I
didn't have long to wonder.
Nothing happened during the rest of the day. We went back, together and separately, several times during the daylight hours and during the early hours of the night. For a wonder, nobody had leaked anything to the newspapers, and for what it was worth, we had the show to ourselves.
"Perhaps tomorrow," Aunt Mattie said around midnight, as we left the field for the last time. "Perhaps they must rest."
"I could use some of that," I said with a yawn.
"Yes, Hapland," she agreed. "We must conserve our strength. Heaven knows what may be required of us on the morrow."
Did she feel something, too? It was so strong, how could she help it? And yet, the monster had not looked into her eye.
I didn't expect to sleep well, but I fooled myself. I was quite sure I hadn't more than closed my eyes when I was roused by another excited rapping on my bedroom door and again the butler rushed in without ceremony.
"Look, Master Hapland," he shouted in a near falsetto.
He pulled so hard on my drapes they swept back from my windows like a stage curtain—and I looked.
To the very limit of our grounds in the distance, but not beyond, the trees, the shrubs, the drives and walkways, the lawns and ponds, all were covered with a two foot thick blanket of glistening salt.
"And the monsters are gone," the butler was saying. "And I must go to your aunt."
"So must I," I said, and grabbed up a robe.
As I ran, overtook him, passed him, from all over the house I could hear excited outcries, wonder, amazement, anger, fear from the servants. I finished the length of my wing, sprinted through the main body of the house, and down the hallway of her wing to the door of her suite. I didn't need to knock, someone had left it open.
Her own personal maid, I saw, as I ran past the little alcove into the sitting room. The maid was standing beside Aunt Mattie, wringing her hands and crying. The drapes here, too, were swept full back, and through the windows I could see the collection, the highly prized, wondrous collection of flora, all covered in salt.
Aunt Mattie stood there, without support, looking at it. When I came up to her there were tears in her eyes and glistening streaks on her wrinkled cheeks.
"Why?" she asked. It was very quietly spoken.
By now the butler had made the trip, and came into the room. I turned to him.
"If we hurry," I said. "A good deal of the collection is enclosed under plastic domes. If we don't wet the salt, and if we hurry and have it scraped away from the buildings it won't poison the ground inside them. We can save most of the collection that way."
"No, Master Hapland," he said, and shook his head. "The salt is inside the buildings, just as much as here. A gardener shouted it at me as I passed."
Aunt Mattie's closed fist came up to her lips, and then dropped again. That was all.
"Why, Hapland?" she asked again. "Evil for good? Why?"
I motioned the maid and butler to leave—and take with them the cluster of servants around the door in the hall. I took Aunt Mattie over to her favorite chair, the one where she could sit and look out at her collection; no point in pretending the salt wasn't there. I sat down at her feet, the way I used to when I was ten years old. I looked out at the salt, too. It was everywhere. Every inch of our grounds was covered with it, to poison the earth so that nothing could grow in it. It would take years to restore the grounds, and many more years to restore the collection.
"Try to understand, Aunt Mattie," I said. "Not only what I say, but all the implications of it. They didn't return evil for good. Let's see it from what might have been their point of view. They live on a world of salt, an antiseptic world. We went there, and you intended good. You told them that our code was to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
"They returned our visit, and what did they find? What kind of a pestilent horror did we live in? Bare ground, teeming with life, billions of life forms in every cubic foot of ground beneath our feet. Above the ground, too. Raw, growing life all around us, towering over us.
"If they were doomed to live in such a world, they would want it covered in salt, to kill all the life, make it antiseptic. They owed nothing to the rest of Earth, but they owed this kindness to you. They did unto others, as they would have others do unto them."
"I never realized—I was sure I couldn't be.... I've built my life around it," she said.
"I know," I said with a regretful sigh. "So many people have."
And yet, I still wonder if it might not have happened at all—if I hadn't winked. I wonder if that pesty psychiatrist has been right, all along?