The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  We should have guessed it long ago, Bishop told himself. But even if some of us might have entertained the thought, that we were either pet or playmate, we would have pushed it far away from us, would have refused to recognize it, for our pride is too tender and too raw for a thought like that.

  “There you are, sir,” said the cabinet. “Almost as good as new. Tomorrow you can take the dressing off.”

  He stood before the cabinet without answering. He withdrew his hand and let it fall to his side, like so much dead weight.

  Without asking if he wanted it, the cabinet produced a drink.

  “I made it long and strong,” said the cabinet. “I thought you needed it.”

  “Thank you,” Bishop said.

  He took the drink and stood there with it, not touching it, not wanting to touch it until he’d finished out the thought.

  And the thought would not finish out.

  There was something wrong. Something that didn’t track.

  Our pride is too raw and tender—

  There was something there, some extra words that badly needed saying.

  “There is something wrong, sir.”

  “Nothing wrong,” said Bishop.

  “But your drink.”

  “I’ll get around to it.”

  The Normans had sat their horses on that Saturday afternoon, with the leopard banners curling in the breeze, with the pennons on their lances fluttering, with the sun upon their armor and the scabbards clinking as the horses pranced. They had charged, as history said they had, and they were beaten back. That was entirely right, for it had not been until late afternoon that the Saxon wall was broken and the final fight around the dragon standard had not taken place until it was nearly dark.

  But there had been no Taillefer, riding in the fore to throw up his sword and sing.

  On that history had been wrong.

  A couple of centuries later, more than likely, some copyist had whiled away a monotonous afternoon by writing into the prosaic story of the battle the romance and the glitter of the charge of Taillefer. Writing it in protest against the four blank walls, against his Spartan food, against the daily dullness when spring was in the air and a man should be in the fields or woods instead of shut indoors, hunched with his quills and inkpots.

  And that is the way it is with us, thought Bishop. We write the half-truth and the half-lie in our letters home. We conceal a truth or we obscure a fact or we add a line or two that, if not a downright lie, is certainly misleading.

  We do not face up to facts, he thought. We gloss over the man crawling in the grass, with his torn-out guts snagging on the brambles. We write in the Taillefer.

  And if we only did it in our letters, it would not be so bad. But we do it to ourselves. We protect our pride by lying to ourselves. We shield our dignity by deliberate indignation.

  “Here,” he said to the cabinet, “have a drink on me.”

  He set the glass, still full, on the top of the cabinet.

  The cabinet gurgled in surprise.

  “I do not drink,” it said.

  “Then take it back and put it in the bottle.”

  “I can’t do that,” said the cabinet, horrified. “It’s already mixed.”

  “Separate it, then.”

  “It can’t be separated,” wailed the cabinet. “You surely don’t expect me—”

  There was a little swish and Maxine stood in the center of the room.

  She smiled at Bishop.

  “What goes on?” she asked.

  The cabinet wailed at her. “He wants me to unmix a drink. He wants me to separate it, the liquor from the mix. He knows I can’t do that.”

  “My, my,” she said. “I thought you could do anything.”

  “I can’t unravel a drink,” the cabinet said primly. “Why don’t you take it off my hands?”

  “That’s a good idea,” said the girl. She walked forward and picked up the drink.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked Bishop. “Turning chicken on us?”

  “I just don’t want a drink,” said Bishop. “Hasn’t a man got a right to—”

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course you have.”

  She sipped the drink, looking at him above the rim.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Burned it.”

  “You’re old enough not to play with fire.”

  “You’re old enough not to come barging into a room this way,” Bishop told her. “One of these days you’ll reassemble yourself in the precise spot where someone else is standing.”

  She giggled. “That would be fun,” she said. “Think of you and I—”

  “It would be a mess,” said Bishop.

  “Invite me to sit down,” said Maxine. “Let’s act civilized and social.”

  “Sure, sit down,” said Bishop.

  She picked out a couch.

  “I’m interested in this business of teleporting yourself,” said Bishop. “I’ve asked you before, but you never told me—”

  “It just came to me,” she said.

  “But you can’t teleport. Humans aren’t parapsychic—”

  “Some day, Buster, you’ll blow a fuse. You get so steamed up.”

  He went across the room and sat down beside her.

  “Sure, I get steamed up,” he said. “But—”

  “What now?”

  “Have you ever thought … well, have you ever tried to work at it? Like moving something else, some object—other than yourself?”

  “No, I never have.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, Buster. I drop in to have a drink with you and to forget myself. I didn’t come primed for a long technical discussion. I couldn’t anyway. I just don’t understand. There’s so much we don’t understand.”

  She looked at him and there was something very much like fright brimming in her eyes.

  “You pretend that you don’t mind,” she said. “But you do mind. You wear yourself out pretending that you don’t mind at all.”

  “Then let’s quit pretending,” Bishop said. “Let’s admit—”

  She had lifted the glass to drink and now, suddenly it slipped out of her hand.

  “Oh—”

  The glass halted before it struck the floor. It hovered for a moment, then it slowly rose. She reached out and grasped it.

  And then it slipped again from her suddenly shaking hand. This time it hit the floor and spilled.

  “Try it again,” said Bishop.

  She said, “I never tried. I don’t know how it happened. I just didn’t want to drop it, that was all. I wished I hadn’t dropped it and then—”

  “But the second time—”

  “You fool,” she screamed. “I tell you I didn’t try. I wasn’t putting on an exhibition for you. I tell you that I don’t know what happened.”

  “But you did it. It was a start.”

  “A start?”

  “You caught the glass before it hit the floor. You teleported it back into your hand.”

  “Look, Buster,” she said grimly, “quit kidding yourself. They’re watching all the time. They play little tricks like that. Anything for a laugh.”

  She rose, laughing at him, but there was a strangeness in her laughing.

  “You don’t give yourself a chance,” he told her. “You are so horribly afraid of being laughed at. You got to be a wise guy.”

  “Thanks for the drink,” she said.

  “But Maxine—”

  “Come up and see me sometime.”

  “Maxine! Wait!”

  But she was gone.

  XVII

  Watch for the clues, Morley had said, pacing up and down the room. Send us back the clues and we will do the rest. A foot in the door is all we expect
from you. Give us a foot inside the door and that is all we need.

  Clues, he had said.

  Not fact, but clues.

  And perhaps he had said clues instead of facts because he had been blinded like all the rest of them. Like the copyist who could not face up to the fact of battle without chivalry. Like those who wrote the letters home from Kimon. Like Maxine, who said quit kidding yourself, Buster, they’re watching all the time, they play little tricks like this.

  And here were facts.

  Facts he should send home to Morley.

  Except he couldn’t send them.

  Facts that he was ashamed to send.

  You couldn’t write:

  We are pets. The children house and feed us. They throw sticks for us to chase. They like to hear us bark—

  He sweated as he thought of it.

  Or the kinder fact:

  We are playmates—

  You couldn’t write that, either. You simply couldn’t write it.

  And yet, he said, the facts are there—the truth is there. And you must admit it. You must admit the fact. And you must admit the truth.

  If not for Morley, if not for Earth, if not for fellow man, then you must admit it for yourself.

  For a man may fool his friends, he may deceive the world—but he must be truthful with himself. Let’s forget the bitterness, he told himself—the bitterness and hurt. Let’s forget the pride.

  Let us look for facts.

  The Kimonians are a race more culturally advanced than we are, which means, in other words, that they are farther along the road of evolution, farther from the ape. And what does it take to advance along the evolutionary road beyond the high tide of my own race of Earth?

  Not mere intelligence alone, for that is not enough.

  What then would it take to make the next major stride in evolution?

  Perhaps philosophy rather than intelligence—a seeking for a way to put to better use the intelligence that one already had, a greater understanding and a more adequate appreciation of human values in relation to the universe.

  And if the Kimonians had that greater understanding, if they had won their way through better understanding to closer brotherhood with the galaxy, then it would be inconceivable that they’d take the members of another intelligent race to serve as puppy dogs for children. Or even as playmates for their children, unless in the fact of playing with their children there be some greater value, not to their child alone, but to the child of Earth, than the happiness and wonder of such association. They would be alive to the psychic damage that might be done because of such a practice, would not for a moment run the danger of that damage happening unless out of it might come some improvement or some change.

  He sat and thought of it and it seemed right, for even on his native planet history showed increasing concern with social values as the culture improved.

  And something else.

  Parapsychic powers must not come too soon in human evolution, for they could be used disastrously by a culture that was not equipped, emotionally and intellectually, to handle them. No culture which had not reached an adult stage could have parapsychic powers, for they were nothing to be fooled around with by an adolescent culture.

  In that respect at least, Bishop told himself, the Kimonians are the adults and we are the adolescents. In comparison with the Kimonians, we have no right to consider ourselves any more than children.

  It was hard to take.

  He gagged on it.

  Swallow it, he told himself. Swallow it.

  The cabinet said, “It is late, sir. You must be getting tired.”

  “You want me to go to bed?”

  “It’s a suggestion, sir.”

  “All right,” he said.

  He rose and started for the bedroom, smiling to himself.

  Sent off to bed, he thought—just as a child is sent.

  And going.

  Not saying: “I’ll go when I am ready.”

  Not standing on your adult dignity.

  Not throwing a tantrum, not beating your heels upon the floor and howling.

  Going off to bed—like a child when it’s told to go.

  Maybe that’s the way, he thought. Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe that’s the only answer.

  He swung around.

  “Cabinet.”

  “What is it, sir?”

  “Nothing,” Bishop said. “Nothing at all … that is. Thanks for fixing up my hand.”

  “That’s quite all right,” said the cabinet. “Good night.”

  Maybe that’s the answer.

  To act like a child.

  And what does a child do?

  He goes to bed when he is told.

  He minds his elders.

  He goes to school.

  He—Wait a minute!

  He goes to school!

  He goes to school because there is a lot to learn. He goes to kindergarten so that he can get into first grade and he goes to high school so that he can go to college. He realizes there is a lot to learn, that before he takes his place in the adult world it must be learned and that he has to work to learn.

  But I went to school, Bishop told himself. I went for years and years. I studied hard and I passed an examination that a thousand others failed to pass. I qualified for Kimon.

  But just suppose.

  You went to kindergarten to qualify for first grade.

  You went to high school to qualify for college.

  You went to Earth to qualify for Kimon.

  You might have a doctorate on Earth, but still be no more than a kindergarten youngster when you got to Kimon.

  Monty knew a bit of telepathy and so did some of the others. Maxine could teleport herself and she had made the glass stop before it hit the floor. Perhaps the others could, too.

  And they’d just picked it up.

  Although just telepathy or stopping a glass from hitting the floor would not be all of it. There’d be much more of it. Much more to the culture of Kimon than the parapsychic arts.

  Maybe we are ready, he thought. Maybe we’re almost finished with our adolescence. Maybe we are on the verge of being ready for an adult culture. Could that be why the Kimonians let us in, the only ones in the galaxy they are willing to let in?

  His brain reeled with the thought.

  On Earth only one of every thousand passed the examination that sent them on to Kimon. Maybe here on Kimon only another one in every thousand would be qualified to absorb the culture that Kimon offered them.

  But before you could even start to absorb the culture, before you could start to learn, before you ever went to school, you’d have to admit that you didn’t know. You’d have to admit that you were a child. You couldn’t go on having tantrums. You couldn’t be a wise guy. You couldn’t keep on polishing up false pride to hold as a shield between you and the culture that waited for your understanding.

  Morley, Bishop said, I may have the answer—the answer that you’re awaiting back on Earth.

  But I can’t tell it to you. It’s something that can’t be told. It’s a thing that each one must find out for himself.

  And the pity of it is that Earth is not readily equipped to find it out. It is not a lesson that is often taught on Earth.

  Armies and guns could not storm the citadel of Kimonian culture, for you simply could not fight a war with a parapsychic people. Earth aggressiveness and business cunning likewise would fail to crack the dead-pan face of Kimon.

  There is only one way, Morley, Bishop said, talking to his friend. There is only one thing that will crack this planet and that is humility.

  And Earthmen are not humble creatures.

  Long ago they forgot the meaning of humility.

  But here it’s different.

  Here you have to b
e different.

  You start out by saying, I don’t know.

  Then you say, I want to know.

  Then you say, I’ll work hard to learn.

  Maybe, Bishop thought, that’s why they brought us here, so that the one of us in every thousand who has a chance of learning would get that chance to learn. Maybe they are watching, hoping that there may be more than one in every thousand. Maybe they are more anxious for us to learn than we are to learn. For they may be lonely in a galaxy where there are no others like them.

  Could it be that the ones at this hotel were the failures, the ones who had never tried, or who might have tried and could not pass.

  And the others—the one out of every thousand—where were they?

  He could not even guess.

  There were no answers.

  It was all superstition.

  It was a premise built upon a pipedream—built on wishful thinking.

  He’d wake up in the morning and know that it was wrong.

  He’d go down to the bar and have a drink with Maxine or with Monty and laugh at himself for the things that he’d dreamed up.

  School, he’d told himself. But it wouldn’t be a school—at least not the kind of school he’d ever known before.

  I wish it could be so, he thought.

  The cabinet said, “You’d better get on to bed, sir.”

  “I suppose I should,” said Bishop. “It’s been a long, hard day.”

  “You’ll want to get up early,” said the cabinet, “so you aren’t late to school.”

  During his fifty-five-year career, CLIFFORD D. SIMAK produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.

  Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.