The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 13

  Then he locked the doors and went to bed.

  To bed, but not immediately to sleep. He lay beneath the covers, staring up into the darkness and trying to quiet the turmoil of speculation that surged within his brain.

  He had gone walking in the morning and found a machine. He had put his hand upon it and it had given him a gift. Later on, it had given other gifts.

  “A machine came, bearing gifts,” he said into the darkness.

  A clever, calculated, well-worked-out first contact.

  Contact them with something they will know and recognize and need not be afraid of, something to which they can feel superior.

  Make it friendly—and what is more friendly than handing out a gift?

  What is it?

  Missionary?

  Trader?

  Diplomat?

  Or just a mere machine and nothing more?

  Spy? Adventurer? Investigator? Surveyor?

  Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief?

  And why, of all places, had it landed here, in this forsaken farmland, in this pasture on his farm?

  And its purpose?

  What had been the purpose, the almost inevitable motive, of those fictional alien beings who, in tales of fantasy, had landed on Earth?

  To take over, of course. If not by force, then by infiltration or by friendly persuasion and compulsion; to take over not only Earth, but the human race as well.

  The man from the radio station had been excited, the Associated Press man had been indignant that anyone should so insult his intelligence, the Tribune man had been bored and the United Press man flippant. But the citizen had been angry. He was being taken in by another Flying Saucer story and it was just too much.

  The citizen was angry because he didn’t want his little world disturbed. He wanted no interference. He had trouble enough of his own without things being messed up by a Saucer’s landing. He had problems of his own—earning a living, getting along with his neighbors, planning his work, worrying about the polio epidemic.

  Although the newscaster had said the polio situation seemed a little brighter—no new cases and no deaths. And that was a fine thing, for polio was pain and death and a terror on the land.

  Pain, he thought.

  For the first time in many days, there has been no pain.

  He lay stiff and still beneath the covers, examining himself for pain. He knew just where it lurked, the exact spot in his anatomy where it lurked hidden out of sight. He lay and waited for it, fearful, now that he had thought of it, that he would find it there.

  But it was not there.

  He lay and waited for it, afraid that the very thought of it would conjure it up from its hiding place. It did not come. He dared it to come, he invited it to show itself, he hurled mental jibes at it to lure it out. It refused to be lured.

  He relaxed and knew that for the moment he was safe. But safe only temporarily, for the pain still was there. It bided its time, waited for its moment, would come when the time was right.

  With careless abandon, trying to wipe out the future and its threat, he luxuriated in life without the pain. He listened to the house—the slightly settling joists that made the floor boards creak, the thrum of the light summer wind against the weathered siding, the scraping of the elm branch against the kitchen roof.

  Another sound. A knocking at the door. “Chaye! Chaye, where are you?”

  “Coming,” he called.

  He found slippers and went to the door. It was the sheriff and his men.

  “Light the lamp,” the sheriff said.

  “You got a match?” Peter asked.

  “Yeah, here are some.”

  Groping in the dark, Peter found the sheriff’s hand and the book of matches.

  He located the table, slid his hand across the top and left the lamp. He lit it and looked at the sheriff from across the table.

  “Chaye,” the sheriff said, “that thing is building something.”

  “I know it is.”

  “What’s the gag?”

  “There’s no gag.”

  “It gave me this,” the sheriff said.

  He threw the object on the table.

  “A gun,” said Peter.

  “You ever see one like it?”

  It was a gun, all right, about the size of a .45. But it had no trigger and the muzzle flared and the whole thing was made of some white, translucent substance.

  Peter picked it up and found it weighed no more than half a pound or so.

  “No,” said Peter. “No, I’ve never seen one like it.” He put it back on the table, gingerly. “Does it work?”

  “It does,” the sheriff said. “I tried it on your barn.”

  “There ain’t no barn no more,” said one of the deputies.

  “No report, no flash, no nothing,” the sheriff added.

  “Just no barn,” repeated the deputy, obsessed with the idea.

  A car drove into the yard.

  “Go out and see who’s there,” said the sheriff.

  One of the deputies went out.

  “I don’t get it,” complained the sheriff. “They said Flying Saucer, but I don’t think it’s any Saucer. A box is all it is.”

  “It’s a machine,” said Peter.

  Feet stamped across the porch and men came through the door.

  “Newspapermen,” said the deputy who had gone out to see.

  “I ain’t got no statement, boys,” the sheriff said.

  One of them said to Peter: “You Chaye?”

  Peter nodded.

  “I’m Hoskins from the Tribune. This is Johnson from the AP. That guy over there with the sappy look is a photographer, name of Langly. Disregard him.”

  He pounded Peter on the back. “How does it feel to be sitting in the middle of the century’s biggest news break? Great stuff, hey, boy?”

  Langly said: “Hold it.”

  A flash bulb popped.

  “I got to use the phone,” said Johnson. “Where is it?”

  “Over there,” said Peter. “It’s not working.”

  “How come at a time like this?”

  “I cut the wire.”

  “Cut the wire! You crazy, Chaye?”

  “There were too many people calling.”

  “Now,” said Hoskins, “wasn’t that a hell of a thing to do?”

  “I’ll fix her up,” Langly offered. “Anyone got a pair of pliers?”

  The sheriff said, “You boys hold on a minute.”

  “Hurry up and get into a pair of pants,” Hoskins said to Peter. “We’ll want your picture on the scene. Standing with your foot on it, like the guy that’s just killed an elephant.”

  “You listen here,” the sheriff said.

  “What is it, Sheriff?”

  “This here’s important. Get it straight. You guys can’t go messing around with it.”

  “Sure it’s important,” said Hoskins. “That is why we’re here. Millions of people standing around with their tongues hanging out for news.”

  “Here are some pliers,” someone remarked.

  “Leave me at that phone,” said Langly.

  “What are we horsing around for?” asked Hoskins. “Let’s go out and see it.”

  “I gotta make a call,” said Johnson.

  “Look here, boys,” the sheriff insisted in confusion. “Wait—”

  “What’s it like, Sheriff? Figure it’s a Saucer? How big is it? Does it make a clicking noise or something? Hey, Langly, take the sheriff’s picture.”

  “Just a minute,” Langly shouted from outside. “I’m fixing up this wire.”

  More feet came across the porch. A head was thrust into the door.

  “TV truck,” the head said. “This the place? How do we get out to the thing?”
<
br />   The phone rang.

  Johnson answered it.

  “It’s for you, Sheriff.”

  The sheriff lumbered across the room. They waited, listening.

  “Sure, this is Sheriff Burns … Yeah, it’s out there, all right … Sure, I know. I’ve seen it … No, of course, I don’t know what it is … Yes, I understand … Yes, sir … Yes, sir. I’ll see to it, sir.”

  He hung up the receiver and turned around to face them.

  “That was military intelligence,” he said. “No one is going out there. No one’s moving from this house. This place is restricted as of this minute.”

  He looked from one to another of them ferociously.

  “Them’s orders,” he told them.

  “Oh, hell,” said Hoskins.

  “I came all the way out here,” bawled the TV man. “I’m not going to come out here and not …”

  “It isn’t me that’s doing the ordering,” said the sheriff. “It’s Uncle Sam. You boys take things easy.”

  Peter went into the kitchen and poked up the fire and set on the kettle.

  “The coffee’s there,” he said to Langly. “I’ll put on some clothes.”

  Slowly, the night wore on. Hoskins and Johnson phoned in the information they had jotted down on folded copy paper, their pencils stabbing cryptic signs as they talked to Peter and the sheriff. After some argument with the sheriff about letting him go, Langly left with his pictures. The sheriff paced up and down the room.

  The radio blared. The phone banged constantly.

  They drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, littering the floor with ground-out stubs. More newsmen pulled in, were duly warned by the sheriff, and settled down to wait.

  Someone brought out a bottle and passed it around. Someone else tried to start a poker game, but nobody was interested.

  Peter went out to get an armload of wood. The night was quiet, with stars.

  He glanced toward the pasture, but there was nothing there to see. He tried to make out the empty place where the barn had disappeared. It was too dark to tell whether the barn was there or not.

  Death watch or the last dark hour before the dawn—the brightest, most wonderful dawn that Man had ever seen in all his years of striving?

  The machine was building something out there, building something in the night.

  And what was it building?

  Shrine?

  Trading Post?

  Mission House?

  Embassy?

  Fort?

  There was no way of knowing, no way that one could tell.

  Whatever it was building, it was the first known outpost ever built by an alien race on the planet Earth.

  He went back into the house with the load of wood.

  “They’re sending troops,” the sheriff told him.

  “Tramp, tramp, tramp,” said Hoskins, dead-pan, cigarette hanging negligently to his underlip.

  “The radio just said so,” the sheriff said. “They called out the guard.”

  Hoskins and Johnson did some more tramp-tramping.

  “You guys better not horse around with them soldier boys,” the sheriff warned. “They’ll shove a bayonet …”

  Hoskins made a noise like a bugle blowing the charge. Johnson grabbed two spoons and beat out galloping hoofs.

  “The cavalry!” shouted Hoskins. “By God, boys, we’re saved!”

  Someone said wearily: “Can’t you guys be your age?”

  They sat around, as the night wore on, drinking coffee and smoking. They didn’t do much talking.

  The radio station finally signed off. Someone fooled around, trying to get another station, but the batteries were too weak to pull in anything. He shut the radio off. It had been some time now since the phone had rung.

  Dawn was still an hour away when the guardsmen arrived, not marching, nor riding horses, but in five canvas-covered trucks.

  The captain came in for just a moment to find out where this goddam obscenity Saucer was. He was the fidgety type. He wouldn’t even stay for a cup of coffee. He went out yelling orders at the drivers.

  Inside the house, the others waited and heard the five trucks growl away.

  Dawn came and a building stood in the pasture, and it was a bit confusing, for you could see that it was being built in a way that was highly unorthodox. Whoever or whatever was building it had started on the inside and was building outward, so that you saw the core of the building, as if it were a building that was being torn down and someone already had ripped off the entire exterior.

  It covered half an acre and was five stories high. It gleamed pink in the first light of the morning, a beautiful misty pink that made you choke up a little, remembering the color of the dress the little girl next door had worn for her seventh birthday party.

  The guardsmen were ringed around it, the morning light spattering off their bayonets as they stood the guard.

  Peter made breakfast—huge stacks of flapjacks, all the bacon he had left, every egg he could find, a gallon or two of oatmeal, more coffee.

  “We’ll send out and get some grub,” said Hoskins. “We’ll make this right with you.”

  After breakfast, the sheriff and the deputies drove back to the county seat. Hoskins took up a collection and went to town to buy groceries. The other newsmen stayed on. The TV truck got squared off for some wide-angle distance shots.

  The telephone started jangling again. The newsmen took turns answering it.

  Peter walked down the road to the Mallet farm to get eggs and milk.

  Mary ran out to the gate to meet him. “The neighbors are getting scared,” she said.

  “They weren’t scared yesterday,” said Peter. “They walked right up and got their gifts.”

  “But this is different, Peter. This is getting out of hand. The building …”

  And that was it, of course. The building.

  No one had been frightened of an innocent-appearing machine because it was small and friendly. It shone so prettily and it clicked so nicely and it handed out gifts. It was something that could be superficially recognized and it had a purpose that was understandable if one didn’t look too far.

  But the building was big and might get bigger still and it was being erected inside out. And who in all the world had ever seen a structure built as fast as that one—five stories in one single night?

  “How do they do it, Peter?” Mary asked in a hushed little voice.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Some principle that is entirely alien to us, some process that men have never even thought of, a way of doing things, perhaps, that starts on an entirely different premise than the human way.”

  “But it’s just the kind of building that men themselves would build,” she objected. “Not that kind of stone, perhaps—maybe there isn’t any stone like that in the entire world—but in every other way there’s nothing strange about it. It looks like a big high school or a department store.”

  “My jade was jade,” said Peter, “and your perfume was perfume and the rod and reel that Johnny got was a regular rod and reel.”

  “That means they know about us. They know all there is to know. Peter, they’ve been watching us!”

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  He saw the terror in her eyes and reached out a hand to draw her close and she came into his arms and he held her tightly and thought, even as he did so, how strange that he should be the one to extend comfort and assurance.

  “I’m foolish, Peter.”

  “You’re wonderful,” he assured her.

  “I’m not really scared.”

  “Of course you’re not.” He wanted to say, “I love you,” but he knew that those words he could never say. Although the pain, he thought—the pain had not come this morning.

  “I’ll get the milk and eggs,”
said Mary.

  “Give me all you can spare. I have quite a crowd to feed.”

  Walking back, he thought about the neighbors being frightened now and wondered how long it would be before the world got frightened, too—how long before artillery would be wheeling into line, how long before an atom bomb would fall.

  He stopped on the rise of the hill above the house and for the first time noticed that the barn was gone. It had been sheared off as cleanly as if cut with a knife, with the stump of the foundation sliced away at an angle.

  He wondered if the sheriff still had the gun and supposed he had. And he wondered what the sheriff would do with it and why it had been given him. For, of all the gifts that he had seen, it was the only one that was not familiar to Earth.

  In the pasture that had been empty yesterday, that had been only trees and grass and old, grassed-over ditches, bordered by the wild plum thickets and the hazel brush and blackberry vine, rose the building. It seemed to him that it was bigger than when he had seen it less than an hour before.

  Back at the house, the newspapermen were sitting in the yard, looking at the building.

  One of them said to him, “The brass arrived. They’re waiting in there for you.”

  “Intelligence?” asked Peter.

  The newsman nodded. “A chicken colonel and a major.”

  They were waiting in the living-room. The colonel was a young man with gray hair. The major wore a mustache, very military.

  The colonel introduced himself. “I’m Colonel Whitman. This is Major Rockwell.”

  Peter put down his eggs and milk and nodded acknowledgment.

  “You found this machine,” said the colonel.

  “That is right.”

  “Tell us about it,” said the colonel, so Peter told them about it.

  “This jade,” the colonel said. “Could we have a look at it?”

  Peter went to the kitchen and got the jade. They passed it from one to the other, examining it closely, turning it over and over in their hands, a bit suspicious of it, but admiring it, although Peter could see they knew nothing about jade.

  Almost as if he might have known what was in Peter’s mind, the colonel lifted his eyes from the jade and looked at him.

  “You know jade,” the colonel said.

  “Very well,” said Peter.