The Thing in the Stone: And Other Stories Page 6

  More to wonder at was what had happened within his own jumbled brain that could send him so unerringly to the moment of a vital happening. What more would he find in it to astonish and confound him? How far along the path to ultimate understanding might it drive him? And what was the purpose of that driving?

  He sat on the rock and gasped for breath. The sea lay flat and calm beneath the blazing sun, its only motion the long swells running in to break around the sphere and on the beach. The little skittering creatures ran along the mud and he rubbed his palm against his trouser leg, trying to brush off the green and slimy scum.

  He could wade out, he thought, and have a closer look at the sphere lying in the mud. But it would be a long walk in such an atmosphere and he could not chance it — for he must be nowhere near the cave up in that distant future when he popped back to his present.

  Once the excitement of knowing where he was, the sense of out-of-placeness, had worn off, this tiny mud-flat island was a boring place. There was nothing but the sky and sea and the muddy beach; there was nothing much to look at. It was a place, he thought, where nothing ever happened, or was about to happen once the ship had gone away and the great event had ended. Much was going on, of course, that in future ages would spell out to quite a lot — but it was mostly happening out of sight, down at the bottom of this shallow sea. The skittering things, he thought, and the slimy growth upon the rock were hardy, mindless pioneers of this distant day — awesome to look upon and think about but actually not too interesting.

  He began drawing aimless patterns in the mud with the toe of one boot. He tried to make a tic-tac-toe layout but so much mud was clinging to his toe that it didn't quite come out.

  And then, instead of drawing in the mud, he was scraping with his toe in fallen leaves, stiff with frozen sleet and snow.

  The sun was gone and the scene was dark except for a glow from something in the woods just down the hill from him. Driving sheets of snow swirled into his face and he shivered. He pulled his jacket close about him and began to button it. A man, he thought, could catch his death of cold this way, shifting as quickly as he had shifted from a steaming mudbank to the whiplash chill of a northern blizzard.

  The yellow glow still persisted on the slope below him and he could hear the sound of human voices. What was going on? He was fairly certain of where he was, a hundred feet or so above the place where the cliff began — there should be no one down there; there should not be a light.

  He took a slow step down the hill, then hesitated. He ought not to be going down the hill — he should be heading straight for home. The cattle would be waiting at the barnyard gate, hunched against the storm, their coats covered with ice and snow, yearning for the warmth and shelter of the barn. The pigs would not have been fed, nor the chickens either. A man owed some consideration to his livestock.

  But someone was down there, someone with a lantern, almost on the lip of the cliff. If the damn fools didn't watch out, they could slip and go plunging down into a hundred feet of space. Coon hunters more than likely, although this was not the kind of night to be out hunting coon. The coons would all be denned up.

  But whoever they might be, he should go down and warn them.

  He was halfway to the lantern, which appeared to be setting on the ground, when someone picked it up and held it high and Daniels saw and recognized the face of the man who held it.

  Daniels hurried forward.

  'Sheriff, what are you doing here?'

  But he had the shamed feeling that he knew, that he should have known from the moment he had seen the light.

  'Who is there?' the sheriff asked, wheeling swiftly and tilting the lantern so that its rays were thrown in Daniels' direction. 'Daniels,' he gasped. 'Good God, man, where have you been?'

  'Just walking around,' said Daniels weakly. The answer, he knew, was no good at all — but how could he tell anyone that he had just returned from a trip through time?

  'Damn it,' the sheriff said, disgusted. 'We've been hunting you. Ben Adams got scared when he dropped over to your place and you weren't there. He knows how you go walking around in the woods and he was afraid something had happened to you. So he phoned me, and he and his boys began looking for you. We were afraid you had fallen or had been hurt somehow. A man wouldn't last the night in a storm like this.'

  'Where is Ben now?' asked Daniels.

  The sheriff gestured down the hill and Daniels saw that two men, probably Adams' sons, had a rope snubbed around a tree and that the rope extended down over the cliff.

  'He's down on the rope,' the sheriff said. 'Having a look in the cave. He felt somehow you might be in the cave.'

  'He had good reason to — ' Daniels started to say but he had barely begun to speak when the night was rent by a shriek of terror. The shrieking did not stop. It kept on and on. The sheriff thrust the lantern at Daniels and hurried forward.

  No guts, Daniels thought. A man who could be vicious enough to set up another for death, to trap him in a cave — but who, when the chips were down, could not go through with it and had to phone the sheriff to provide a witness to his good intentions — a man like that lacked guts.

  The shrieks had fallen to moaning. The sheriff hauled on the rope, helped by one of Adams' sons. A man's head and shoulders appeared above the cliff top and the sheriff reached out and hauled him to safety.

  Ben Adams collapsed on the ground and never stopped his moaning. The sheriff jerked him to his feet.

  'What's the matter, Ben?'

  'There's something down there,' Adams screamed. 'There is something in the cave — '

  'Something, damn it? What would it be? A cat? A panther?'

  'I never seen it. I just knew that it was there. I felt it. It was crouched back inside the cave.'

  'How could anything be in there? Someone cut down the tree. How could anything get into the cave?'

  'I don't know,' howled Adams. 'It might have been in there when the tree was cut. It might have been trapped in there.'

  One of the sons was holding Ben erect and the sheriff moved away. The other son was puffing in the rope and neatly coiling it.

  'Another thing,' the sheriff said, 'how come you thought Daniels might be in that cave? If the tree was cut down he couldn't have used a rope the way you did, for there wasn't any rope. If he had used a rope it would still have been there. I don't know what's going on — damned if I do. You down messing in that cave and Daniels comes walking out of the woods. I wish someone would tell me.'

  Adams, who had been hobbling forward, saw Daniels for the first time and came to a sudden halt.

  'Where did you come from?' he demanded. 'Here we been wearing out our guts trying to hunt you down and then — '

  'Oh, go on home,' the sheriff said in a disgusted tone of voice. 'There's a fishy smell to this. It's going to take me a little while to get it figured out.'

  Daniels reached out his hand to the son who had finished coiling the rope.

  'I believe that's my rope,' he said.

  Without protest, taken by surprise, the boy handed it to him.

  'We'll cut across the woods,' said Ben. 'Home's closer that way.'

  'Good night, men,' the sheriff said.

  Slowly the sheriff and Daniels climbed the hill.

  'Daniels,' said the sheriff, 'you were never out walking in this storm. If you had been you'd have had a whole lot more snow on you than shows. You look like you just stepped from a house.'

  'Maybe I wasn't exactly walking around,' Daniels said.

  'Would you mind telling me where you were? I don't mind doing my duty as I see it but I don't relish being made to look a fool while I'm doing it.'

  'Sheriff, I can't tell you. I'm sorry. I simply cannot tell you.'

  'All right, then. What about the rope?'

  'It's my rope,' said Daniels. 'I lost it this afternoon.'

  'And I suppose you can't tell me about that, either.'

  'No, I guess I can't.'

  'You know,' the
sheriff said, 'I've had a lot of trouble with Ben Adams through the years. I'd hate to think I was going to have trouble with you, too.'

  They climbed the hill and walked up to the house. The sheriff's car was parked out on the road.

  'Would you come in?' asked Daniels. 'I could find a drink.'

  The sheriff shook his head. 'Some other time,' he said. 'Maybe soon. You figure there was something in that cave? Or was it just Ben's imagination? He's a flighty sort of critter.'

  'Maybe there wasn't anything,' said Daniels. 'but if Ben thought there was, what difference does it make? Thinking it might be just as real as if there were something there. All of us, sheriff, live with things walking by our sides no one else can see.'

  The sheriff shot a quick glance at him. 'Daniels, what's with you?' he asked. 'What is walking by your side or sniffing at your heels? Why did you bury yourself out here in this Godforsaken place? What is going on?'

  He didn't wait for an answer. He got into his car, started it and headed down the road.

  Daniels stood in the storm and watched the glowing taillights vanish in the murk of flying snow. He shook his head in bewilderment. The sheriff had asked a question and then had not waited for the answer. Perhaps because it was a question to which he did not want an answer.

  Daniels turned and went up the snowy path to the house. He'd like some coffee and a bite to eat — but first he had to do the chores. He had to milk the cows and feed the pigs. The chickens must wait till morning — it was too late to feed the chickens. The cows would be waiting at the barn door.

  They had waited for a long time and it was not right to make them wait.

  He opened the door and stepped into the kitchen.

  Someone was waiting for him. It sat on the table or floated so close above it that it seemed to be sitting. The fire in the stove had gone out and the room was dark but the creature sparkled.

  You saw? the creature asked.

  'Yes,' said Daniels. 'I saw and heard. I don't know what to do. What is right or wrong? Who knows what's right or wrong?'

  Not you, the creature said. Not I. I can only wait. I can only keep the faith.

  Perhaps among the stars, thought Daniels, might be those who did know. Perhaps by listening to the stars, perhaps by trying to break in on their conversations and by asking questions, he might get an answer. Certainly there must be some universal ethics. A list, perhaps, of Universal Commandments. Maybe not ten of them. Maybe only two or three — but any number might be enough.

  'I can't stay and talk,' he said. 'I have animals to take care of. Could you stick around? Later we can talk.'

  He fumbled for the lantern on the bench against the wall, found the matches on the shelf. He lit the lantern and its feeble flame made a puddle of light in the darkness of the room.

  You have others to take care of? asked the creature. Others not quite like yourself? Others, trusting you, without your intelligence?

  'I guess you could say it that way,' Daniels said, 'I've never heard it put quite that way before.'

  Could I go along with you? the creature asked, it occurs to me, just now, that in many ways we are very much alike.

  'Very much — ' But with the sentence hanging in the air, Daniels stopped.

  Not a hound, he told himself. Not the faithful dog. But the shepherd. Could that be it? Not the master but the long-lost lamb?

  He reached out a hand towards the creature in a swift gesture of understanding, then pulled it back, remembering it was nothing he could touch.

  He lifted the lantern and turned toward the door.

  'Come along,' he said.

  Together the two of them went through the storm toward the barn and the waiting cows.

  (ebook version 1.1 All _foos_ turned back into italicized text. All double dashes replaced with mdashes. Enjoy! Archon)

  Title : The Thing in the Stone

  Author : Clifford D. Simak

  Original copyright year: 1970

  Genre : science fiction

  Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

  Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

  Date of e-text : February 21, 2000

  Prepared by : Anada Sucka

  Anticopyright 2000. All rights reversed.

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