The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

Daisies

Dr. Michaelson was showing his wife, whose name was Mrs. Michaelson, around his combination laboratory and greenhouse. It was the first time she had been there in several months and quite a bit of new equipment had been added.

“You were really serious then, John,” she asked him finally, “when you told me you were experimenting in communicating with flowers? I thought you were joking.”

“Not at all,” said Dr. Michaelson. “Contrary to popular belief, flowers do have at least a degree of intelligence.”

“But surely they can’t talk!”

“Not as we talk. But contrary to popular belief, they do communicate. Telepathically, as it were, and in thought pictures rather than in words.”

“Among themselves perhaps, but surely—”

“Contrary to popular belief, my dear, even human-floral communication is possible, although thus far I have been able to establish only one-way communication. That is, I can catch their thoughts but not send messages from my mind to theirs.”

“But—how does it work, John?”

“Contrary to popular belief,” said her husband, “thoughts, both human and floral, are electromagnetic waves that can be—Wait, it will be easier to show you, my dear.”

He called to his assistant who was working at the far end of the room, “Miss Wilson, will you please bring the communicator?”

Miss Wilson brought the communicator. It was a headband from which a wire led to a slender rod with an insulated handle. Dr. Michaelson put the headband on his wife’s head and the rod in her hand.

“Quite simple to use,” he told her. “Hold the rod near a flower and it acts as an antenna to pick up its thoughts. And you will find out that, contrary to popular belief—”

But Mrs. Michaelson was not listening to her husband. She was holding the rod near a pot of daisies on the window sill. After a moment she put down the rod and took a small pistol from her purse. She shot first her husband and then his assistant, Miss Wilson.

Contrary to popular belief, daisies do tell.