All Flesh is Grass

They might, indeed, I thought, be very far in time from that old home where another race (by their description of it, a non-human race) had trained them to intelligence.

Ведь этот череп у меня в руках  — бесспорное доказательство, что Земля эта не всегда принадлежала Цветам. Их родина не здесь... должно быть, они завоевали этот мир... так или иначе, он перешел к ним от кого-то другого. Да, очень возможно, что они переселились во времени очень далеко от той Земли, где иное племя  — по их описанию, племя, нисколько не похожее на людей,  — научило их мыслить.

How far back, I wondered, lay the homeland of the Flowers? How many conquered earths lay between this world and the one where they had risen? How many other earths lay empty, swept clean of any life that might compete with the Flowers?

And that other race, the race that had raised and elevated them above their vegetable existence where was that old race today?

Как далеко в прошлом лежит она, родина Цветов? Сколько еще Земель завоевали они на пути сюда, в этот мир из того неведомого, который был их колыбелью? Сколько миров осталось позади, опустошенных, очищенных от всего живого, что могло соперничать с этими Цветами.

..

А те, кто обучил и возвысил простые растения, кто наделил их разумом,  — где они теперь, что с ними сталось?"

"I put the skull back into the hole from which I'd taken it. Carefully, I brushed back the sand and dirt until it was covered once again, this time entirely covered, with no part of it showing. I would have liked to take it back to camp with me so I could have a better look at it.

But I knew I couldn't, for Tupper must not know what I had found. His mind was an open book to his friends the Flowers, and I was sure mine wasn't, for they had had to use the telephone to get in touch with me. So long as I told Tupper nothing, the Flowers would never know that I had found the skull. There was the possibility, of course, that they already knew, that they had the sense of sight, or perhaps some other sense that was as good as sight. But I doubted that they had; there was so far no evidence they had. The best bet was that they were mental symbionts, that they had no awareness beyond the awareness they shared with minds in other kinds of life.

Я положил череп обратно в яму, откуда его извлек. Снова осторожно засыпал его песком и землей  — так, что больше уже ничего не было видно. Хорошо бы взять его с собой и внизу, на берегу, получше разглядеть.