She put the sphere down on the moss and began her work, totally ignoring Weston. She made fires spring up—Weston was completely puzzled by the method—and simply sat, and looked at the flames. That seemed to be all there was to it.
Twice Weston spoke to her, but she did not answer. He finally began to explore the buildings. In the end, he was no wiser than when he began, and he had not encountered either of the two men. Whatever he had expected, it wasn’t this.
He thought: Why aren’t they surprised? Had time-traveling become common or was there another answer?
The noon passed into afternoon and the beginnings of blue evening, while Weston moved like a ghost through that strange, incomprehensible place that was too alien for him to understand. Finally he saw Serena and the men sitting on the moss before one of the buildings. He went out to them, and saw that they were eating. He joined them.
It was the strangest meal Weston had ever had. The earth served him! A little pool opened in the lawn at his feet, exactly like an opening mouth. It was full of something like jelly. Weston, watching the others, scooped up some of the stuff in his palms and tried it. It was palatable enough.
Then, around the pool, a ring of small green plants pushed themselves up, budded without blossoming, and put out round fruits like little balloons which swelled as he watched. Serena plucked one and ate it. Weston closed his mind temporarily to questions and—had dinner!
When they finished, the pool closed, and the tiny plants fell to bright pink dust that sifted into the moss. The three aliens sat back, paying little attention to Weston, and talked.
“The fires were burning well today,” Serena said. “It was easy to handle the clay.”
“I had a little trouble,” one of the young men murmured.
“Will you finish soon?” Weston asked, and they looked at him with odd eagerness.
“I shall. I think I shall,” Serena answered. “How far along are you?”
“That isn’t my job,” Weston found himself saying. “I’m from a different time. This isn’t my world at all. I—I—”
He stopped, because they were looking at him with polite inattention. Then they went on with their talk as though he hadn’t spoken.
It grew darker. Time in that world was different. Weston had left Versailles at sunset and stepped into noon. Finally Serena stood up and led the way back into a grove of tall trees. Four branches were hanging low, and at the end of each branch was an enormous folded flower. The flowers opened slowly.
Serena stepped into the soft trough of the nearest and stretched out. The petals folded about her, and the branch rose. The two men also relaxed in similar fantastic hammocks. One flower remained.
Weston hesitated, alone in the gathering darkness. He had not had a single question answered satisfactorily since he came here. He had met only acceptance. Even this world accepted him without an inquiry. There were now four flowers—perhaps last night there had been only three.
Serena and the men were invisible in their blossom-hammocks above Weston’s head. He drew a long breath and turned away. He went to the pool that was that gateway back to his own time, but something stopped him from making any definite move toward return. This opportunity might never come again. He had what he had wanted. He was in another time-world—but such a world! How could he find out?
In the end, he returned to the fourth flower and lay down. The petals folded around him. There was a sweet, cool scent in his nostrils, a warm rocking—and that was the last thing he remembered. The next day—
The next day the two men tried to kill him.
The flowers opened at dawn, and the four bathed in a pool of glowing water that felt like silk. And another tiny crater opened in the moss to feed them all. Afterwards, ignoring Weston’s futile questions, Serena went away to her work. The two men watched Weston follow her, their eyes coldly interested.
By now Weston knew he must leave very soon. If he did not get his questions answered quickly, they would never be answered. So he kept interrupting Serena at her work, asking what it was she did, what this world was like, a thousand other queries that apparently meant nothing at all to her. Sometimes she spoke, but only once did she give Weston any real help. Once she said:
“You must ask The Knowledge about that.” And she gave Weston directions.
Perhaps it was merely to get rid of his annoying presence.
At any rate, he followed Serena’s instructions, feeling like an ignorant child in a place of inconceivable maturity. Yet The Knowledge sounded very helpful. A library of talking books or pictures, or a radio-atomic brain. Weston began to feel rising excitement as he searched in the building Serena had indicated.
At first he couldn’t find it. The room looked ordinary, insofar as any of those rooms of deep, cool light and color could ever seem ordinary. But after a while one of the men brushed past Weston in the doorway and crossed the floor to stand before the far wall.
In the wall an oval of shining light dawned. The man seemed to listen. Then he turned and went softly out by another door. The bright oval faded.
When Weston stepped in front of it, the panel came to life again. It was The Knowledge, all right. And it was the equivalent of a super-library. A machine—yes, a radio-atomic brain, a mechanical colloid that was the culmination of the thinking machines of Weston’s own time. It could answer questions. Serena’s race had come to need a radio-atomic brain, because they had lost a certain human factor, over the long, long ages.
They had lost intelligence.
They had initiative. So has a plant. So has a flower.
