The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Read online

  Given time, a man might finally get it figured out. But there was no time and no incentive at the moment to spend upon one particular item any great amount of time when there were hundreds of other items equally fantastic and incomprehensible. For while one puzzled over a single item, the edges of his mind would always wonder if he might not be spending time on the most insignificant of the entire lot.

  He was a victim of museum fatigue, Enoch told himself, overwhelmed by the many pieces of the unknown scattered all about him.

  He reached out a hand, not for the globe of balls, but for the shining bottle that lay atop the cloak. As he picked it up and brought it closer, he saw that there was a line of writing engraved upon the glass (or diamond?) of the bottle. Slowly he studied out the writing. There had been a time, long ago, when he had been able to read the Hazer language, if not fluently, at least well enough to get along. But he had not read it for some years now and he had lost a good deal of it and he stumbled haltingly from one symbol to another. Translated very freely, the inscription on the bottle read: To be taken when the first symptoms occur.

  A bottle of medicine! To be taken when the first symptoms occur. The symptoms, perhaps, that had come so quickly and built up so rapidly that the owner of this bottle could make no move to reach it and so had died, falling from the sofa.

  Almost reverently, he put the bottle back in its place atop the cloak, fitting it back into the faint impression it had made from lying there.

  So different from us in so many ways, thought Enoch, and then in other little ways so like us that it is frightening. For that bottle and the inscription on its face was an exact parallel of the prescription bottle that could be compounded by any corner drugstore.

  Beside the globe of balls was a box, and he reached out and lifted it. It was made of wood and had a rather simple clasp to hold it shut. He flipped back the lid and inside he saw the metallic sheen of the material the Hazers used as paper.

  Carefully he lifted out the first sheet and saw that it was not a sheet, but a long strip of the material folded in accordion fashion. Underneath it were more strips, apparently of the same material.

  There was writing on it, faint and faded, and Enoch held it close to read it.

  To my ——,—— friend: (although it was not “friend.” “Blood brother,” perhaps, or “colleague.” And the adjectives which preceded it were such as to escape his sense entirely.)

  The writing was hard to read. It bore some resemblance to the formalized version of the language, but apparently bore the imprint of the writer’s personality, expressed in curlicues and flourishes which obscured the form. Enoch worked his way slowly down the paper, missing much of what was there, but picking up the sense of much that had been written.

  The writer had been on a visit to some other planet, or possibly just some other place. The name of the place or planet was one that Enoch did not recognize. While he had been there he had performed some sort of function (although exactly what it was was not entirely clear) which had to do with his approaching death.

  Enoch, startled, went back over the phrase again. And while much of the rest of what was written was not clear, that part of it was. My approaching death, he had written, and there was no room for mistranslation. All three of the words were clear.

  He urged that his good (friend?) do likewise. He said it was a comfort and made clear the road.

  There was no further explanation, no further reference. Just the calm declaration that he had done something which he felt must be arranged about his death. As if he knew death was near and was not only unafraid, but almost unconcerned.

  The next passage (for there were no paragraphs) told about someone he had met and how they’d talked about a certain matter which made no sense at all to Enoch, who found himself lost in a terminology he did not recognize.

  And then: I am most concerned about the mediocrity (incompetence? inability? weakness?) of the recent custodian of (and then that cryptic symbol which could be translated, roughly, as the Talisman). For (a word, which from the context, seemed to mean a great length of time), ever since the death of the last custodian, the Talisman has been but poorly served. It has been, in all reality, (another long time term), since a true (sensitive?) has been found to carry out its purpose. Many have been tested and none has qualified, and for the lack of such a one the galaxy has lost its close identification with the ruling principle of life. We here at the (temple? sanctuary?) all are greatly concerned that without a proper linkage between the people and (several words that were not decipherable) the galaxy will go down in chaos (and another line that he could not puzzle out).

  The next sentence introduced a new subject—the plans that were going forward for some cultural festival which concerned a concept that, to Enoch, was hazy at the best.

  Enoch slowly folded up the letter and put it back into the box. He felt a faint uneasiness in reading what he had, as if he’d pried into a friendship that he had no right to know. We here at the temple, the letter had said. Perhaps the writer had been one of the Hazer mystics, writing to his old friend, the philosopher. And the other letters, quite possibly, were from that same mystic—letters that the dead old Hazer had valued so highly that he took them along with him when he went traveling.

  A slight breeze seemed to be blowing across Enoch’s shoulders; not actually a breeze, but a strange motion and a coldness to the air.

  He glanced back into the gallery and there was nothing stirring, nothing to be seen.

  The wind had quit its blowing, if it had ever blown. Here one moment, gone the next. Like a passing ghost, thought Enoch.

  Did the Hazer have a ghost?

  The people back on Vega XXI had known the moment he had died and all the circumstances of his death. They had known again about the body disappearing. And the letter had spoken calmly, much more calmly than would have been in the capacity of most humans, about the writer’s near approach to death.

  Was it possible that the Hazers knew more of life and death than had ever been spelled out? Or had it been spelled out, put down in black and white, in some depository or depositories in the galaxy?

  Was the answer there? he wondered.

  Squatting there, he thought that perhaps it might be, that someone already knew what life was for and what its destiny. There was a comfort in the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe that some intelligence might have solved the riddle of that mysterious equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.

  He tried to imagine what one might feel if he were in contact with the force, and could not. He wondered if even those who might have been in contact with it could find the words to tell. It might, he thought, be impossible. For how could one who had been in intimate contact all his life with space and time tell what either of these meant to him or how they felt?

  Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman. He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it, but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity. Whatever might be happening now had not happened in the last few years; it had been building up for a longer time than most aliens would admit. Although, come to think of it, most aliens probably did not know.

  Enoch closed the box lid and put it back into the trunk. Some day, he thought, when he was in the proper frame of mind, when the pressure of events made him less emotional, when he could dull the guilt of prying, he would achieve a scholarly and conscientious translation of those letters. For in them, he felt certain, he might find further understandi
ng of that intriguing race. He might, he thought, then be better able to gauge their humanity—not humanity in the common and accepted sense of being a member of the human race of Earth, but in the sense that certain rules of conduct must underlie all racial concepts even as the thing called humanity in its narrow sense underlay the human concept.

  He reached up to close the lid of the trunk and then he hesitated.

  Some day, he had said. And there might not be a some day. It was a state of mind to be always thinking some day, a state of mind made possible by the conditions inside this station. For here there were endless days to come, forever and forever there were days to come. A man’s concept of time was twisted out of shape and reason and he could look ahead complacently down a long, almost never ending, avenue of time. But that might be all over now. Time might suddenly snap back into its rightful focus. Should he leave this station, the long procession of days to come would end.

  He pushed back the lid again until it rested against the shelves. Reaching in, he lifted out the box and set it on the floor beside him. He’d take it upstairs, he told himself, and put it with the other stuff that he must be prepared immediately to take along with him if he should leave the station.

  If? he asked himself. Was there a question any longer? Had he, somehow, made that hard decision? Had it crept upon him unaware, so that he now was committed to it?

  And if he had actually arrived at that decision, then he must, also, have arrived at the other one. If he left the station, then he could no longer be in a position to appear before Galactic Central to plead that Earth be cured of war.

  You are the representative of the Earth, Ulysses had told him. You are the only one who can represent the Earth. But could he, in reality, represent the Earth? Was he any longer a true representative of the human race? He was a nineteenth-century man and how could he, being that, represent the twentieth? How much, he wondered, does the human character change with each generation? And not only was he of the nineteenth century, but he had, as well, lived for almost a hundred years under a separate and a special circumstance.

  He knelt there, regarding himself with awe, and a little pity, too, wondering what he was, if he were even human, if, unknown to himself, he had absorbed so much of the mingled alien viewpoint to which he had been subjected that he had become some strange sort of hybrid, a queer kind of galactic half-breed.

  Slowly he pulled the lid down and pushed it tight. Then he shoved the trunk back underneath the shelves.

  He tucked the box of letters underneath his arm and rose, picking up his rifle, and headed for the stairs.

  31

  He found some empty cartons stacked in the kitchen corner, boxes that Winslowe had used to bring out from town the supplies that he had ordered, and began to pack.

  The journals, stacked neatly in order, filled one large box and a part of another. He took a stack of old newspapers and carefully wrapped the twelve diamond bottles off the mantel and packed them in another box, thickly padded, to guard against their breakage. Out of the cabinet he got the Vegan music box and wrapped it as carefully. He pulled out of another cabinet the alien literature that he had and piled it in the fourth box. He went through his desk, but there wasn’t too much there, only odds and ends tucked here and there throughout the drawers. He found his chart and, crumpling it, threw it in the wastebasket that stood beside his desk.

  The already filled boxes he carried across the room and stacked beside the door for easy reaching. Lewis would have a truck, but once he let him know he needed it, it still might take a while for it to arrive. But if he had the important stuff all packed, he told himself, he could get it out himself and have it waiting for the truck.

  The important stuff, he thought. Who could judge importance? The journals and the alien literature, those first of all, of course. But the rest of it? Which of the rest of it? It was all important; every item should be taken. And that might be possible. Given time and with no extra complications, it might be possible to haul it all away, all that was in this room and stored down in the basement. It all was his and he had a right to it, for it had been given him. But that did not mean, he knew, that Galactic Central might not object most strenuously to his taking any of it.

  And if that should happen, it was vital that he should be able to get away with those most important items. Perhaps he should go down into the basement and lug up those tagged articles of which he knew the purpose. It probably would be better to take material about which something might be known than a lot of stuff about which there was nothing known.

  He stood undecided, looking all about the room. There were all the items on the coffee table and those should be taken, too, including the little flashing pyramid of globes that Lucy had set to working.

  He saw that the Pet once again had crawled off the table and fallen on the floor. He stooped and picked it up and held it in his hands. It had grown an extra knob or two since the last time he had looked at it and it was now a faint and delicate pink, whereas the last time he had noticed it had been a cobalt blue.

  He probably was wrong, he told himself, in calling it the Pet. It might not be alive. But if it were, it was a sort of life he could not even guess at. It was not metallic and it was not stone, but very close to both. A file made no impression on it and he’d been tempted a time or two to whack it with a hammer to see what that might do, although he was willing to bet it would have no effect at all. It grew slowly, and it moved, but there was no way of knowing how it moved. But leave it and come back and it would have moved—a little, not too much. It knew it was being watched and it would not move while watched. It did not eat so far as he could see and it seemed to have no wastes. It changed colors, but entirely without season and with no visible reason for the change.

  A being from somewhere in the direction of Sagittarius had given it to him just a year or two ago, and the creature, Enoch recalled, had been something for the books. He probably wasn’t actually a walking plant, but that was what he’d looked like—a rather spindly plant that had been shorted on good water and cheated on good soil, but which had sprouted a crop of dime-store bangles that rang like a thousand silver bells when he made any sort of motion.

  Enoch remembered that he had tried to ask the being what the gift might be, but the walking plant had simply clashed its bangles and filled the place with ringing sound and didn’t try to answer.

  So he had put the gift on one end of the desk and hours later, after the being was long gone, he found that it had moved to the other end of the desk. But it had seemed too crazy to think that a thing like that could move, so he finally convinced himself that he was mistaken as to where he’d put it. It was not until days later that he was able to convince himself it moved.

  He’d have to take it when he left and Lucy’s pyramid and the cube that showed you pictures of other worlds when you looked inside of it and a great deal of other stuff.

  He stood with the Pet held in his hand and now, for the first time, he wondered at why he might be packing.

  He was acting as if he’d decided he would leave the station, as if he’d chosen Earth as against the galaxy. But when and how, he wondered, had he decided it? Decision should be based on weighing and on measuring and he had weighed and measured nothing. He had not posed the advantages and the disadvantages and tried to strike a balance. He had not thought it out. Somehow, somewhere, it had sneaked up on him—this decision which had seemed impossible, but now had been reached so easily.

  Was it, he wondered, that he had absorbed, unconsciously, such an odd mixture of alien thought and ethics that he had evolved, unknown to himself, a new way in which to think, perhaps some subconscious way of thought that had lain inoperative until now, when it had been needed.

  There was a box or two out in the shed and he’d go and get them and finish up the packing of what he’d pick out here. Then he’d go down into the basement and start lugging up the stuff
that he had tagged. He glanced toward the window and realized, with some surprise, that he would have to hurry, for the sun was close to setting. It would be evening soon.

  He remembered that he’d forgotten lunch, but he had no time to eat. He could get something later.

  He turned to put the Pet back on the table and as he did a faint sound caught his ear and froze him where he stood.

  It was the slight chuckle of a materializer operating and he could not mistake it. He had heard the sound too often to be able to mistake it.

  And it must be, he knew, the official materializer, for no one could have traveled on the other without the sending of a message.

  Ulysses, he thought. Ulysses coming back again. Or perhaps some other member of Galactic Central. For if Ulysses had been coming, he would have sent a message.

  He took a quick step forward so he could see the corner where the materializer stood and a dark and slender figure was stepping out from the target circle.