All Flesh Is Grass Read Online Free PDF Page B

capacity?” I asked.
    â€œDiplomatically,” said the voice. “I think that is the proper term.”
    â€œBut I’m no diplomat. I have no …”
    â€œYou mistake us, Mr. Carter. You do not understand. Perhaps I should explain a little. We have contact with many of your people. They serve us in many ways. For example, we have a group of readers …”
    â€œReaders?”
    â€œThat is what I said. Ones who read to us. They read many different things, you see. Things of many interests. The Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Oxford dictionary and many different textbooks. Literature and history. Philosophy and economics. And it’s all so interesting.”
    â€œBut you could read these things yourself. There is no need of readers. All you need to do is to get some books …”
    The voice sighed resignedly. “You do not understand. You are springing at conclusions.”
    â€œAll right, then,” I said, “I do not understand. We’ll let it go at that. What do you want of me? Remembering that I’m a lousy reader.”
    â€œWe want you to represent us. We would like first to talk with you, so that you may give us your appraisal of the situation, and from there we can …”
    There was more of it, but I didn’t hear it. For now, suddenly, I knew what had seemed so wrong. I had been looking at it all the while, of course, but it was not until this moment that a full realization of it touched my consciousness. There had been too many other things—the phone when there should have been no phone, the sudden change of voices, the crazy trend of the conversation. My mind had been too busy to grasp the many things in their entirety.
    But now the wrongness of the phone punched through to me and what the voice might be saying became a fuzzy sound. For this was not the phone that had been on the desk an hour before. This phone had no dial and it had no cord connected to the wall outlet.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” I shouted. “Who am I talking to? Where are you calling from?”
    And there was yet another voice, neither feminine nor male, neither businesslike nor sweet, but an empty voice that was somehow jocular, but without a trace of character in the fiber of it.
    â€œMr. Carter,” said the empty voice, “you need not be alarmed. We take care of our own. We have much gratitude. Believe us, Mr. Carter, we are very grateful to you.”
    â€œGrateful for what?” I shouted.
    â€œGo see Gerald Sherwood,” said the emptiness. “We will speak to him of you.”
    â€œLook here,” I yelled, “I don’t know what’s going on, but …”
    â€œJust talk to Gerald Sherwood,” said the voice.
    Then the phone was dead. Dead, completely dead. There was no humming on the wire. There was just an emptiness.
    â€œHello, there,” I shouted. “Hello, whoever you may be.”
    But there was no answer.
    I took the receiver from my ear and stood with it in my hand, trying to reach back into my memory for something that I knew was there. That final voice—I should know that voice. I had heard it somewhere. But my memory failed me.
    I put the receiver back on the cradle and picked up the phone. It was, to all appearance, an ordinary phone, except that it had no dial and was entirely unconnected. I looked for a trademark or a manufacturer’s designation and there was no such thing.
    Ed Adler had come to take out the phone. He had disconnected it and had been standing, with it dangling from his hand, when I’d gone out for my walk.
    When I had returned and heard the ringing of the phone and seen it on the desk, the thing that had run through my mind (illogical, but the only ready explanation), had been that for some reason Ed had reconnected the phone and had not taken it. Perhaps because of his friendship for me; willing, perhaps, to disregard an order so that I could keep the phone. Or,