Chapter 1 Part A of Greener Than You Think, Greener Than You Think, by Ward Moore Neither the vegetation nor the people in this book are entirely fictitious, but reader, no person pictured here is you, with one exception. You, Sir, Miss, or Madam, whatever your country or station, are Albert Wiener, as I am Albert Wiener. Chapter 1 Albert Wiener Begins I always knew I should write a book, something to help tired minds lay aside the cares of the day, but I always say you never can tell what's around the corner till you turn it, and everyone has become so accustomed to fantastic occurrences in the last twenty-one years that the inspiring and relaxing novel I used to dream about would be today as unreal as Atlantis. Instead, I find I must write of the things which have happened to me in that time. It all began with the word itself—grass, grimina, the family griminia, grasses. Oh, I responded doubtfully. The picture in my mind was only of a vague area in parks, edged with benches for the idol. Anyway, I was far too resentful to pay strict attention. I had set out in good faith, not for the first time in my career as a salesman, to answer an ad offering fifty dollars or more daily to top producers, naturally expecting the searching once over of an alert sales manager back to the light behind a shiny top desk. When you've handled as many products as I had, an ad like that has the right sound, but the world is full of crackpots, and some of the most pernicious are those who hoodwink unsuspecting canvassers into anticipating a sizzling deal where there is actually only a warm hope. No genuinely high-class proposition ever came from a layout without aggressiveness enough to put on some kind of front, working out of an office, for instance, not an outdated rundown apartment in the wrong part of Hollywood. It's only a temporary drawback weiner which restricts the metamorphizer's efficacy to grasses. The wheeling syllables coming in a deep voice from the middle-aged woman emphasize the absurdity of the whole business. The snuffy apartment, the unhome-like living room, dust and books its only furniture. The unbelievable kitchen, looking like a pictured warning to housewives, were only guffaws before the final buffoonery of discovering the J.S. Francis who'd inserted that promising ad to be Josephine Spencer Francis. Wrong location, wrong atmosphere, wrong gender.  No, indeed, I believe they are in some ways just as capable as I am. If Miss Francis had been one of those well-groomed, efficient ladies who have earned their place in the business world without at the same time sacrificing femininity, I'm sure I would not have suffered such a pang for my lost time in car fair. But well-groomed and feminine were alike inapplicable adjectives towering above me. She was at least five foot ten while I am of average height. She strode up and down the kitchen which apparently was office and laboratory also, waving her arms, speaking too exuberantly the antithesis of moderation and restraint. She was an aggregate of cylinders, big and small. Her shapeless legs were columns with large, flat-heeled shoes for their bases, supporting the inverted pediment of great hips. Her too short, grease-spotted skirt was a mighty barrel and on it was placed the tremendous drum of her torso. A little more work, she rumbled, a few interesting problems solved and the metamorphiser will change the basic structure of any plant inoculated with it. Large as she was, her face and head were disproportionately big. Her eyes I can only speak of as enormous. I dare say there are some who would have called them beautiful. In moments of intensity they bored into mine and held them till I felt quite uncomfortable. Think of what this discovery means, she urged me. Think of it, Weiner. Plants will be capable of making use of anything within reach. Understand, Weiner, anything. Rocks, quartz, decomposed granite, anything. She took a gold Victorian toothpick from the pocket of her Manish jacket and used it energetically. I shuddered. Unfortunately, she went on a little indistinctly. Unfortunately I lack resources for further experiment right now. This too, I thought despairingly. A slight cash investment, just enough to get production started. How many wishful times I've heard it. I was a salesman, not a sucker. In any way I was for the moment, without liquid capital. It will change the face of the world, Weiner. No more used up areas, no more frantic scrabbling for the few bits of naturally rich ground. No more struggle to get artificial fertilizers to worn out soil in the face of ignorance and poverty.  Excitedly she paced the floor largely taken up by jars and flots of vegetation, some green and flourishing, others gray and sickly, all constricting her movements as did the stove supporting a glass tank, robbed of a goldfish who should rightfully have gaped against its sides, and containing instead some slimy growth topped by a bubbling brown scum. I simply couldn't understand how any woman could so far oppose what must have been her natural instinct as to live and work in such a slatternly place. It wasn't just her kitchen which was disordered and dirty, her person too was slovenly and possibly unclean. The lank gray hair swishing about her ears was dark, perhaps from vigor, but more likely from frugality with soap and water. Her massive heavy-chinned face was untouched by makeup and suggested an equal innocence of other attentions. Fertilizers. Poo. Expedient, Swiener. Miserable makeshift expedience. Her unavoidable eyes bit into mine. What is a fertilizer, a tidbit, a papalollipop? Indians use fish, Chinese nightsoil, agricultural chemists concoct tasty tonics of nitrogen and potash. Where's your progress? Putting a mechanical whip on a buggy instead of inventing an internal combustion engine. I've gone directly to the heart of the matter. Like what? Like Maxwell? Like Elmroth, right? No use being held back because you've only got poor materials to work with. Leap ahead with imagination. Change the plant itself, Wiener. Change the plant itself. It was no longer politeness which held me. If I could have freed myself from her eyes, I would have escaped thankfully. Nourish him on anything, she shouted, rubbing the round end of the toothpick vigorously into her ear.  Inoculate the plants with a metamorphizer, and you have a crop fatter than Iowa's or the Ukraine's best. The whole world will team with abundance. Perhaps. But what was the sales angle? Where did I come in? I didn't know a dandelion from a toadstool and was quite content to keep my distance from nature. Had she inserted the ad merely to lure a listener? Her whole procedure was irregular, not a word about territories and commissions. If I could bring her to the point of mentioning the necessary investment, maybe I could get away gracefully. You said you were stuck, I prompted, resolved to get the painful interview over with. Stuck? Stuck. Oh, money to perfect the metamorphizer. Luckily it will do it itself. I don't catch. Look about you, what do you see? I glanced around and started to say a measuring glass and a dirty plate next to half a cold fried egg, but she stopped me with the sweep of her arm which came dangerously close to the flasks and retorts, all holding dirty colored liquids which cluttered the sink. No, no, I mean outside. I couldn't see outside because instead of a window I was facing a sickly leaf unaccountably preserved in a jar of alcohol. I said nothing. Metaphorically, of course, wheat fields, acres and acres of wheat, bread, wheat, a grass, and cornfields. Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, not a state in the union without corn. Milo, oats, sorghum, rye, all grasses. And the metamorphizer will work on all of them. I am always a man with an open mind. She might, it was just possible, she might have something after all. But could I work with her? Go out in the sticks and talk to farmers? Learn to sit on fence rails and whittle, asking after crops as if they were of interest to me? No, no, it was fantastic. Out of the question. A different, more practical setup now. At least there would have been no lack of prospects if you wanted to go miles from civilization to find them. No answers like, we never read magazines, thank you. Of course it was hardly believable. A woman without interest in keeping herself presentable could invent any such fabulous product. But there was a bare chance of making a few sales just on the idea. The idea. It suddenly struck me she had the whole thing backward. Grasses, she said, and went on about wheat and corn and going out to the rubes. Southern California was dotted with lawns, wasn't it? Why rush around to the Hinnerland when there was a big territory next door? And undoubtedly a better one. Revive your old tired lawn, I improvised. Nomaners, fuss, cuss or must. One shot of the meta. One shot of Francis's amazing discovery and your lawn springs to new life. Lawns, nonsense. She snorted rudely, I thought. Do you think I've spent years in order to satisfy suburban vanity? Lawns indeed. Lawns indeed, Miss Francis, I retorted with some spirit. I'm a salesman and I know something about marketing a product. Yours should be sold to householders for their lawns. Should it? Well, I say it shouldn't. Listen to me. There are two ways of making a discovery. One is to cut off a cat's hind leg. The discovery is then made that a cat with one leg cut off has three legs. The other way is to find out your need and then search for a method of filling it. My work is with plants. I don't take a daisy and see if I can make a producer red and black-pedaled monstrosity. If I did, I'd be a fashionable horticulturist. Delighted to encourage imbeciles to grow grass in a desert. My method is the second one. I want no more backward countries, no more famines in India or China, no more dust bowls, no more wars, depressions, hungry children. For this, I produce the metamorphizer to make not two blades of grass grow where one sprouted before, but whole fields flourish where only rocks and sandpiles lay. No wiener. It won't do. I can't trade in my vision as a down payment on a means to encourage a waste of ground, seed, and water. You may think I lost such rights when I thought up the name metamorphizer to appeal on the popular level, but there's a difference. That was a clincher. Anyone who believed metamorphizer had sales appeal just wasn't all there. But why should I disillusion her and wound her pride down underneath her rough exterior? I suppose she could be as sensitive as I, and I hope I am not without chivalry. I said nothing, but of course her interdiction of the only possibility killed any weakening inclination. And yet, after all, I had to have something. All right, wiener. This pump. She produced miraculously from the jumble an unwieldy engine dragging a long and tangling tail of hose behind it, the end lost among mementos of unfinished meals.  I have a table worked out to show you about that. The tank holds five gallons, get fifty dollars a gallon, a dollar and a half an acre, and keep ten percent for yourself. Be sure to return the pump every night. I had to say for her that when she got down to business she didn't waste any words. Perhaps this contrasting directness so startled me I was roped in before I could refuse. On the other hand, of course, I would be helping out someone who needed my assistance badly since she couldn't with all the obvious factors against her be having a very easy time. Sometimes it is advisable to temper business judgment with kindness. Her first offer was ridiculous in its assumption that a salesman's talent, skill and effort were worth only a miserable ten percent, as though I were a literary agent with something as cinched as cell. I began to feel more at home as we ironed out the details and I brought the knowledge acquired with much hard work and painful experience into the bargaining. Fifty percent I wanted and fifty percent I finally got by demanding seventy-five. She became as interested in the contest as she had been before in benefits to humanity and I perceived a keen mind under all her eccentricity. I can't truthfully say I got to like her, but I reconciled myself and eventually was on my way with the pump. A trifling weight to Miss Frances, judging by the way she handled it, but uncomfortably heavy to me, strapped to my back and ten feet of recalcitrant hose coiled around my shoulder. She turned her imperious eyes on me again and repeated for the fourth or fifth time the instructions were applying as though I were less intelligent than she. I went out through the barren living-room and took a backward glance at the scaling stucco walls of the apartment house, shaking my head. It was a queer place for Albert Wiener, the crackerjack salesman who had once let his team in a national contest to put over a three-piece aluminum deal to be working out of. And for a woman. And for such a woman. End of chapter one, part A. Chapter one, part B 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 one, part B. Everything is for the best is my philosophy. And make your cross your crutch is a good thought to hold. So I reminded myself that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown and no one sees the bright side of things if he wears dark glasses. Since it takes all kinds to make a world, and Josephine Spencer Francis was one of those kinds, wasn't it only reasonable to suppose that there were other kinds who would buy the stuff she'd invented? The only way to sell something is first to sell yourself, and I piously went over the virtues of the metamorphiser in my mind. What if, by its very nature, there could be no repeat business? I wasn't tying myself to it for life. All that remained was to find myself a customer. I tried to recall the location of the nearest rural territory. San Fernando Valley, probably. A long, tiresome trip. And expensive, unless I wished to demean myself by thumbing rides. A difficult thing to do burdened as I was by the pump. If she hadn't balked unreasonably about putting the stuff on lawns, I'd have prospects right at hand. I was suddenly long conscious. There was probably not a Los Angeles street I hadn't covered at some time. Magazines, vacuums, old gold, near nylons, and I must have been aware of green spaces before most of the houses, but now for the first time I saw lawns. Neat, sharply confined, smooth-shaven lawns. Sagging, slipping, eager to keep up appearances but fighting a losing game lawns. Racket, weedy, dissolute lawns. Half-bear, repulsively crippled, humickey lawns. Bright lawns, insistent on former respectability and trimness. Yellow and gray lawns touched with the craziness of age. Quite beyond all interest and looks, content to doze easily in the sun. If Miss Francis' mixture was on the up and up and she hadn't introduced a perfectly unreasonable condition why I couldn't mess. On the other hand, I thought suddenly, I'm the salesman, not she. It was up to me as a practical man to determine where and how I could sell to the best advantage. With sudden resolution I walked over a twinkling green sword and rang the bell. Good afternoon, madam. I can see from your garden you're a lady who's interested in keeping it lovely. Not my garden and Mrs. Smith, not home. The door shut. Not gently. The next house had no lawn at all, but was fronted with a rank growth of ivy. I felt no one had a right to plant ivy when I was selling something effective only on the family Grimminia. I trampled over the ivy hard and rang the doorbell on the other side. Good afternoon, madam. I can see from the appearance of your lawn you're a lady who really cares for her garden. I'm introducing to a restricted group, just one or two in each neighborhood, a new preparation and astounding discovery by a renowned scientist which will make your grass twice as green and many times as vigorous upon one application without the aid of anything else natural or artificial. My gardener takes care of all that. But, madam, there is a city ordinance against unlicensed solicitors. Have you a licensed young man? After the fifth refusal I began to think less unkindly of Miss Francis' idea of selling the stuff to farmers and to wonder what was wrong with my technique. After some understandable hesitation, for I don't make a practice of being odd or conspicuous, I sat down on the curb to think. Besides the pump was getting wearisomely heavy, I couldn't decide exactly what was unsatisfactory in my routine. The stuff had neither been used nor advertised, so there could be no prejudice against it. No one had yet allowed me to get so far as quoting price so it wasn't too expensive. The process of elimination brought me to the absurd conclusion that the fault must lie in me. Not in my appearance, I reasoned, for I was a personable young man, a little over thirty at the time, with no obvious defects a few visits to the dentist wouldn't have removed. Of course, I do have an unfortunate skin condition, but such a thing's an act of God, as the lawyers say, and people mistake me as I am. No, it wasn't my appearance, or was it that monstrously outsized pump who wanted to listen to a sales talk from a man apparently prepared for an immediate gas attack. There is little use in pressing your trousers between two boards under the mattress if you discount such neatness with the accoutrement of an invading Martian. I uncoiled the hose from my shoulder and eased the incubus from my back. Leaving them visible from the corner of my eye, I crossed the most miserable lawn yet encountered. It was composed of what I since learned is Bermuda, a plant most Southern Californians call, with many profane prefixes, devil grass. It was yellow, the dirty grayish yellow of moldy straw, and bald scuff spots immodestly exposed, the cracked parched earth beneath. Over the walk interwoven stolans had been felted down into a ragged mat repellent alike to foot and eye. Perversely onto what had once been flower beds, the runners crept direct, bristling spines showing faintly green on top the only live color in the miserable expanse. Where the grass had gone to seed there were patches of muddy purple, patches which enhanced rather than relieve the diseased color of the whole and emphasize the dying air of the yard. It was a neglected, unvalued thing, an odious appendage a mistake never rectified. Madam, I began, your lawn is deplorable. There was no use giving her the line about, I can see you are a lady who cares for lovely things. Anyway, now the pump was off my back I felt reckless. I threw the whole book of salesmanship away. It's the most neglected lawn in the neighborhood. It is, madam, I am sorry to say no less than a disgrace. She was a woman beyond the age of childbearing, her dress revealing the outlines of her corset, and she looked at me coldly through rimless glassing biting the bridge of her inadequate nose. So what, she asked. Madam, I said, for ten dollars I can make this the finest lawn in the block, the pride of your family and the envy of your neighbors.  Gratefully I knew I had her then and was glad I hadn't weekly given in to an impulse to carry out the crackpots original instructions. When they start to argue my motto is, they're sold. I took a good breath and wound up for the clincher. I won't say she was an easy sale, but after all I'm a psychologist. I found all her weak points and touched them expertly. Even so she made me cut my price in half, leaving me only two fifty according to my agreement with Miss Francis. But it was an icebreaker. I got the pump and hose collecting at the same time an audience of brats who assisted me by shouting, Whatcha gonna do, mister? What's that thing for, mister? You going to water Mrs. Dinkman's front yard, mister? Do your teeth always look so funny, mister? My grandpa takes his teeth out at night and puts them in a glass of water. Do you take out your teeth at night, mister? You going to put that stuff on our garden too, mister? Hey, Shirley, come on over and see the funny looking man who's fixing up Dinkman's yard. They were untiring, shrilling their questions, exclamations and comments, completely driving from my mind the details of the actual application of the metamorphizer. Anyway, Miss Francis had been concerned with putting it in the irrigation water, which didn't apply in this case. I thought a moment. A gallon was enough for thirty acres. Half a pint should suffice for this, more than suffice. Irrigation water. Nonsense, I'd squirt it on and tell the woman to hose it down afterward. That'd be the same as putting it in the water, wouldn't it? To come to this practical conclusion under the brunt of the children's assault was a remarkable feat. As I dribbled the stuff over the sorry devil grass, they kicked the pump and my shins, mimicking my actions, tripping me as they skipped under my legs, getting wet with the metamorphizer, I hoped with mutually deleterious effect, and generally making me more than ever thankful for my bachelor condition. Two fifty, I thought, angrily squirting a fine mist at a particularly dreary spot, and it isn't even selling. Manual labor! Working with my hands, I might as well be a gardener. College training, wide experience, alert and aggressive, in order to dribble stuff smelling sickeningly of carnations on a wasted yard. I coiled up my hose disgustedly and collected a reluctant five dollars. It don't look any different, commented Mrs. Dinkman dubiously. Madam, Professor Francis's remarkable discovery works miracles, but not in the twinkling of an eye. In a week you'll see for yourself, provided, of course, you wet it down properly. In a week you'll be far gone with my five dollars, diagnosed Mrs. Dinkman. While this might be superficially true, it was an unfair and unkind thing to say, and it wounded me. I reached into my pocket and drew out an old card, one printed before I'd had an irreconcilable difference, with the firm employing me at the time. I can always be reached at this address, Mrs. Dinkman, I said, should you have any cause for dissatisfaction, which I'm sure is quite impossible, besides I shall be daily in this district demonstrating the value of Dr. Francis' lawn tonic. That was certainly true, unless I made a better connection. Degrading manual labor or not, I intended to sell as many local people as possible on the strength of having found a weak spot in the wall of sales resistance before the effects of the metamorphiser became apparent. For in strict confidence, and despite its being an undesirable negative attitude, I was a little dubious that those effects, or lack of them, would stimulate further sales. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. My alarm clock, as it did every morning, Sundays included, rang at 6.30, for I am a man of habit. I turned it off, remembering instantly I had given Miss Francis neither her pump nor her share of the sale. Of course, it was more convenient and time-saving to bring them both together, and I was sure she didn't expect me to follow instructions to the letter, like an office boy, any more in these matters than she had in her restriction to agricultural use. Still, it was remiss of me. The fact is, I had spent her money as well as my own, not on dissipation, I hasten to say, but on dinner and an installment of my room rent. This was embarrassing, but I looked upon it merely as an advance, quite as if I'd had the customary drawing-account to be charged against my next commissions. My acceptance of the advance merely indicated my faith in the future of the metamorphiser. I dissolved a yeast-cake in a glass of water. It's very healthy, and I'd heard it alleviated dermal irritations. Lathering my face, I glanced over the list, culled from the dictionary, and stuck in the mirror the night before, for I have never been too tired to improve my mind. By this easy method of increasing my vocabulary, I have progressed at the time down to the letter K. While drinking my coffee, never more than two cups, it was my custom to read and digest stock and bond quotations, for though I had no investments, the only time I had been able to take a flurry there was an unforeseen recession in the market, I thought a man who didn't keep up with trends and conditions unfitted for a place in the business world. Besides, I didn't expect to be straightened indefinitely, and I believed him being ready to take proper advantage of opportunity when it came. As a man may devote the graver part of his mind to a subject and then term for relaxation to a lighter aspect, so I had for years been interested in a stock called Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates. It wasn't a high-priced issue, nor were its fluctuations startling. For six months of the year, year in and year out, it would be quoted at one-sixteenths of a cent a share, for the other six months it stood at one-eighth. I didn't know what Pemmican was, and I didn't particularly care, but if a man could invest at one-sixteenth, he could double his money overnight when it rose to one-eighth. Then he could reverse the process by selling before it went down, and so snowball into fortune. It was a daydream, but a harmless one. Satisfying myself, Consolidated Pemmican was bumbling along at its low level. I reluctantly prepared to resume Miss Francis's pump. It seemed less heavy as I wound the hose over my shoulder, and I felt this wasn't due to the negligible quantity I'd expended on Mrs. Dinkman's grass. I just knew I was going to have a successful day. I had to. In moments of fancy I often think a salesman is more truly a creative artist than many of those who irrigate the title to themselves. He uses words on one hand, and the receptivity of prospects on the other, to mold a cohesive and satisfying whole, a work of art, signed and dated on the dotted line. Like any such work, the creation implies thoughtful and careful preparation, so it was that I got off the bus polishing a new sales-talk to fit the change situation. One of your neighbors—I have just applied. I sneered my way past those houses refusing my services the day before. They couldn't have the metamorphiser at any price now. Then it hit my eyes. Mrs. Dinkman's lawn, I mean. The one so neglected, ailing and yellow only yesterday. It wasn't sad and sickly now. The most enthusiastic homeowner wouldn't have disdained it. There wasn't a single bare spot visible in the whole lush, healthy expanse. And it was green. Green. Not just here and there, but over every inch of soft, undulating surface. A pale, apple-green where the blades waved to expose its underparts and a rich, dazzling emerald on top. Even the runners, sinuously encroaching upon the sidewalk, were deeply fluorescent. The metamorphiser worked. The metamorphiser not only worked, but it worked with unbelievable rapidity overnight. I knew nothing about the speed at which ordinary fertilizers, plants, stimulants, or hormones took hold, but common sense told me nothing like this had ever happened so quickly. I had been indulging in a little legitimate puffery and saying the inoculant worked miracles, but if anything, that had been an understatement. I just went to show how impossible it is for a real salesman to be too enthusiastic. Nerves and knees and fingers quivering. I walked over to join the group curiously inspecting the translated lawn. I had done this. Out of the most miserable, I'd made the loveliest and for a paltry five dollars. I tried to recapture the memory of what it had looked like in order to relish the contrast more, but it was impossible. The vivid present blotted out the decayed past completely. Overnight, someone said. Yes, sir, just overnight. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't noticed just yesterday how much worse in the city dump it looked. Bet that's just ten inches high. Brother, you can say that again. Foo to be closer. Anyhow, it's the fattest looking grass I've seen since I left Texas. And the greenest. Guess I never did see such a green before. While they exclaimed about the beauty and vigor of the growth, my mind was racing in high along practical lines. Achievement isn't worth much unless you can harness it. And in today's triumph, I saw tomorrow's benefit. No more canvassing with a pump undignifiedly on my back. No more manual labor. No, bold as the thought was. Not even any more direct selling for me. This was big, too big to be approached in any cockroach build up slowly from the bottom way. It was a real top deal in a class with nylon or jukeboxes or bubble gum. You could smell the money in it. First of all, I'd have to tie Josephine Francis down with an ironclad contract. Agents, dealerships, distributors, and a general sales manager, Albert Wiener at the top. Incorporate! Get it all down in black and white and signed by Ms. Francis right away for her own good. An idealistic scientist, a frail woman, protect her from the vultures who'd try to rob her as soon as they saw what the metamorphizer would do. Such a woman wouldn't have any business sense. I'd see she got a comfortable living out of it and free her from responsibility. Then she could potter around all she liked. Incorporate! Interest, big money, put it on a nationwide basis. A cut for the general sales manager on every sale. Besides, stuck! Oh, take the patent in the company's name. In six months I'd be on my way to being a millionaire. I had certainly been right up on my toes and picking the metamorphizer as a winner in spite of Ms. Francis' kitchen and her lack of aggressiveness. Instinct, the unerring instinct of a wide-awake salesman for the right product and for the right market. I mustn't forget that. Had I been content with her original limitation, I'd still be bumbling around trying to interest Farmer Hicks in some metamorphizer for his hay. Did you notice how thick it was? Well, that's permutaforya. Tell me they actually plan it on purpose in Florida. No kidding. Yes, sir. No one thing. Even if it looks pretty right now, I wouldn't want that stuff on my place. Have to cut it every day. Betcha. Tough looking too. I'd rather take my exercise in bed. That's an angle, I thought. Have to get old Lady Francis to modify her formula or something else will never get rich. Slow down the rate of growth. Delude it. ought to be more profitable, too. Have to find out how cheaply the inoculant can be produced. No more inefficient hand methods. Of course, the fastness of growth wouldn't affect the sale to farmers. Help it, in fact. No doubt she'd had more than I originally thought in that aspect I conceded generously. We could let them apply it themselves. Mail order advertising. Cut costs that way. Think of clover, or alfalfa, or weren't they grasses? Anyway, imagine hay or wheat as tall as Iowa corn and corn higher than a small town city hall. Fortune? There'd be a dozen fortunes in it. I began perspiring. The deal was getting bigger and bigger. It wasn't just a simple matter of cutting in on a good thing. All the angles which were multiplying at a tremendous rate had to be covered before I saw Miss Francis again. I dare not miss any bets. I needed a staff of agricultural experts. Anyway, someone who could cover the scientific side. Whatever happened to my freshman chemistry? And a mob of lawyers. You'd have to plug every loophole tight. But here I was without a financial resource. Couldn't hire a ditch-digger much less the high-priced talent I needed. And someone else might get a brainstorm when he saw the lawn and beat me to it. I visioned myself cheated out of my million. Yes. A really fast worker, some unethical promoter willing to stoop to devious methods, might pass at any moment and grasp the possibilities. Have Miss Francis signed up before I'd even got the deal straight in my mind. How could he miss seeing this lawn splendid, magnificent, beautiful? No one would ever call this stuff devilgrass. Angel grass would be more appropriate to the implications of such a heavenly green. Millions in it. Simply millions. Say, aren't you the fellow put this stuff on? Half a dozen vacant faces gaped at me, the burdening pump, the caudal hoes. Curiosity, interest, and basile amusement argued in their expression with the respect due to the worker of the transformation. It was a sort of look connected with sales resistance of the most obstinate kind. They distracted me from thinking things through. Ms.  Here was an unfortunate development, an angle to end all angles, unfavorable publicity. The abortifation of new enterprises wouldn't mean you could hardly give the stuff away. My imagination raced through columns of newsprint in which the metamorphizer was made the butt of reporter's humor. Ms. Dankman's ire would have to be placated, bought off. Perhaps I better discuss developments with Ms. Francis right away after all. Whatever I decided, it was advisable for me to leave this vicinity. I was in no financial position to soothe Ms. Dankman, and it was dubious in view of her attitude, whether it would be possible to sell any more in the immediate neighborhood. Probably a new territory was the answer to my problem. A few sales would give me both cash in hand and time to think. While I hesitated, Ms. Dankman, belligerency dancing like a sparkling aura about her, came out of her garage with a rusty, rattling lawnmower. I'm no authority on garden tools, but this creaking rickety machine was clearly no match for the lusty growth. The audience felt so too, and there was a stir of sporting interest as they settled down to watch the contest. Determination was implicit in the sharply unnatural lines of her corset and the firm set of her glasses as she charged into the gently swaying runners. The wheels turned rebelliously. The mower bit, its rusty blades grated against the knife. Something clanked forcibly, and the machine stopped. Ms. Dankman pushed her back arch with effort. The mower didn't budge. She pulled it back. It worked gratefully. The clanking stopped, and she tried again. This time it chewed a handful of grass from the edge, found it distasteful, and quit once more.  Nade's oil was helpfully volunteered. She retired into the garage and returned with a lopsided oil can. Oil it, she commanded regally. The helpful one reluctantly pressed his thumb against the rye bottom of the can, aiming the twisted spout at odd parts of the mower. I didn't know, he commented. I don't either, said Ms. Dankman. You. Greener. Wiener. Whatever your name is. There was no possibility of evasion. Yes, ma'am. You made this stuff grow. Now you can cut it down. Uncouth guffaws from the watching idiots. Mrs. Dankman, I get behind that lawnmower, young man, if you don't want to be involved in a lawsuit. I wasn't afraid of such a consequence in itself, having at the moment nothing to attach. But I thought of Ms. Francis and future sales, and that impalpable thing known as goodwill. Yes, ma'am, I repeated. I discarded pump and hose to move reluctantly toward the mower. Under my feet I felt the springiness of the grass. Was it pure fancy, or did it truly differ in quality from the lawns I'd trod so indifferently the day before? I took the handle. If oiling had improved the machine, its previous efficiency must have been slight. It went shakily over the first inch of grass, and then, as it had for Mrs. Dankman, it stopped for me. By now the spectators had increased to a small crowd, and their dull humor had taken the form of cheerfully offering much gratuitous advice. Tie into it, Slim. Build up the old muscle. Back her up and take a good run.  Come back next year. Got to put the old back behind it, bud. Give her the gas. Need a decent mower? No use trying to cut stuff like that with an antique? Yeah, get a good mower. One made sense the Civil War. No one around here got an honest-to-god lawnmower.  This'll do the business, he announced confidently, as I relinquish the spotlight to him with understandable readiness. It's a regular Jim Dandy. It certainly was. The devil-grass came irreverently above the wheels, and flowed with graceful inquisitiveness over the blades, but the brisk little man pushed heartily, and the mechanism revolved with a barely audible clicking. It did not balk, complain, or hesitate. Cleanly severed ends of grass whirled into the air, and floated down on the neat smooth swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly at the Jim Dandy's triumph, and my sigh was loudest and most heartfelt. I edged away as unobtrusively as I could. End of Part C. Chapter 1, Part D, 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 1, Part D. I have no sympathy with weaklings who complain of the cards being stacked, but it did seem as though fate were dealing unkindly with me. Here was a good proposition coming just at the time I needed it most, and it was turning bad rapidly. Walking the short distance to Miss Francis's, I was unable to settle my mind to strike a mental balance sheet. There was money. There had to be money. Lots and lots of it in the Metamorphizer, but it was possible there was trouble. Lots and lots of it, also. The thing was, well, dangerous. What was the use of expanding ability and selling something which could have kickbacks acting as deterrents to future sales? Of course a man had to take risks. The door, after a properly prudent hesitation, clicked brokenly. Miss Francis looked as though she'd added insomnia to her other abstentions, otherwise she had not changed, even to her skirt and a smudge on her left nostril.  I fixed it myself. She greeted me gruffly. Wiener, I reminded her. Albert Wiener, remember? I'm selling, that is, I'm going to sell the product you invented to make plants eat anything. Oh, Wiener, yes. She produced the toothpick and scratched her chin with it. About the Metamorphizer, she paused and rubbed her elbow. A mistake, I'm afraid, an error. A-ha, I thought, a new deal. Someone's offered to back her, steal her brainchild, negate all my efforts to make her independent, and cheat me of the reward of my spade work. You wouldn't think of her as a frail, credulous woman, easily taken in by the first smooth talker. But a woman is a woman after all. Look, Miss Francis, I argued.  The possibilities are practically unlimited. Of course she'll have to have a manager to put it across. An executive, a man with business experience, someone who can tap the great reservoir of buying power by the conviction of a new need, organize a sales campaign, nationalize production, put the whole thing on a commercial basis. For all this, you need a man who has contacted the public on every level, preferably door to door and with a varied background. She strobe past the stove, which had gathered new accretia during the night and looked in the cloudy mirror as though searching for a misplaced thought. No doubt, Wiener, no doubt. But before all these romantically streamlined things eventuate, there must be a hiatus. In my haste, I overlooked a detail yesterday. Trivial, maybe. Perhaps vital. I should never have let you start out so soon. This was bad. I was struggling now for my job and for the future of the metamorphizer. Miss Francis, I don't know what you mean by mistakes or trivial details or how I could have started out too soon. But whatever the trouble is, I'm sure it can be smoothed out easily. Sometimes, you know, obstacles which appear tremendous prove to be nothing at all in experienced hands. I myself have had occasion to put things right for a number of different concerns. Really, Miss Francis, you mustn't let opportunity slip through your fingers.  I've seen what it does.  Ah, she said so soon. Well, I began. It certainly acted quickly. I stopped when I saw she wasn't hearing me. She sat down in the only empty chair and drummed her fingers against big white teeth. Even under a microscope, she muttered no perceptible reaction for 48 hours. Laboratory conditions are my own idiocy. But I approximated. Her voice trailed off and for a full minute, the absolute silence of the kitchen was broken only by the melodramatic dripping of a tap. She made an effort to pull herself together and address me in her old abrupt way. Corn or wheat? Eh? You said you've seen what it does. I asked you if you had applied it to corn or wheat. Or what? She was looking at me so fixedly I had a slight difficulty in putting my words in good order. It wasn't either, ma'am. I applied some of the stuff to a lawn. A lawn wiener? Yes, ma'am. But I said general instructions, Ms. Francis. I'm sure you didn't mean to tie my hands. Another long silence. No wiener. I didn't mean to tie your hands. Well, as I was saying, I applied some of the stuff to a lawn. Exactly according to your instructions. In the irrigation water? Well, not precisely, but just as good I assure you. Go on. A terrible lawn all shot last night this morning. Stop. What kind of grass? Or don't you know? Of course I know. I answered indignantly. Did she think I was an idiot? It was devil grass. She rubbed the back of her hand against her singularly smooth cheek. Bermuda. Synodon deftalon.  How could I have been so blind? Did I think only the corn would be affected and not the weeds in the furrows? Or that something like this might not happen? I didn't feel like wasting any more time listening to her soliloquy. This morning I continued it was as green. All right, wiener. Spare me your poetry. Show it to me. Well, now, Ms. Francis. I wanted understandably enough to discuss future arrangements before she saw Dinkman's lawn. Immediately, wiener. When dealing with childish persons, you have to cater to their whims. I rid myself of the pump. I'd never dreamed I'd be reluctant to part with the monster while she made perfunctory and unconvincing motions to fit herself for the street. Of course she neither washed nor made up, but she peered in the glass argumentatively, pulled her jacket down decisively, threw her shoulders back to raise it askew again, and gave the swirl of hair a half-hearted pat. I'd like to go over the matter of organizing, not now. I was naturally reluctant to be seen on the street with so conspicuous a figure, but I could hardly escape. I tried to match her swinging stride, but as she was at least six inches taller, I had to give a sort of skip between steps, which was less than dignified. Searching my mind to find a tactful approach again to the subject of proper distribution of the metamorphizer, I felt my opportunity slipping away every moment. She, on her part, was silent, and so abstracted that I often had to put out a guiding hand to avert collision with other pedestrians or stationary objects. I doubt if I'd been gone from Mrs. Dinkman's three-quarters of an hour. I had left a small group excited at the free show consequent upon the too successful beautification of a local eyesore. I returned to a sizable crowd, viewing an impressive phenomenon. The homely levity had vanished. No one shouted jovial advice. Opinions and comments passed in whispers, accompanied by furtive glances toward the lawn, as though it were sentient and might be offended by rude speculation. As we pushed through the bystanders, I was suddenly aware of their cautious avoidance of contact with the grass itself. The nearest onlooker stood a respectful yard back, and when unbalanced by the push of those behind, went through such antics to avoid treading on it, while at the same time preserving the convention of innocence of any taboo, that they frequently pivoted and pirouetted on one foot in an awkward ballet. The very hiding of their inhibition emphasized the new awesomeness of the grass. It was no longer to be lightly approached or frivolously treated. Now, I am not what is generally called a man of religious sensibilities, having long ago discarded belief in the supernatural, and I am not overcome at odd moments by mystical feelings. Furthermore, I had been intimate with this particular patch of vegetation for some eighteen hours. I had viewed its decaying state. I had injected life into it. I had seen it in the first flush of resurrection. In spite of all this, I too fell under the spell of the grass and knew something compounded of wonder and apprehension. The neatly cut swaths of the little man with the gym dandy mower came to a dramatic end in the middle of the yard. Beyond this shorn portion, the grass rose in a threatening crest, taller than a man's knees, green, aloof, and derisive. But it was not this forbidding sight which gave me such a queer turn. It was the moan part. For I recalled how the brisk man's machine had cut close and left behind short, crisp stems. Now this piece was almost as high as when I'd first seen it, grown faster in an hour than ordinary grass in a month. I stole a look at Miss Francis to see how she was taking the sight, but there was no emotion visible on her face. The toothpick was once more in play and the luminous eyes fixed straight ahead. Her legs were spread apart and she seemed firmly in position for hours to come as though she would wait for the grass to exhaust its phenomenal growth. Why did they quit cutting, I asked the man standing beside me. Mower give out, dulled the blade so they wouldn't cut no more. Going to give up and let it grow?  Sent for a gardener with a power mower! Biggin! Could anything! I ought to be here now. He was too honking the crowd from the driveway. Mrs. Dinkman was with him looking at once indignant, persecuted, uncomfortable, and self-righteous. It was evident they had failed to reach any agreement. The gardener slammed the door of the senescent truck with vehement lack of affection. I cut lots of devil grass, lady, but I won't tie into this overgrown stuff at that price. You got no right to expect it. I know what's fair and it's not reasonable to count on me cutting this like it was an ordinary lawn. You know yourself it isn't fair. I'll give you ten dollars and that's my last word. Listen, lady, when I get through this job, I'll have to take my mower apart and have it resharpened. Do you think I can afford to do that for a ten dollar job? Ten dollars, repeated Mrs. Dinkman firmly. The gardener appealed to the gallery. Listen, folks! Now I ask you, is this fair? I'm willing to be reasonable. I understand this lady's in trouble and I'm willing to help. But I can't do a twenty-five dollar job for ten bucks, can I? It was doubtful if the observers were particularly concerned with justice. What they desired was action, swift and drastic. A general resentment at being balked of their amusement was manifest in murmurs of go ahead, do it. What's the matter with you? Don't be dumb, do it for nothing, you'll get plenty business out of it. They appealed to his nobler and baser natures, but he remained adamant. Not to be balked by his churlishness, they passed a hat and collected eight dollars and sixty-seven cents, which I thought a remarkably generous admission price. When this was added to Mrs. Dinkman's ten dollars, the gardener, still protesting, reluctantly agreed to perform. Mrs. Dinkman prudently holding the total, he unloaded the power mower with many flourishes, making quite an undertaking of oiling and adjusting the roller, setting the blades, bending down to assure himself of the gasoline in the small tank, finally wheeling the contraption into place with great spirit. The motor started with a disgruntled boom, changing into a series of resigned explosions as he guided it over the lawn crosswise to the lines of his predecessor. Ms. Francis followed every motion with rapt attention. Did you expect this, I asked? Eh? They had normally stimulated growth humane? Yes. Yes and no. Work in the laboratory didn't indicate it. My own fault. I didn't realize at once making available so much free nitrogen would have such instant results. But last night, yes, not now, later. The power mower went nicely. I might almost say smoothly over this stuff cut before, muttering and chickling happily to itself as it dragged the panting gardener inescapably harnessed in its wake. But the mown area was narrow, and the machine quickly jerked through it and made the last easy journey along the wall of untouched devil grass beyond. The gardener, without hesitation, aimed his machine at the thicket of grass. It growled, slowed, coughed, spat, struggled, and thrashed on, and finally conked out. Ah, said Ms. Francis. Oh, said the spectators.  He yanked the grumbling mower back angrily, inspecting its mechanism in the manner of a mother with a wayward sun, and began again. There was desperate determination in his shoulders as he added his forward thrust to the protesting rhythm. The machine went at the grass like a bulldog attacking a borzoi. It bit, chewed, held on. It cut a new six inches readily, another foot, slowly, and then with jolts and misfires and loud implications from the gardener, it gave up again. You, judged Mrs. Dinkman, don't know how to cut grass. The gardener wiped his sweaty forehead with the inside of his wrist. You! You should have a law against you, he answered bitterly and inadequately. But the crowd evidently agreed with Mrs. Dinkman's verdict, for there were mutterings of, it's a farmer's job. Get somebody with a scythe. That's right, get a scythe. Got to have a scythe to cut hay like that. These remarks uttered loudly enough for him to hear, so discouraged the gardener that after three more futile tries, he reloaded his equipment and left amid jeers and expressions of disfavor without attempting to collect any of the money. For some reason, the failure of the power mower lightened the atmosphere. Everyone, including Mrs. Dinkman, seemed convinced that scything was the solution. Tension relaxed and the bystanders began talking in something above a whisper. End of Chapter 1 Part D. Chapter 1 Part E 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 1 Part E This will just about ruin our sales, I said. Miss Frances suspended the toothpick before her chin and looked at me as though I'd said dirty words in the presence of the ladies. Well, it will, I argued. You can't expect people to have their lawns inoculated if they find out it's going to make grass act this way. Her eyes might have been microscopes and eyes something smeared on a slide. Weiner, you're the sort of man who pedals life begins at 40 to the inmates of an old people's home. I couldn't see what had upset her. The last idea had sound sales appeal, but it was a low-income market.   I still believe you've got something I pointed out. You yourself said it wasn't perfected, but perhaps you haven't realized how far from marketable it actually is yet. Now then, I went on reasonably, you're just going to have to dilute it or change it or do something to it, so while it will make grass nice and green, it won't let it grow wild like this. The fixed look could be annoying. It was nearly impossible to turn your eyes away without rudeness once she caught them. Weiner, the metamorphizer is neither fertilizer nor plant food. It is a chemical compound producing a controlled mutation in any treated member of the family Grimminia. Dilution might make it not work. The mutation might not take place, but it couldn't make it half work. I could change your nature by forcibly injecting an ounce of lead into your cerebellum. The change would not only be irrevocable, but it wouldn't make the slightest difference if the lead were adulterated with iron pyrites or not. But Miss Francis, I expostulated, you'll have to do something. She threw her hands into the air, a theatrical gesture even more than ordinarily unbecoming. Why? Why? To make your discovery marketable, of course.  You advertise for a salesman. Instead of sneering up my honest efforts to put your merchandise across to the public, I think you'd be better advised to worry about such low-brow things as keeping faith. Am I to keep faith in a vacuum? You came to me as a salesman, and I must give you something to sell. This is simple morality, but if such a grant entails concomitant evils, surely I am absolved of my original contract. I don't know what you're talking about, I told her frankly. Your stuff made the grass grow too fast, that's all. You should change the formula or find a new one or else, or else you'll have been left with nothing to sell. I despair of making the point about changing the formula. Your trust in my powers is too reverent. Again, I'm not an arrogant woman, and I'll admit to some responsibility. Make the world fit for Alfred Weiner to make a living in. It's Albert, not Alfred, I corrected her. I'm not touchy, goodness knows, but after all, a name's a piece of property. You're pardon, Albert. She looked down at me with such a placatory and genuinely feminine smile, I decided I'd been foolish to be offended. She's another course, I thought, indulgently, someone whose life is bounded by theories and test tubes, a woman with no conception of practical reality. Instead of being affronted, it would be better to show her patiently how essential my help was to her.  Of all people, I've the least cause for moral snobbery. Anxious to get a few dollars to carry on my work. And what was such anxiety but self-indulgence? I threw the metamorphiser to you and the world before I realized that it was not only imperfect but faulty. Hell is paved with good intentions, and the first result of my desire to benefit mankind has been to injure the dinkments. Meditation in place of infatuation would have shown me both the immediate and ultimate wrongs. I'd died if you'd been gone an hour yesterday when I knew I'd made a blunder in permitting you to go out with danger in both hands. I don't know what you're getting at, I said stiffly, for it sounded as though she were regarding me as a child. Why, as I was sitting composing my thoughts toward extending the effectiveness of the metamorphiser beyond Grimine, it suddenly became clear to me I'd aired about not knowing how long the effect of the inoculations would last. You mean you found out? If she brought the thing under control and the effect lasted a specified time, there might be repeat business after all. I found out a great deal by using speculation and logic for a change instead of my hands and memory. I sat and thought, and though this is an unorthodox way for a scientist to proceed, I profited by it. I reasoned, if you change the genetic structure of a plant, you change it permanently, not for a day or an hour, but for its existence. I'm not speaking of chance mutations, you understand, Wiener, coming about over a course of generations, generations which include sports, degenerates, adavars, and so forth, but of controlled changes brought about through human intervention. Inoculation by the metamorphizer might be compared to cutting off a man's leg or transplanting part of his brain.  I was tired of being talked to like a grammar school class. Still, I humored her. Why, then, he has only one leg, I answered, agreeably, if idiotically. True, more than that, he has a one-legged disposition. His whole ego, his entire spirit, has changed. No longer a two-legged creature reduced, he is another, warped, if you like, being. To come to the immediate point of the grass, if you engender an omnivorous capacity, you implant an insatiable appetite. I don't catch.  A Chevy coupe, gently breathing steam from its radiator cap, interrupted. From its turtle hung the blade of a scythe, and on the nervously hinged door had been hopefully lettered, Archangelo Barelli, plowing and grating. While the coupe was trembling for some seconds before quieting down, I sighed a double relief at Miss Francis' forgetfulness of the money-doer and the soothing of my fears for the lawns eating its way downward to China or India. The remark about gluttonous abdomens was disturbing. And, of course, there will be no further sale of the metamorphiser, she concluded, her eyes now totally concerned with a farmer who was opening the turtle with the air of a man expecting to be unpleasantly astonished. Mr. Barelli came as to a deathbed, a consoling but hopeless smile widening his narrow face only inconsiderably. At the scythe, cradled in his arms, someone shouted, Here's old father Tom himself! Mr. Barelli wasn't amused. Brushing his forehead thoughtfully with tender fingers, he surveyed with saddened eye the three graduated steps of grass. The last step, unassayed by his predecessors, rose nearly four feet, as alien to the concept of lawn as a field of wheat. Think it can cut it? one of the audience asked. Mr. Barelli smiled cheerlessly and didn't answer. Instead he uprooted from his hip pocket a slender stone and began phlegmatically to caress the blade of the scythe with it. Hey, that stuff's not going to stop growing while you fool around! Got to do things right, explained Mr. Barelli gently. The rhythmic friction of stone against steel prolonged suspense unbearably. All kinds of speculation crowded my mind while the leisurely performance went on. The grass was growing rapidly, faster than vegetation had ever grown before. Could it grow so quickly the farmer's scythe couldn't keep up with it? Suppose it had been wheat or corn. Planted today it would be ready to harvest next week, fully ripe. The original dream of Miss Francis would pale compared with the reality. There was still somewhere, somehow, a fortune in the metamorphizer. Ready at last, Mr. Barelli walked delicately across the stubble as if it were a substance too precious to be trampled brutally. Again he measured the rippling ascending mass with his eye. It was the look of a bridegroom. What you waiting for? Unheeding he scraped boot-welt semi-circularly on the sword as though to mark a stance. Once more he appraised the grass, cooked his knee, rested his hands lightly on the two short, upraised handholds. Satisfied at length with his preparations, he finally drew the scythe back with a sweeping motion of both arms and curved it forward close to the ground. It embraced a sudden island lovingly and a sheaf of grass swooned into a heap. I was reminded of old woodcuts in a history of the French Revolution. The bystanders sighed in harmony. Nothing to it. Should have had him in the first place. Can't beat the old elbow grease nose or muscle power or do it every time. Guess it's licked now. All right, all right. Mr. Borelli duplicated his sweep and another sheaf fell. Another and another. One of the oldest human rituals remarked Ms. Francis swaying her body in time with the farmers. An active devotion to Ceres. But all this husbandman reaps is synodon dactylon. A commentary. Progress, I pointed out. Now they have machines to harvest grain. All up-to-date farmers use them. Only the backward ones stick to primitive tools and have to make a living by taking on odd jobs. Progress, she repeated, looking from the scythe wielder to me and back again. Progress, weiner. A remarkable conception of the 19th century. The less intense spectators began to move off. Not to be sure without backward glances, but the metronomic swing of Mr. Borelli's blade indicated it was all over with the ranked grass now. I too should have been on my way, riding off the metamorphizer as a total loss and considering methods for making a new and more profitable connection. Not that I was one to leave a sinking ship, nor had I lost faith in the potentialities of Ms. Francis' discovery. But she either wasn't smart enough to modify her formula or else. But there really wasn't any or else. She just wasn't smart enough to make the metamorphizer marketable, and she was cheating me of the handsome return which should be rightfully mine. She'd made the stuff and deceived me by an unscrupulously worded advertisement. Now, no longer interested, she asked Airely if further effort were essential. Who wouldn't be indignant? And to cap it all, she suddenly ejaculated, can't dawdle around here all day. And after snatching up a handful of the sithings, she left, rolling her large body from side to side, galloping her untidy hair up and down over her neck as she took rapid strides. Evidently, the attractions of her messy kitchen are more to her taste than the wholesome air of outdoors. Pottering around, producing another mayor's nest, and eventually, I suppose, getting another victim. End of chapter one, part E. Chapter one, part F, 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 one, part F. But I couldn't leave so cavalierly. Every leaf, stem, and blade of the cancerous grass held me in somewhat the same way Miss Francis's intense eyes did. It wasn't an aesthetic or morbid attraction. Its basis was strictly practical. If it could have been controlled, if only the growth could be induced on a modified and proper scale. What a product! A fury of frustration rocked my customary calm. The stretch and retraction of the Moor's arms the swift, bright curving as the scythe cut deeper fascinated me. An unscrupulous man, just a whimsical thought, might go about in the night inoculating lawns surreptitiously and appear with a crew next day to offer his services and cutting them. Just goes to show how easy it is to make dishonest speculations. But of course, such things don't pay in the long run. The lush area was being reduced, but perhaps not with the same rapidity as at first when Mr. Borelli was at the top of enthusiastic, if the adjective was applicable, figure. Offener and offener and offener, he paused to sharpen his implement, and I thought the crop shocks were becoming smaller and smaller. As the movement of the scythe swept the guillotine grass backward, the trailing stolons entangled themselves with the uncut stand, pulling the sheaves out of place and making the stacks ragged and inadequate looking. Behind me a cocky voice asked, What's cookin' around here, chum? I turned round to a young man, thin as a bamboo pole, elegantly tailored, who yawned to advertise gold inlays. I explained while he looked skeptical, bored, and knowing simultaneously. Would the flummox bogum, he inquired. He took a pack of playing cards from his pocket and riffled them expertly. Who ya kiddin', bud, he translated. No one. Ask anybody here if this wasn't a dead lawn yesterday and if it hasn't grown this high since morning. He yawned again and proffered me the deck. Pick any card, he suggested. To avoid rudeness, I selected one. He put the pack back and said, You have the nine of diamonds. Clever, eh? I didn't know whether it was or not. He accepted the pace board from me and said, peering out from under furry black eyebrows. If I brought in a story like that, the chief would fire me before you could say James Gordon Bennett.  A cute chap. Newspaperman. Name a Goots. Jackson Goots, Daily Intelligencer. Not thrilling wonder stories. I thought I saw an answer to my most pressing problem. One has to stoop occasionally to methods which, if they didn't lead to important ends, might almost be termed petty. But after all, there was no reason Mr. Jackson Goots shouldn't buy me a dinner and return for information valuable to him. Let's get away from here, I suggested. He fished out a coin, showed it to me, waved his arm in the air, and opened an empty poem for my inspection. I sure would like to, Colonel, but I've got to cover this hillstoy, even if it's out of this miserable world. I'm sure I can give you details to bring it down to earth, I told him. Make it a story your editor will be glad to have. Glad? He pressed tobacco into a slender pipe as emaciated as himself. You don't know W.R.  He evidently enjoyed his own quip for he repeated several times in different accents. God wanted a byline. He puffed a match flame and surveyed the field of Mr. Barelli's effort. Hard work, infeller, what? Guess I better have a check with the bounder, probably closest to the dash of thing. Mr. Goots, I said impressively, I am the man who applied the inoculator to this grass. Now, shall we get out of here so you can listen to my story? Son Abish, these gonna be good. Lead away, amigo, I prepare both ears to listen. I drew him toward Hollywood Boulevard and into a restaurant I calculated might not be too expensive for his generosity. Besides, he probably had an expense account. We put a porcelain top table between us and he commanded, give down. Obediently, I went over all the happenings of yesterday, omitting only Miss Francis' name and the revealing wording of the ad. Goots surveyed me, interestingly. You certainly started something here, acne and or psoriasis. Humor like his was beneath a fence. My name's Albert Wiener. Mines mustered. He produced a plastic cup and rapidly extracted from it a series of others in diminishing sizes. I wouldn't have thought it to look at you, the dirty deed I mean, not the exemical hot dog. Okay, Mr. Wiener, who's this scientific magnet? Why are you holding him out on me? Scientists don't like to be disturbed in their researches, I temporized. No more does a man in a whorehouse, he retorted vulgarly. Stories no good without him. That was what I thought and I'm afraid my satisfaction appeared on my face.  What's the matter, you already had the beer and the roast a beef sandwich? Maybe you better repeat the order. You know in these cheap places they don't like to have you sit around and talk without spending money. Money. Erlady, um, ne, me, ne. He balanced a full glass of water thoughtfully upon a knife-blade looking around for applause. When it was not forthcoming he meekly followed my suggestion. Listen, Goot, I swallowed a mouthful of sandwich and sipped a little beer. I want to help you get your story. He waved his hand and pulled a handkerchief out of his ear. The point is I commenced sopping a piece of bread in the thick gravy. If I were to betray the confidence involved I couldn't hope to continue my connection and I'd lose my chance to benefit from this remarkable discovery. Balls, exclaimed Goots. Forget this spiel. I'm not a prospect for your lawn, Tonic. I disregarded the interruption. I'm not a mercenary man and I believe in enlightening the public to the fullest extent compatible with decency. I'm willing to make a sacrifice for the general good, yet I must live. I know, I know, how much. It seems to me fifty dollars would be little enough. Fifty potatoes? He went through an elaborate pantomime of shock, horror, indignation, grotesque dismay, and a dozen other assorted emotions. Little man, your fruitcake, sure. WR wouldn't part with half a C for a tip-off on the second coming. No, brother, you rang the wrong bell. Five I might getcha, but no more. I replied firmly I was not in need of charity, ignoring his pointed look at the remains on my plate, and this was strictly a business proposition payment for value received. After some bargaining he finally agreed to phone his managing editor and propose I'd come clean for twenty dollars. While he was on this errand I added pie and coffee to the check. It is well to be profident, and I'd paid for my meal in more than money. Jackson Goots came limply from the phone booth his bumptiousness gone. No soap, he shook his head dejectedly. Old man said only pity for the lower mammals prevented him from letting me go to work for Hearst right away. Sorry. His nerves appeared quite shattered. Capable of restoration only by old granddad. After tossing down a couple of bourbons he seemed a little recovered, but hardly quite well enough to use an accent or perform a trick. I'm sorry also, I said, since we can be of no further use to each other. Don't take a powder chum, he urged plaintively. What about a last gander at the weed together? As we walked back I reflected that at any rate I was saved from submitting Miss Francis to vulgar publicity. Everything is for the best. I've seen a hundred instances to prove it. Perhaps, who knew? Something might yet happen to make it possible for me to profit by the freak-growth. Needs a transfusion, remarked to Goots as we stood on the sidewalk before it. Indeed it was anemically green, uneven, hacked and ragged, shorn of its emerald beauty. A high fog filtered the late afternoon light to show Mr. Barelli's task accomplished and the curious watcher's gone. It was no smoothly clipped carpet, yet it was no longer a freakish exotic thing. Rather forlorn it looked and crippled. Pale face, pay out much wampum to get him cut every day. Oh, it probably won't take long till the strength is exhausted, says you. Well, I've got half a story. Cheerio! I sighed if only Miss Francis could control it. A fortune. I walked home trying to figure out what I was going to do tomorrow. I thought I was prepared for anything after the shocks of the day before. I know I was prepared for nothing at all to find the grasses I'd left it or even reverted to its original decay. Indeed, I was not too sure that my memory was completely accurate, that the thing had happened so fantastically. But the devil grass had outdone itself and made my anticipations foolish. It waved a green crest higher than the crowd, a crowd three times the size of yesterday's and increasing rapidly. All the scars inflicted on it, the indignities of Scythe Moor, were covered by a new and even more prodigious stand which made all its former growth appear puny. Bold and insolent, it had repaired the hacked out areas and risen to such a height that, except for a narrow strip at the top, all the windows of the Dinkman House were smothered. Of the garage, only the roof islanded and bewildered was visible, apparently resting on a solid foundation of devil grass. It sprawled kittenishly, its deceptive softness faintly suggesting fur. At once playful and destructive. My optimism of the night before was dashed. This voracious growth wasn't going to dwindle away of itself. It would have to be killed, rooted out. Now the Dinkman lawn wasn't continuous with its neighbors, but until now had been set off by chest high hedges. The day before these had contained and defined the growth, but overwhelming them in the night, the grass had swept across and invaded the neat civilized plots behind, blurring sharply cut edges, curiously investigating flowerbeds, barbarously strangling shapely bushes. But these weren't the ravages which upset me. It was reasonable, if not entirely comfortable, to see shrubbery plants and blossoms swallowed up. Work of men's hands they may be, but they bear the imprimatur of nature. The cement sidewalk, however, was pure artifice, stamped with the trademark of man. Indignity and defeat were symbolized by its overrunning.  But the grass was not satisfied with this irreverence. It was already making demands on curbing and gutter. Junior, you've got a story now. W.R. fired three copy boys and a proofreader he was so mad at himself. Here. Jackson Goots made a pass in the air, simulated astonishment at the $20 bill which appeared miraculously between his fingers and put it in my hand. Thank you, I replied coolly. Just what is this for? Faith me, boy, such innocence I've never seen since I left the old sod. Tis but a little token of esteem from himself to repay you for the trouble of leading me to your scientist or Frankenstein or Burbank. Lead on, my boy, and make it snappy, brother, he added, because I've got to be back here for the rescue. Rescue? Yeah, people in the house. He consulted a scrap of paper. Pinkman. Dinkman. Dinkman. Yeah, thanks. No idea how sensitive people are when you get their names wrong. Dinkman's phone the fire department can't get out. Rescue any minute. Got to cover that imperative. Trapped in home by freak lawn and nailed on your scientist at the same time. I was very anxious myself to see what would happen here so I suggested, since I could take him to the discoverer of the metamorphizer any time, that we better stay and get the Dinkman's story first. With over-enthusiastic praise of my acuteness, he agreed, and began practicing his sleight of hand tricks to the great pleasure of some children. The same ones I suspect who had plagued me when I was spraying the lawn. His performance was terminated by the rapidly approaching fire siren. The crowd seemed of several minds about the purpose of the red truck squealing around the corner to a stop. Some, like Goot, had heard the Dinkmans were indeed trapped in the house. Others declared the firemen had come to cut away the grass once and for all. Still others held the loud opinion that the swift growth had generated a spontaneous combustion. But having made their abrupt face in the ground halt, the truck, or rather the firemen on it, anticlimatically did nothing at all. Helmeted and accoutred, ready for instant action, they relaxed contentedly against the engine oblivious of grass bystanders or presumable emergency. Goot strolled over to inquire the cause of their indolence. Waiting for the chief, he was informed. Thereupon he borrowed a helmet, possibly on the strength of his press card, and proceeded to pull from it such a variety of objects that he received the final accolade from several of his audience when they told him admiringly he ought to be on the stage. The bystanders were not seduced by this entertainment into approval of the firemen's idleness and inquired sarcastically why they had left their cots behind, or if they thought they were still on WPA. The men remained impervious, until the chief jumped out of his red roadster and surveyed the scene napoleonically. Thought somebody was pulling a rib, he explained to no one in particular. All right, boys, there's folks in that house. Let's get them out. Carrying a ladder, the men plunged toward the house. Their boots trod the sprawling runners heavily, spurning and crushing them carelessly. The grass responded by flowing back like water, sloshing over ankles and lapping at calves, thoroughly entangling and impeding progress. Panting and struggling the firemen penetrated only a short way into the mass before they were slowed almost to a standstill. From the sidelines it seemed as though they were wrestling with an invisible octopus. Feet were lifted high, but never free of the twining vegetation. The ladder was pulled angrily forward, but the clutch of the grass upon it became firmer with every tug. At length they were halted, although their effort still gave an appearance of advance. Thrashing and wrenching they urged themselves in the now burdensome ladder against the invincible wall. The only result was to give the illusion they were burying themselves in the clutching tentacles. Exertions dwindled, the struggle grew less intense. Then they retreated, fighting their way out of the enveloping mass in a panic of desperation, abandoning the ladder. The chief surveyed them with less than approbation. Cut your way in, he ordered. You guys think those axes are only to bust up furniture with? Obediently, wedges of bright steel flashed against the green wall. Impatiently I await the rescue of fair dinkmans from this enchanted keep, murmured Goots vainly trying to balance his pipe on the back of his hand. It looked as though he would have to contain his impatience for some time. The firemen slashed unenthusiastically at the grass, which gave way only grudgingly and by inches. Half an hour later, they triumphantly dragged out the abandoned ladder. Stuffs like rubber, bounds back instead of cutting. Yeah, and in the meantime those people been telephoning again. Want to know what the delay is, want to know what they pay taxes for, threaten to sue the city. Let them sue, long as they're in there they can't collect. Funny as a flat tire. Get going, Goldbrick. End of chapter one, part F. Chapter one, part G, 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 one, part G. Another firetruck rolled up and there was much kidding back and forth between the two crews. This is clearly no situation in which lives or property were at stake. It was rather in line with assisting distraught cats down from tops of telephone poles, or persuading self-immolated children to unlock the bathroom door and let mommy in. An amusing interval in a tense day. Perhaps those manning the second truck were more naturally ingenious, possibly the original workers sought more diverting labor. At any rate the futile chopping was abandoned. Instead several long ladders were hooked together and the synthesis lowered from the curb to the edge of Dinkman's roof. It seemed remarkably fragile, but it reached and the watchers murmured approval. No longer beset by novelty the men took easily to the swaying sagging bridge. They passed over the baffle grass, the leader carrying another short ladder which he hung from the roof, stabbing its lower rungs down into the matted verger below. The crossing was made with such insouciance the wonder was that they hadn't done it at first, instead of wasting time on other expedients. The firemen went down the vertical ladder and forced an entrance into the choked windows. Mrs. Dinkman came out first, helped by two of them. She kept pinching her glasses into place with one hand and pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality and paying no heed to the rush of words inaudible to us on the street bursting from her. They coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuously outlined against the bright sky, berating her suckers, until Mr. Dinkman, rounded bald and calm, joined her. At first Mrs. Dinkman refused to try the bridge to the street, but after some urging which was conveyed to us by the gestures of the firemen, she ventured gingerly on the trembling ladders only to draw back quickly. One of the firemen demonstrated the ease and simplicity of the journey, but it was vain. Mrs. Dinkman was carried across gallantly in traditional movie style with Mr. Dinkman and the crew following sedately behind. A crime, Mrs. Dinkman was saying when she came within airshot, a crime malicious mischief ought to be locked up for life. Don't upset yourself, my dear, urge Mr. Dinkman. It's very distressing, but after all it might be worse. Worse? Adam Dinkman has misfortune completely unhinged your mind.  She turned around and shouted, Shoo! Shoo!  And then to Mr. Dinkman again, worse indeed. I'd like to know what could be worse. Oh, began Mr. Dinkman, but I didn't hear the rest, for I was afraid by rascals Mrs. Dinkman referred quite unjustly to me, and I thought the time opportune to remind Goots he hadn't yet completed his assignment. Right, he agreed, suddenly assuming the abrupt accents of an improbable Englishman. Oh, very right, old chap. Let's total along and see what Fu Man Chu has to say for himself. First off, though, I shall have to phone in to Fleet Street. I mean, to W. R. Fine. You can ask him at the same time to authorize you to give me the other thirty. Goots lost his British speech instantly. What other thirty, bum? Why, the balance of the fifty, for an introduction to the maker of the metamorphiser. To compensate me, you know, for my loss of revenue. Weiner, you have all the earmarks of a cast iron mooter. Let me tell you, sir, such methods are unbecoming. They suggest damn yanky push and blackmail. Remember reconstruction and what supremacy, sir. If I were hypersensitive to the silly things people say I should have given up selling long before I pretended not to hear him. We walked into a drugstore and he dropped a nickel into a payphone, hunching the receiver between ear and shoulder. Fifty or last word, he asked out of the corner of his mouth. I nodded. Hello? Jenser? Goots. Hiya, beautiful. Syphilis all cleared up? No. Now, baby. Well, if you're going to be formal, give me W. R. He turned to me and leered while he waited. Chief? Goots. Got the Dinkman story. You know, freak growth swallows Hollywood mansion? Yeah. Yeah. I know. But, chief, this is what I wanted you for, on the follow-up. I have the fellow who put the stuff on the grass. Yeah. Sure I did, yeah.  I know. But I can't, chief. I haven't got a lead. I don't know, chief. Not much of a one, I guess. Wait a minute. He turned to me. Listen, little man. Mr. Lafacici. He pronounced it Lafacici and he pronounced it with awe. I, too, was properly solemn for I hadn't realized before to whom he referred when he talked so lightly of W. R. I knew, as what newspaper reader didn't, of William Rufus Lafacici, the last of the great editors, but I hadn't connected him with the Daily Intelligencer. Mr. Lafacici, we'll shoot you another saw-book and no more. What's the deal? Now, the famous editor's reputation was such that you didn't tell him to go to the devil, even through the medium of an agent. It would have been like writing your name on the Lincoln Memorial. It was reluctantly, therefore, that I shook my head. I'm sorry, Mr. Goots, I apologized. I'd certainly like to oblige.  No soap, chief. Okay. Okay. All right, put the rewrite man on. And for the next ten minutes he went over the events at the Dinkmans, carefully spelling out all names, including the Napoleonic fire chiefs. I began to suspect Goots wasn't so inefficient a reporter as he appeared. The story given in, he hung up and turned to me. Well, so long, little man. Been nice knowing you. But what about meeting the discoverer of the Metamorphizer? Oh, that. Well, W.R. thinks we don't need him anymore. Not enough in that angle. I suspected he was bluffing. Still, it was possible he wasn't. In such a delicate situation, there was nothing I could do but bluff in turn. If you are a good salesman, I always say you must have psychology at your fingertips. Very well, Mr. Goots. Perhaps I shall see you again sometime. I was immediately confronted by a Frenchman, affable, volatile, affectionate.  Do not leave me with the abruptness. You desolate, mon coeur. Allors, return to me the twenty dollars. But Mr. Goots, none of it bud. He whisked the cards out and showed them to me. The ace of spades, ghoulishly visible, its ominousness tempered only by the word bicycle printed across it.  A block of concrete tastefully inscribed a weiner ought to make an amusing base for a bird bath, say? Listen, Goots. I was firm. I'm reasonably certain you've been authorized to advance me the other thirty. But I hope we're both sensible people, and I'll be glad to sign a receipt for the full amount if you'll let me have twenty-five. Albert, you're a fine fellow. Uprince. On a page from his notebook he wrote, of Jackson Goots, fifty dollars US, and I signed it. He handed me another twenty dollar bill and put his wallet away. Charge the other five to agents' fees, he suggested. Lead us to your steinmet. You just can't expect everyone to have the same standards of probity, so philosophically I pocketed my loss and gains together. Life is full of ups and downs, and take the bad with the good. Goots was in high spirits after his piece of chicanery, and as we went down the street he practiced, quite unsuccessfully, a series of ventriloquial exercises. The appearance of the apartment house drew the comment from him that it was a good thing for their collective blood pressures the Chamber of Commerce and the All Year Club didn't know such things existed in the heart of Hollywood. It's no better than I live in myself, he added. He whistled at the dismal living room and raised his eyebrows at the kitchen. Before I could mutter an introduction, Miss Frances growled without turning around. If you've come about the icebox. Sounds, exclaimed Goots. A female Linnaeus. Shades of Dorothy Dix. I don't know who you are, young man, but you're extremely impudent to come tramping into my kitchen, adding nothing to the sum of knowledge but a confirmation of my sex, which would be plain to any mammal. If you've, nine, frontline doctor, said Goots hastily, about the covenators on no nothing. I represent frontline doctor, the daily intelligences atone. Miss Frances pierced his turgid explanation with a sharp spate of words in what I took to be German. Goots answered with difficult slowness, but he fumbled and hauled before long and abandoning the central European became again the southern gentleman. I quite understand, ma'am, how any delicately rare gentleman would resent having her privacy intruded upon by rude agents of the yellow press. But consider, ma'am, we live in a progressive age, and having made a great contribution to science, you can hardly escape the fame rightfully yours. You are a public figure now, a must-stand in the light. Would it not be preferable, ma'am, to talk as lady to gentlemen? I am related to the tally of pharaohs of Ruffin County on the distaff side, fan to be badgered by some heck journalist. Miss Frances squatted ungracefully on her heels and looked up from the flowerpot she had been engaged with. I haven't any objection to publicity hack or otherwise, she said mildly. I am merely impressed again by the invulnerability of newspapers to thousands of important discoveries and inventions, newsworthy contributions to science, as you call them in your bland ignorance of semantics, in contrast to their acute, almost painful sensitivity to any mishance. Goots, unjoining, disproportioned length carelessly against the sink to the peril of several jars of specimens, didn't reply. Instead, he fluttered his arms and produced a half-dollar, apparently from Miss Frances's hair, which after exhibiting he prudently pocketed. Tell me, Dr. Frances. Miss, show me how you did that trick. In a minute, Miss Frances, it's a honey, isn't it? Paid four bits to a funhouse in Utica, New York for it. Tell me, how did you come to make your great discovery? I was born. I went to school. I read books. I reached maturity. I looked through a microscope. Yes, prodded Goots. That's all. Lassie urged Goots, underlining the honey of his voice with a tantalizing glimpse of a rapid-fire snatching of three-colored handkerchiefs out of the air. It is no sensible cause, Shafala. Thank, girl, what that press can do to a recassitant lass like herself. Y'all wouldn't like it if tomorrow's paper branded you, and I quote an unsexed harpy, a traitor to mankind, a heartless, soulless.  What do you want to know? No. First, said Goots briskly, what is this stuff? The metamorphizer? He nodded. You want the chemical formula? Wouldn't do me or my readers the least bit of good, and you wouldn't give it to me if I asked. Why should you? No, enlighten me in English. It is a compound on the order of culture scene, acting through the somatoplasm of the plant. It is apparently effective only on the family Grimminia, producing a constitutional metabolic change. I have no means of knowing as yet whether this change is transmissible through seed to offspring. Hey, wait a minute. Producing a constitutional metabolic change? How do you spell metabolic? Never mind. The proofreaders will catch it. What constitutional change? Are you a botanist, young man? Goots shook his head. An agri-stologist? Even an agronomist? Then you can't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about. Maybe not, retorted Goots, but one of my readers might. Just give me a rough idea. Plants absorb certain minerals in suspension. That is, they absorb some and reject others. The metamorphizer seems to give them the ability to break down even the most stable compound, select what they need, and also fix the inert nitrogen of the air to nourish themselves, themselves, repeated Goots writing rapidly. Okay, if I get you, which is doubtful, so far it sounds just like a good new fertilizer. Really? I tried to make myself clear. Now don't get sore, Professor. Just give out on what made the grass go wild. I can only hazard a guess. As I told Weiner, if you create a capacity, you engender an appetite. I imagine that patch of synodondactylon just couldn't stop absorbing once it had been inoculated. Aha! Like giving a man a taste for bourbon. If it pleases you to put it that way. Okay. Okay. Now let's have an idea how this growth can be stopped. Theoretical, you know. As far as I know, said Miss Francis, it cannot be stopped. End of chapter one of greener than you think by Ward Moore.