The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume One

by Clifford D. Simak

  The man was almost on it, walking straight and upright—a man with puny body and ridiculous fists—and courage. Courage, thought Jenkins, courage to take on hell itself. Courage to go down into the pit and rip up the quaking flagstones and shout a lurid, obscene jest at the keeper of the damned.

  Then the creature had it—had the thing it had been groping for, knew the thing to do. Jenkins sensed the flood of relief that flashed across its being, heard the thing, part word, part symbol, part thought, that it performed. Like a piece of mumbo-jumbo, like a spoken charm, like an incantation, but not entirely that. A mental exercise, a thought that took command of the body—that must be nearer to the truth.

  For it worked.

  The creature vanished. Vanished and was gone—gone out of the world.

  There was no sign of it, no single vibration of its being. As if it had never been.

  And the thing it had said, the thing that it had thought? It went like this. Like this—

  Jenkins jerked himself up short. It was printed on his brain and he knew it, knew the word and thought and the right inflection—but he must not use it, he must forget about it, he must keep it hidden.

  For it had worked on the cobbly. And it would work on him. He knew that it would work.

  The man had swung around and now he stood limp, hands dangling at his side, staring at Jenkins.

  His lips moved in the white blur of his face. “You … you—”

  “I am Jenkins,” Jenkins told him. “This is my new body.”

  “There was something here,” said Peter.

  “It was a cobbly,” said Jenkins. “Joshua told me one had gotten through.”

  “It killed Lupus,” said Peter.

  Jenkins nodded. “Yes, it killed Lupus. And it killed many others. It was the thing that has been killing.”

  “And I killed it,” said Peter. “I killed it … or drove it away … or something.”

  “You frightened it away,” said Jenkins. “You were stronger than it was. It was afraid of you. You frightened it back to the world it came from.”

  “I could have killed it,” Peter boasted, “but the cord broke—”

  “Next time,” said Jenkins quietly, “you must make stronger cords. I will show you how it’s done. And a steel tip for your arrow—”

  “For my what?”

  “For your arrow. The throwing stick is an arrow. The stick and cord you throw it with is called a bow. All together, it’s called a bow and arrow.”

  Peter’s shoulders sagged. “It was done before, then. I was not the first?”

  Jenkins shook his head. “No, you were not the first.”

  Jenkins walked across the grass and lay his hand upon Peter’s shoulder.

  “Come home with me, Peter.”

  Peter shook his head. “No. I’ll sit here with Lupus until the morning comes. And then I’ll call in his friends and we will bury him.”

  He lifted his head to look into Jenkins’ face. “Lupus was a friend of mine. A great friend, Jenkins.”

  “I know he must have been,” said Jenkins. “But I’ll be seeing you?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Peter. “I’m coming to the picnic. The Webster picnic. It’s in a week or so.”

  “So it is,” said Jenkins, speaking very slowly, thinking as he spoke. “So it is. And I will see you then.”

  He turned around and walked slowly up the hill.

  Peter sat down beside the dead wolf, waiting for the dawn. Once or twice, he lifted his hand to brush at his cheeks.

  They sat in a semicircle facing Jenkins and listened to him closely.

  “Now, you must pay attention,” Jenkins said. “That is most important. You must pay attention and you must think real hard and you must hang very tightly to the things you have—to the lunch baskets and the bows and arrows and the other things.”

  One of the girls giggled. “Is this a new game, Jenkins?”

  “Yes,” said Jenkins, “sort of. I guess that is what it is—a new game. And an exciting one. A most exciting one.”

  Someone said: “Jenkins always thinks up a new game for the Webster picnic.”

  “And now,” said Jenkins, “you must pay attention. You must look at me and try to figure out the thing I’m thinking—”

  “It’s a guessing game,” shrieked the giggling girl. “I love guessing games.”

  Jenkins made his mouth into a smile. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s exactly what it is—a guessing game. And now if you will pay attention and look at me—”

  “I want to try out these bows and arrows,” said one of the men. “After this is over, we can try them out, can’t we, Jenkins?”

  “Yes,” said Jenkins patiently, “after this is over you can try them out.”

  He closed his eyes and made his brain reach out for each of them, ticking them off individually, sensing the thrilled expectancy of the minds that yearned toward his, felt the little probing fingers of thought that were dabbing at his brain.

  “Harder,” Jenkins thought. “Harder! Harder!”

  A quiver went across his mind and he brushed it away. Not hypnotism—nor yet telepathy, but the best that he could do. A drawing together, a huddling together of minds—and it was all a game.

  Slowly, carefully, he brought out the hidden symbol—the words, the thought and the inflection. Easily he slid them into his brain, one by one, like one would speak to a child, trying to teach it the exact tone, the way to hold its lips, the way to move its tongue.

  He let them lie there for a moment, felt the other minds touching them, felt the fingers dabbing at them. And then he thought them aloud—thought them as the cobbly had thought them.

  And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. No click within his brain. No feeling of falling. No vertigo. No sensation at all.

  So he had failed. So it was over. So the game was done.

  He opened his eyes and the hillside was the same. The sun still shone and the sky was robin’s egg.

  He sat stiffly, silently and felt them looking at him.

  Everything was the same as it had been before.

  Except—

  There was a daisy where the clump of Oswego tea had bloomed redly before. There was a pasture rose beside him and there had been none when he had closed his eyes.

  “Is that all there’s to it?” asked the giggly girl, plainly disappointed.

  “That is all,” said Jenkins.

  “Now we can try out the bows and arrows?” asked one of the youths.

  “Yes,” said Jenkins, “but be careful. Don’t point them at one another. They are dangerous. Peter will show you how.”

  “We’ll unpack the lunch,” said one of the women. “Did you bring a basket, Jenkins?”

  “Yes,” said Jenkins. “Esther has it. She held it when we played the game.”

  “That’s nice,” said the woman. “You surprise us every year with the things you bring.”

  And you’ll be surprised this year, Jenkins told himself. You’ll be surprised at packages of seeds, all very neatly labeled.

  For we’ll need seeds, he thought to himself. Seeds to plant new gardens and to start new fields—to raise food once again. And we’ll need bows and arrows to bring in some meat. And spears and hooks for fish. Now other little things that were different began to show themselves. The way a tree leaned at the edge of the meadow. And a new kink in the river far below.

  Jenkins sat quietly in the sun, listening to the shouts of the men and boys, trying out the bows and arrows, hearing the chatter of the women as they spread the cloth and unpacked the lunches.

  I’ll have to tell them soon, he told himself. I’ll have to warn them to go easy on the food—not to gobble it up all at one sitting. For we will need that food to tide us over the first day or two, until we can find roots to dig and fish to
catch and fruit to pick.

  Yes, pretty soon I’ll have to call them in and break the news to them. Tell them they’re on their own. Tell them why. Tell them to go ahead and do anything they want to. For this is a brand-new world.

  Warn them about the cobblies.

  Although that’s the least important. Man has a way with him—a very vicious way. A way of dealing with anything that stands in his path.

  Jenkins sighed.

  Lord help the cobblies, he said.

  NOTES ON THE EIGHTH TALE

  There is some suspicion that the eighth and final tale may be a fraud, that it has no place in the ancient legend, that it is a more recent story made up by some storyteller hungering for public acclamation.

  Structurally, it is an acceptable story, but the phraseology of it does not measure up to the narrative skill that goes into the others. Another thing is that it is too patently a story. It is too clever in its assembly of material, works the several angles from the other tales too patly together.

  And yet, while no trace of historic basis can be found in any of the other tales, which are indisputably legendary, there is historic basis for this tale.

  It is a matter of record that one of the closed worlds is closed because it is a world of ants. It is now an ant world—has been an ant world for uncounted generations.

  There is no evidence that the ant world is the original world on which the Dogs arose, but neither is there evidence that it is not. The fact that research has not uncovered any world which can lay claim to being the original world would seem to indicate that the ant world might in fact be the world that was called the Earth.

  If that is so, all hope of finding further evidence of the legend’s origin may be gone forever, for only on the first world could there be artifacts which might prove beyond contention the origin of the legend. Only there could one hope to find the answer to the basic question of Man’s existence or his non-existence. If the ant world is the Earth, then the closed city of Geneva and the house on Webster Hill are lost to us forever.

  VIII

  THE SIMPLE WAY

  Archie, the little renegade raccoon, crouched on the hillside, trying to catch one of the tiny, scurrying things running in the grass. Rufus, Archie’s robot, tried to talk to Archie, but the raccoon was too busy and he did not answer.

  Homer did a thing no Dog had ever done before. He crossed the river and trotted into the wild robots’ camp and he was scared, for there was no telling what the wild robots might do to him when they turned around and saw him. But he was worried worse than he was scared, so he trotted on.

  Deep in a secret nest, ants dreamed and planned for a world they could not understand. And pushed into that world, hoping for the best, aiming at a thing no Dog, or robot, or man could understand.

  In Geneva, Jon Webster rounded out his ten-thousandth year of suspended animation and slept on, not stirring. In the street outside, a wandering breeze rustled the leaves along the boulevard, but no one heard and no one saw.

  Jenkins strode across the hill and did not look to either left or right, for there were things he did not wish to see. There was a tree that stood where another tree had stood in another world. There was the lay of ground that had been imprinted on his brain with a billion footsteps across ten thousand years.

  And, if one listened closely, one might have heard laughter echoing down the ages … the sardonic laughter of a man named Joe.

  Archie caught one of the scurrying things and held it clutched within his tight-shut paw. Carefully he lifted the paw and opened it and the thing was there, running madly, trying to escape.

  “Archie,” said Rufus, “you aren’t listening to me.”

  The scurrying thing dived into Archie’s fur, streaked swiftly up his forearm.

  “Might have been a flea,” said Archie. He sat up and scratched his belly.

  “New kind of flea,” he said. “Although I hope it wasn’t. Just the ordinary kind are bad enough.”

  “You aren’t listening,” said Rufus.

  “I’m busy,” said Archie. “The grass is full of them things. Got to find out what they are.”

  “I’m leaving you, Archie.”

  “You’re what!”

  “Leaving you,” said Rufus. “I’m going to the Building.”

  “You’re crazy,” fumed Archie. “You can’t do a thing like that to me. You’ve been tetched ever since you fell into that ant hill …”

  “I’ve had the Call,” said Rufus. “I just got to go.”

  “I’ve been good to you,” the raccoon pleaded. “I’ve never overworked you. You’ve been like a pal of mine instead of like a robot. I’ve always treated you just like an animal.”

  Rufus shook his head stubbornly. “You can’t make me stay,” he said. “I couldn’t stay, no matter what you did. I got the Call and I got to go.”

  “It isn’t like I could get another robot,” Archie argued. “They drew my number and I ran away. I’m a deserter and you know I am. You know I can’t get another robot with the wardens watching for me.”

  Rufus just stood there.

  “I need you,” Archie told him. “You got to stay and help me rustle grub. I can’t go near none of the feeding places or the wardens will nab me and drag me up to Webster Hill. You got to help me dig a den. Winter’s coming on and I will need a den. It won’t have heat or light, but I got to have one. And you’ve got to …”

  Rufus had turned around and was walking down the hill, heading for the river trail. Down the river trail … traveling toward the dark smudge above the far horizon.

  Archie sat hunched against the wind that ruffled through his fur, tucked his tail around his feet. The wind had a chill about it, a chill it had not held an hour or so before. And it was not the chill of weather, but the chill of other things.

  His bright, beady eyes searched the hillside and there was no sign of Rufus.

  No food, no den, no robot. Hunted by the wardens. Eaten up by fleas.

  And the Building, a smudge against the farther hills across the river valley.

  A hundred years ago, so the records said, the Building had been no bigger than the Webster House.

  But it had grown since … a place that never was completed. First it had covered an acre. And then a square mile. Now finally a township. And still it grew, sprawling out and towering up.

  A smudge above the hills and a cloudy terror for the little, superstitious forest folks who watched it. A word to frighten kid and whelp and cub into sudden quiet.

  For there was evil in it … the evil of the unknown, an evil sensed and attributed rather than seen or heard or smelled. A sensed evil, especially in the dark of night, when the lights were out and the wind keened in the den’s mouth and the other animals were sleeping, while one lay awake and listened to the pulsing otherness that sang between the worlds.

  Archie blinked in the autumn sunlight, scratched furtively at his side.

  Maybe someday, he told himself, someone will find a way to handle fleas. Something to rub on one’s fur so they will stay away. Or a way to reason with them, to reach them and talk things over with them. Maybe set up a reservation for them, a place where they could stay and be fed and not bother animals. Or something of the sort.

  As it was, there wasn’t much that could be done. You scratched yourself. You had your robot pick them off, although the robot usually got more fur than fleas. You rolled in the sand or dust. You went for a swim and drowned some of them … well, you really didn’t drown them; you just washed them off and if some of them drowned that was their own tough luck.

  You had your robot pick them off … but now there was no robot.

  No robot to pick off fleas.

  No robot to help him hunt for food.

  But, Archie remembered, there was a black haw tree down in the river bottom and last night’s frost wo
uld have touched the fruit. He smacked his lips, thinking of the haws. And there was a cornfield just over the ridge. If one was fast enough and bided his time and was sneaky about it, it was no trouble at all to get an ear of corn. And if worse came to worse there always would be roots and wild acorns and that patch of wild grapes over on the sand bar.

  Let Rufus go, said Archie, mumbling to himself. Let the Dogs keep their feeding stations. Let the workers go on watching.

  He would live his own life. He would eat fruit and grub for roots and raid the cornfields, even as his remote ancestors had eaten fruit and grubbed for roots and raided fields.

  He would live as the other raccoons had lived before the Dogs had come along with their ideas about the Brotherhood of Beasts. Like animals had lived before they could talk with words, before they could read the printed books that the Dogs provided, before they had robots that served in lieu of hands, before there was warmth and light for dens.

  Yes, and before there was a lottery that told you if you stayed on Earth or went to another world.

  The Dogs, Archie remembered, had been quite persuasive about it, very reasonable and suave. Some animals, they said, had to go to the other worlds or there would be too many animals on Earth. Earth wasn’t big enough, they said, to hold everyone. And a lottery, they pointed out, was the fair way to decide which of them would go to the other worlds.

  And, after all, they said, the other worlds would be almost like the Earth. For they were just extensions of the Earth. Just other worlds following in the track of Earth. Not quite like it, perhaps, but very close. Just a minor difference here and there. Maybe no tree where there was a tree on Earth. Maybe an oak tree where Earth had a walnut tree. Maybe a spring of fresh, cold water where there was no such spring on Earth.

  Maybe, Homer had told him, growing very enthusiastic … maybe the world he would be assigned to would be a better world than Earth.

  Archie hunched against the hillside, felt the warmish sun of autumn cutting through the cold chill of autumn’s wind. He thought about the black haws. They would be soft and mushy and there would be some of them lying on the ground. He would eat those that were on the ground, then he’d climb the tree and pick some more and then he’d climb down again and finish off the ones he had shaken loose with his climbing of the tree.