City

by Clifford D. Simak

  An alien thing, he thought. That’s how far I’ve left the human race. For it’s not alien at all. Not alien to me. It is the place I lived in, dreamed in, planned in. It is the place I left—afraid. And it is the place I come back to—driven and afraid.

  Driven by the memory of the people who were like me before I became the thing I am, before I knew the aliveness and the fitness and the pleasure that is possible if one is not a human being.

  Towser stirred beside him and Fowler sensed the bumbling friendliness of the one-time dog, the expressed friendliness and comradeship and love that had existed all the time, perhaps, but was never known so long as they were man and dog.

  The dog’s thoughts seeped into his brain. “You can’t do it, pal,” said Towser.

  Fowler’s answer was almost a wail. “But I have to, Towser. That’s what I went out for. To find what Jupiter is really like. And now I can tell them, now I can bring them word.”

  You should have done it long ago, said a voice deep inside of him, a faint, far-off human voice that struggled up through his Jovian self. But you were a coward and you put it off—and put it off. You ran away because you were afraid to go back. Afraid to be turned into a man again.

  “I’ll be lonesome,” said Towser, and yet he did not say it. At least there were no words—rather a feeling of loneliness, a heart-wrench cry of parting. As if, for the moment, Fowler had moved over and shared Towser’s mind.

  Fowler stood silent, revulsion growing in him. Revulsion at the thought of being turned back into a man—into the inadequacy that was the human body and the human mind.

  “I’d come with you,” Towser told him, “but I couldn’t stand it. I might die before I could get back. I was nearly done for, you remember. I was old and full of fleas. My teeth were worn right down to nubbins and my digestion was all shot. And I had terrible dreams. Used to chase rabbits when I was a pup, but toward the last it was the rabbits that were chasing me.”

  “You stay here,” said Fowler. “I’ll be coming back.”

  If I can make them understand, he thought. If I only can. If I can explain.

  He lifted his massive head and stared at the lift of hills which swelled to mountain peaks shrouded in the rose and purple mist. A lightning bolt snaked across the sky and the clouds and mist were lighted with a fire of ecstasy.

  He shambled forward, slowly, reluctantly. A whiff of scent came down the breeze and his body drank it in—like a cat rolling in catnip. And yet it wasn’t scent—although that was the closest he could come to it, the nearest word he had. In years to come the human race would develop a new terminology.

  How could one, he wondered, explain the mist that drifted on the land the scent that was pure delight. Other things they’d understand, he knew. That one never had to eat, that one never slept, that one was done with the whole range of depressive neuroses of which Man was victim. Those things they would understand, because they were things that could be told in simple terms, things which could be explained in existent language.

  But what about the other things—the factors that called for a new vocabulary? The emotions that Man had never known. The abilities that Man had never dreamed of. The clarity of mind and the understanding—the ability to use one’s brain down to the ultimate cell. The things one knew and could do instinctively that Man could never do because his body did not carry the senses with which they could be done.

  “I’ll write it down,” he told himself. “I’ll take my time and write it down.”

  But the written word, he realized, was a sorry tool.

  A televisor port bulged out of the crystalline hide of the dome and he shambled toward it. Rivulets of condensed mist ran down across it and he reared up to stare straight into the port.

  Not that he could see anything, but the men inside would see him. The men who always watched, staring out at the brutality of Jupiter, the roaring gales and ammonia rains, the drifting clouds of deadly methane scudding past. For that was the way that men saw Jupiter.

  He lifted a forepaw and wrote swiftly in the wetness on the port—printing backwards.

  They had to know who it was, so there would be no mistake. They had to know what co-ordinates to use. Otherwise they might convert him back into the wrong body, use the wrong matrix and he would come out somebody else—young Allen, maybe, or Smith, or Pelletier. And that might well be fatal.

  The ammonia ran down and blurred the printing, wiped it out. He wrote the name again.

  They would understand that name. They would know that one of the men who had been converted into a Loper had come back to report.

  He dropped to the ground and whirled around, staring at the door which led into the converter unit. The door moved slowly, swinging outward.

  “Good-by, Towser,” said Fowler, softly.

  A warning cry rose in his brain: It’s not too late. You aren’t in there yet. You still can change your mind. You still can turn and run.

  He plodded on, determined, gritting mental teeth. He felt the metal floor underneath his pads, sensed the closing of the door behind him. He caught one last, fragmentary thought from Towser and then there was only darkness.

  The conversion chamber lay just ahead and he moved up the sloping ramp to reach it.

  A man and dog went out, he thought, and now the man comes back.

  The press conference had gone well. There had been satisfactory things to report.

  Yes, Tyler Webster told the newsmen, the trouble on Venus had been all smoothed out. Just a matter of the parties involved sitting down and talking. The life experiments out in the cold laboratories of Pluto were progressing satisfactorily. The expedition for Centauri would leave as scheduled, despite reports it was all balled up. The trade commission soon would issue new monetary schedules on various interplanetary products, ironing out a few inequalities.

  Nothing sensational. Nothing to make headlines. Nothing to lead off the newscast.

  “And Jon Culver tells me,” said Webster, “to remind you gentlemen that today is the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the last murder committed in the Solar System. One hundred and twenty-five years without a death by premeditated violence.”

  He leaned back in the chair and grinned at them, masking the thing he dreaded, the question that he knew would come.

  But they were not ready to ask it yet—there was a custom to be observed—a very pleasant custom.

  Burly Stephen Andrews, press chief for Interplanetary News, clearing his throat as if about to make an important announcement, asked with what amounted to mock gravity:

  “And how’s the boy?”

  A smile broke across Webster’s face. “I’m going home for the week end,” he said. “I bought my son a toy.”

  He reached out, lifted the little tube from off the desk.

  “An old-fashioned toy,” he said. “Guaranteed old-fashioned. A company just started putting them out. You put it up to your eye and turn it and you see pretty pictures. Colored glass falling into place. There’s a name for it—”

  “Kaleidoscope,” said one of the newsmen, quickly. “I’ve read about them. In an old history on the manners and customs of the early twentieth century.”

  “Have you tried it, Mr. Chairman?” asked Andrews.

  “No,” said Webster. “To tell the truth, I haven’t. I just got it this afternoon and I’ve been too busy.”

  “Where’d you get it, Mr. Chairman?” asked a voice. “I got to get one of those for my own kid.”

  “At the shop just around the corner. The toy shop, you know. They just came in today.”

  Now, Webster knew, was the time for them to go. A little bit of pleasant, friendly banter and they’d get up and leave.

  But they weren’t leaving—and he knew they weren’t. He knew it by the sudden hush and the papers that rattled quickly to cover up the hush.

  Then Stephen Andrews was asking the question that Webster had dreaded. For a moment Webster was grateful that Andrews should be the one to ask i
t. Andrews had been friendly, generally speaking, and Interplanetary Press dealt in objective news, with none of the sly slanting of words employed by interpretative writers.

  “Mr. Chairman,” said Andrews, “we understand a man who was converted on Jupiter has come back to Earth. We would like to ask you if the report is true?”

  “It is true,” said Webster, stiffly.

  They waited and Webster waited, unmoving in his chair.

  “Would you wish to comment?” asked Andrews, finally.

  “No,” said Webster.

  Webster glanced around the room, ticking off the faces. Tensed faces, sensing some of the truth beneath his flat refusal to discuss the matter. Amused faces, masking brains that even now were thinking how they might twist the few words he had spoken. Angry faces that would write outraged interpretative pieces about the people’s right to know.

  “I am sorry, gentlemen,” said Webster.

  Andrews rose heavily from the chair. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” he said.

  Webster sat in his chair and watched them go, felt the coldness and emptiness of the room when they were gone.

  They’ll crucify me, he thought. They’ll nail me to the barn door and I haven’t got a comeback. Not a single one.

  He rose from the chair and walked across the room, stood staring out the window at the garden in the sun of afternoon.

  Yet, you simply couldn’t tell them.

  Paradise! Heaven for the asking! And the end of humanity! The end of all the ideals and all the dreams of mankind, the end of the race itself.

  The green light on his desk flashed and chirped and he strode back across the room.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  The tiny screen flashed and a face was there.

  “The dogs just reported, sir, that Joe, the mutant, went to your residence and Jenkins let him in.”

  “Joe! You’re sure?”

  “That’s what the dogs said. And the dogs are never wrong.”

  “No,” said Webster slowly, “No, they never are.”

  The face faded from the screen and Webster sat down heavily.

  He reached with numbed fingers for the control panel on his desk, twirled the combination without looking.

  The house loomed on the screen, the house in North America that crouched on the windy hilltop. A structure that had stood for almost a thousand years. A place where a long line of Websters had lived and dreamed and died.

  Far in the blue above the house a crow was flying and Webster heard, or imagined that he heard, the wind-blown caw of the soaring bird.

  Everything was all right—or seemed to be. The house drowsed in the morning light and the statue still stood upon the sweep of lawn—the statue of that long-gone ancestor who had vanished on the star-path. Allen Webster, who had been the first to leave the Solar System, heading for Centauri—even as the expedition now on Mars would head out in a day or two.

  There was no stir about the house, no sign of any moving thing.

  Webster’s hand moved out and flipped a toggle. The screen went dead.

  Jenkins can handle things, he thought. Probably better than a man could handle them. After all, he’s got almost a thousand years of wisdom packed in that metal hide of his. He’ll be calling in before long to let me know what it’s all about.

  His hand reached out, set up another combination.

  He waited for long seconds before the face came on the screen.

  “What is it, Tyler?” asked the face.

  “Just got a report that Joe—”

  Jon Culver nodded. “I just got it, too. I’m checking up.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  The face of the World Security chief crinkled quizzically. “Softening up, maybe. We’ve been pushing Joe and the other mutants pretty hard. The dogs have done a top-notch job.”

  “But there have been no signs of it,” protested Webster. “Nothing in the records to indicate any trend that way.”

  “Look,” said Culver. “They haven’t drawn a breath for more than a hundred years we haven’t known about. Got everything they’ve done down on tape in black and white.

  Every move they’ve made, we’ve blocked. At first they figured it was just tough luck, but now they know it isn’t. Maybe they’ve up and decided they are licked.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Webster, solemnly. “Whenever those babies figure they’re licked, you better start looking for a place that’s soft to light.”

  “I’ll keep on top of it,” Culver told him. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  The plate faded and was a square of glass. Webster stared at it moodily.

  The mutants weren’t licked—not by a long shot. He knew that, and so did Culver. And yet—

  Why had Joe gone to Jenkins? Why hadn’t he contacted the government here in Geneva? Face saving, maybe. Dealing through a robot. After all, Joe had known Jenkins for a long, long time.

  Unaccountably, Webster felt a surge of pride. Pride that if such were the case Joe had gone to Jenkins. For Jenkins, despite his metal hide, was a Webster, too.

  Pride, thought Webster. Accomplishment and mistake. But always counting for something. Each of them down the years. Jerome, who had lost the world and Juwain philosophy. And Thomas, who had given the world the space-drive principle that now had been perfected. And Thomas’ son, Allen, who had tried for the stars and failed. And Bruce, who had first conceived the twin civilization of man and dog. Now, finally himself—Tyler Webster, chairman of the World Committee.

  Sitting at the desk, he clasped his hands in front of him, stared at the evening light pouring through the window.

  Waiting, he confessed. Waiting for the snicker of the signal that would tell him Jenkins was calling to report on Joe. If only—

  If only an understanding could be reached. If only mutants and men could work together. If they could forget this half-hidden war of stalemate, they could go far, the three of them together—man and dog and mutant.

  Webster shook his head. It was too much to expect. The difference was too great, the breach too wide. Suspicion on the part of men and a tolerant amusement on the part of the mutants would keep the two apart. For the mutants were a different race, an offshoot that had jumped too far ahead. Men who had become true individuals with no need of society, no need of human approval, utterly lacking in the herd instinct that had held the race together, immune to social pressures.

  And because of the mutants the little group of mutated dogs so far had been of little practical use to their older brother, man. For the dogs had watched for more than a hundred years, had been the police force that kept the human mutants under observation.

  Webster slid back his chair, opened a desk drawer, took out a sheaf of papers.

  One eye on the televisor plate, he snapped over the toggle that called his secretary.

  “Yes, Mr. Webster.”

  “I’m going to call on Mr. Fowler,” said Webster. “If a call comes through—”

  The secretary’s voice shook just a little. “If one does, sir, I’ll contact you right away.”

  “Thanks,” said Webster.

  He snapped the toggle back.

  They’ve heard of it already, he thought. Everyone in the whole building is standing around with their tongues hanging out, waiting for the news.

  Kent Fowler lounged in a chair in the garden outside his room, watching the little black terrier dig frantically after an imagined rabbit.

  “You know, Rover,” said Fowler, “you aren’t fooling me.”

  The dog stopped digging, looked over his shoulder with grinning teeth, barked excitedly. Then went back to digging.

  “You’ll slip up one of these days,” Fowler told him, “and say a word or two and I’ll have you dead to rights.”

  Rover went on digging.

  Foxy little devil, thought Fowler. Smarter than a whip. Webster sicked him on me and he’s played the part, all right. He’s dug for rabbits and he’s been disrespectful to the shru
bs and he’s scratched for fleas—the perfect picture of a perfect dog. But I’m on to him. I’m on to all of them.

  A foot crunched in the grass and Fowler looked up.

  “Good evening,” said Tyler Webster.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d come,” said Fowler shortly. “Sit down and give it to me—straight. You don’t believe me, do you?”

  Webster eased himself into the second chair, laid the sheaf of papers in his lap.

  “I can understand how you feel,” he said.

  “I doubt if you can,” snapped Fowler. “I came here, bringing news that I thought was important. A report that had cost me more than you can imagine.”

  He hunched forward in his chair. “I wonder if you can realize that every hour I’ve spent as a human being has been mental torture.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Webster. “But we had to be sure. We had to check your reports.”

  “And make certain tests?”

  Webster nodded.

  “Like Rover over there?”

  “His name isn’t Rover,” said Webster, gently. “If you’ve been calling him that, you’ve hurt his feelings. All the dogs have human names. This one’s Elmer.”

  Elmer had stopped his digging, was trotting toward them. He sat down beside Webster’s chair, scrubbed at his dirt-filled whiskers with a clay-smeared paw.

  “What about it, Elmer?” asked Webster.

  “He’s human, all right,” said the dog, “but not all human. Not a mutant, you know. But something else. Something alien.”

  “That’s to be expected,” said Fowler. “I was a Loper for five years.”

  Webster nodded. “You’d retain part of the personality. That’s understandable. And the dog would spot it. They’re sensitive to things like that. Psychic, almost. That’s why we put them on the mutants. They can sniff one out no matter where he is.”

  “You mean that you believe me?”

  Webster rustled the papers in his lap, smoothed them out with a careful hand. “I’m afraid I do.”

  “Why afraid?”

  “Because,” Webster told him, “you’re the greatest threat mankind’s ever faced.”

  “Threat! Man, don’t you understand? I’m offering you…offering you—”