Gordy fed the man, and accepted a cigarette from him after they had
eaten. The first puffs made him light-headed--it had been that long
since he'd smoked--and through the smoke he looked at John de Terry
amiably enough. Company would be all right, he thought. The pink mice
had been company, of a sort--but it turned out that the mutation that
made them hairless had also given them an appetite for meat. And after
the morning when he had awakened to find tiny tooth-marks in his leg,
he'd had to destroy them. And there had been no other animal since,
nothing but the ants.
"Are you going to stay?" Gordy asked.
De Terry said, "If I can. What's your name?" When Gordy told him, some
of the animal look went out of his eyes, and wonder took its place.
"_Doctor_ Salva Gordy?" he asked. "Mathematics and physics in Pasadena?"
"Yes, I used to teach at Pasadena."
"And I studied there." John de Terry rubbed absently at his ruined
clothes. "That was a long time ago. You didn't know me; I majored in
biology. But I knew you."
Gordy stood up and carefully put out the stub of his cigarette. "It was
too long ago," he said. "I hardly remember. Shall we work in the garden
now?"
Together they sweated in the spring sunlight that afternoon, and Gordy
discovered that what had been hard work for one man went quickly enough
for two. They worked clear to the edge of the plot before the sun
reached the horizon. John de Terry stopped and leaned on his spade,
panting.
He gestured to the rank growth beyond Gordy's patch. "We can make a
bigger garden," he said. "Clear out that truck, and plant more food. We
might even--" He stopped. Gordy was shaking his head.
"You can't clear it out," said Gordy. "It's rank stuff, a sort of
crabgrass with a particularly tough root. I can't even cut it. It's all
around here, and it's spreading."