Read Galaxies Like Grains of Sand for Free Online

sudden impulse of curiosity, Smithlao got out of the sedan. The open air stank of roses and clouds and green things turning dark with the thought of autumn. It was frightening for Smithlao, but an adventurous impulse made him go on.
    The girl was not looking in his direction; she peered toward the barricade of trees which cut her off from the world. As Smithlao approached, she moved around to the rear of the house, still staring intently. He followed with caution, taking advantage of the cover afforded by a small plantation. A metal gardener nearby continued to wield shears along a grass verge, unaware of his existence.
    Ployploy now stood at the back of the house. The wind that rustled her long dress blew leaves against her. It sighed around the weird and desolate garden like fate at a christening, ruining the last of the roses. Later, the tumbling pattern of petals might be sucked from paths, lawn and patio by the steel gardener; now, they made a tiny tide about her feet.
    Extravagant architecture overshadowed Ployploy. Here a rococo fancy had mingled with a genius for fantastic portal and roof. Balustrades rose and fell, stairs marched through circular arches, grey and azure eaves swept almost to the ground. But all was sadly neglected. Virginia creeper, already hinting at its glory to come, strove to pull down the marble statuary; troughs of rose petals clogged every sweeping staircase. And all this formed the ideal background for the forlorn figure of Ployploy.
    Except for her delicate pink lips, her face was utterly pale. Her hair was black; it hung straight, secured only once at the back of her head, and then fell in a tail to her waist. She looked mad indeed, her melancholy eyes peering toward the great elms as if they would scorch down everything in their line of vision. Smithlao turned to see what she stared at so compellingly.
    The wild man he had observed from the air was just breaking through the thickets around the elm boles.
    A sudden rain shower came down, rattling among the dry leaves of the shrubbery. It was over in a flash; during the momentary downpour, Ployploy never shifted her position, the wild man never looked up. Then the sun burst through, cascading a pattern of elm shadow over the house, and every flower wore a jewel of rain.
    Smithlao reflected on what he had thought in Gunpat’s room about the coming end of man. Now he considered that it would be so easy for Nature, when parasite man was extinct, to begin again.
    He waited tensely, knowing a fragment of drama was about to take place before his eyes. Across the sparkling lawn, a tiny tracked thing scuttled, pogoing itself up steps and out of sight through an arch. It was a perimeter guard, off to give the alarm, to warn that an intruder was about.
    In a minute it returned. Four big robots accompanied it; one of them Smithlao recognized as the toadlike machine that had challenged his arrival. They threaded their way purposefully among the rosebushes, five differently shaped menaces. The metal gardener muttered to itself, abandoned its clipping, and joined the procession toward the wild man.
    “He hasn’t a dog’s chance,” Smithlao said to himself. The phrase held significance; dogs, having been declared redundant, had long since been exterminated.
    By now the wild man had broken through the barrier of the thicket and come to the lawn’s edge. He pulled a leafy branchlet off a shrub and stuck it into his shirt so that it partially obscured his face; he tucked another branch into his trousers. As the robots drew nearer, he raised his arms above his head, a third branch clasped in his hands.
    The six machines encircled him, humming and chugging quietly.
    The toad robot clicked, as if deciding on what it should do next.
    “Identity?” it demanded.
    “I am a rose tree,” the wild man said.
    “Rose trees bear roses. You do not bear roses. You are not a rose tree,” the steel toad said. Its biggest, highest gun came level with the wild man’s