The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Year after year Earth men and women dribbled out to Kimon, settled there, prospered, wrote their letters home.

  Of those who went out, none came back. Once you had lived on Kimon, you could not bear the thought of going back to Earth.

  And yet, in all those years, the sum of knowledge concerning Kimon, its inhabitants and its culture, was very slight indeed. What knowledge there was, the only knowledge that there was, was compiled from the letters delivered meticulously once each week to the desk of the postal chief in London.

  The letters spoke of wages and salaries a hundred times the wages and salaries that were paid on Earth, of magnificent business opportunities, of the Kimonian culture and the Kimonians themselves, but in no detail, of culture or of business or any other factor, were the letters specific.

  And perhaps the recipients of the letters did not mind too much the lack of specific information, for almost every letter carried with it a sheaf of notes, all crisp and new, and very, very legal, backed by tons of uranium, bushels of diamonds, stacked bars of gold and other similar knick-knacks deposited from time to time beside the desk of the World Bank’s president.

  It became, in time, the ambition of every family on the Earth to send at least one relative to Kimon, for a relative on Kimon virtually spelled an assured and sufficient income for the rest of the clan for life.

  Naturally, the legend of Kimon grew. Much that was said about it was untrue, of course. Kimon, the letters protested, did not have streets paved with solid gold, since there were no streets. Nor did Kimonian damsels wear gowns of diamond dust—the damsels of Kimon wore not much of anything.

  But to those whose understanding went beyond streets of gold and gowns of diamonds, it was well understood that in Kimon lay possibilities vastly greater than either gold or diamonds. For here was a planet with a culture far in advance of Earth, a people who had schooled themselves or had naturally developed parapsychic powers. On Kimon one could learn the techniques that would revolutionize galactic industry and communications; on Kimon one might discover philosophy that would set mankind overnight on a new and better—and more profitable?—path.

  The legend grew, interpreted by each according to his intellect and his way of thought, and grew and grew and grew …

  Earth’s government was very helpful to those who wished to go to Kimon, for government, as well as individuals, could appreciate the opportunities for the revolution of industry and the evolution of human thought. But since there had been no invitation to grant diplomatic recognition, Earth’s government sat and waited, scheming, doing all it could to settle as many of its people on Kimon as was possible. But only the best, for even the densest bureaucrat recognized that on Kimon Earth must put its best foot forward.

  Why the Kimonians allowed Earth to send its people was a mystery for which there was no answer. But apparently Earth was the only other planet in the galaxy which had been allowed to send its people. The Earthmen and the Kimonians, of course, both were humanoid, but this was not an adequate answer, either, for they were not the only humanoids in the galaxy. For its own comfort, Earth assumed that a certain common understanding, a similar outlook, a certain parallel evolutionary trend—with Earth a bit behind, of course—between Earth and Kimon might account for Kimon’s qualified hospitality.

  Be that as if may, Kimon was a galactic El Dorado, a never-never land, a place to get ahead, the place to spend your life, the country at the rainbow’s end.

  III

  Selden Bishop stood in the parklike area where the gig had landed him, for Kimon had no spaceports, as it likewise failed to have many other things.

  He stood, surrounded by his luggage, and watched the gig drive spaceward to rendezvous with the liner’s orbit.

  When he could see the gig no longer, he sat down on one of his bags and waited.

  The park was faintly Earthlike, but the similarity was only in the abstract, for in each particular there was a subtle difference that said this was an alien planet. The trees were too slim and the flowers just a shade too loud and the grass was off a shade or two from the grass you saw on Earth. The birds, if they were birds, were more lizardlike than the birds of Earth and their feathers were put on wrong and weren’t quite the color one associated with plumage. The breeze had a faint perfume upon it that was no perfume of Earth, but an alien odor that smelled as a color looked, and Bishop tried to decide, but couldn’t, which color it might be.

  Sitting on his bag, in the middle of the park, he tried to drum up a little enthusiasm, tried to whistle up some triumph that he finally was on Kimon, but the best that he could achieve was a thankfulness that he’d made it with the twenty still intact.

  He would need a little cash to get along on until he could find a job. But, he told himself, he shouldn’t have to wait too long before he found a job. The thing, of course, was not to take the first one offered him, but to shop around a little and find the one for which he was best fitted. And that, he knew, might take a little time.

  Thinking of it, he wished that he had more than a twenty. He should have allowed himself a bigger margin, but that would have meant something less than the best luggage he could buy and perhaps not enough of it, off-the-rack suits instead of tailored, and all other things accordingly.

  It was, he told himself, important that he made the best impression, and sitting there and thinking it over, he couldn’t bring himself to regret the money he had spent to make a good impression.

  Maybe he should have asked Morley for a loan. Morley would have given him anything he asked and he could have paid it back as soon as he got a job. But he had hated to ask, for to ask, he now admitted, would have detracted from his new-found importance as a man who had been selected to make the trip to Kimon. Everyone, even Morley, looked up to a man who was sent to blast for Kimon, and you couldn’t go around asking for a loan or for other favors.

  He remembered that last visit he had with Morley, and looking back at it now, he saw that, while Morley was his friend, that last visit had a flavor, more or less, of a diplomatic job that Morley had to carry out.

  Morley had gone far and was going farther in the diplomatic service. He looked like a diplomat and he talked like one and he had a better grasp, old heads at the department said, of Sector Nineteen politics and economics than any of the other younger men. He wore a clipped mustache that had a frankly cultivated look, and his hair was always quite in place, and his body, when he walked, was like a panther walking.

  They had sat in Morley’s diggings and had been all comfortable and friendly, and then Morley had gotten up and paced up and down the room with his panther walk.

  “We’ve been friends for a long, long time,” said Morley. “We’ve been in a lot of scrapes together.”

  And the two of them had smiled, remembering some of the scrapes they had been in together.

  “When I heard you were going out to Kimon,” Morley said, “I was pleased about it naturally. I’d be pleased at anything that came your way. But I was pleased, as well, for another reason. I told myself here finally was a man who could do a job and find out what we want.”

  “What do you want?” Bishop had asked and, as he remembered it, he had asked it as if he might be asking whether Morley wanted Scotch or bourbon. Although, come to think of it, he never would have asked that particular question, for all the young men in the alien relations section religiously drank Scotch. But, anyhow, he asked it casually, although he sensed that there was nothing casual at all about the situation.

  He could smell the scent of cloak and dagger and he caught a sudden glimpse of huge official worry, and for an instant he was a little cold and scared.

  “There must be some way to crack that planet,” Morley had told him, “but we haven’t found it yet. So far as the Kimonians are concerned, none of the rest of us, none of the other planets, officially exist. There’s not a single planet accorded diplomatic stat
us. On Kimon there is not a single official representative of any other people. They don’t seem to trade with anyone, and yet they must trade with someone, for no planet, no culture can exist in complete self-sufficiency. They must have diplomatic relations somewhere, with someone. There must be some reason, beyond the obvious one that we are an inferior culture, why they do not recognize Earth. For even in the more barbaric days of Earth there was official recognition of many governments and peoples who were cultural inferiors to the recognizing nation.”

  “You want me to find out all this?”

  “No,” said Morley. “Not all that. All we want are clues. Somewhere there is the clue that we are looking for, the hint that will tell us what the actual situation is. All we need is the opening wedge—the foot in the door. Give us that and we will do the rest.”

  “There have been others,” Bishop told him. “Thousands of others. I’m not the only one who ever went to Kimon.”

  “For the last fifty years or more,” said Morley, “the section has talked to all the others, before they went out, exactly as I’m talking to you now.”

  “And you’ve got nothing?”

  “Nothing,” said Morley. “Or almost nothing. Or nothing, anyhow, that counted or made any sense.”

  “They failed—”

  “They failed,” Morley told him, “because once on Kimon they forgot about Earth…well, not forgot about it, that’s not entirely it. But they lost all allegiance to it. They were Kimon-blinded.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Morley. “It’s the best explanation that we have. The trouble is that we talk to them only once. None of them come back. We can write letters to them, certainly. We can try to jog them—indirectly, of course. But we can’t ask them outright.”

  “Censorship?”

  “Not censorship,” said Morley, “although they may have that, too; but mostly telepathy. The Kimonians would know if we tried to impress anything too forcibly upon their minds. And we can’t take the chance of a simple thought undoing all the work that we have done.”

  “But you’re telling me.”

  “You’ll forget it,” Morley said. “You will have several weeks in which you can forget it—push it to the back of your mind. But not entirely—not entirely.”

  “I understand,” Bishop told him.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Morley. “It’s nothing sinister. You’re not to look for that. It may be just a simple thing. The way we comb our hair. There’s some reason—perhaps many little ones. And we must know those reasons.”

  Morley had switched it off as quickly as he had begun it, had poured another round of drinks, had sat down again and talked of their school days and of the girls they’d known and of week-ends in the country.

  It had been, all in all, a very pleasant evening.

  But that had been weeks ago, and since then he’d scarcely remembered it and now here he was on Kimon, sitting on one of his bags in the middle of a park, waiting for a welcoming Kimonian to show up.

  All the time that he’d been waiting, he had been prepared for the Kimonian’s arrival. He knew what a Kimonian looked like and he should not have been surprised.

  But when the native came, he was.

  For the native was six foot, ten, and almost a godlike being, a sculptured humanoid who was, astonishingly, much more human than he had thought to find.

  One moment he had sat alone in the little parklike glade and the next the native was standing by his side.

  Bishop came to his feet and the Kimonian said, “We are glad you are here. Welcome to Kimon, sir.”

  The native’s inflection was as precise and beautiful as his sculptured body.

  “Thank you,” Bishop said, and knew immediately that the two words were inadequate and that his voice was slurred and halting compared with the native’s voice. And, looking at the Kimonian, he had the feeling that by comparison, he cut a rumpled, seedy figure.

  He reached into his pocket for his papers and his fingers were all thumbs, so that he fumbled for them and finally dug them out—dug is the word exactly—and handed them to the waiting being.

  The Kimonian flicked them—that was it, flicked them—then he said. “Mr. Selden Bishop. Very glad to know you. Your I.Q. rating, 160, is very satisfactory. Your examination showing, if I may say so, is extraordinary. Recommendations good. Clearance from Earth in order. And I see you made good time. Very glad to have you.”

  “But—” said Bishop. Then he clamped his mouth tight shut. He couldn’t tell this being he’d merely flicked the pages and could not possibly have read them. For, obviously, he had.

  “You had a pleasant flight, Mr. Bishop?”

  “A most pleasant one,” said Bishop and was filled with sudden pride that he could answer so easily and urbanely.

  “Your luggage,” said the native, “is in splendid taste.”

  “Why, thank you—” then Bishop was filled with rage. What right had this person to patronize his luggage!

  But the native did not appear to notice.

  “You wish to go to the hotel?”

  “If you please,” said Bishop, speaking very tightly, holding himself in check.

  “Please allow me,” said the native.

  Bishop blurred for just a second—a definite sense of blurring—as if the universe had gone swiftly out of focus, then he was standing, not in the parklike glade, but in a one-man-sized alcove off a hotel lobby, with his bags stacked neatly beside him.

  IV

  He had missed the triumph before, sitting in the glade, waiting for the native, after the gig had left him, but now it struck him, a heady, drunken triumph that surged through his body and rose in his throat to choke him.

  This was Kimon! He finally was on Kimon! After all the years of study, he was here—the fabulous place he’d worked for many years to reach.

  A high I.Q., they’d said behind their half-raised hands—a high I.Q. and many years of study, and a stiff examination that not more than one in every thousand passed.

  He stood in the alcove, with the sense of hiding there, to give himself a moment in which to regain his breath at the splendor of what had finally come to pass, to gain the moment it would take for the unreasoning triumph to have its way with him and go.

  For the triumph was something that must not be allowed to last. It was something that he must not show. It was a personal thing and as something personal it must be hidden deep.

  He might be one of a thousand back on Earth, but here he stood on no more than equal footing with the ones who had come before him. Perhaps not quite on equal footing, for they would know the ropes and he had yet to learn them.

  He watched them in the lobby—the lucky and the fabulous ones who had preceded him, the glittering company he had dreamed about during all the weary years—the company that he presently would join, the ones of Earth who were adjudged fit to go to Kimon.

  For only the best must go—the best and smartest and the quickest. Earth must put her best foot forward, for how otherwise would Earth ever persuade Kimon that she was a sister planet?

  At first the people in the lobby had been no more than a crowd, a crowd that shone and twinkled, but with that curious lack of personality which goes with a crowd. But now, as he watched, the crowd dissolved into individuals and he saw them, not as a group, but as the men and women he presently would know.

  He did not see the bell captain until the native stood in front of him, and the bell captain, if anything, was taller and more handsome than the man who’d met him in the glade.

  “Good evening, sir,” the captain said. “Welcome to the Ritz.”

  Bishop started. “The Ritz? Oh, yes, I had forgotten. This place is the Ritz.”

  “We’re glad to have you with us,” said the captain. “We hope your stay will prove to be a long one.”


  “Certainly,” said Bishop. “That is, I hope so, too.”

  “We had been notified,” the captain said, “that you were arriving, Mr. Bishop. We took the liberty of reserving rooms for you. I trust they will be satisfactory.”

  “I am sure they will be,” Bishop said.

  As if anything on Kimon could be unsatisfactory!

  “Perhaps you will want to dress,” the captain said. “There still is time for dinner.”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Bishop. “Most assuredly I will.”

  And wished he had not said it.

  “We’ll send up the bags,” the captain said. “No need to register. That is taken care of. If you will permit me, sir.”

  V

  The rooms were satisfactory. There were three of them.

  Sitting in a chair, Bishop wondered how he’d ever pay for them.

  Remembering the lonely twenty credits, he was seized with a momentary panic.

  He’d have to get a job sooner than he planned, for the twenty credits wouldn’t go too far with a layout like this one. Although he supposed if he asked for credit it would be given him.

  But he recoiled from the idea of asking for credit, of being forced to admit that he was short of cash. So far he’d done everything correctly. He’d arrived aboard a liner and not a battered trader; his luggage—what had the native said?—was in splendid taste; his wardrobe was all that could be expected; and he hoped that he’d not communicated to anyone the panic and dismay he’d felt at the luxury of the suite.

  He got up from the chair and prowled about the room. There was no carpeting, for the floor itself was soft and yielding, and you left momentary tracks as you walked, but they puffed back and smoothed out almost immediately.

  He walked over to a window and stood looking out of it. Evening had fallen and the landscape was covered with a dusty blue—and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, but rolling countryside. There were no roads that he could see and no lights that would have told of other habitations.