Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

  He heard the sound of the running feet as they came around the farther corner of the house, a stumbling, exhausted running, as if the one who ran might have come a far way.

  He leapt to his feet and strode out into the yard to see who it might be and the runner came stumbling toward him, with her arms outstretched. He put out an arm and caught her as she came close to him, holding her close against him so she would not fall.

  “Lucy!” he cried. “Lucy! What has happened, child?”

  His hands against her back were warm and sticky and he took one of them away to see that it was smeared with blood. The back of her dress, he saw, was soaked and dark.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her away from him so he could see her face. It was wet with crying and there was terror in the face—and pleading with the terror.

  She pulled away from him and turned around. Her hands came up and slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it slide halfway down her back. The flesh of the shoulders were ribboned by long slashes that still were oozing blood.

  She pulled the dress up again and turned to face him. She made a pleading gesture and pointed backward down the hill, in the direction of the field that ran down to the woods.

  There was motion down there, someone coming through the woods, almost at the edge of the old deserted field.

  She must have seen it, too, for she came close against him, shivering, seeking his protection.

  He bent and lifted her in his arms and ran for the shed. He spoke the phrase and the door came open and he stepped into the station. Behind him he heard the door go sliding shut.

  Once inside, he stood there, with Lucy Fisher cradled in his arms, and knew that what he’d done had been a great mistake—that it was something that, in a sober moment, he never would have done, that if he’d given it a second thought, he would not have done it.

  But he had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than himself, should have ever crossed the threshold.

  But it was done and there was no way to change it. Once across the threshold, there was no way to change it.

  He carried her across the room and put her on the sofa, then stepped back. She sat there, looking up at him, smiling very faintly, as if she did not know if she were allowed to smile in a place like this. She lifted a hand and tried to brush away the tears that were upon her cheeks.

  She looked quickly around the room and her mouth made an O of wonder.

  He squatted down and patted the sofa and shook a finger at her, hoping that she might understand that he meant she should stay there, that she must go nowhere else. He swept an arm in a motion to take in all the remainder of the station and shook his head as sternly as he could.

  She watched him, fascinated, then she smiled and nodded, as if she might have understood.

  He reached out and took one of her hands in his own, and holding it, patted it as gently as he could, trying to reassure her, to make her understand that everything was all right if she only stayed exactly where she was.

  She was smiling now, not wondering, apparently, if there were any reason that she should not smile.

  She reached out her free hand and made a little fluttering gesture toward the coffee table, with its load of alien gadgets.

  He nodded and she picked up one of them, turning it admiringly in her hand.

  He got to his feet and went to the wall to take down the rifle.

  Then he went outside to face whatever had been pursuing her.

  17

  Two men were coming up the field toward the house and Enoch saw that one of them was Hank Fisher, Lucy’s father. He had met the man, rather briefly, several years ago, on one of his walks. Hank had explained, rather sheepishly and when no explanation had been necessary, that he was hunting for a cow which had strayed away. But from his furtive manner, Enoch had deduced that his errand, rather than the hunting of a cow, had been somewhat on the shady side, although he could not imagine what it might have been.

  The other man was younger. No more, perhaps, than sixteen or seventeen. More than likely, Enoch told himself, he was one of Lucy’s brothers.

  Enoch stood by the porch and waited.

  Hank, he saw, was carrying a coiled whip in his hand, and looking at it, Enoch understood those wounds on Lucy’s shoulders. He felt a swift flash of anger, but tried to fight it down. He could deal better with Hank Fisher if he kept his temper.

  The two men stopped three paces or so away.

  “Good afternoon,” said Enoch.

  “You seen my gal?” asked Hank.

  “And if I have?” asked Enoch.

  “I’ll take the hide off of her,” yelled Hank, flourishing the whip.

  “In such a case,” said Enoch, “I don’t believe I’ll tell you anything.”

  “You got her hid,” charged Hank.

  “You can look around,” said Enoch.

  Hank took a quick step forward, then thought better of it.

  “She got what she had coming to her,” he yelled. “And I ain’t finished with her yet. There ain’t no one, not even my own flesh and blood, can put a hex on me.”

  Enoch said nothing. Hank stood, undecided.

  “She meddled,” he said. “She had no call to meddle. It was none of her damn’ business.”

  The young man said, “I was just trying to train Butcher. Butcher,” he explained to Enoch, “is a coon hound pup.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “He wasn’t doing nothing wrong. The boys caught a young coon the other night. Took a lot of doing. Roy, here, had staked out the coon—tied it to a tree. And he had Butcher on a leash. He was letting Butcher fight the coon. Not hurting anything. He’d pull Butcher off before any damage could be done and let them rest a while. Then he’d let Butcher at the coon again.”

  “It’s the best way in the world,” said Roy, “to get a coon dog trained.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “That is why they caught the coon.”

  “We needed it,” said Roy, “to train this Butcher pup.”

  “This all is fine” said Enoch, “and I am glad to hear it. But what has it got to do with Lucy?”

  “She interfered,” said Hank. “She tried to stop the training. She tried to grab Butcher away from Roy, here.”

  “For a dummy,” Roy said, “she is a mite too uppity.”

  “You hush your mouth,” his father told him sternly, swinging around on him.

  Roy mumbled to himself, falling back a step.

  Hank turned back to Enoch.

  “Roy knocked her down,” he said. “He shouldn’t have done that. He should have been more careful.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Roy said. “I just swung my arm out to keep her away from Butcher.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “He swung a bit too hard. But there wasn’t any call for her doing what she did. She tied Butcher up in knots so he couldn’t fight that coon. Without laying a finger on him, mind you, she tied him up in knots. He couldn’t move a muscle. That made Roy mad.”

  He appealed to Enoch, earnestly, “Wouldn’t that have made you mad?”

  “I don’t think it would,” said Enoch. “But then, I’m not a coon-dog man.”

  Hank stared in wonder at this lack of understanding.

  But he went on with his story. “Roy got real mad at her. He’d raised that Butcher. He thought a lot of him. He wasn’t going to let no one, not even his own sister, tie that dog in knots. So he went after her and she tied him up in knots, just like she did to Butcher. I never seen a thing like it in all my born days. Roy just stiffened up and then he fell down to the ground and his legs pulled up against his belly and he wrapped his arms around himself and he laid there on the ground, pulled into a ball. Him and Butcher, both. But she never touched that coon. She never tied him in no knots. Her own folks is all she touched.”

  �
��It didn’t hurt,” said Roy. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

  “I was sitting there,” said Hank, “braiding this here bull whip. Its end had frayed and I fixed a new one on it. And I seen it all, but I didn’t do a thing until I saw Roy there, tied up on the ground. And I figured then it had gone far enough. I am a broad-minded man; I don’t mind a little wart-charming and other piddling things like that. There have been a lot of people who have been able to do that. It ain’t no disgrace at all. But this thing of tying dogs and people into knots…”

  “So you hit her with the whip,” said Enoch.

  “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 way. 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.