Mama, and relapsed into silence. We had a very uneasy dinner, during which we were unable to discuss business owing to the presence of the ladies. Afterward, the general and I withdrew with our coffee. He did not drink at home, so I missed the clarity which always accompanied his indulgence, and were deep in figures and calculations when Winifred summoned us hastily. General, Mr. Wiener, come quickly, Mama! We hurried into the living room, I for one anticipating Mama if not in the throes of a stroke, at least in a faint. But she was standing upright before the open fire. An unsheathed cavalry saber in her hand. It was clearly a family relic, for from its guard dangled the golden tassel of the United States Army, and on its naked blade were little spots of rust. But it looked dangerous enough as she warned us off with a sweep of it. In her other hand I recognized the bulky manuscript of George Thario's first symphony, which she was burning page by page. Some damned imposter, she said. Some damned imposter. Harriet, protested the general. Harriet, please, the boys work, only copy. She fed another leaf to the fire. Imposter. Harriet, he advanced toward her, but she waved him away with a sharp blade. Can't burn George's work this way? Gave his life. I had not thought highly of Joe's talents as a musician, believing them by and large to be but reflections of his unfortunate affectations. I think I can say I appreciate good music, and I've often taken a great deal of pleasure from hearing a hotel band play Rubenstein's melody in F or like classical numbers during mealtimes. But even if Joe's symphony was but a series of harsh and disjointed sounds, I thought it's destruction, a dreadful thing for Mama to do. And the more shocking, aside from any question of artistic taste, because of its reversal of all we associate with the attitude of true motherhood. Mrs. Thario, I protested. As your son's friend, I beg you to consider impudence, declared Mama, pointing the sword at me so that I am voluntarily backed up, although already at a respectful distance. Damned impudence. She repeated, feeding another page to the fire, came into my house, bold as brass, and said, cream, if you please, ha, I'll cream him, I will. And she made a violent gesture with the saber as though skewering me up on its length. I whispered to Constance, who was standing closest, that her mother had undoubtedly lost her reason and should be forcibly restrained. Unhappily, the old lady's keen ears caught my suggestion. Oh ho ho, deranged am I, I spend my life making more money than I can spend, do I? I push my way against all decency into the company of my betters, boring them and myself for no earthly reason do I. I live on crackers and milk because I've spent my nervous energy piling up the means by an endless supply of steaks and chops my doctor forbids me to eat. I starve my employees half to death in order to give them money I steal from them to some charity which hands a small part of it back, eh? I hire lobbyists or bribe officials to pass laws and then employ others to break them. I foster nationalist organizations with one hand and build up international cartels with the other do I? I'm crazy, am I? Excited by her own rhetoric she put several pages at once into the flames. Constance pleaded, Mama this is all we have left of Joe, please Mama. Sundays the church banner is raised above the flag. I never heard a post chaplain say immortality was contained on pieces of paper. Comfort them, Mama, suggested Winifred. Creative work, muttered the general. Is it some trivial thing to endure the pangs of child-bed that the creations of men are so exalted? I have offered my life on a battlefield no less and no more than my grandfather fought on at Chancellorsville. Little minds do not judge, but I judge. I bore a son. He was my extension as this weapon is my extension. She thrust the sword forward to emphasize her utterance. I will not hesitate to judge my son. If he did not die in proper uniform at least I shall not have him go down as a maker of piano notes instead of bugle calls. She threw the balance of the score into the fire and stirred it into a blaze with the steel's point. The ringing of the telephone bell put a period to the scene. Constance, who spoke several languages, answered it. She carried on an incomprehensible conversation for a minute and then motioned to me with her head. It's for you, Mr. Wiener. Rio. I'll wait till they get the connection through. She turned to the mouthpiece again and encouraged the operator with a soothing flow of words. I was vastly relieved at the interruption. It was undoubtedly Preblesham calling me on some routine matter, but it served to distract attention from the still muttering old lady and give her a chance to subside. Preblesham's voice came in a bodyless waiver over the miles. A.W., can you hear me? I can give you a tip. Just about three hours ahead of the radio and newspapers. Can you understand me? Our big competitor has bought the adjoining property. Do you get me, A.W.? I nodded at the receiver as though he could see me, my thoughts racing furiously ahead. I had understood him all right. The grass had somehow jumped the saltwater gap and was loose upon another continent. I had about three hours in which to dispose of all my South American holdings before their value vanished. Telephone facilities in the Thario House, though adequate for the transaction of the General's daily business, were completely unequal to the emergency. Even if they had not been, Mama's occasional sallies from her fireplace fort, saber-waving threateningly, frequently endangered half-hour communications, and we suffered all the while from the idiosyncrasies of the continental operators, who seemed unable ever to make a clear connection, varying this annoyance by a habit of either dropping dead or visiting the nearest cafe at those crucial moments when they did not interrupt a tense interchange by polite inquiries as to whether Majur had been connected. I must say that in this crisis Stuart Thario displayed all his soldierly qualities to the full, sweeping aside his domestic concerns, as he would at the order of mobilization, he became swift, decisive, vigorous. The first call he put through was to the Christian Four Hotel, engaging every available empty room so that we might preempt as much of the switchboard as possible. Pressing Constance and Winifred into services secretaries until his own office staff could be summoned, and leaving Pauline to deal with Mama, he had us established in the hotel less than three-quarters of an hour from the time published and phoned. Even as the earliest calls were being put through, a barely perceptible signal passed from the general to Winifred, and presently large parts of the Christian Four Bar were being arranged on a long table to the general's elbow. I had little time for observation since I had to exert all my powers of salesmanship on unseen financiers to persuade them by indirection that I was facing a financial crisis, and they had a chance to snap up my South American holdings at fractions of their values. But out of the corner of my eye I admired the way Stuart Thario continuously sipped from his constantly refilled glass without hesitating in his duplicating endeavors. I expected the news to break and end our efforts at any moment, but the quickness with which I had seized upon Prebleschum's information confirmed the proverb about the early bird. The three-hour reprieve stretched to five, and by the time Havas flashed the news I had liquefied almost all of my now worthless assets and to potential financial rivals. Needless to say I had not trusted solely to the honor of the men with whom I had conversed, but had the sale confirmed in each case by an agent on the spot who accepted a check, draft, or cash from the buyer. Only on paper did I suffer the slightest loss. In actuality my position became three times as strong as before.