The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Some other time,” said Maxwell. “At least, let us sit down. We are hungry. We don’t want to get thrown out.”

  “Pete,” said Alley Oop, “it is a matter of some large distinction to be heaved out of this joint. You ain’t arrived socially otherwise.”

  But, muttering under his breath, he led the way back to the table and held a chair for Carol. Sylvester planted himself between Maxwell and Carol, propped his chin on the table and glared balefully at Oop.

  “That cat don’t like me,” Oop declared. “Probably he knows how many of his ancestors I wiped out back in the Old Stone Age.”

  “He’s only a bio-mech,” said Carol. “He couldn’t possibly.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” said Oop. “That critter is no bio-mech. He’s got the dirty meanness in his eyes all saber-toothers have.”

  “Please, Oop,” said Maxwell. “Just a moment, please. Miss Hampton, this gentleman is Ghost A long-time friend.”

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Ghost,” said Carol.

  “Not mister,” said Ghost. “Just plain Ghost. That is all I am. And the terrible thing about it is that I don’t know who I am the ghost of. I’m most pleased to meet you. It is so comfortable with four around the table. There is something nice and balanced in the number four.”

  “Well, now,” said Oop, “that we know one another, leave us proceed to business. Let us do some drinking. It’s lonesome for a man to drink all by himself. I love Ghost, of course, for his many sterling qualities, but I hate a man who doesn’t drink.”

  “You know I can’t drink,” said Ghost. “Nor eat, either. Or smoke. There’s not much a ghost can do. But I wish you wouldn’t keep pointing it out to everyone we meet.”

  Oop said to Carol, “You seem to be surprised that a barbaric Neanderthaler can sling the language around with the facility I command.”

  “Not surprised,” said Carol. “Astounded.”

  “Oop,” Maxwell told her, “has soaked up more education in the last twelve years than most ordinary men. Started out virtually in kindergarten and now is working on his doctorate. And the thing about it is that he intends to keep right on. You might say he is one of our most notable professional students.”

  Oop raised his arm and waved it, bellowing at a waiter. “Over here,” he shouted. “There are people here who wish to patronize you. All dying of slow thirst.”

  “The thing,” said Ghost, “I have always admired about him is his shy, retiring nature.”

  “I keep on studying,” said Oop, “not so much that I hunger after knowledge as for the enjoyment I get from the incredulous astonishment on the faces of those stuffed-shirt professors and those goofy students. Not,” he said to Maxwell, “that I maintain all professors are stuffed shirts.”

  “Thank you,” Maxwell said. “There are those who seem to think,” said Oop, “that Homo sapien neanderthalensis can be nothing other than a stupid brute. After all, he became extinct, he couldn’t hold his own—which in itself is prime evidence that he was very second rate. I’m afraid that I’ll continue to devote my life to proving—”

  The waiter appeared at Oop’s elbow. “It’s you again,” he said. “I might have known when you yelled at me. You have no breeding, Oop.”

  “We have a man here,” Oop told him, ignoring the insult, “who has come back from the dead. I think it would be fitting that we should celebrate his resurrection with a flourish of good fellowship.”

  “You want something to drink, I take it.”

  “Why,” said Oop, “don’t you simply bring a bottle of good booze, a bucket of ice and four—no, three glasses. Ghost doesn’t drink, you know.”

  “I know,” the waiter said. “That is,” said Oop, “unless Miss Hampton wants one of these fancy drinks. . . .”

  “Who am I to gum up the works?” asked Carol. “What is it you are drinking?”

  “Bourbon,” said Oop. “Pete and I have a lousy taste in liquor.”

  “Bourbon let it be,” said Carol. “I take it,” said the waiter, “that when I lug the bottle over here, you’ll have the cash to pay for it. I remember the time—”

  “Whatever I may lack,” said Oop, “will be forthcoming from Old Pete.”

  “Pete?” The waiter glanced at Maxwell. “Professor!” he exclaimed. “I had heard that you—”

  “That’s what I been trying to tell you,” said Oop. “That’s what we’re celebrating. He came back from the dead.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to,” said Oop. “Just rustle up the booze.”

  The waiter scurried off.

  “And now,” said Ghost to Maxwell, “please tell us what you are. You are no ghost, apparently. Or if you are, there’s been a vast improvement in procedure since the man I represent shuffled off his mortal coil.”

  VI

  “It seems,” Maxwell told them, “that I’m a split personality. One of me, I understand, got in an accident and died.”

  “But that’s impossible,” said Carol. “Split personality in the mental sense—sure, that can be understood. But physically—”

  “There’s nothing in heaven or Earth,” said Ghost, “that is impossible.”

  “That’s a bad quotation,” said Oop, “and, besides, you misquoted it.”

  He put a hand to his hairy chest and scratched vigorously with blunt fingers.

  “You needn’t look so horrified,” he said to Carol. “I itch. I’m a brute creature of nature, therefore I scratch. And I’m not naked, either. I have a pair of shorts on.”

  “He’s house-broken,” said Maxwell, “but just barely.”

  “To get back to this split personality,” said the girl, “can you tell us what actually did happen?”

  “I set out for one of the Coonskin planets,” said Maxwell, “and along the way somehow my wave pattern duplicated itself, and I wound up in two places.”

  “You mean there were two Pete Maxwells?”

  “That’s the way of it.”

  “If I were you,” said Oop, “I’d sue them. These Transportation people get away with murder. You could shake them down for plenty. Me and Ghost could testify for you. We went to your funeral.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I think Ghost and I should sue as well. For mental anguish. Our best friend cold and rigid in his casket and us prostrate with grief.”

  “We really were, you know,” said Ghost.

  “I have no doubt of it,” said Maxwell.

  “I must say,” said Coral, “that all three of you take it rather lightly.”

  “What do you want of us?” demanded Oop. “Sing hallelujahs, perhaps? Or bug out our eyes and be filled with the wonder of it? We lost a pal, and now he’s back again.”

  “But one of him is dead!”

  “Well,” said Oop, “so far as we were concerned, there was never more than one of him. And maybe this is better. Imagine the embarrassing situations that could develop if there were two of him.”

  Carol turned to Maxwell. “And you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “In a day or two, I’ll take some serious thought of it. Right now, I guess, I’m putting off thinking about it. To tell you the truth, when I do think about it, I get a little numb. But tonight I’ve got a pretty girl and two old friends and a great big pussy cat and a bottle of liquor to get rid of and later on some food.”

  He grinned at her. She shrugged.

  “I never saw such a crazy bunch,” she said. “I believe I like it.”

  “I like it, too,” said Oop. “Say whatever you will of it, this civilization of yours is a vast improvement over the days of yore. It was the luckiest day of my life when a Time team snatched me hence just at the point when some of my loving brother tribesmen were about to make a meal of me. Not that I blame them particularly, you understand. It had been a long, hard winter and the snow was deep and the game had been very scarce. And there were certain members of the tribe who felt they had a score or two to set
tle with me. And I’ll not kid you; they may have had a score. I was about to be knocked upon the head and, so to speak, dumped into the pot.”

  “Cannibalism!” Carol said, horrified.

  “Why, naturally,” he told her. “In those rough and ready days, it was quite acceptable. But, of course, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been really hungry, I take it. Gut hungry. So shriveled up with hunger—”

  He halted his talk and looked around.

  “The thing that is most comforting about this culture,” he declared, “is the abundance of the food. Back in the old days we had our ups and downs. We’d bag a mastodon and we’d eat until we vomited and then we’d eat some more.”

  Ghost said, warningly, “I doubt that this is a proper subject for dinner conversation.” Oop glanced at Carol.

  “You must say this much for me,” he insisted. “I’m honest. When I mean vomit, I say vomit and not regurgitate.”

  The waiter brought the liquor, thumping the bottle and the ice bucket down upon the table.

  “You want to order now?” he asked.

  “We ain’t decided yet,” said Oop, “if we’re going to eat in this crummy joint. It’s all right to get liquored up in, but—”

  “Then, sir,” the waiter said, and laid down the check.

  Oop dug into his pockets and came up with cash. Maxwell pulled the bucket and the bottle close and began fixing drinks.

  “We’re going to eat here, aren’t we?” asked Carol. “If Sylvester doesn’t get that steak you promised him, I don’t know What will happen. He’s been so patient and so good, with the smell of all the food. . . .”

  “He’s already had one steak,” Maxwell pointed out. “How much can he eat?”

  “An unlimited amount,” said Oop. “In the old days one of them monsters would polish off an elk in a single sitting. Did I ever tell you—”

  “Yes,” said Ghost.

  “But that was a cooked steak,” protested Carol, “and he likes them raw. Besides, it was a small one.”

  “Oop,” said Maxwell, “get that waiter back here. You are good at it. You have the voice for it.”

  Oop signaled with a brawny arm and bellowed. He waited for a moment, then bellowed once again, without results.

  “He won’t pay attention to me,” Oop growled. “Maybe it’s not our waiter. I never am able to tell them monkeys apart. They all look alike to me.”

  “I don’t like the crowd tonight,” said Ghost. “I have been watching it. There’s trouble in the air.”

  “What is wrong with it?” asked Maxwell.

  “There are an awful lot of creeps from English Lit. This is not their hangout. Mostly the crowd here are Time and Supernatural.

  “You mean this Shakespeare business?”

  “That might be it,” said Ghost.

  Maxwell handed Carol her drink, pushed another across the table to Oop.

  “It seems a shame,” Carol said to Ghost, “not to give you one. Couldn’t you even sniff it, just a little.”

  “Don’t let it bother you,” said Oop. “The guy gets drunk on moonbeams. He can dance on rainbows. He has a lot of advantages you and I don’t have. For one thing, he’s immortal. What could kill a ghost?”

  “I’m not sure of that,” said Ghost.

  “There’s one thing that bothers me,” said Carol. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all,” said Ghost.

  “It’s this business of you not knowing who you are the ghost of. Is that true or is it just a joke?”

  “It is true,” said Ghost. “And I don’t mind telling you, it’s embarrassing and confusing. But I’ve just plain forgotten. From England—that much, at least, I know. But the name I can’t recall. I would suspect most other ghosts would know that much.”

  “We have no other ghosts,” said Maxwell. “Contacts with other ghosts, of course, and conversations and interviews with them. But no other ghost has ever come to live with us. Why did you do it, Ghost—come to live with us?”

  “He’s a natural chiseler,” said Oop. “Always figuring out the angles.”

  “You’re wrong there,” Maxwell said. “It’s damned little we can do for Ghost.”

  Said Ghost, “You give me a sense of reality.”

  “Well, no matter what the reason,” said Maxwell, “I am glad you did it.”

  “The three of you,” said Carol, “have been friends for a long, long time.”

  “And it seems strange to you?” asked Oop.

  “Well, yes, maybe it does,” she said.

  Sounds of scuffling came from the front of the place. Carol and Maxwell turned around in their chairs to look toward it, but there wasn’t much that one could see.

  A man suddenly loomed on top of the table and began to sing:

  “Hurrah for Old Bill Shakepeare,

  “He never wrote them plays.

  “He stayed at home and, chasing girls,

  Sang dirty rondelays!”

  Jeers and catcalls broke out from over the room, and someone threw something that went sailing past the singer. Part of the crowd took up the song:

  “Hurrah for Old Bill Shakespeare;

  “He never wrote them. . . .”

  Someone with a bull voice howled: “To hell with Old Bill Shakespeare!”

  The room exploded into action. Chairs went over. There were other people on top of tables. Shouts reverberated, and there was shoving and pushing. Fists began to fly. Various items went sailing through the air.

  Maxwell sprang to his feet, reached out an arm and swept it back, shoving Carol behind him. Oop came charging across the table top with a wild warwhoop. His foot caught the bucket and sent the ice cubes flying.

  “I’ll mow ’em down,” he yelled at Maxwell. “You pile ’em to one side!”

  Maxwell saw a fist coming at him out of nowhere and ducked to one side, bringing his own fist up in a vicious jab, hitting out at nothing, but aiming in the direction from which the fist had come. Over his shoulder came Oop’s brawny arm, with a massive fist attached. It smacked into a face with a splattering sound, and out beyond the table a figure went slumping to the floor.

  Something heavy and traveling fast caught Maxwell behind the ear, and he went down. Feet surged all around him. Someone stepped on his hand. Someone fell on top of him. Above him, seemingly from a long ways off, he heard Oop’s wild whooping.

  Twisting around, he shoved off the body that had fallen across him and staggered to his feet.

  A hand grabbed him by the elbow and twisted him around.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Oop. “Someone will get hurt.”

  Carol was backed against the table, bent over, With her hands clutching the scruff of Sylvester’s neck. Sylvester was standing on his hind legs and pawing the air with his forelegs. Snarls were rumbling in his throat, and his long fangs gleamed.

  “If we don’t get him out of here,” said Oop, “that cat will get his steak.”

  He swooped down and wrapped an arm around the cat, lifting him by the middle, hugging him tight against his chest.

  “Take care of the girl,” Oop told Maxwell. “There’s a back door around here somewhere. And don’t leave that bottle behind. We’ll need it later on.”

  Maxwell reached out and grabbed the bottle.

  There was no sign of Ghost.

  VII

  “I’m a coward,” Ghost confessed. “I admit that I turn chicken at the sight of violence.”

  “And you,” said Oop, “the one guy in the world no one can lay a mitt on.”

  They sat at the rude, square, rickety table that Oop once, in a moment of housekeeping energy, had knocked together from rough boards. Carol pushed away her plate. “I was starved,” she said, “but not any more.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Oop. “Look at our putty cat.” Sylvester was curled up in front of the fireplace, his bobbed tail clamped down tight against his rump, his furry paws covering his nose. His whiskers stirred gently as his
breath went in and out.

  “That’s the first time in my life,” said Oop, “I ever saw a saber-toother have more than he could eat.”

  He reached out for the bottle and shook it. It had an empty sound. He lumbered to his feet and went across the floor, knelt and raised a small door set into the floor, reaching down with his arm and searching in the space underneath the door. He brought up a glass fruit jar and set it to one side. He brought up a second fruit jar and set it beside the first. Finally he came up triumphantly with a bottle.

  He put the fruit jars back and closed the door. Back at the table, he snapped the sealer off the bottle and reached out to pour drinks.

  “You guys don’t want ice,” he said. “It just dilutes the booze. Besides, I haven’t any.”

  He jerked a thumb back toward the door hidden in the floor. “My cache,” he said. “I keep a jug or two hid out. Some day I might break a leg or something and the doc would say I couldn’t drink.”

  “Not because of a broken leg,” said Ghost.

  “Well, then, something else,” said Oop.

  They sat contentedly with their drinks, Ghost staring at the fire. Outside a rising wind worried at the shack.

  “I’ve never had a better meal,” said Carol. “First time I ever cooked my own steak stuck on a stick above an open fire.”

  Oop belched contentedly. “That’s the way we did it back in the Old Stone Age. That, or eat it raw, like the saber-toother. We didn’t have no stoves or ovens or fancy things like that.”

  “I have the feeling,” said Maxwell, “that it would be better not to ask, but where did you get that rack of ribs? I imagine all the butcher shops were closed.”

  “Well, they were,” admitted Oop, “but there was this one with a back door that had this itty bitty padlock. . . .”

  “Some day,” said Ghost, “you’ll get into trouble.”