Chapter X: Part 10

"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 and 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 and bellowing 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 Saul 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 manmade 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, O miserable sinner, and be Brother Paul also."

I thought it might be very confusing. "I have always been interested in religion."

"O puny man. Interested in life and interested in death, interested in being and interested in begetting, 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 mused 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 youd 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 manmade 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, sweatgreasy muffler at once hiding and revealing lack of necktie, and cracked 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 jellymold. It tapered up into bracketing ears, supporting gingery eaves. I pressed home my arguments.

"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. "Arent 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 illfavored appearance. Not intuition really, but an ability to evaluate and classify personalities instantly. I always had this faculty; it helped me in my early experiences as a salesman and blossomed out when I entered my proper field.

Anthony Preblesham--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 hocuspocus, which he quickly dropped, had merely caught and canalized an abounding energy that would otherwise have flowed aimlessly in a stagnant world. In Consolidated Pemmican 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 Preblesham took with him were all Brother Pauls 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 overlay 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.

_61._ 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 dryer 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 fueloil, 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 crackling 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 spotbroadcasters 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 results. The heat had melted the snow for many yards outside the orbit of fire, revealing a border of dull and sodden 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 to $175 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 grayishgreen grass the retreating snow had laid open to its rays. Grayishgreen, 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 toward 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 immolation. 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. Only _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 graminophile evangelist, the purpose of Mother Joan's expedition had been her 'Sanctification,' above the exact spot where the Savior 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.'"

_62._ The coming of spring was awaited with grim foreboding, but the Grass was not bound by any manmade 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 greatgrandfathers' had been in 1877. The wornout 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 pussywillow and the showing of the first crocus to jump northward and meet the western advance there.

The dwindling remnants of cohesion and selfcontrol 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.

Brother 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 Joan's infrequent public appearances attracted enormous crowds as she proclaimed, "O 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 panicstricken 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 Ungava and almost equally empty Labrador the hardier ones pushed, armed like their forebears with only ax 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. Heeding 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 miningvillage. The Grass, advancing rapidly, was just beyond the nearest mountainridge, 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, A W," 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 mails 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 theyre preserved."

"Joe, Florence!" I exclaimed. "This is ridiculous. Insane. Come back with me."

Silence.

"You can compose just as well in Europe, if it is so important to you. In France, say, or England, away from this danger and discomfort. There is no doubt the country is finished; come to safety while you can."

Florence was busy with a stack of musicpaper 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 shot off at the battle of Oriskany. He made his men put his back to a treestump 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, selfnamed 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.

_63._ "The United States, July 4 (N.A.N.A.)--'A decent respect for the opinion of mankind' dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries past, a small group of smugglers, merchants and planters united in an insurrection which in its course gathered to itself such an accreta of riffraff--debtors, convicts, adventurers, careerists, foreigners, theoreticians, idealists, revolutionaries, 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 halfhearted 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 into basic law.

"The cryptogram is readable backward or forward, straightaway or upside down. Unparalleled resources, the fortuitous historical moment, the tide of immigration drawing on the best of the world, the implicit good in conception necessarily resultant in the explicit best of being; high purpose, inventive genius, exploratory urge, competitive spirit, fraternal enthusiasm, what does the ascription 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 in passing the girdled forests, abused prairies, gullied lands, the stupidly harnessed plains, wasted coal, gas, petroleum; the millions of tons of rich mud denied hungry soil by Mississippi levees 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."

_64._ 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 Jacson Gootes, Le ffaçasé 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 anecdotes of his sudden appearance in typhusridden 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.

_65._ When winter came again, the Canadian government petitioned the Parliament at Westminster for crowncolony 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 landmass 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 Nome to Veracruz stretched a new Sargasso Sea of _Cynodon dactylon_. 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 businesslife seemed to run slower and slower. Production dwindled, prices rose; luxury articles were made in abundance, but manufacturers hesitated to adopt American methods of massproduction 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.

Consolidated Pemmican 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 in palatable, 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 didnt listen respectfully to my suggestions.

Tony Preblesham 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 laborleaders. 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, timber, and other resources. With permission of the Danish authorities I sent Preblesham to Julianthaab. There he established our headquarters for Greenland, Iceland, and all that was left of North America. From Julianthaab 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 Innuit, living on fish and seals and an occasional obligingly beached 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 narrower 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 Innuit 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.

_66._ 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 socalled 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 nonexistent 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 governmentsinexile, 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 laborgangs and steamshovels, ammunitionships loaded with tons of explosives sailed from every port for Panama and Colon. Though at first reluctant with their contributions, the countries had reconsidered and poured forth their shares without stint. All obsolete warmaterials 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 roll.

Shortsightedly 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 commonsense 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 highexplosives 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 Tehuantepec. 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. Dynamite widened the Nicaragua Canal to a ridiculously thin barrier as the Grass overran Honduras.

They stood now almost facetoface, 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 tropic heat the work was kept up at superhuman pace. Gangs of native laborers fainting under their loads were blown skyhigh by impatient technicians unwilling to waste the time necessary to revive them. In selfdefense 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 elephants. It swept down to the edge of the ditch and paused at the fiftymile stretch of saltwater 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 waterboys, 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 diminishing 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 supercyclone fans were set up to blow back any errant seed. Fed 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 an 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.

FIVE

_The South Pacific Sailing Directory_

_67._ 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' remark that if you cut off a man's leg you 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 growingpains 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. Debtor nations expanded their chests when they remembered Uncle Shylock was no more. Industrial 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 interests I believe I have become completely a cosmopolitan, but for everyone, Englishman, Italian, Afrikander 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 cocacola at any price; the disappearance of the solacing wad of chewinggum; the pulsing downbeat of a hot band--these were the first things whose loss was noticed.

For a long time I had been too busy to attend movingpictures, 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 cleancut American product which always satisfied the nobler feelings by showing the reward of the honest, the downfall of evildoers and the purity of love and motherhood. Art is all very well, but need it be sordid?

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 highbrow 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 serial 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 in talking about each others' products, but I must admit I missed the good old American slapdash advertising which yelled, Buy my deodorant or youll stink; wash your mouth with my antiseptic or youll lose your job; brush your teeth with my dentifrice or no one will kiss you; powder your face with my leadarsenate or youll keep your maidenhead. 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. Living within your income is fine, but the world lacks the goods youd have bought on the installmentplan; getting what you need is sound policy, but how many lives were lightened by the young men working their way through college, or the fullerbrushman?

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 socalled 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 in Pekin and explain the superior construction of the Masonic Hall at Cedar Rapids; no more visitors to the champagne caves at Rheims to inquire where they could get a shot of real bourbon; no more music lovers at Salzburg or Glyndebourne to regret audibly the lack of a peppy swingtune; no more gourmets in Vienna demanding thick steaks, rare and smothered in onions.

But this period of smug selfcongratulation 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 Englishspeaking nations and translated anew in other countries. American movies were revived and imitated. Fashionable speech was powdered with what were conceived to be Yankee expressions and a southern drawl was assiduously cultivated.

Bestselling 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. Instead of fairytales children demanded stories of fortyniners 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 handinhand with this newfound romantic love went a completely practical attitude toward those Americans still existing in the flesh. 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 shortsighted and so heartless as to bar homeless wanderers. We bring you knowledge and skills and 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 had been fair to all and only kept out undesirable immigrants.

Gradually the world geared itself to a slower tempo. The gogetter followed the brontosaurus to extinction, and we Americans with the foresight to carry on our businesses from new bases profited by the unAmerican 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 papermills and large interests in aluminum and steel; from there the progression to tinmines and rollingmills, to coalfields and railroads, to shippinglines and machineshops was not far. Consolidated Pemmican, once the center of my business existence, was now but a minor point on its periphery. 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.

_68._ It was at this time, many months after we had given up all hope of hearing from Joe again, that General Thario received a longdelayed 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 programnotes, little men who tell you the opening chords of Opus 67 describe Fate Knocking at the Door or the call of the yellowhammer. A child draws a picture and writes on it, 'This is a donkey,' and when grown proves it to be a selfportrait by translating the Jupiter Symphony into words. Having said this, let me stultify myself--but for private ears 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 sight and thoughts of the Grass, much as LvB took a mistaken idealization of his youth as a startingpoint for Opus 55; but just as no man is an island, so no theme stands alone. There is a cord 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 doubts.

"We 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--

Aroostook, Maine

"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, nevermelting, nevercloying icecreamcones, 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 magnate.

Joe"

_69._ About the same time I also received a letter which somehow got through the protective screening of my secretaries:

"Albert Weener,
Savoy Hotel,
Thames Embankment, WC1.

"Sir:
You may recall making an offer I considered premature. It is now no
longer so. I am at home afternoons from 1 until 6 at 14, Little Bow
Street, EC3 (3rd 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, Weener," she said abruptly. "I am here to beg a favor."

"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 oldfashioned gold one--just an ordinary wooden splinter. "Hum. You remember asking me to superintend gathering specimens of _Cynodon 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 counteragent, 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 hireling 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 nurseryschools 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 Szechwan--"

"Thereby lessening absenteeism from sickness among your coolies."

"I will not stoop to answer your insinuations," I said. "I merely mentioned my gifts 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 isnt 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 antigraminous 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, Weener. Lie to yourself, deny facts, brazen it out. The world was safe behind the saltband too, in the days when Josephine Francis was a quack and 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."

"Weener, 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 counteragent, 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 researchworkers, 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 landtitles 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 catalogue of items, stabbing 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. Outside 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.

_70._

"Mr. Albert Weener,
Queen Elizabeth Hotel,
Perth, Western Australia, A.C.

"Dear Sir:--
According to yr. instructions our party left Paramaribo on the 9th
inst. for Medellin, giving out that we were going to see possible
tin deposits near there. At Medellin I checked with our men & was
told that work gangs with the stuff needed to make landing fields
together with caches of gas & oil, enough for 3 times the flying
required had been dropped both at Mt. Whitney & 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,
& told them if they really made good they might be moved up to Rio
or Copenhagen or may be even London.

"Every thing being O.K. in Medellin, we left on the 12th inst.,
heading at first South to fool any nosey cops & 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 sneer
all you like at Bro. Paul (& 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 & saw nothing but green grass where houses &
trees & mtns. ought to have been, I remembered that I was a
backslider & sinful man. However, this is beside the point.

"The lady professor, Miss Francis I mean, & Mr. White & 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 any thing 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, altho it does not belong here, in Paramaribo I
had to fire our local man as he had got into trouble with the Police
there & was giving Cons. Pem. 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 sighting the party at Mt. Whitney & I want to
tell you, A. W., it was a great relief to get rid of the Scientists
altho they are no doubt all right in their way. Some of the work
gang kicked at being left behind altho that was in our agreement.
They said they were sick of the snow & the sight of the Grass
beyond. I said we only had room in the transport for the Banks Is.
gang & anyway they would have company now. I promised them we would
pick them up on our next trip.

"Miss Francis & the 2 others acted like crazy. They kept shaking
each other's hands & saying We are here, we are here, altho any body
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 any way, why any
body should want to be there is some thing beyond me.

"We took off from Whitney on the 14th inst., flying back S. West.
There were no land marks, but the navigator told me when we were
over the Site of L. A. I have to report that the Grass looked no
different in this Area, where it is the oldest. Then we flew North
E., looking for the Gt. Salt Lake according to yr. instructions. I
am sorry to say that we could not find it altho we flew back & forth
for some time, searching while the instruments were checked. The
Lake has disappeared in the Grass.