The Money Tree

More than likely the rollas had a hand in growing them. The rollas were good with plants. They had developed the money trees and if they could develop money trees there wasn't anything they couldn't do with plants. He remembered how the nettles had fallen over to the left and right to make a path for him. It had been the rolla, he was sure, who had made them do that, for there hadn't been enough wind to do it and even if there had been a wind, there wasn't any wind that blew two ways at once.

There was nothing like the rollas in the world. And that might be exactly it. They'd said something about doing good on other worlds. But no matter what they'd done on other worlds, they'd sure been suckered here.

Do-gooders, he thought. Missionaries, maybe, from some other world, from some place out in space — a roving band of beings devoted to a cause. And trapped into a ridiculous situation on a planet that might have little, if anything, in common with any other world they'd ever seen.

Did they even, he wondered, understand what money was? Just what kind of story had Metcalfe palmed off on them?

They had arrived and Metcalfe, of all persons, had stumbled onto them and taken them in tow. Metcalfe, not so much a man as an organization that from long experience would know exactly how to exploit a situation such as the rollas offered. One man alone could not have handled it, could not have done all that needed to be done to set up the rollas for the kill. And only in an organization such as Metcalfe headed, long schooled in the essentials of self preservation, could there have been any hope of maintaining the essential secrecy.

The rollas had been duped — completely, absolutely fooled — and yet they were no fools. They had learned the language, not the spoken language only, but both the spoken and the written, and that spelled sharp intelligence. Perhaps more intelligence than was first apparent, for they did not make use of sound in their normal talk among themselves. But they had adapted readily, it seemed, to sound communication.

The sun long since had disappeared behind the nettles and now was just above the tree line of the bluffs. Dusk would be coming soon and then, Doyle told himself, he could get busy.

He debated once again which course he should take. By now the rollas might have told Metcalfe he was at the fence and Metcalfe might be waiting for him, although Metcalfe, if he knew, more than likely would not just wait, but would be coming out to get him. And as for the raid upon the orchard — he'd had trouble enough with just one rolla when he tried to rob a tree. He didn't like to think what five might do to him.

Behind him the nettles began to rustle and he leaped to his feet. Maybe, he thought wildly, they were opening up the path again. Maybe the path was opened automatically, at regularly scheduled hours. Maybe the nettles were like four o'clocks or morning glories — maybe they were engineered by the ralias to open and to close the path so many times a day.

And what he imagined was the truth in part. A path, he saw, was opening. And waddling down the path was another rolla. The path opened in front of him and then closed as he passed.

The rolla came out into the trampled area and stood facing Doyle.

GOOD EVENING, HEEL, he said.

It couldn't be the rolla locked in the trunk of the car down on the river road. It must, Doyle told himself, be one of the two that had walked out on the money project.

YOU SICK? the rolla asked.

'I itch just something awful and my tooth is aching and every time I sneeze the top of my head comes off.'

COULD FIX

'Sure, you could grow a drug-store tree, sprouting lina-ments and salves and pills and all the other junk.'

SIMPLE, spelled the rolla.

'Well, now,' said Doyle and then tried to say no more. For suddenly it struck him that it would be as the rolla said — very, very simple.

Most medicines came from plants and there wasn't anyone or anything that could engineer a plant the way the rollas could.

'You're on the level there,' said Doyle enthusiastically. 'You would be able to cure a lot of things. You might find a cure for cancer and you might develop something that would hold off heart disease. And there's the common cold…'

SORRY, PAL, BUT WE ARE OFF OF YOU. YOU MADE SAPS OF US.

Then you are one of them that ran away,' said Doyle in some excitement. 'You saw through Metcalfe's game…'

But the rolla was paying no attention to anything he said. It had drawn itself a little straighter and a little taller and it had formed its lips into a circle as if it might be getting ready to let out a bay and the sides of its throat were quivering as if it might be singing, but there was no sound.

No sound, but a rasping shrillness that skidded on one's nerves, a something in the air that set one's teeth on edge.