The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 67

  “I did my duty,” Hank told him solemnly. “I ain’t about to have no witch in any family of mine. I hit her a couple of licks and her making that dumb show of hers to try to get me stopped. But I had my duty and I kept on hitting. If I did enough of it, I figured, I’d knock it out of her. That was when she put the hex on me. Just like she did on Roy and Butcher, but in a different way. She turned me blind—she blinded her own father! I couldn’t see a thing. I just stumbled around the yard, yelling and clawing at my eyes. And then they got all right again, but she was gone. I saw her running through the woods and up the hill. So Roy and me, we took out after her.”

  “And you think I have her here?”

  “I know you have,” said Hank.

  “O.K.,” said Enoch. “Have a look around.”

  “You can bet I will,” Hank told him grimly. “Roy, take the barn. She might be hiding there.”

  Roy headed for the barn. Hank went into the shed, came out almost immediately, strode down to the sagging chicken house.

  Enoch stood and waited, the rifle cradled on his arm.

  He had trouble here, he knew—more trouble than he’d ever had before. There was no such thing as reasoning with a man of Hank Fisher’s stripe. There was no approach, right now, that he would understand. All that he could do, he knew, was to wait until Hank’s temper had cooled off. Then there might be an outside chance of talking sense to him.

  The two of them came back.

  “She ain’t nowhere around,” said Hank. “She is in the house.”

  Enoch shook his head. “There can’t anyone get into that house.”

  “Roy,” said Hank, “climb them there steps and open up that door.”

  Roy looked fearfully at Enoch.

  “Go ahead,” said Enoch.

  Roy moved forward slowly and went up the steps. He crossed the porch and put his hand upon the front door knob and turned. He tried again. He turned around.

  “Pa,” he said, “I can’t turn it. I can’t get it open.”

  “Hell,” said Hank, disgusted, “you can’t do anything.”

  Hank took the steps in two jumps, paced wrathfully across the porch. His hand reached out and grasped the knob and wrenched at it powerfully. He tried again and yet again. He turned angrily to face Enoch.

  “What is going on here?” he yelled.

  “I told you,” Enoch said, “that you can’t get in.”

  “The hell I can’t!” roared Hank.

  He tossed the whip to Roy and came down off the porch, striding over to the woodpile that stood beside the shed. He wrenched the heavy, double-bitted ax out of the chopping block.

  “Careful with that ax,” warned Enoch. “I’ve had it for a long time and I set a store by it.”

  Hank did not answer. He went up on the porch and squared off before the door.

  “Stand off,” he said to Roy. “Give me elbow room.”

  Roy backed away.

  “Wait a minute,” Enoch said. “You mean to chop down that door?”

  “You’re damned right I do.”

  Enoch nodded gravely.

  “Well?” asked Hank.

  “It’s all right with me if you want to try.”

  Hank took his stance, gripping the handle of the ax. The steel flashed swiftly, up over his shoulder, then down in a driven blow.

  The edge of the steel struck the surface of the door and turned, deflected by the surface, changed its course, bouncing from the door. The blade came slicing down and back. It missed Hank’s spraddled leg by no more than an inch and the momentum of it spun him half around.

  He stood there, foolishly, arms outstretched, hands still gripping the handle of the ax. He stared at Enoch.

  “Try again,” invited Enoch.

  Rage flowed over Hank. His face was flushed with anger.

  “By God, I will!” he yelled.

  He squared off again and this time he swung the ax, not at the door, but at the window set beside the door.

  The blade struck and there was a high singing sound as pieces of sun-bright steel went flying through the air.

  Ducking away, Hank dropped the ax. It fell to the floor of the porch and bounced. One blade was broken, the metal sheared away in jagged breaks. The window was intact. There was not a scratch upon it.

  Hank stood there for a moment, staring at the broken ax, as if he could not quite believe it.

  Silently he stretched out his hand and Roy put the bull whip in it.

  The two of them came down the stairs.

  They stopped at the bottom of them and looked at Enoch. Hank’s hand twitched on the whip.

  “If I were you,” said Enoch, “I wouldn’t try it, Hank. I can move awfully fast.”

  He patted the gun butt. “I’d have the hand off you before you could swing that whip.”

  Hank breathed heavily. “There’s the devil in you, Wallace,” he said. “And there’s the devil in her, too. You’re working together, the two of you. Sneaking around in the woods, meeting one another.”

  Enoch waited, watching the both of them.

  “God help me,” cried Hank. “My own daughter is a witch!”

  “I think,” said Enoch, “you should go back home. If I happen to find Lucy, I will bring her there.”

  Neither of them made a move.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this,” yelled Hank. “You have my daughter somewhere and I’ll get you for it.”

  “Any time you want,” said Enoch, “but not now.”

  He made an imperative gesture with the rifle barrel.

  “Get moving,” he said. “And don’t come back. Either one of you.”

  They hesitated for a moment, looking at him, trying to gauge him, trying to guess what he might do next.

  Slowly they turned and, walking side by side, moved off down the hill.

  18

  He should have killed the two of them, he thought. They were not fit to live.

  He glanced down at the rifle and saw that his hands had such a tense grip on the gun that his fingers stood out white and stiff against the satin brownness of the wood.

  He gasped a little in his effort to fight down the rage that boiled inside him, trying to explode. If they had stayed here any longer, if he’d not run them off, he knew he’d have given in to that towering rage.

  And it was better, much better, the way that it had been. He wondered a little dully how he had managed to hold in.

  And was glad he had. For even as it stood, it would be bad enough.

  They would say he was a madman; that he had run them off at gunpoint. They might even say that he had kidnapped Lucy and was holding her against her will. They would stop at nothing to make him all the trouble that they could.

  He had no illusions about what they might do, for he knew the breed, vindictive in their smallness—little vicious insects of the human race.

  He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how a girl so fine as Lucy could spring from such decadent stock. Perhaps her handicap had served as a bulwark against the kind of folks they were; had kept her from becoming another one of them. Perhaps if she could have talked with them or listened, she would in time have become as shiftless and as vicious as any one of them.

  It had been a great mistake to get mixed up in a thing like this. A man in his position had no business in an involvement such as this. He had too much to lose; he should have stood aside.

  And yet what could he have done? Could he have refused to give Lucy his protection, with the blood soaking through her dress from the lashes that lay across her shoulders? Should he have ignored the frantic, helpless pleading in her face?

  He might have done it differently, he thought. There might have been other, smarter ways in which to handle it. But there had been no time to think of any smarter w
ay. There only had been time to carry her to safety and then go outside to meet them.

  And now, that he thought of it, perhaps the best thing would have been not to go outside at all. If he’d stayed inside the station, nothing would have happened.

  It had been impulsive, that going out to face them. It had been, perhaps, the human thing to do, but it had not been wise. But he had done it and it was over now and there was no turning back. If he had it to do again, he would do it differently, but you got no second chance.

  He turned heavily around and went back inside the station.

  Lucy was still sitting on the sofa and she held a flashing object in her hand. She was staring at it raptly and there was in her face again that same vibrant and alert expression he had seen that morning when she’d held the butterfly.

  He laid the rifle on the desk and stood quietly there, but she must have caught the motion of him, for she looked quickly up. And then her eyes once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands.

  He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres and now all the spheres were spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft, warm light.

  Enoch caught his breath at the beauty and the wonder of it—the old, hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He had examined it a hundred times or more and had puzzled at it and there had been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see, it was only something that was meant to be looked at, although there had been that persistent feeling that it had a purpose and that, perhaps, somehow, it was meant to operate.

  And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.

  He noticed the rapture with which she was regarding it. Was it possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?

  He went across the room and touched her arm and she lifted her face to look at him and in her eyes he saw the gleam of happiness and excitement.

  He made a questioning gesture toward the pyramid, trying to ask if she knew what it might be. But she did not understand him. Or perhaps she knew, but knew as well how impossible it would be to explain its purpose. She made that happy, fluttery motion with her hand again, indicating the table with its load of gadgets and she seemed to try to laugh—there was, at least, a sense of laughter in her face.

  Just a kid, Enoch told himself, with a box heaped high with new and wondrous toys. Was that all it was to her? Was she happy and excited merely because she suddenly had become aware of all the beauty and the novelty of the things stacked there on the table?

  He turned wearily and went back to the desk. He picked up the rifle and hung it on the pegs.

  She should not be in the station. No human being other than himself should ever be inside the station. Bringing her here, he had broken that unspoken understanding he had with the aliens who had installed him as a keeper. Although, of all the humans he could have brought, Lucy was the one who could possibly be exempt from the understood restriction. For she could never tell the things that she had seen.

  She could not remain, he knew. She must be taken home. For if she were not taken, there would be a massive hunt for her, a lost girl—a beautiful deaf-mute.

  A story of a missing deaf-mute girl would bring in newspapermen in a day or two. It would be in all the papers and on television and on radio and the woods would be swarming with hundreds of searchers.

  Hank Fisher would tell how he’d tried to break into the house and couldn’t and there’d be others who would try to break into the house and there’d be hell to pay.

  Enoch sweated, thinking of it.

  All the years of keeping out of people’s way, all the years of being unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for all the crackpots of the world.

  He went to the medicine cabinet, to get the healing ointment that had been included in the drug packet provided by Galactic Central.

  He found it and opened the little box. More than half of it remained. He’d used it through the years, but sparingly. There was, in fact, little need to use a great deal of it.

  He went across the room to where Lucy sat and stood back of the sofa. He showed her what he had and made motions to show her what it was for. She slid her dress off her shoulders and he bent to look at the slashes.

  The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was red and angry.

  Gently he rubbed ointment into the stripes that the whip had made.

  She had healed the butterfly, he thought; but she could not heal herself.

  On the table in front of her the pyramid of spheres still was flashing and glinting, throwing a flickering shadow of color all about the room.

  It was operating, but what could it be doing?

  It was finally operating, but not a thing was happening as a result of that operation.

  19

  Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.

  Enoch and Lucy had just finished with their supper and were sitting at the table when Enoch heard his footsteps.

  The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth baldness of his head, the flat, pointed ears pasted tight against the skull lent him a vicious fearsomeness.

  If one did not know him for the gentle character that he was, Enoch told himself, he would be enough to scare a man out of seven years of growth.

  “We had been expecting you,” said Enoch. “The coffeepot is boiling.”

  Ulysses took a slow step forward, then paused.

  “You have another with you. A human, I would say.”

  “There is no danger,” Enoch told him.

  “Of another gender. A female, is it not? You have found a mate?”

  “No,” said Enoch. “She is not my mate.”

  “You have acted wisely through the years,” Ulysses told him. “In a position such as yours, a mate is not the best.”

  “You need not worry. There is a malady upon her. She has no communication. She can neither hear nor speak.”

  “A malady?”

  “Yes, from the moment she was born. She has never heard or spoken. She can tell of nothing here.”

  “Sign language?”

  “She knows no sign language. She refused to learn it.”

  “She is a friend of yours.”

  “For some years,” said Enoch. “She came seeking my protection. Her father used a whip to beat her.”

  “This father knows she’s here?”

  “He thinks she is, but he cannot know.”

  Ulysses came slowly out of the darkness and stood within the light.

  Lucy was watching him, but there was no terror on her face. Her eyes were level and untroubled and she did not flinch.

  “She takes me well,” Ulysses said. “She does not run or scream.”

  “She could not scream,” said Enoch, “even if she wished.”

  “I must be most repugnant,” Ulysses said, “at first sight to any human.”

  “She does not see the outside only. She sees inside of you as well.”

  “Would she be frightened if I made a human bow to her?”

  “I think,” said Enoch, “she might be very pleased.”

  Ulysses made his bow, formal and exaggerated, with one hand upon his leathery belly, bowing from the waist.

  Lucy smiled and clapped her hands.

  “You see,” Ulysses cried, delight
ed, “I think that she may like me.”

  “Why don’t you sit down, then,” suggested Enoch, “and we all will have some coffee.”

  “I had forgotten of the coffee. The sight of this other human drove coffee from my mind.”

  He sat down at the place where the third cup had been set and waiting for him. Enoch started around the table, but Lucy rose and went to get the coffee.

  “She understands?” Ulysses asked.

  Enoch shook his head. “You sat down by the cup and the cup was empty.”

  She poured the coffee, then went over to the sofa.

  “She will not stay with us?” Ulysses asked.

  “She’s intrigued by that tableful of trinkets. She set one of them to going.”

  “You plan to keep her here?”

  “I can’t keep her,” Enoch said. “There’ll be a hunt for her. I’ll have to take her home.”

  “I do not like it,” Ulysses said.

  “Nor do I. Let’s admit at once that I should not have brought her here. But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. I had no time to think it out.”

  “You’ve done no wrong,” said Ulysses softly.

  “She cannot harm us,” said Enoch. “Without communication …”

  “It’s not that,” Ulysses told him. “She’s just a complication and I do not like further complications. I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we are in trouble.”

  “Trouble? But there’s not been any trouble.”

  Ulysses lifted his coffee cup and took a long drink of it.

  “That is good,” he said. “I carry back the bean and make it at my home. But it does not taste the same.”

  “This trouble?”

  “You remember the Vegan that died here several of your years ago.”

  Enoch nodded. “The Hazer.”

  “The being has a proper name …”

  Enoch laughed. “You don’t like our nicknames.”

  “It is not our way,” Ulysses said.

  “My name for them,” said Enoch, “is a mark of my affection.”

  “You buried this Vegan.”

  “In my family plot,” said Enoch. “As if he were my own. I read a verse above him.”