The Ghost of a Model T: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  He stopped in the lobby to pick up his mail, hoping there might be a package from PugAlNash. In the excitement of leaving for the weekend, he’d forgotten to take along the box of leaf and three days without it had impressed upon him how much he had come to rely upon it. Remembering how low his supply was getting he became a little jittery to think that more might not be forthcoming.

  There was a batch of letters, but no box from Pug.

  And he might have known, he told himself, that there wouldn’t be, for the box never came until he was entirely out. At first, he recalled, he wondered by what prophetic insight Pug might have known when the leaf was gone, how he could have gauged the shipping time to have it arrive exactly when there was need of it. By now he no longer thought about it, for it was one of those unbelievable things it does no good to think about.

  “Glad to have you back,” the clerk told him cheerfully. “You had a good weekend, Mr. Packer?”

  “Tolerable,” growled Packer, grumpily, heading for the lift.

  Before he reached it, he was apprehended by Elmer Lang, the manager of the building.

  “Mr. Packer,” he whinnied, “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Well, go ahead and talk.”

  “It’s about the mice, Mr. Packer.”

  “What mice?”

  “Mrs. Foshay tells me there are mice in your apartment.”

  Packer drew himself up to the fullness of his rather dumpy height.

  “They are your mice, Lang,” he said. “You get rid of them.”

  Lang wrung his hands. “But how can I, Mr. Packer? It’s the way you keep your place. All that litter in there. You’ve got to clean it up.”

  “That litter, I’ll have you know, sir, is probably one of the most unique stamp collections in the entire galaxy. I’ve gotten behind a little in keeping it together, true, but I will not have you call it litter.”

  “I could have Miles, the caretaker, help you get it straightened out.”

  “I tell you, sir,” said Packer, “the only one who could help me is one trained in philately. Does your caretaker happen to be –”

  “But, Mr. Packer,” Lang pleaded, “all that paper and all those boxes are nesting places for them. I can do nothing about the mice unless I can get in there and get some of it cleared away.”

  “Cleared away!” exploded Packer. “Do you realize, sir, what you are talking of? Somewhere hidden in that vast stock of material, is a certain cover—to you, sir, an envelope with stamps and postmarks on it—for which I have been offered a quarter million dollars if I ever turn it up. And that is one small piece of all the material I have there. I ask you, Lang, is that the sort of stuff that you clear away?”

  “But, Mr. Packer, I cannot allow it to go on. I must insist –”

  The lift arrived and Packer stalked into it haughtily, leaving the manager standing in the lobby, twisting at his hands.

  Packer whuffled his mustache at the operator.

  “Busybody,” he said.

  “What was that, sir?”

  “Mrs. Foshay, my man. She’s a busybody.”

  “I do believe,” said the operator judiciously, “that you may be entirely right.”

  Packer hoped the corridor would be empty and it was. He unlocked his door and stepped inside.

  A bubbling noise stopped him in his tracks.

  He stood listening, unbelieving, just a little frightened.

  The bubbling noise went on and on.

  He stepped cautiously out into the room and as he did he saw it.

  The wastebasket beside the desk was full of a bubbling yellow stuff that in several places had run down the sides and formed puddles on the floor.

  Packer stalked the basket, half prepared to turn and run.

  But nothing happened. The yellowness in the basket simply kept on bubbling.

  It was a rather thick and gooey mess, not frothy, and the bubbling was no more than a noise that it was making, for in the strict sense of the word, he saw, it was not bubbling.

  Packer sidled closer and thrust out a hand toward the basket. It did not snap at him. It paid no attention to him.

  He poked a finger at it and the stuff was fairly solid and slightly warm and he got the distinct impression that it was alive.

  And immediately he thought of the broth-soaked cover he had thrown in the basket. It was not so unusual that he should think of it, for the yellow of the brew within the basket was the exact color of the stamp upon the cover,

  He walked around the desk and dropped the mail he’d picked up in the lobby. He sat down ponderously in the massive office chair.

  So a stamp had come to life, he thought, and that certainly was a queer one. But no more queer, perhaps, than the properties of many other stamps, for while Earth had exported the idea of their use, a number of peculiar adaptations of the idea had evolved.

  And now, he thought a little limply, I’ll have to get this mess in the basket out of here before Lang comes busting in.

  He worried a bit about what Lang had said about cleaning up the place and he got slightly sore about it, for he paid good money for these diggings and he paid promptly in advance and he was never any bother. And besides, he’d been here for twenty years, and Lang should consider that.

  He finally got up from the chair and lumbered around the desk. He bent and grasped the wastebasket, being careful to miss the places where the yellow goo had run down the sides, He tried to lift it and the basket did not move. He tugged as hard as he could pull and the basket stayed exactly where it was. He squared off and aimed a kick at it and the basket didn’t budge.

  He stood off a ways and glared at it, with his whiskers bristling. As if he didn’t have all the trouble that he needed, without this basket deal! Somehow or other, he was going to have to get the apartment straightened out and get rid of the mice, He should be looking for the Polaris cover. And he’d lost or mislaid his tongs and would have to waste his time going out to get another pair.

  But first of all, he’d have to get this basket out of here. Somehow it had become stuck to the floor—maybe some of the yellow goo had run underneath the edge of it and dried. Maybe if he had a pinch bar or some sort of lever that he could jab beneath it, he could pry it loose.

  From the basket the yellow stuff made merry bubbling noises at him.

  He clapped his hat back on his head and went out and slammed and locked the door behind him.

  It was a fine summer day and he walked around a little, trying to run his many problems through his mind, but no matter what he thought of, he always came back to the basket brimming with the yellow mess and he knew he’d never be able to get started on any of the other tasks until he got rid of it.

  So he hunted up a hardware store and bought a good-sized pinch bar and headed back for the apartment house. The bar, he knew, might mark up the floor somewhat, but if he could get under the edge of the basket with a bar that size he was sure that he could pry it loose.

  In the lobby, Lang descended on him.

  “Mr. Packer,” he said sternly, “where are you going with that bar?”

  “I went out and bought it to exterminate the mice.”

  “But, Mr. Packer –”

  “You want to get rid of those mice, don’t you?”

  “Why, certainly I do.”

  “It’s a desperate situation,” Packer told him gravely, “and one that may require very desperate measures.”

  “But that bar!”

  “I’ll exercise my best discretion,” Packer promised him. “I shall hit them easy.”

  He went up the lift with the bar. The sight of Lang’s discomfiture made him feel a little better and he managed to whistle a snatch of tune as he went down the hall.

  As he fumbled with the key, he heard the sound of rustling coming from beyond the door and he felt a c
hill go through him, for the rustlings were of a furtive sort and they sounded ominous.

  Good Lord, he thought, there can’t be that many mice in there!

  He grasped the bar more firmly and unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  The inside of the place was a storm of paper.

  He stepped in quickly and slammed the door behind him to keep the blowing paper from swooping out into the hall.

  Must have left a window open, he thought. But he knew he had not, and even if he had, it was quiet outside. There was not a breath of breeze.

  And what was happening inside the apartment was more than just a breeze.

  He stood with his back against the door and watched what was going on and shifted his grip on the bar so that it made a better club.

  The apartment was filled with a sleet of flying paper and a barrage of packets and a snowstorm of dancing stamps. There were open boxes standing on the floor and the paper and the stamps and packets were drifting down and chunking into these, and along the wall were other boxes, very neatly piled—and that was entirely wrong, for there had been nothing neat about the place when he had left it less than two hours before.

  But even as he watched, the activity slacked off. There was less stuff flying through the air and some of the boxes were closed by unseen hands and then flew off, all by themselves, to stack themselves with the other boxes.

  Poltergeists! he thought in terror, his mind scrambling back frantically over all that he had ever thought or read or heard to grasp some explanation.

  Then it was done and over.

  There was nothing flying through the air. All the boxes had been stacked. Everything was still.

  Packer stepped out into the room and stared in slack-jawed amazement.

  The desk and the tables shone. The drapes hung straight and clean. The carpeting looked as if it might be new. Chairs and small tables and lamps and other things, long forgotten, buried all these years beneath the accumulation of his collection, stood revealed and shining—dusted, cleaned and polished.

  And in the middle of all this righteous order stood the wastebasket, bubbling happily.

  Packer dropped the bar and headed for the desk.

  In front of him a window flapped open and he heard a swish and the bar went past him, flying for the window. It went out the window and slashed through the foliage of a tree, then the window closed and he lost sight of it.

  Packer took off his hat and tossed it on the desk.

  Immediately his hat lifted from the desk and sailed for a closet door. The closet door swung open and the hat ducked in. The door closed gently on it.

  Packer whuffled through his whiskers, He got out his handkerchief and mopped a glistening brow.

  “Funny goings-on,” he said to himself.

  Slowly, cautiously, he checked the place. All the boxes were stacked along one wall, three deep and piled from floor to ceiling. Three filing cabinets stood along another wall and he rubbed his eyes at that, for he had forgotten that there were three of them—for years he’d thought that he had only two. And all the rest of the place was neat and clean and it fairly gleamed.

  He walked from room to room and everywhere it was the same.

  In the kitchen the pots and pans were all in place and the dishes stacked primly in the cupboard. The stove and refrigerator had been wiped clean and there were no dirty dishes and that was a bit surprising, for he was sure there had been. Mrs. Foshay’s kettle, with the broth emptied out of it and scrubbed until it shone, stood on the kitchen table.

  He went back to the desk and the top of it was clear except for several items laid out, as if for his attention:

  Ten dead mice.

  Eight pairs of stamp tongs.

  The packet of covers with the strange yellow stamps.

  Two—not one—but two covers, one bearing a strip of four and the other a strip of five Polaris 17b.

  Packer sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the items on the desk.

  How in the world, he wondered—how had it come about? What was going on?

  He peeked around the desk edge at the bubbling basket and it seemed to chortle at him.

  It was, he told himself, it must be the basket—or, rather, the stuff within the basket. Nothing else had been changed, no other factor had been added. The only thing new and different in the apartment was the basket of yellow gook.

  He picked up the packet of covers with the yellow stamps affixed and opened the drawer to find a glass. The drawer was arranged with startling neatness and there were five glasses lying in a row. He chose the strongest one.

  Beneath the glass the surface of the stamps became a field made up of tiny ball-like particles, unlike the grains of sand which the weaker glass he had used before had shown.

  He bent above the desk, with his eye glued to the glass, and he knew that what he was looking at were spores.

  Encysted, lifeless, they still would carry life within them, and that had been what had happened here. He’d spilled the broth upon the stamp and the spores had come to life—a strange alien community of life that settled within the basket.

  He put the glass back in the drawer and rose. He gathered up the dead mice carefully by their tails. He carried them to the incinerator shaft and let them drop.

  He crossed the room to the bookcases and the books were arranged in order and in sequence and there, finally, were books that he’d lost years ago and hunted ever since. There were long rows of stamp catalogues, the set of handbooks on galactic cancellations, the massive list of postmarks, the galactic travel guides, the long row of weird language dictionaries, indispensable in alien stamp identification, and a number of technical works on philatelic subjects.

  From the bookcase he moved to the piled-up boxes. One of them he lifted down. It was filled with covers, with glassine envelopes of loose stamps, with sheets, with blocks and strips. He dug through the contents avidly, with wonder mounting in him.

  All the stamps, all the covers, were from the Thuban system.

  He closed the box and bent to lift it back. It didn’t wait for him. It lifted by itself and fitted itself in place.

  He looked at three more boxes. One contained, exclusively, material from Korephoros, and another material from Antares and the third from Dschubba. Not only had the litter been picked up and boxed and piled into some order, but the material itself had been roughly classified!

  He went back to the chair and sat down a little weakly. It was too much, he thought, for a man to take.

  The spores had fed upon the broth and had come to life, and within the basket was an alien life form or a community of life forms. And they possessed a passion for orderliness and a zest for work and an ability to channel that zest into useful channels.

  And what was more, the things within the basket did what a man wanted done.

  It had straightened up the apartment, it had classified the stamps and covers, it had killed the mice, it had located the Polaris covers and had found the missing tongs.

  And how had it known that he wanted these things done? Read his mind, perhaps?

  He shivered at the thought, but the fact remained that it had done absolutely nothing except bubble merrily away until he had returned. It had done nothing, perhaps, because it did not know what to do—until he had somehow told it what to do. For as soon as he had returned, it had found out what to do and did it.

  The door chimed and he got up to answer.

  It was Tony.

  “Hi, Unk,” he said. “You forgot your pajamas and I brought them back. You left them on the bed and forgot to pack them.”

  He held out a package and it wasn’t until then that he saw the room.

  “Unk!” he yelled. “What happened? You got the place cleaned up!”

  Packer shook his head in bewilderment. “Something funny, Tony.”
/>   Tony walked in and stared around in admiration and astonishment.

  “You sure did a job,” he said.

  “I didn’t do it, Tony.”

  “Oh, I see. You hired someone to do it while you were up at our place.”

  “No, not that. It was done this morning. It was done by that!”

  He pointed at the basket.

  “You’re crazy, Unk,” said Tony, firmly. “You have flipped your thatch.”

  “Maybe so,” said Packer. “But the basket did the work.”

  Tony walked around the basket warily. He reached down and punched the yellow stuff with a stuck-out finger.

  “It feels like dough,” he announced.

  He straightened up and looked at Packer.

  “You aren’t kidding me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what it is,” said Packer. “I don’t know why or how it did it, but I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Unk,” said Tony, “we may have something here!”

  “There is no doubt of that.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. This may be the biggest thing that ever happened. This junk, you say, will really work for you?”

  “Somehow or other,” said Packer. “I don’t know how it does it. It has a sense of order and it does the work you want. It seems to understand you—it anticipates whatever you want done. Maybe it’s a brain with enormous psi powers. I was looking at a cover the other night and I saw this yellow stamp …”

  Packer told him swiftly what had happened.

  Tony listened thoughtfully, pulling at his chin.

  “Well, all right, Unk,” he said, “we’ve got it. We don’t know what it is or how it works, but let’s put our thinking into gear. Just imagine a bucket of this stuff standing in an office—a great big, busy office. It would make for efficiency such as you never saw before. It would file all the papers and keep the records straight and keep the entire business strictly up to date. There’d never be anything ever lost again. Everything would be right where it was supposed to be and could be located in a second. When the boss or someone else should want a certain file—bingo! It would be upon his desk. Why, an office with one of these little buckets could get rid of all its file clerks. A public library could be run efficiently without any personnel at all. But it would be in big business offices—in insurance firms and industrial concerns and transportation companies—where it would be worth the most.”