The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 6

  Lambert shook his head. “If what both of you say is true, if Phil really is an extension of myself, then I must tell you I do not have the least idea of how it might be done. If I did it, I just did it, that was all. No particular way of doing it. No ritual to perform. No technique I’m aware of.”

  “Ridiculous that is,” cried the Follower. “Surely you can give me hint or clue.”

  “All right, then,” said Phil, “I’ll tell you how to do it. Take a species and give them two million years in which they can evolve, and you might come to it. Might, I say. You can’t be certain of it. It would have to be the right species, and it must experience the right kind of social and psychological pressure, and it must have the right kind of brain to respond to these kinds of pressures. And if all of this should happen, then one day one member of the species may be able to do what Ed has done. But that one of them is able to do it does not mean that others will. It may be no more than a wild talent, and it may never occur again. So far as we know, it’s not happened before. If it has, it’s been hidden, as Ed has hidden his ability, even from himself, forced to hide it from himself because of the human conditioning that would make such an ability unacceptable.”

  “But all these years,” said the Follower, “all these years, he has kept you as you are. That seems …”

  “No,” said Phil. “Not that at all. No conscious effort on his part. Once he created me, I was self-sustaining.”

  “I sense,” the Follower said, sadly, “that you tell me true. That you hold nothing back.”

  “You sense it, hell,” said Phil. “You read our minds, that is what you did. Why, instead of chasing me across the galaxy, didn’t you read my mind long ago and have done with it?”

  “You would not stand still,” said the Follower, accusingly. “You would not talk with me. You never bring this matter to the forefront of your mind so I have a chance to read it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Phil, “that it turned out this way for you. But until now, you must realize, I could not talk with you. You make the game too good. There was too much zest in it.”

  The Follower said, stiffly, “You look upon me and you think me brute. In your eyes I am. You see no man of honor, no creature of ethics. You know nothing of us and you care even less. Arrogant you are. But, please believe me, in all that’s happened, I act with honor according to my light.”

  “You must be weary and hungry,” said Lambert. “Can you eat our food? I could cook up some ham and eggs, and the coffee is still hot. There is a bed for you. It would be an honor to have you as our guest.”

  “I thank you for your confidence, for your acceptance of me,” said the Follower. “It warms—how do you say it—the cockle of the heart. But the mission’s done and I must be going now. I have wasted too much time. If you, perhaps, could offer me conveyance to the spaceport.”

  “That’s something I can’t do,” said Lambert. “You see, I have no car. When I need a ride, I bum one from a neighbor, otherwise I walk.”

  “If you can walk, so can I,” said the Follower. “The spaceport is not far. In a day or two, I’ll find a ship that is going out.”

  “I wish you’d stay the night,” said Lambert. “Walking in the dark …”

  “Dark is best for me,” said the Follower. “Less likely to be seen. I gather that few people from other stars wander about this countryside. I have no wish to frighten your good neighbors.”

  He turned briskly and went into the kitchen, heading for the door, not waiting for Lambert to open it for him.

  “Good-by, pal,” Phil called after him.

  The Follower did not answer. He slammed the door behind him.

  When Lambert came back into the living room, Phil was standing in front of the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel.

  “You know, of course,” he said, “that we have a problem.”

  “Not that I can see,” said Lambert. “You will stay, won’t you. You will not leave again. We are both getting old.”

  “If that is what you want. I could disappear, snuff myself out. As if I’d never been. That might be for the best, more comfortable for you. It could be disturbing to have me about. I do not eat or sleep. I can attain a satisfying solidity but only with an effort and only momentarily. I command enough energy to do certain tasks, but not over the long haul.”

  “I have had a brother for a long, long time,” said Lambert. “That’s the way I want it. After all this time, I would not want to lose you.”

  He glanced at the breakfront and saw that the trinkets Phil had brought on his other trips still stood solidly in place.

  Thinking back, he could remember, as if it were only yesterday, watching from the barn door as Phil went trudging down the road through the grey veil of the drizzle.

  “Why don’t you sit down and tell me,” he said, “about the incident out in the Coonskin system. I knew about it at the time, of course, but I never caught quite all of it.”

  Senior Citizen

  Originally published in the October 1975 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, this story was one of several Simak stories that led some critics to suggest that the author seemed to be obsessed with old age. Even if true, so what? Cliff was in his early seventies when he wrote this story, and retirement from the job he had loved all his life was looming on the horizon.

  I do wonder, at times, why he chose the name Anson Lee for the old man in this story—it was a name he used several times in other stories, but I know of nothing in Cliff’s history to explain why it seemed to stick in his mind—but I don’t think about it too often, because this story, with its images of the way that dignity can die before the body does, makes me very uncomfortable.

  —dww

  The music wakened him, and a soft, sweet, feminine voice said, “Good morning, Mr. Lee. If you should not, for the moment, remember, you are Anson Lee. You are a lucky senior citizen in your retirement home in space.”

  He sat up blindly and swung his feet out of bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed his eyes with closed fists, ran a hand through his thinning hair. It would be nice if he could fall back on the bed again and get another hour of sleep.

  “We have so much to do today, Mr. Lee,” said the sweet voice, but it seemed to him that behind the sweetness he could detect the hidden steel of authority. Women, he thought—bitches, all of them.

  “There is a nice change of clothes for you,” the voice said. “Hurry up and dress. Then we’ll have breakfast.”

  I’ll have breakfast, he thought. Not we, but I. You won’t have any breakfast, for you aren’t even here.

  He reached out his hand for the clothes. “I don’t like new clothes,” he complained. “I like old clothes. I like to break them in and get them comfortable. Why do I have to have new clothes every day? I know what you do with my old clothes. You throw them in the converter every night when I take them off to go to bed.”

  “But these are nice,” said the voice. “They are nice and clean. The pants are blue, the shirt is green. You like blue and green.”

  “I like old clothes,” he said.

  “You cannot have old clothes,” the voice said. “New clothing is so much better for you. And the clothing fits. It always fits. We have your measurements.”

  He put on the shirt. He stood up and put on the pants. There was no use in arguing, he knew. They always had their way. He never won. Just once he’d like to win. Just once he’d like to have old clothes. They were comfortable and soft, once you wore them for a while. He remembered his old fishing clothes. He’d had them for years and had treasured them. But now he had no fishing clothes. There was no place to fish.

  “Now,” said the voice, “we’ll have breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast. You like scrambled eggs.”

  “I won’t eat any breakfast,” he said. “I don’t want any breakfast. I might be eating Nancy.”<
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  “What foolishness is this?” asked the voice, not so sweet, a little sharper now. “You remember Nancy’s gone. She went away and left us.”

  “Nancy died,” he said. “You put her in the converter. You put everything into the converter. We have only so much matter, and we must use it over and over again. I know the theory. I was a chemist. I know exactly how it works. Matter to energy, energy to matter. We are a closed ecology and …”

  “But Nancy. It was so long ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. There’s Nancy in the clothes. There’ll be Nancy in the eggs.”

  “I think we’d better,” said the voice, which was no longer sweet.

  A hand reached out behind him and grasped him around the waist. “Let’s have a look at you, old-timer,” said a voice in his ear, this time an authoritative voice, a man’s voice.

  He felt himself being urged into a cubicle. He was grasped by things other than hands. Tentacles wormed their way inside his clothes, fastened on his flesh. He could not move. A cold liquid sprayed forcefully against his arm. Then everything let loose of him.

  “You’re fine,” said the hard, firm medic voice. “You are in finer shape than you were yesterday.”

  Yes, fine, he told himself. So fine that when he woke they thought it necessary to tell him who he was. So fine they had to shoot some dope into his arm to keep him from fantasizing.

  “Come now,” said the voice, grown sweet again. “Come and eat your breakfast.”

  He hesitated for a moment, trying to force himself to think. It seemed there was some reason he should not be eating breakfast, but he had forgotten. If there had ever been a reason.

  “Come along, now,” said the voice, wheedling.

  He shuffled toward the table and sat down, staring at the cup of coffee, the plate of scrambled eggs.

  “Now pick up your fork and eat,” said the urgent voice. “It’s the breakfast you like best. You have always told me you like scrambled eggs the best. Hurry up and eat. There’s a lot to do today.”

  She was bullying him again, he told himself, patronizing him, treating him in the same manner she would use with a sulking child. But there was nothing he could do about it. He might resent it, but he could not act upon the resentment. He could never reach her. She was not really there. There was no one really there. They tried to make him think there was, but he knew he was alone. Even if he could not act upon the resentment, he tried to cherish it, but it slipped away. It was something, he knew, that was done in the diagnostic cubicle. Maybe it was the stuff they shot into his arm. Stuff to make him feel good, to block off resentment, to wipe the self-nagging from his mind.

  Although it didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered. He drank his urine, he ate his feces, and it didn’t really matter. And there was something else that he ate as well, but he could not remember. He had known once, but he had forgotten.

  He finished the plate of eggs and drank the cup of coffee, and the voice said, “What will we do now? What would you like to do today. I can read to you or we can play some music or we can play cards or chess. Would you like to paint? You used to like to paint. You were very good at it.”

  “No, God damn it,” he said. “I would not like to paint.”

  “Tell me why you don’t want to paint. You must have a reason. When you do so well, you must have a reason.”

  Bullying him again, he thought, using schoolboy psychology upon him—and, worst of all, lying to him. For he could not paint. He did not do well at it. The daubs he turned out were not painting. But there was no use to go into that, he told himself; she would keep on insisting he did well at painting, operating on the conviction that the self-concept of the old must at all times be supported and improved upon.

  “There’s nothing to paint,” he said.

  “There are many things to paint.”

  “There are no trees, no flowers, no sky or clouds, no people. There once were trees and flowers, but now I’m not sure there are. I can’t remember any more what a tree or flower looks like. A man can carry memory only for so long. There once were flowers and trees on Earth.”

  And there had been, as well, a house upon the Earth. But the house was dim in his memory as well. What did the house look like, he wondered. How does another human being look? What is a river like?

  “You do not need to see things to paint them,” she said. “You can paint out of your mind.”

  Perhaps he could, he thought. But how do you paint loneliness? How does one depict dejection and abandonment?

  When he made no answer, she asked, “There is nothing you want to do?”

  He made no answer to her. Why bother to answer a simulated voice produced by a data core that was crammed with social welfare concepts and with little else? Why, he wondered, did they go to so much trouble to take good care of him? Although, come to think of it, perhaps it was not so much trouble as if might seem. The satellite would be out here, anyhow, gathering and monitoring data, perhaps performing other tasks of which he was not aware. And if such satellites could also serve to get the useless aged off the Earth, the care would cost them nothing.

  He remembered how he and Nancy had been persuaded to make the satellite their home by a clever young man with a sincere and authoritative voice, carefully reciting all the benefits of it. Perhaps, even so, they would not have gone if their little house had not been condemned to make way for a transportation project. After that it had not really mattered where they’d gone or where they might be sent, for their home was gone. You’ll be out of this world’s rat race, the sincere young man had said. You’ll have peace and comfort in your final years; everything will be done for you. All your friends are gone, and the changes that you see must be distressful to you; there’s no reason you should stay. Your son? Why, he can come and see you as often, perhaps oftener, than you see him now—but, of course, he’d never come. Up there, you’ll have everything you need. You’ll never have to cook or clean; it’ll be done for you. No more bother going to a doctor; there’ll be a diagnostic cubicle just a step away. There’ll be music and reading tapes and all your favorite programs, just like here on Earth.

  Once a man gets old, he thought, he gets somewhat confused, and he’s not sure of his rights and, even if he is, doesn’t have the courage to stand up for them, not the courage to face down authority, no matter how much he may despise authority. His strength is gone and the sharpness of his mind, and he is tired of fighting for his heritage.

  Now, he thought, there was nothing left but the sweet authority (more hateful, perhaps, because it was so sweet) and the scarcely concealed contempt for the old, although the sweetness tried to hide it.

  “Well then,” said the social-worker voice, “since you do not care to do anything, I’ll leave you sitting here, by the port, where you can look out.”

  “There is no sense of looking out,” he said. “There’s nothing one can see.”

  “But there is,” she said. “There are all the pretty stars.”

  Sitting by the port, he watched the pretty stars.

  The Gunsmoke Drummer Sells a War

  If the title of this story does not seem like a Clifford Simak creation, that’s probably because the title was created by someone at Ace-High Western Stories, to whom Cliff sent the story, and who published it in their January 1946 issue. And the magazine’s editor (whose name does not appear on the masthead) apparently liked it well enough to make it the lead story in the issue, giving it top billing on the cover and the first position among the stories inside.

  In keeping with his desire to feature characters other than cowboys and Indians in his Westerns, Cliff created his protagonist as a drummer—that is, a peddler, a person who drove a wagon from town to town, carrying goods to sell and performing the occasional service, such as sharpening scissors. But for there to be a story at all, Johnny Harrison had to ri
de into a bad situation; and he drove his wagon into an effort to take control of the county.

  —dww

  Chapter One

  A Deadly Message

  There was no time to draw a gun.

  The horseman with the blue shirt and the blue bandana tied across his face simply rode out of the brush that screened the trail and was there, sitting the sorrel, a six-gun in his hand.

  Johnny Harrison pulled the team to a halt and sat motionless on the seat of the peddler rig, staring at the man.

  The bushes rustled and another man rode out, a man with a red shirt and a blue handkerchief, mounted on a bay horse with a blaze slashed across its face from nose to ears. And then another rustle and another man, big and beefy in a black coat, with red whiskers sticking out beneath the mask.

  “Everybody here?” asked Harrison.

  The gun tilted in the first man’s hand, belched sudden smoke and thunder. Harrison felt the hat twitch from his head, go rolling in the dust. He fought the startled team to quietness with firm hands on the reins.

  “That goes to show you,” the gunman told him, “that we aren’t fooling. So you better listen close.”

  “That hat was plumb new, mister,” said Harrison. “It will cost you just ten bucks.”

  “He’s got a nice horse tied on behind the wagon,” said the man with the black coat and red whiskers. “We might just as well take it along when we up and leave.”

  The first man snarled behind the mask. “Shut up,” he snapped. “And leave the horse alone.” Then he said to Harrison: “We’ve got a little message we’d like you to deliver.”

  “Speak your piece,” Harrison said, curtly, “and fork over that ten bucks.”

  He was feeling better now, for he knew they wouldn’t kill him. Men who want one to deliver a message don’t shoot the messenger.

  “There’s a hombre in jail over at Sundown,” said the man, “that ain’t got no call to be there. You go and see the marshal and tell him this: Tell him that if he don’t turn Jim Westman loose we’ll be over and take care of it ourselves.”