A neighbor went past on the sidewalk outside the picket fence and he spoke gravely to her: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Abrams.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Williams,” she said and that was the way it always was, except on occasions she would stop a moment and they’d talk about the flowers. But today she would not stop unless he made it plain he would like to have her stop, for otherwise she would not wish to intrude upon him.
That was the way it had been at the office, he recalled.
He’d put away his work with sure and steady hands—as sure and steady as he could manage them. He’d walked to the rack and got down his hat and no one had spoken to him, not a single one of them had kidded him about his quitting early, for all had guessed—or known—as well as he. You could not always tell, of course, for the foresight ability was more pronounced in some than it was in others, although the lag in even the least efficient of them would not be more than a quarter-hour at most.
He’d often wished he could understand how it had been brought about, but there were factors involved he could not even remotely grasp. He knew the story, of course, for he could remember the night that it had happened and the excitement there had been—and the consternation. But knowing how it came about and the reason for it was quite a different thing from understanding it.
It had been an ace in the hole, a move of desperation to be used only as a last resort. The nation had been ready for a long time with the transmitters all set up and no one asking any questions because everyone had taken it for granted they were a part of the radar network and, in that case, the less said of them the better.
No one had wanted to use those transmitters, or at least that had been the official explanation after they’d been used—but anything was better than another war.
So the time had come, the time of last resort, the day of desperation, and the switches had been flicked, blanketing the nation with radiations that did something to the brain—“stimulating latent abilities” was as close a general explanation as anyone had made—and all at once everyone had been able to see twenty-four hours ahead.
There’d been hell to pay, of course, for quite a little while, but after a time it simmered down and the people settled down to make the best of it, to adapt and live with their strange new ability.
The President had gone on television to tell the world what had happened and he had warned potential enemies that we’d know twenty-four hours ahead of time exactly what they’d do. In consequence of which they did exactly nothing except to undo a number of incriminating moves they had already made—some of which the President had foretold that they would undo, naming the hour and place and the manner of their action.
He had said the process was no secret and that other nations were welcome to the know-how if they wanted it, although it made but little difference if they did or not, for the radiations in time would spread throughout the entire world and would affect all people. It was a permanent change, he said, for the ability was inheritable and would be passed on from one generation to the next, and never again, for good or evil, would the human race be blind as it had been in the past.
So finally there had been peace, but there’d been a price to pay. Although, perhaps, not too great a price, Williams told himself. He’d liked baseball, he recalled, and there could be no baseball now, for it was a pointless thing to play a game the outcome of which you’d know a day ahead of time. He had liked to have the boys in occasionally for a round of poker—but poker was just as pointless now and as impossible as baseball or football or horse racing or any other sport.
There had been many changes, some of them quite awkward. Take newspapers, for example, and radio and television reporting of the news. Political tactics had been forced to undergo a change, somewhat for the better, and gambling and crime had largely disappeared.
Mostly, it had been for the best. Although even some of the best was a little hard at first—and some of it would take a long time to become completely accustomed to.
Take his own situation now, he thought.
A lot more civilized than in the old days, but still fairly hard to take. Hard especially on Florence and the children, forcing them into a new and strange attitude that in time would harden into custom and tradition, but now was merely something new and strange. But Florence was standing up to it admirably, he thought. They’d often talked of it, especially in these last few years, and they had agreed that no matter which of them it was they would keep it calm and dignified, for that was the only way to face it. It was one of the payments that you made for peace, although sometimes it was a little hard to look at it that way.
But there were certain compensations. Florence and he could have a long talk before the children arrived. There’d be a chance to go over certain final details—finances and insurance and other matters of like nature. Under the old way there would have been, he told himself, no chance at all for that. There’d be the opportunity to do all the little worthwhile things, all the final sentimental gestures, that except for the foresight ability would have been denied.
There’d be talk with the children and the neighbors bringing things to eat and the big bouquet of flowers the office gang would send—the flowers that under other circumstances he never would have seen. The minister would drop in for a moment and manage to get in a quiet word or two of comfort, all the time making it seem to be no more than a friendly call. In the morning the mail would bring many little cards and notes of friendship sent by people who wanted him to know they thought of him and would have liked to have been with him if there had been the time. But they would not intrude, for the time that was left was a family time.
The family would sit and talk, remembering the happy days—the dog that Eddie had and the time John had run away from home for an hour or two and the first time Mary had ever had a date and the dress she wore. They’d take out the snapshot albums and look at the pictures, recalling all the days of bittersweetness and would know that theirs had been a good life—and especially he would know. And through it all would run the happy clatter of grandchildren playing in the house, climbing up on Granddad’s knee to have him tell a story.
All so civilized, he thought.
Giving all of them a chance to prove they were civilized. He’d have to go back inside the house now, for he could hear Florence arranging the flowers in the birthday vase that was blue and gold. And they had so much to say to one another—even after forty years they still had so much to say to one another.
He turned and glanced back at the garden.
Most beautiful flowers, he thought, that they had ever raised.
He’d go out in the morning, when the dew was on them, when they were most beautiful, to bid them all good-bye.
Census
Sent to Astounding Science Fiction in January 1944, “Census,” the third story in the series that became the City cycle, was returned to the author “to be resubmitted”—presumably after revision. It was indeed resubmitted, early in April, and it was purchased later that month for $175 and published in the September 1944 issue. It is the story that set up the themes that would form the basis for the City cycle; and that may explain the length of time—very unusual for Cliff Simak—taken to make his revisions.
There have been those who have opined that “Census” was so important a story as to have been worthy of a retroactive Hugo. But, for me, the story is stolen, within its first page, by a little black dog who makes me smile whenever I think of him.
—dww
Richard Grant was resting beside the little spring that gushed out of the hillside and tumbled in a flashing stream across the twisting trail when the squirrel rushed past him and shinnied up a towering hickory tree. Behind the squirrel, in a cyclone of churning autumn-fallen leaves, came the little black dog.
When he saw Grant the dog skidded to a stop, stood watching him, tail wagging, eyes a-dance with fun.
Grant grinned. “Hello, there,” he said.
“Hi,” said the dog.
Grant jerked out of his easy slouch, jaw hanging limp. The dog laughed back at him, red dish rag of a tongue lolling from its mouth.
Grant jerked a thumb at the hickory. “Your squirrel’s up there.”
“Thanks,” said the dog. “I know it. I can smell him.”
Startled, Grant looked swiftly around, suspecting a practical joke. Ventriloquism, maybe. But there was no one in sight. The woods were empty except for himself and the dog, the gurgling spring, the squirrel chattering in the tree.
The dog walked closer.
“My name,” he said, “is Nathaniel.”
The words were there. There was no doubt of it. Almost like human speech, except they were pronounced carefully, as one who was learning the language might pronounce them. And a brogue, an accent that could not be placed, a certain eccentricity of intonation.
“I live over the hill,” declared Nathaniel, “with the Websters.”
He sat down, beat his tail upon the ground, scattering leaves. He looked extremely happy.
Grant suddenly snapped his fingers.
“Bruce Webster! Now I know. Should have thought of it before. Glad to meet you, Nathaniel.”
“Who are you?” asked Nathaniel.
“Me? I’m Richard Grant, enumerator.”
“What’s an enum … enumer—”
“An enumerator is someone who counts people,” Grant explained. “I’m taking a census.”
“There are lots of words,” said Nathaniel, “that I can’t say.”
He got up and walked over to the spring, lapped noisily. Finished, he plunked himself down beside the man.
“Want to shoot the squirrel?” he asked.
“Want me to?”
“Sure thing,” said Nathaniel.
But the squirrel was gone. Together they circled the tree, searching its almost bare branches. There was no bushy tail sticking out from behind the boll, no beady eyes staring down at them. While they had talked, the squirrel had made his getaway.
Nathaniel looked a bit crestfallen, but he made the best of it.
“Why don’t you spend the night with us?” he invited. “Then, come morning, we could go hunting. Spend all day at it.”
Grant chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you. I am used to camping out.”
Nathaniel insisted. “Bruce would be glad to see you. And Grandpa wouldn’t mind. He don’t know half what goes on, anyway.”
“Who’s Grandpa?”
“His real name is Thomas,” said Nathaniel, “but we all call him Grandpa. He is Bruce’s father. Awful old now. Just sits all day and thinks about a thing that happened long ago.”
Grant nodded. “I know about that, Nathaniel. Juwain.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” agreed Nathaniel. “What does it mean?”
Grant shook his head. “Wish I could tell you, Nathaniel. Wish I knew.”
He hoisted the pack to his shoulder, stooped and scratched the dog behind the ear. Nathaniel grimaced with delight.
“Thanks,” he said, and started up the path.
Grant followed.
Thomas Webster sat in his wheel chair on the lawn and stared out across the evening hills.
I’ll be eighty-six tomorrow, he was thinking. Eighty-six. That’s a hell of a long time for a man to live. Maybe too long. Especially when he can’t walk any more and his eyes are going bad.
Elsie will have a silly cake for me with lots of candles on it and the robots all will bring me a gift and those dogs of Bruce’s will come in and wish me happy returns of the day and wag their tails at me. And there will be a few televisor calls—although not many, perhaps. And I’ll pound my chest and say I’m going to live to be one hundred and everyone will grin behind their hands and say “listen to the old fool.”
Eighty-six years and there were two things I meant to do. One of them I did and the other one I didn’t.
A cawing crow skimmed over a distant ridge and slanted down into the valley shadow. From far away, down by the river, came the quacking of a flock of mallards.
Soon the stars would be coming out. Came out early this time of year. He liked to look at them. The stars! He patted the arms of the chair with fierce pride. The stars, by Lord, were his meat. An obsession? Perhaps—but at least something to wipe out that stigma of long ago, a shield to keep the family from the gossip of historic busybodies. And Bruce was helping, too. Those dogs of his—
A step sounded in the grass behind him.
“Your whiskey, sir,” said Jenkins.
Thomas Webster stared at the robot, took the glass off the tray.
“Thank you, Jenkins,” he said.
He twirled the glass between his fingers. “How long, Jenkins, have you been lugging drinks to this family?”
“Your father, sir,” said Jenkins. “And his father before him.”
“Any news?” asked the old man.
Jenkins shook his head. “No news.”
Thomas Webster sipped the drink. “That means, then, that they’re well beyond the solar system. Too far out even for the Pluto station to relay. Halfway or better to Alpha Centauri. If only I live long enough—”
“You will, sir,” Jenkins told him. “I feel it in my bones.”
“You,” declared the old man, “haven’t any bones.”
He sipped the drink slowly, tasting it with expert tongue. Watered too much again. But it wouldn’t do to say anything. No use flying off the handle at Jenkins. That doctor. Telling Jenkins to water it a bit more. Depriving a man of proper drinking in his final years—
“What’s that down there?” he asked, pointing to the path that straggled up the hill.
Jenkins turned to look.
“It appears, sir,” he said, “that Nathaniel’s bringing someone home.”
The dogs had trooped in to say goodnight, had left again.
Bruce Webster grinned after them.
“Great gang,” he said.
He turned to Grant. “I imagine Nathaniel gave you quite a start this afternoon.”
Grant lifted the brandy glass, squinted through it at the light.
“He did,” he said. “Just for a minute. And then I remembered things I’d read about what you’re doing here. It isn’t in my line, of course, but your work has been popularized, written up in more or less nontechnical language.”
“Your line?” asked Webster. “I thought—”
Grant laughed. “I see what you mean. A census taker. An enumerator. All of that, I grant you.”
Webster was puzzled, just a bit embarrassed. “I hope, Mr. Grant, that I haven’t—”
“Not at all,” Grant told him. “I’m used to being regarded as someone who writes down names and ages and then goes on to the next group of human beings. That was the old idea of a census, of course. A nose counting, nothing more. A matter of statistics. After all, the last census was taken more than three hundred years ago. And times have changed.”
“You interest me,” said Webster. “You make this nose counting of yours sound almost sinister.”
“It isn’t sinister,” protested Grant. “It’s logical. It’s an evaluation of the human population. Not just how many of them there are, but what are they really like, what are they thinking and doing?”
Webster slouched lower in his chair, stretching his feet out toward the fire upon the hearth. “Don’t tell me, Mr. Grant, that you intend to psychoanalyze me?”
Grant drained the brandy glass, set it on the table. “I don’t need to,” he said. “The World Committee knows all it needs to know about the folks like you. But it is the others—the ridge runners, you call them here. Up north they’re jackpine savages. Farther south they’re something else. A hidden population—an almost for
gotten population. The ones who took to the woods. The ones who scampered off when the World Committee loosened the strings of government.”
Webster grunted. “The governmental strings had to be loosened,” he declared. “History will prove that to anyone. Even before the World Committee came into being the governmental setup of the world was burdened by oxcart survivals. There was no more reason for the township government three hundred years ago than there is for a national government today.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Grant told him, “and yet when the grip of government was loosened, its hold upon the life of each man was loosened. The man who wanted to slip away and live outside his government, losing its benefits and escaping its obligations, found it an easy thing to do. The World Committee didn’t mind. It had more things to worry over than the irresponsibles and malcontents. And there were plenty of them. The farmers, for instance, who lost their way of life with the coming of hydroponics. Many of them found it hard to fit into industrial life. So what? So they slipped away. They reverted to a primitive life. They raised a few crops, they hunted game, they trapped, they cut wood, did a little stealing now and then. Deprived of a livelihood, they went back to the soil, all the way back, and the soil took care of them.”
“That was three hundred years ago,” said Webster. “The World Committee didn’t mind about them then. It did what it could, of course, but as you say, it didn’t really mind if a few slipped through its fingers. So why this sudden interest now?”
“Just, I guess,” Grant told him, “that they’ve got around to it.”
He regarded Webster closely, studying the man. Relaxed before the fire, his face held power, the shadows of the leaping flames etching planes upon his features, turning them almost surrealistic.
The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 23
