The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  And somehow I must stop it Somehow it must be stopped. Somehow my words must stand, so that all may read and know, without the smokescreen of crooked theorizing and dishonest interpretation and weasel logic confusing them.

  FOR it is so simple. Such a simple thing:

  All life has destiny, not human life alone.

  There is one destiny partner for every living thing. For every living thing and then to spare. They wait for life to happen, and each time it occurs, one of them is there and stays there until the particular life is ended. How, I do not know, nor why. I do not know if the actual Johnny is lodged within my mind and being, or if he merely keeps in contact with me from Cygni. But I know that he is with me. I know that he will stay.

  And yet the Revisionists will twist my words and discredit me. They will change my book and dig up old scandals about the Suttons so that the mistakes of my forebears, magnified many times, will tend to smear my name.

  They sent back a man who talked to John H. Sutton and he told them things that they could have used. For John Sutton said that there are skeletons in every family closet, and in that he spoke the truth. And, being old and garrulous, he talked about those skeletons.

  But those tales were not carried forward into the future to be of any use, for the man who heard them came tramping up the road with a bandage on his head and no shoes on his feet.

  Something happened and he could not go back.

  Something happened.

  Something . . .

  Sutton rose slowly.

  Something happened, he said, talking to himself, and I know what it was.

  Six thousand years ago in a place that was called Wisconsin.

  He moved forward, heading for the pilot’s chair and the Wisconsin of sixty centuries in the past.

  XXIX

  CHRISTOPHER ADAMS came into his office and hung up his hat and coat.

  He turned around and pulled out the chair before his desk and in the act of sitting down, he froze and listened.

  The psych-tracer burped at him.

  Ker-up, it chuckled. Ker-up, clickity, click, ker-up.

  Christopher Adams straightened from his half-sitting position and put on his hat and coat again.

  Going out, he slammed the door behind him.

  In all his life, he had never slammed a door.

  XXX

  SUTTON breasted the river, swimming with slow, sure strokes. The water was warm against his body and it talked to him with a deep, important voice and Sutton thought: It is trying to tell me something, as it has tried to tell people something all down through the ages. A mighty tongue talking down the land, gossiping to itself when there is no one to hear, but trying, always trying to tell its people the news it has to tell. Some of them, perhaps, have grasped a certain truth and a certain philosophy from the river, but none of them have ever reached the meaning of the river’s language, for it is an unknown language.

  Like the language, Sutton thought, I used to make my notes. For they had to be in a language which no one else could read, a language that had been forgotten in the galaxy eons before any tongue now living lisped its baby talk. Either a language that had been forgotten or one that never could be known.

  I do not know that language, Sutton told himself, the language of my notes. I do not know whence it came or when or how. I asked, but they would not tell me. Johnny tried to tell me once, but I could not grasp it, for it was a thing that the brain of Man could not accept.

  I know its symbols and the things they stand for, but I do not know the sounds that make it. My tongue might not be able to form the sounds that make the spoken language. For all I know, it might be the language that this river talks . . . or the language of some race that went to disaster and to dust a million or a billion years ago.

  The black of night came down to nestle against the black of flowing river and the Moon had not arisen, would not rise for many hours to come. The starlight made little diamond points on the rippling waves of the pulsing river. On the shore ahead, the lights of homes made jagged patterns up and down the land.

  Herkimer has the notes, Sutton told himself, and I hope he has sense enough to hide them. I will need them later, but not now. I would like to see Herkimer, but I can’t take the chance; they’ll be watching him. And there’s no doubt they have a tracer on me, but if I move fast enough I can keep out of their way.

  His feet struck gravel bottom and he let himself down, waded up the shelving shore. The night wind struck him and he shivered; the river had been warm from a day of sun, and the wind had a touch of chill.

  Herkimer, of course, would be one of those who had come back from the future to see that he wrote the book as he would have written it if there had been no interference. Herkimer and Eva . . . and of the two, Sutton told himself, he could trust Herkimer. For an android would fight, would fight and die for the thing that the book would say. And so would every non-human form of life that could read and understand Asher Sutton’s book. But no human could be trusted.

  HE FOUND a grassy bank and sat down and took off his clothes to wring them dry, then put them on again. He struck out across the meadow toward the highway that arrowed up the valley.

  No one would find the ship at the bottom of the river . . . not for a while, at least. And a few hours were all he needed. A few hours to ask a thing that he must know, a few minutes then to get back to the ship again.

  But he couldn’t waste any time. He had to get the information the quickest way he could. For if Adams had a tracer on him—and Adams would have a tracer on him—they would already know that he had returned to Earth.

  Once again came the old nagging wonder about Adams. How had Adams known that he was coming back from 61 Cygni, and why had he set a mouse trap for him when he did arrive? What information had he gotten that would make him give the order that Sutton must be shot on sight?

  Someone had reached him . . . someone who had evidence to show him. For Adams would not go on anything less than evidence. And the only person who could have given him any information would have been someone from the future. One of those, perhaps, who contended that the book must not be written, that it must not exist, that the knowledge that it held be blotted out forever. And if the man who was to write it should die, what could be more simple?

  Except that the book had been written. The book already did exist. The knowledge apparently was spread across the galaxy.

  That would be catastrophe . . . for if the book were not written, then it never had existed. The whole segment of the future that had been touched by the book in any wise would be blotted out, along with the book that had not been.

  And that could not be, Sutton told himself.

  That meant that Asher Sutton could not, would not be allowed to die before the book was written.

  However it were written, the book must be written or the future was a lie.

  Sutton shrugged. The tangled thread of logic was too much for him. There was no precept, no precedent upon which one might develop the pattern of cause and result.

  Alternate futures? Maybe, but it didn’t seem likely. Alternate futures were a fantasy that employed semantics-twisting to prove a point, a clever use of words that covered up and masked the fallacies.

  He crossed the road and took a footpath that led to a house standing on a knoll.

  In the marsh down near the river, the frogs had struck up their piping and somewhere far away a wild duck called in the darkness. In the hills the whippoorwills began the evening forum. The scent of new-cut grass lay heavy in the air and the smell of fog was crawling up the hills.

  The path came out on a patio and Sutton moved across it.

  A man’s voice came to him.

  “Good evening,” it said, and Sutton wheeled around.

  He saw the man, then, for the first time. A man who sat in his chair and smoked his pipe beneath the evening stars.

  “I hate to bother you,” said Sutton, “but I wonder if I might use your phone.”

>   “Certainly, Ash,” said Adams. “Anything you wish.”

  Sutton started and then felt himself freeze.

  Adams!

  OF ALL the homes along the river, he would walk.in on Adams! Adams chuckled at him. “Destiny works, against you, Ash.”

  Sutton moved forward, found a chair in the darkness and sat down. “You have a pleasant place,” he said.

  “A very pleasant place,” said Adams. He tapped out his pipe and put it in his pocket. “So you died again.”

  “I was killed,” said Sutton. “I got unkilled almost immediately.”

  “Some of my boys?” asked Adams. “They are hunting for you.”

  “A couple of strangers. Some of Morgan’s gang.”

  Adams shook his head. “I don’t know the name.”

  “He probably didn’t tell you his name,” said Shotton. “He told you I was coming back.”

  “So that was it. The man out of the future. You have him worried, Ash.”

  “I need a phone,” said Sutton. “You can use the phone.”

  “And I need an hour.”

  Adams shook his head. “I can’t give you an hour.”

  “A half-hour, then. I may have a chance to make it. A half-hour after I finish my call.”

  “Nor a half-hour, either.”

  “You never gamble, do you?”

  “Never,” said Adams.

  “I do,” said Sutton. He rose. “Where is that phone? I’m going to gamble on you.”

  “Sit down, Ash,” said Adams, almost kindly. “Sit down and tell me something.”

  Stubbornly, Sutton remained standing.

  “If you could give me your word,” said Adams, “that this destiny business won’t harm Man, if you could tell me it won’t give aid and comfort to our enemies . . .”

  “Man hasn’t any enemies,” said Ash, “except the ones he’s made.”

  “The galaxy is waiting for us to crack. Waiting to close in at the first sign of weakness.”

  “That’s because we taught them it. They watched us use their own weaknesses to push them under.”

  “What will this destiny do?” asked Adams.

  “It will teach Man humility,” said Sutton. “Humility and responsibility.”

  “It’s not a religion,” said Adams. “That’s what Raven told me. But it sounds like a religion . . . with all that preaching about humility.”

  “Dr. Raven was right,” Sutton told him. “It’s not a religion. Destiny and religions could flourish side by side and exist in perfect peace. They, do not conflict. Rather, they would complement one another. Destiny stands for the same things most religions stand for, and it holds out no promise of an after-life. It leaves that to religion.”

  “Ash,” asked Adams quietly, “you have read your history?”

  Sutton nodded.

  “Think back,” said Adams. “Remember the Crusades. Remember the rise of Mohammedanism. Remember Cromwell in England. Remember Germany and America. And Russia and America. Religion and ideas, Ash. Man will fight for an idea when he wouldn’t lift a hand for land or life or honor. But an idea to make other races fight Man . . . that’s a different thing.”

  “And you’re afraid of an idea.”

  “We can’t afford any, Ash. Net right now, at least.”

  “And still,” Sutton told him, “it has been the ideas that have made men grow. We wouldn’t have a culture if it weren’t for ideas.”

  “Right now,” said Adams bitterly, “men are fighting in the future over this destiny of yours.”

  “That’s why I have to use the phone,” said Sutton. “That’s why I need an hour.”

  ADAMS rose heavily to his feet.

  “I may be making a mistake,” he said. “It’s something I have never done in all my life. But I seem to be doing a lot of things I never did before. For once I’ll gamble.”

  He led the way across the patio and into a dimly lighted room, filled with old-fashioned furniture of the 50th and 60th centuries.

  “Jonathon,” he called.

  Feet pattered in the hall and the android came into the room.

  “A pair of dice,” said Adams heavily. “Mr. Sutton and I are about to gamble.”

  “Dice, sir?”

  “Yes, that pair you and the cook are using.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jonathon.

  He turned and disappeared and Sutton listened to his feet going through the house, fainter and fainter.

  Adams turned to face him.

  “One throw each,” he said. “High man wins.”

  Sutton nodded, tense.

  “If you win, you get the hour,” said Adams. “If I win, you take my orders.”

  “I’ll throw with you,” said Sutton. “On terms like that, I’m willing to gamble.”

  And he was thinking: I lifted the battered ship on Cygni VII and maneuvered it through space. I was the engine and the pilot, the power tubes and navigator. Energy garnered by my body took the ship and lifted it and drove it through space . . . eleven years through space. I brought the ship down tonight through atmosphere with the engines dead so it could not be spotted and I landed in the river. I could pick a book out of that case and carry it to the table without laying hands on it, and I could turn the pages without the use of fingertips.

  But dice.

  They roll so fast and topple so.

  “Win or lose,” said Adams, “you can use the phone.”

  “If I lose,” said Sutton, “I won’t need the phone.”

  Jonathon came back and laid the dice upon a table top. When he saw that the two humans were waiting for him to go, he left. His footsteps died away.

  Sutton nodded at the dice carelessly. “You first,” he said.

  Adams picked them up, held them in his fist and shook them. Their clicking was like the frightened porcelain chatter of teeth.

  His fist came down above the table and his fingers opened. The little white cubes spun and whirled on the polished top. They came to rest.

  One was a five, the other a six.

  Adams raised his eyes to Sutton and there was nothing in them. No triumph. Absolutely nothing.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  Perfect, thought Sutton, nothing less than perfect. It has to be two sixes.

  HE STRETCHED out his hand and picked up the dice, shook them in his fist, felt the shape and size of them rolling in his palm.

  Now take them in your mind, he told himself . . . take them in your mind as well as in your fist. Hold them in your mind, make them a part of you, as you made the two ships you drove through space, as you could make a book or chair or a flower you wished to pick.

  He changed for a moment and his heart faltered to a stop. The blood slowed to a trickle in his arteries and veins, and he was not breathing. He felt the energy system take over, the other body that drew raw energy from anything that could be tapped.

  His mind reached out and took the dice and shook them inside the prison of his fist. He brought his hand down with a swooping gesture and let his fingers uncurl. The dice came dancing out.

  They were dancing in his brain, too, as well as on the table top and he saw them, or sensed them, or was aware of them, as if they were a part of him. Aware of the sides that had the six black dots and the sides with all the other numbers.

  But they were slippery to handle, hard to make go the way he wanted them to go. For a fearful, agonizing second, it seemed almost as if the spinning cubes had minds and personalities that were their very own.

  One of them was a six and the other still was rolling. The six was coming up and it toppled for a moment, threatening to fall back.

  A push, thought Sutton. Just a little push. But with brain power instead of muscular.

  The six came up and the two dice lay there, both of them showing sixes.

  Sutton drew in a sobbing breath and his heart beat once again and the blood pumped through the veins.

  The two men stood in silence for a moment, staring at one another acro
ss the table top.

  Adams spoke and his voice was quiet; one could not have guessed from his tone what he felt.

  “The phone is over there,” he said.

  Sutton bowed, ever so slightly, and felt foolish doing it, like a character out of some incredibly old and bad piece of romantic fiction.

  “Destiny,” he said, “still is working for me. When it comes to the pinch, destiny is there.”

  “Your hour will start,” said Adams, “as soon as you finish phoning.”

  He turned smartly and walked back to the patio, very stiff and straight.

  Now that he had won, Sutton suddenly was weak, and he walked unsteadily to the phone. He sat down before it and took out the directory that he needed.

  Information. And the subheading: Geography, historic, North America.

  HE FOUND the number and dialed it and the screen lit up. The information robot said: “Can I be of service, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Sutton. “I would like to know where Wisconsin was.”

  “Where are you now, sir?”

  “I am at the residence of Mr. Christopher Adams.”

  “The Mr. Adams who is with the Department of Galactic Investigation?”

  The same.

  “Then,” the robot said, “you are in Wisconsin.”

  “Bridgeport?” asked Sutton.

  “It was on the Wisconsin River, on the north bank, a matter of seven miles above the junction with the Mississippi.”

  “But those rivers—I’ve never heard of them.”

  “You are near them now, sir. The Wisconsin flows into the Mississippi just below the point where you are now.”

  Sutton hung up, rose shakily and crossed the room, went out on the patio.

  Adams was lighting up his pipe. “You got what you wanted?” Sutton nodded.

  “Get going, then,” said Adams. “Your hour’s already started.”

  Sutton hesitated.

  “What is it, Ash?”

  “I wonder,” said Sutton, “I wonder if you would shake my hand.”

  “Why, sure,” said Adams.

  He rose ponderously to his feet and held out his hand.