The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  Lewis was unmoved. He did not try to pull away. “I had a job,” he said.

  “Yeah, a job. Watching me. Not robbing graves.” He let loose of the shirt.

  “Tell me,” said Lewis, “that thing in the grave. What was it?”

  “That’s none of your damn business,” Enoch told him, bitterly. “Getting back that body is. It’s most important thing you’ve ever done. Don’t forget that for a minute. It affects everyone on Earth. You and I and everyone. And if you fail, you’ll answer to me for it.”

  “Wallace, is there something you can tell me?”

  “Not a thing,” said Enoch. He picked up the lantern, turned, went across the garden and started up the hill.

  In the yard, Lewis stood for a long time, watching the lantern bobbing out of sight.

  XVIII

  ULYSSES was alone in the station when Enoch returned. He had sent the Thuban on his way and the Hazer back to Vega.

  A fresh pot of coffee was brewing and Ulysses was sprawled out on the sofa, doing nothing.

  Enoch hung up the rifle and blew out the lantern. Taking off his jacket, he threw it on the desk. He sat down in a chair across from the sofa.

  “The body will be back,” he said, “by this time tomorrow.”

  “I sincerely hope,” Ulysses said, “that it will do some good. But I’m inclined to doubt it.” Said Enoch bitterly, “Maybe I should not have bothered.”

  “It will show good faith,” Ulysses said. “It might have some mitigating effect in the final weighing.”

  “The Hazer could have told me,” Enoch said, “where the body was. If he knew it had been taken from the grave, then he must have known where it could be found.”

  “I would suspect he did,” Ulysses said. “But, you see, he couldn’t tell you. All that he could do was to make his protest. The rest was up to you.”

  “Sometimes this business is enough to drive one crazy.”

  “There may come a day,” Ulysses said, “when it won’t be like that. I can look ahead and see, in some thousands of years, the knitting of the galaxy together into one great culture, one huge area of understanding. The local and the racial variations still will exist, of course, and that is as it should be, but overriding all of these will be a tolerance that will make for what one might be tempted to call a brotherhood.”

  Enoch said, “You sound almost like a human.”

  THE COFFEE pot was making sounds. Enoch went to get it. Ulysses had pushed some of the trinkets on the coffee table to one side to make room for two coffee cups. Enoch filled them and set the pot upon the floor.

  Ulysses picked up his cup, held it for a moment in his hands, then put it back on the table top.

  “We’re in bad shape,” he said. “Not like in the old days. It has Galactic Central worried. All this squabbling and haggling among the races, all the pushing and the shoving.”

  He looked at Enoch. “You thought it was all nice and cozy.”

  “No,” said Enoch, “not that. But I’m afraid I thought of the conflicts as being on a fairly lofty plane. Gentlemanly, you know. Good mannered.”

  “That was the way it was at one time. There always have been differing opinions, but they were based on principles and ethics, not on special interests. You know about the spiritual force, of course. The universal spiritual force.”

  Enoch nodded. “I’ve read some of the literature. I don’t quite understand, but I’m willing to accept it. There is a way, I know, to get in contact with the force.”

  “The Talisman,” said Ulysses. “That’s it. The Talisman. A machine, of sorts.”

  “I suppose,” Ulysses agreed, “you could call it that. Although machine is a little awkward. More I than sheer mechanics went into the making of it. There is just the one. Only one was ever made, by a being who lived ten thousand of your years ago. I wish I could tell you what it is or how it is constructed, but there is no one, I am afraid, who can tell you that. There have been others who have attempted to duplicate the Talisman, but no one has succeeded. The mystic who made it left no blueprints, no plans, no specifications, not a single note. There is no one who knows anything about it.”

  “There is no reason, I suppose,” said Enoch, “that another should not be made. No sacred taboos, I mean. To make another one would not be sacrilegious.”

  “Not in the least,” Ulysses told him. “In fact, we need another badly. For now we have no Talisman. It has disappeared.”

  Enoch jerked upright in his chair.

  “Disappeared?” he asked. “Lost,” said Ulysses. “Misplaced. Stolen. No one knows.”

  “But I hadn’t . . .”

  Ulysses smiled bleakly. “It’s a strange business,” he said. “The Talisman has been missing for several years or so, and no one knows about it—except Galactic Central and the—what would you call it? The hierarchy, I suppose. The organization of mystics. And yet, even with no one knowing, the galaxy is beginning to show wear. It’s coming apart at the seams. In time to come, it may fall apart. As if the Talisman represented a force that all unknowingly held the races of the galaxy together, exerting its influence even when it remained unseen.”

  “But even if it’s lost, it’s somewhere,” Enoch pointed out. “It still would be exerting its influence. It couldn’t have been destroyed.”

  “You forget,” Ulysses reminded him, “that without its proper custodian it is inoperative. The machine merely acts as an intermediary between the sensitive and the force. It is an extension of the sensitive.”

  THEY SAT in silence for a moment, listening to the soft sound that the wind made as it blew through the gable gingerbread.

  “You really think relations in the galaxy are deteriorating because of this?”

  “Once,” Ulysses said, “the races all were bound together. There were differences, naturally, but these differences were bridged. Both sides wanted them bridged, you see. There was a common purpose, the forging of a great confraternity of all intelligences. We realized that among us we had a staggering fund of knowledge and techniques. Working together, putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing. We had our troubles and our differences, but we were progressing. We brushed the small animosities and the petty differences underneath the rug and worked only on the big ones. We felt that if we could get the big ones settled, the small ones would become so small they would disappear. But it is becoming different now. There is a tendency to pull the pettiness from underneath the rug and blow it beyond its size.”

  “It sounds like Earth,” said Enoch.

  “In many ways,” Ulysses said. “In principle, although the circumstances would diverge immensely.”

  “You’ve been reading the papers I have been saving for you?”

  Ulysses nodded. “It doesn’t look too happy.”

  “It looks like war,” said Enoch bluntly.

  Ulysses stirred uneasily.

  “You don’t have wars,” said Enoch.

  “The galaxy, you mean. No, as we are set up now we don’t have wars.”

  “Too civilized?”

  “Stop being bitter,” Ulysses told him. “There has been a time or two when we came very close, but not in recent years. There are many races now in the confraternity that in their formative years had a history of war.”

  “There is hope for us, then. It’s something you outgrow.”

  “In time, perhaps.”

  “But not a certainty?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

  “I’ve been working on a chart,” said Enoch. “Based on the Mizar system of statistics. The chart says there is going to be war.”

  “You don’t need the chart,” Ulysses said, “to tell you that.”

  “But there was something else. It was not just knowing if there’d be a war. I had hoped that the chart might show how to keep the peace. There must be a way. If we could only think of it or know
where to look or whom to ask or . . .”

  “There is a way,” Ulysses said. “You mean you know . . .”

  “It’s drastic. A last resort.”

  “And we’ve not reached that last resort?”

  “Perhaps you have. The kind of war that Earth would fight could spell an end to everything but the feeble remnants of civilizations. It could, just possibly, eliminate life upon the planet.”

  “This method of yours—it has been used?”

  “A few times.”

  “And worked?”

  “Oh, certainly. We’d not even consider it if it didn’t work.”

  “It could be used on Earth?”

  “You could apply for it.”

  “I?”

  “As a representative of the Earth. To gain a hearing, you must know about Galactic Central and you’re the only man of Earth who does. Besides, your record has been good. We would listen to you.”

  “But one man alone! One man can’t speak for an entire race. If I could consult some others—”

  “Who would believe you?”

  “That’s true,” said Enoch.

  Of course it was. To him there was no longer any strangeness in the idea of a galactic confraternity, of a transportation network that spread among the stars—but tell it to any other Earthman and it would sound like madness.

  “And this method?” he asked, almost afraid to ask it.

  “Stupidity,” Ulysses said.

  ENOCH gasped. “Stupidity? I don’t understand. We are stupid enough, in many ways, right now.”

  “You’re thinking of intellectual stupidity. What I am talking about is a mental incapacity. An inability to understand the science and the technique that makes possible the kind of war that Earth would fight. An inability to operate the machines that are necessary to fight that kind of war. Turning the people back to a mental position where they would not be able to comprehend the mechanical and technological and scientific advances they have made. Those who know would forget. Those who didn’t know could never learn. Back to the simplicity of the wheel and lever. That would make your kind of war impossible.”

  Enoch sat stiff and straight, unable to speak.

  “I told you it was drastic,” Ulysses said.

  “I couldn’t!” Enoch said. “No one could.”

  “Perhaps you can’t. But consider this: If there is a war . . .”

  “I know. If there is a war, it could be worse. But it wouldn’t stop war. It’s not the kind of thing I had in mind. People still could fight, still could kill.”

  “With clubs,” said Ulysses. “Maybe bows and arrows. Rifles, so long as they still had rifles, and until they ran out of ammunition. Then they wouldn’t know how to make more powder or how to get the metal to make the bullets or even how to make the bullets. There might be fighting, but there’d be no holocaust. Cities would not be wiped out by nuclear warheads, for no one could fire a rocket or arm the warhead—perhaps wouldn’t even know what a rocket or a warhead was.”

  “It would be terrible,” Enoch said.

  “So is war,” Ulysses said.

  “But how long?” asked Enoch. “How long would it last? We wouldn’t have to go back to stupidity forever?”

  “Several generations,” said Ulysses. “By that time the effect would gradually begin wearing off. The people slowly would shake off their moronic state and and begin their intellectual climb again. They’d be given a second chance.”

  “They could,” said Enoch, “in a few generations after that arrive at exactly the same situation that we have today.”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s too much for one man . . .”

  “Something hopeful,” Ulysses said, “that you might consider. The method is offered only to those races which seem to us to be worth the saving.”

  “You have to give me time,” said Enoch.

  But he knew there was no time.

  XIX

  A LONG time later he roused himself, shook his head and reached for the rifle on the peg.

  He needed something to take his mind off what Ulysses had said. And he needed the target practice. It had been too long since he’d been on the rifle range. He spoke the word, and watched the wall slide back, and clumped down the stairs to the basement.

  The basement was huge. It stretched out into a dim haze beyond the lights which he had turned on, a place of tunnels and rooms, carved deep into the rock that folded up to underlie the ridge.

  Here were the massive tanks filled with the various solutions for the tank travelers; here the pumps and the generators, which operated on a principle alien to the human manner of generating electric power, and far beneath the floor of the basement itself those great storage tanks which held the acids and the soupy matter which once had been the creatures which came traveling to the station, leaving behind them, as they went on to some other place, the useless bodies which then must be disposed of.

  Enoch moved across the floor, past the tanks and generators, until he came to a gallery that stretched out into the darkness. He found the panel and pressed it to bring on the lights, then walked down the gallery. On either side were metal shelves which had been installed to accommodate the overflow of gadgets, of artifacts, of all sorts of gifts which had been brought him by the travelers. From floor to ceiling the shelves were jammed with a I junkyard accumulation from all the corners of the galaxy. And yet, thought Enoch, perhaps not actually a junkyard, for very little of this stuff was actual junk. All of it was serviceable and had some purpose, either practical or aesthetic, if only that purpose could be learned. Although perhaps not in every instance a purpose that would be applicable to humans.

  Down at the end of the shelves was one section of shelving into which the articles were packed more systematically and with greater care, each one tagged and numbered, with cross-filing to a card catalogue and certain journal dates. These were the articles of which he knew the purpose and, in certain instances, something of the principles involved. There were some that were innocent enough and others that held great potential value and still others that had, at the moment, no connection whatsoever with the human way of life—and there were a few, tagged in red, that made one shudder to even think upon.

  He went down the gallery, his footsteps echoing loudly as he trod through this place of alien ghosts.

  Finally the gallery widened into an oval room. Here the walls were padded with a thick gray substance that would entrap a bullet and prevent a ricochet.

  Enoch walked over to a panel set inside a deep recess, sunk into the wall. He reached in and thumbed up a tumbler, then stepped quickly out into the center of the room.

  Slowly the room began to darken. Then suddenly it seemed to flare—and he was in the room no longer, but in another place, a place he had never seen before.

  HE STOOD on a little hillock.

  In front of him the land sloped down to a sluggish river bordered by marsh. Between the beginning of the marsh and the foot of the hillock stretched a sea of rough, tall grass. There was no wind, but the grass was rippling. He knew that the rippling motion was caused by many moving bodies, foraging in the grass. Out of it came a savage grunting, as if a thousand angry hogs were fighting for choice swill. And from somewhere farther off, perhaps from the river, came a deep, monotonous bellowing that sounded hoarse and tired.

  Enoch felt the hair crawling on his scalp and he thrust the rifle out and ready. It was puzzling. He felt and knew the danger, though as yet there was no danger. Still, the very air of this place—wherever it might be—seemed to crawl with danger like a dank, miasmic fog.

  He spun around. Close behind him the thick, dark woods climbed down the range of river hills, stopping at the sea of grass which flowed around the hillock on which he found himself. Off beyond the hills loomed a range of mighty mountains that seemed to fade into the sky, purple to their peaks, with no sign of snow upon them.

  Two things came trotting from the woods and stopped at the edge of it. Th
ey sat down and grinned at him, with their tails wrapped neatly round their feet. They might have been wolves or dogs, but they were neither one. They were nothing he had ever seen or heard of. Their pelts glistened in the weak sunshine, as if they had been greased, but the pelts stopped at their necks, with their skulls and faces bare. Like evil old men, off on a masquerade, with their bodies draped in the hides of wolves. But the disguise was spoiled by the lolling tongues which spilled out of their mouths, glistening scarlet against the bone-white of their faces.

  The wood was still. There were only the two gaunt beasts sitting on their haunches. They sat and grinned at him, a strangely toothless grin.

  The wood was dark and tangled, the foliage so dark green that it was almost black. All the leaves shone as if they had been polished.

  Enoch spun around again, to look back toward the river. Crouched at the edge of the grass was a line of toad-like monstrosities, six feet long and standing three feet high, their bodies the color of a dead fish belly, and I each with a single eye, or what seemed to be an eye, which covered a great part of the area just above the snout. The eyes were faceted and glowed in the dim sunlight, as the eyes of a hunting cat will glow when caught in a beam of light.

  The hoarse bellowing still came from the river and in between the bellowing there was a faint, thin buzzing, angry and malicious, I as if a giant mosquito might be I hovering for attack.

  Enoch jerked up his head to look into the sky and far in the depths of it he saw a string of dots, so high that there was no way of knowing what kind of things they were. From the corner of his eye he caught the sense of flowing motion and swung back toward the woods.

  THE WOLF-LIKE bodies with the skull-like heads were coming up the hill in a silent rush.

  They did not seem to run. There was no motion of their running. Rather they were moving as if they had been squirted from a tube.

  Enoch jerked up his rifle and it came into his shoulder, fitting as if it were a part of him. The bead settled in the rear-sight notch and blotted out the skull-like face of the leading beast. The gun bucked as he squeezed the trigger and, without waiting to see if the shot had downed the beast, the rifle barrel was swinging toward the second as his right fist worked the bolt. The rifle bucked again and the second wolf-like being somersaulted and slid forward for an instant, then began rolling down the hill, flopping limply as it rolled.