Time and Again

by Clifford D. Simak

  The river gurgled at him, deep laughter on its tongue. In the wooded valley a whippoorwill began his measured chugging. Fireflies danced through the blackness of the bushes.

  A mosquito stung him and he slapped at it futilely.

  A place to sleep, he thought. A hay-loft in a barn, perhaps. And pilfered food from a farmer's garden to fill his empty belly. Then clothes.

  XXXIX

  SUNDAYS were lonely.

  During the rest of the week there was work—physical labor—for a man to do, the endless, trudging round of work that is necessary to extract a living from the soil. Land to plow, crops to be put in and tended and finally harvested, wood to cut, fences to be built and mended, machines to be repaired—things that must be done with bone and muscle, with calloused hand and aching back and the hot sun on one's neck or the whiplash of windy cold biting at one's bones.

  For six days a farmer labored and the labor was a thing that dulled one to the aching emptiness of memory and at night, when work was done, sleep was swift and merciful. There were times when the work, not only for its sedative effect but of its very self, became a thing of interest and of satisfaction. The straight line of new-set fence posts became a minor triumph when one glanced back along their length. The harvest field, with its dust upon one's hoes and its smell of sun on golden straw and the clacking of the binder as it went its rounds, became a full-breasted symbolism of plenty and contentment. And there were moments when the pink blush of apple blossoms shining through the silver rain of spring became a wild and pagan paean of the resurrection of the Earth from the frosts of winter.

  For six days a man would labor and would not have time to think; on the seventh day he rested and braced himself for the loneliness and the thoughts of desperation that idleness would bring.

  Not a loneliness for a people or a world or a way of life, for this world was kindlier and closer to Earth and life and safer—much safer—than the world one had left behind. But a nagging loneliness, an accusing loneliness that talked of a job that waited, a piece of work that now might wait forever, a task that must be done, but now might never be done.

  At first there had been hope.

  Surely, Sutton thought, they will look for me. Surely they will find a way to reach me.

  The thought was a comfort that he hugged close against himself, a peace of mind that he could not bring himself to analyze too closely. For he realized, even as he coddled it, that it was a generalization, that it might not survive too close a scrutiny, that it was fashioned of faith and of wishful thinking and that for all its wealth of comfort it might be a fragile bauble.

  The past cannot be changed, he argued with himself, in its entirety. It can be altered—subtly. It can be twisted and it can be dented and it can be whittled down, but by and large it stands. And that is why I'm here, that must be why I'm here, and I'll have to stay until old John H. writes the letter to himself. For the past is in the letter—the letter brought me here and it will keep me here until it's finally written. Up to that point the pattern must necessarily hold, for up to that point in time the past, so far as I and my relation with it are concerned, is a known and revealed past. But the moment the letter is written it becomes an unknown past, it tends to the speculative and there is no known pattern. After the letter's written, so far as I'm concerned anything can happen.

  Although he admitted, even as he thought it, that his premise was fallacious. For known or not, revealed or unrevealed, the past would form a pattern. For the past had happened. He was living in a time that already had been set and molded.

  Although even in that thought there was a hope, even in the unknownness of the past and the knowledge that by and large what had happened was a thing that stood unchanged, there must be hope. For somewhere, somewhen he had written a book. The book existed and therefore had happened, although so far as he was concerned it had not happened yet. But he had seen two copies of the book and that meant that in some future age the book was a factor in the pattern of the past.

  Sometime, said Sutton, they will find me. Sometime before it is too late.

  They will hunt for me and find me. They will have to find me.

  They? he asked himself, finally honest with himself.

  Herkimer, an android.

  Eva Armour, a woman.

  They…two people.

  But not those two alone. Surely not those two alone. Back of them, like a shadowy army, all the other androids and all the robots that Man had ever fashioned. And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.

  They would look for him, of course, but where?

  With all of time and all of space to search in, how would they know when and where to look?

  The robot at the information center, he remembered, could tell them that he had inquired about an ancient town called Bridgeport. And that would tell them where. But no one could tell them when.

  For no one knew about the letter…absolutely no one. He remembered how the dried and flaky mucilage had showered down across his hands in a white and aged powder when his thumbnail had cracked loose the flap of the envelope. No one, certainly, had seen the contents of that letter since the day it had been written until he, himself, had opened it.

  He realized now that he should have gotten word to someone…word of where and when he was going and what he meant to do. But he had been so confident and it had seemed such a simple thing, such a splendid plan.

  A splendid plan in the very directness of its action…to intercept the Revisionist, to knock him out and take his ship and go forward into time to take his place. It could have been arranged, of that he was certain. There would have been an android somewhere to help fashion his disguise, there would have been papers in the ship and androids from the future to brief him on the things that he would have to know.

  A splendid plan…except it hadn't worked.

  I could have told the information robot, Sutton told himself. He certainly was one of us. He would have passed the word along.

  He sat with his back against the tree and stared out across the river valley, hazy with the blue of the Indian summer. In the field below him the corn stood in brown and golden shocks, like a village of wigwams that clustered tight and warm against the sure knowledge of the winter's coming. To the west the bluffs of the Mississippi were a purple cloud that crouched close against the land. To the north the golden land swept up in low hill rising on low hill until it reached a misty point where, somewhere, land stopped and sky began, although one could not find the definite dividing point, no clear-cut pencil mark that held the two apart.

  A blue jay flashed down across the sky and came to rest upon a sun-washed fence post. It jerked its tail and squalled, scolding anything that might be within its hearing.

  A field mouse came out of a corn shock and looked at Sutton for a moment with its beady eyes, then squeaked in sudden fright and whisked into the shock again, its tail looped above its back in frantic alarm.

  Simple folk, thought Sutton. The little, simple, furry folk. They would be with me, too, if they could only know. The bluejay and the field mouse, the owl and hawk and squirrel. A brotherhood, he thought…the brotherhood of life.

  He heard the mouse rustling in the shock and he tried to imagine what life as a mouse might mean. Fear first of all, of course, the ever-present, quivering, overriding fear of other life, of owl and hawk, of mink and fox and skunk. And the fear of Man and cat and dog. And the fear of Man, he said. All things fear Man. Man has made all things to fear him.

  Then there would be hunger, or at least the fear and threat of hunger. And the urge to reproduce. There would be the urgency and the happiness of life, the thrill of swiftly moving feet and the sleek c
ontentment of the well-filled belly and the sweetness of sleep…and what else? What else might there be to fill a mouse's life?

  He crouched in a place of safety and listened and knew that all was well. All was safe and there was food and shelter against the coming cold. For he knew about the cold, not so much from the experience of other winters as from an instinct handed down through many generations of shivering in the cold and dying of the cold.

  To his ears came the soft rustlings in the shock as others of his kind moved softly on their business. He smelled the sweetness of the sun-cured grass that had been brought in to fashion nests for warm and easy sleeping. And he smelled, as well, the grains of corn and the succulent weed seeds that would keep their bellies full.

  All is well, he thought. All is as it should be. But one must keep watch, one must never lower one's guard, for security is a thing that can be swept away in a single instant. And we are so soft…we are so soft and frail, and we make good eating. A paw-step in the dark can spell swift and sure disaster. A whir of wings is the song of death.

  He closed his eyes and tucked his feet beneath him and wrapped his tail around him…

  Sutton sat with his back against the tree and suddenly, without knowing how or when he had become so, he was rigid with the knowledge of what had happened to him.

  He had closed his eyes and tucked his feet beneath him and wrapped his tail about him and he had known the simple fears and the artless, ambitionless contentment of another life…of a life that hid in a corn shock from the paw-steps and the wings, that slept in sun-scented grass and felt a vague but vital happiness in the sure and fundamental knowledge that there was food and warmth and shelter.

  He had not felt it merely, or known it alone…he had been the little creature, he had been the mouse that the corn shock sheltered; and at one and the same time he had been Asher Sutton, sitting with his back against a straight-trunked shellbark hickory tree, gazing out across the autumn-painted valley.

  There were two of us, said Sutton. I, myself, and I, the mouse. There were two of us at once, each with his separate identity. The mouse, the real mouse, did not know it, for if he had known or guessed I would have known as well, for I was as much the mouse as I was myself.

  He sat quiet and still, not a muscle moving, wonder gnawing at him. Wonder and a fear, a fear of a dormant alienness that lay within his brain.

  He had brought a ship from Cygni, he had returned from death, he had rolled a six.

  Now this!

  A man is born and he has a body and a mind that have many functions, some of them complex, and it takes him years to learn those functions, more years to master them. Months before one takes a toddling step, months more before one shapes a word, years before thought and logic become polished tools…and sometimes, said Sutton, sometimes they never do.

  Even then there is a certain guidance, the guidance of experienced mentors…parents at first and teachers after that and the doctors and the churches and all the men of science and the people that one meets. All the people, all the contacts, all the forces that operate to shape one into a social being capable of using the talents that he holds for the good of himself and the society which guides him and holds him to its path.

  Heritage, too, thought Sutton…the inbred knowledge and the will to do and think certain things in a certain way. The tradition of what other men have done and the precepts that have been fashioned from the wisdom of the ages.

  The normal human has one body and one mind, and Lord knows, Sutton thought, that is enough for any man to get along with. But I, to all intents, have what amounts to a second body and perhaps even a second mind, but for that second body I have no mentors and I have no heritage. I do not know how to use it yet; I'm just taking my first toddling step, I am finding out, slowly, one by one, the things that I may do. Later on, if I live long enough, I may even learn how to do them well.

  But there are mistakes that one will make. A child will stumble when it walks at first, and its words to begin with are only the approximation of words and it does not know enough not to burn its finger with matches it has lighted.

  "Johnny," he said. "Johnny, talk to me."

  "Yes, Ash?"

  "Is there more, Johnny?"

  "Wait and see," said Johnny. "I cannot tell you. You must wait and see."

  XL

  THE ANDROID investigator said, "We checked Bridgeport back to the year 2000 and we are convinced nothing ever happened there. It was a small village and it lay off the main trunk of world happenings."

  "It wouldn't have to be a big thing," Eva Armour told him. "It could have been a little thing. Just some slight clue. A word out of the context of the future, perhaps. A word that Sutton might have dropped in some unguarded moment and someone else picked up and used. Within a few years a word like that would become a part of the dialect of that community."

  "We checked for the little things, miss," the investigator said. "We checked for any aberration, any hint that might point to Sutton's having been in that community. We used approved methods and we covered the field. But we found nothing, absolutely nothing. The place is barren of any leads at all."

  "He must have gone there," said Eva. "The robot at the information center talked to him. He asked about Bridgeport. It indicated that he had some interest in the place."

  "But it didn't necessarily indicate that he was going there," Herkimer pointed out.

  "He went someplace," said Eva. "Where did he go?"

  "We threw in as large a force of investigators as was possible without arousing suspicion, both locally and in the future," the investigator told them. "Our men practically fell over one another. We sent them out as book salesmen and scissors grinders and unemployed men looking for work. We canvassed every home for twenty miles around, first at twenty-year intervals, then, when we found nothing, at ten, and finally at five. If there had been any word or any rumor we would have run across it."

  "Back to the year 2000, you say," said Herkimer. "Why not to 1999 or 1950?"

  "We had to set an arbitrary date somewhere," the investigator told him.

  "The Sutton family lived in that locality," said Eva. "I suppose you investigated them just a bit more closely."

  "We had men working on the Sutton farm off and on," said the investigator. "As often as the family was in need of any help on the farm one of our men showed up to get himself the job. When the family needed no help, we had men on other farms near by. One of our men bought a tract of timber in that locality and spent ten years at woodcutting…he could have stretched it out much longer but we were afraid someone would get suspicious.

  "We did this from the year 2000 up to 3150, when the last of the family moved from the area."

  Eva looked at Herkimer. "The family has been checked all the way?" she asked.

  Herkimer nodded. "Right to the day that Asher left for Cygni. There's nothing that would help us."

  Eva said, "It seems so hopeless. He is somewhere. Something happened to him. The future, perhaps."

  "That's what I am thinking," Herkimer told her. "The Revisionists may have intercepted him. They may be holding him."

  "They couldn't hold him…not Asher Sutton," Eva said. "They couldn't hold him if he knew all his powers."

  "But he doesn't know them," Herkimer reminded her. "And we couldn't tell him about them or draw them to his attention. He had to find them for himself. He had to be put under pressure and suddenly discover them by natural reaction. He couldn't be taught them, he had to evolve into them."

  "We did so well," said Eva. "We were doing so well. We forced Morgan into ill-considered action by conditioning Benton into challenging Sutton, the one quick way to get rid of Asher when Adams failed to fall in with the plan to kill him. And that Benton incident put Asher on his guard without our having to tell him that he should be careful. And now," she said. "And now…"

  "The book was written," Herkimer told her.

  "But it doesn't have to be," said Eva. "You and I may be
no more than puppets in some probability world that will pinch out tomorrow."

  "We'll cover all key points in the future," Herkimer told her. "We'll redouble our espionage of the Revisionists, check back on every task force of the past. Maybe we'll learn something."

  "It's the random factors," Eva said. "You can't be sure, ever. All of time and space for them to happen in. How can we know where to look or turn? Do we have to fight our way through every possible happening to get the thing we want?"

  "You forgot one factor," Herkimer said calmly.

  "One factor?"

  "Yes, Sutton himself. Sutton is somewhere and I have a great faith in him. In him and his destiny. For, you see, he pays attention to his destiny and that will pay off in the end."

  XLI

  "YOU ARE a strange man, William Jones," John H. Sutton told him. "And a good one, too. I've never had a better hired hand in all the years I've farmed. None of the others would stay more than a year or two, always running off, always going somewhere."

  "I have no place to go," said Asher Sutton. "There's no place I want to go. This is as good as any."

  And it was better, he told himself, than he had thought it would be, for here were peace and security and a living close to nature that no man of his own age ever had experienced.

  They leaned on the pasture bars and watched the twinkling of the house and auto lights from across the river. In the darkness on the slope below them the cattle, turned out after milking, moved about with quiet, soft sounds, cropping a last few mouthfuls of grass before settling down to sleep. A breeze with a touch of coolness in it drifted up the slope and it was fine and soothing after a day of heat.

  "We always get a cool night breeze," said old John H. "No matter how hot the day may be we have easy sleeping."

  He sighed. "I wonder sometimes," he said, "how well contented a man should let himself become. I wonder if it may not be a sign of—well, almost sinfulness. For Man is not by nature a contented animal. He is restless and unhappy and it's that same unhappiness that has driven him, like a lash across his back, to his great accomplishments."