Mastodonia

by Clifford D. Simak

  “I am still digging in it,” I said.

  “I know you are. Finding anything?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  “I got to be getting on,” said Ben. “I have some people coming in to see me. It was good to meet you, Miss Elliot. I hope you have a pleasant visit.”

  We watched after him as he went bounding down the sidewalk.

  “An old pal of yours?” asked Rila. “One of the gang?”

  “One of the gang,” I said.

  We went across the street and into the supermarket. I got a cart and started wheeling it down the aisle.

  “We’ll need potatoes and some butter,” I said, “and soap, and I guess a lot of other things.”

  “Don’t you make out a list?”

  “I’m a disorganized housekeeper,” I said. “I try to keep it in my head and I always miss an item or two.”

  “You know a lot of people in this town?”

  “Some. Some from when I was a boy, folks who stayed on and never left. Other new ones I have met since I came back.”

  Slowly we loaded the cart. I forgot some items and Rila, running through a hypothetical shopping list, reminded me of others I would have forgotten. Finally, I wheeled the cart up to the checkout counter. Herb Livingston was ahead of us, putting down an armload of purchases.

  “Asa,” he said, the way he always talks, as if he is breathless with delight at seeing you. “I was going to phone you for a news item. I heard you had company.”

  “Rila,” I said, “meet Herb Livingston. He is another of the old gang, and now he owns the weekly paper.”

  Herb beamed. “I am glad that you came to see us,” he told Rila. “I hear you’re from New York. New York City, I mean. We don’t get many people from New York.” He pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket and a short pencil from his shirt pocket. “What is your last name, if I may ask?”

  “Elliot,” said Rila. “Two l’s and one t.”

  “And you’re visiting Asa. I mean that’s why you’re here.”

  “We are friends of long standing,” said Rila shortly. “We worked together on an archaeological dig in Turkey back in the late fifties.”

  Herb made hentracks in his notebook. “And what are you doing now?”

  “I’m in the import-export business.”

  “I see,” said Herb, scribbling furiously. “And you’re staying out on the farm with Asa.”

  “That’s right,” said Rila. “I came to be with Asa. I am staying with him.”

  When we got back to the car, Rila said to me, “I’m not sure I like your friends.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Herb,” I said. “As a newspaperman, he is a little short on tact.”

  “What I can’t understand is why he should be interested in me. My being here simply isn’t news.”

  “To the Willow Bend Record, it is. Nothing ever happens here. Herb has to fill the paper with comings and goings. Mrs. Page holds a card party with three tables and it’s a social event. Herb writes it up in detail. Tells who was there and who won the prizes.”

  “Asa, you don’t mind? Maybe I should leave.”

  “Hell, no,” I said. “Why should I mind? Flying in the face of convention? You can’t do anything that doesn’t fly in the face of convention in a place like this. And with this time-travel business, with Hiram going after Catface, it would be plain desertion if you left. You’ve got to see this thing through with me. I need you.”

  She settled into the seat as I got behind the wheel. “I hoped you would say that,” she said. “I don’t know about this time-travel business, but I do want to stay. Half of the time I believe travel in time is possible and the rest of the time I tell myself, Rila, stop being a fool. But I’m curious about Hiram. Nothing more than Hiram? He must have another name.”

  “His name,” I said, “is Hiram Biglow, but most people have forgotten the Biglow part of it. He’s just Hiram, that’s all. He was born in Willow Bend, and at one time he had an older brother, but the brother ran away from home and, so far as I know, has not been heard of since. The family was an old family, reaching back into the time the town was founded. His father’s name was Horace, an only son of a son of one of the founders of Willow Bend. The family lived in the old ancestral home, one of those Victorian piles set back from the street, with an iron fence enclosing a lawn filled with trees. I remember that I used to hang on the fence when I was a kid and wonder what it would be like to live in a place like that. My family was relatively poor at the time, and we lived in just an ordinary house, and the Biglow place seemed like a mansion to me.”

  “But you told me Hiram lives in a shack down by the river.”

  “He does and I am getting to that. Hiram’s father was the town banker, in partnership with Ben Page’s father …”

  “I don’t like Ben Page any better than I like that Herb person.”

  “You and almost everyone,” I said. “He’s not the sort of man who inspires a lot of confidence or admiration, although in recent years, he may have changed. There are people now who swear by him. Well, anyhow, when Hiram was ten years old or so, his father drowned in a duck-hunting accident. By this time, the older brother, who was seven or eight years older than Hiram, had lit out for parts unknown, so there was only Hiram and his mother left. The old lady lived a secluded life after that. She never left the house and she discouraged friends from calling. Hiram had always been a strange kid, backward in school and not getting along with the other kids, but no one thought too much about it. As the years went past, I suppose, his mother must have known that he wasn’t exactly normal, and so she hid away with him. Pride is a dreadful thing anywhere, and in a small town, it’s deadly. The two of them just sort of withdrew from life, and while people knew, of course, that they were there, they were fairly well forgotten. Which, I suppose, is what Mrs. Biglow had hoped would happen. By this time, I was long gone, of course, so what I tell you from here on is what I’ve heard from people after I came back.

  “It turns out, finally, when the estate was settled, that Hiram’s father didn’t have too much interest in the bank. A few shares and his job, that was all. No one could prove it, of course, but people I talked with later were convinced that Ben’s father had slickered Hiram’s father out of the bank. Apparently, there was a little money left, but not much, and the old lady and Hiram managed somehow until she died. By this time, Hiram must have been twenty-five or so. When it came time to settle his mother’s estate, it was found that the Biglow house was mortgaged to the bank. The bank, pleading it had carried the family as long as it could, foreclosed. By this time, Ben had taken over the bank, his father retiring, and he donated some money and got a few others in town to donate a bit more and they built this shack down by the river and gave it to Hiram and he’s lived there ever since.”

  “The town adopting him,” said Rila. “Taking care of their own. Today he’d be on relief. Or in some state institution.”

  “I guess you could say that,” I said. “The town looks after him, sure, but not too kindly. Some people treat him okay, of course, but he has become a sort of municipal scapegoat and a lot of people laugh at him and make fun of him. They don’t think that Hiram knows; so they think it’s safe to make fun of him. But Hiram knows. He knows his friends and he knows who laughs at him. He may be considerably strange, of course, but he’s not as stupid as a lot of people think.”

  “I hope he’s getting some sleep,” said Rila. “This is his first night of sitting up for Catface.”

  “He may have to spend several nights. Catface is not all that regular in his habits.”

  “I sit and listen to us talking like this,” said Rila. “I know we are talking like this, but then I ask myself if we are really doing it. It’s not sane, Asa. This whole thing. Most people wouldn’t be thinking what we are thinking, saying what we are saying.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told her, “but I have more evidence than you. I went into the Pleistocene and almost got run ove
r by a mastodon. Bowser did bring home those bones.”

  “And yet we let ourselves think only so far,” she said. “We accept the dinosaur bones and the Folsom point and the mastodon, but we don’t allow ourselves to go beyond that. We keep ourselves from saying out loud that Catface is an alien creature that can engineer time tunnels and that he somehow escaped when an alien spaceship crashed here thousands of years ago.”

  “Maybe we’ll come to it,” I said. “We’ll have to wait and see what Hiram manages.”

  ELEVEN

  Three nights later, a loud rapping on the bedroom door brought me upright in bed, stupid with sleep, wondering what the hell was going on. Beside me, Rila stirred protestingly.

  “What’s going on?” I yelled. “Who’s there?”

  Although, if I had stopped to think of it, I’d have known who was there.

  “It’s me, Hiram.”

  “It’s Hiram,” I said to Rila.

  The knocking kept right on. “Cut out that goddamn knocking,” I yelled at Hiram. “I’m awake. I’ll see you in the kitchen.”

  Groping around blindly, I found my slippers, scuffed into them, and tried to find a robe, but couldn’t locate one. I stumbled out into the kitchen in pajama pants and slippers.

  “What is it, Hiram? I hope it’s important.”

  “It’s Catface, Mr. Steele. I been talking with him. He wants to talk with you.”

  “I can’t talk with him,” I said. “There is no way I can. You’re the only one who can.”

  “He says I don’t make any sense,” said Hiram. “He is glad we want to talk with him, but he says he doesn’t know what I want to talk about.”

  “You mean he’s out there now?”

  “Yes, Mr. Steele. He said that he would wait while I came to get you. He says he hopes you can make some sense.”

  “Do you think he could wait until I got on some clothes?”

  “I think so, Mr. Steele. He said that he would wait.”

  “You stay right here,” I said. “Don’t leave the house until we can go with you.”

  Back in the bedroom, I fumbled for my clothes and found them. Rila was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s Catface,” I said. “He wants to talk with us.”

  “It’ll take me just a minute,” she said.

  Hiram was waiting at the kitchen table when we came out.

  “Where’s Bowser?” Rila asked.

  “Out there with Catface,” Hiram told her. “Them two are good friends. I figure maybe they’ve been good friends all the time without us knowing it.”

  “Tell me,” I said. “How did it happen? Was it hard to talk with Catface?”

  “About the same as Bowser,” Hiram said. “Easier than that robin. That robin sometimes is hard to talk with. Sometimes, he doesn’t want to talk. Catface wants to talk.”

  “All right, then,” said Rila. “Let us go and talk with him.”

  “How are we going to do that?” I asked.

  “It’s easy,” Hiram said. “You tell me exactly what to say and I will say it to him. Then I’ll tell you what he says. Maybe I won’t understand everything he says.”

  “We’ll do the best we can,” said Rila.

  “He’s in that apple tree right around the corner. Bowser’s watching him.”

  I opened the back door and waited for the others to go out.

  Once around the corner, there was no trouble spotting Catface, staring out at us from the middle of the apple tree. In the light of the Moon, his face was clear. You could even see the whiskers. Bowser, sitting lopsided to favor his wounded ham, stared up into the tree at Catface.

  “Tell him we are here,” I said to Hiram, “and are ready to begin.”

  “He says he is, too,” said Hiram.

  “Now, wait a minute. You didn’t have time to tell him what I said.”

  “I don’t need to,” Hiram said. “He knows what you say, but he can’t answer back because you can’t hear what he says.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “That makes it simpler.” I said to Catface, “Hiram says that you are willing to talk with us about time travel.”

  “He’s anxious to talk about time travel,” Hiram said. “He said a whole lot more I don’t understand.”

  “Look,” I said to Catface, “let us keep this simple. One thought at a time. As simple as you can.”

  “He says all right,” said Hiram. “He says he has missed putting time travel to work. He says he is a time engineer. Could that be right?”

  “I suppose it could be.”

  “He says he is tired of making time roads for no one but Bowser.”

  “He made one for me.”

  “That is right, he says. But you couldn’t see the road; you stumbled into it.”

  “Can he make roads to any place or time on this planet?”

  “He says he can.”

  “To ancient Greece? To Troy?”

  “If you tell him where these places are, he can. He says it is easy. On this world, anywhere.”

  “But how can we tell him?”

  “He says to mark a map. He talks about lines on a map. Mr. Steele, what kind of lines are there on a map?”

  “Longitude and latitude, perhaps.”

  “He says that is right.”

  “He knows how we measure time? He knows about years? He can understand a million years, a hundred years?”

  “He says he does.”

  “There is one thing I want to ask him,” Rila said. “He is an alien, someone from some other world?”

  “Yes, from very far away.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Almost fifty thousand years.”

  “And he has lived that long?”

  “He says he does not die.”

  “He can make roads into time. He can travel those roads himself?”

  “He says yes.”

  “But apparently he doesn’t travel them. He’s here right now. He came here fifty thousand years ago, but apparently he lived through a normal time line. He just settled in and lived in ordinary time. Otherwise, he might not be here.”

  “Rescue, he says.”

  “What does he mean, rescue?”

  “If he doesn’t stay in a single place and ordinary time, people who come to find him won’t know where he is.”

  “He still hopes for rescue?”

  “Now he has little hope. He must do the best he can. He makes a new life with us. That’s why he’s so happy.”

  “But he must know where his home world is. If he is able to make roads in space and time, he should be able to go home.”

  “He says not. He does not know where his home is from here. He does not know how to get from here to there. If someone told him, he could. But on trip here, he did not know. Someone else knew. Now that someone else is dead. He died when the ship fell.”

  “But Catface did not die because he is immortal?”

  “He says an immortal can be killed in accident, but that is the only way. He says he was lucky. He got away before the ship hit ground.”

  “How did he get away?”

  “Life boat, he says.”

  “Life boat,” I said. “A sphere? A round hollow ball that came apart so he could get out?”

  “He says that is right. He asks how did you know?”

  “I found the life boat,” I said. “It’s out in the barn.”

  “But now he will make time roads for us?” asked Rila. “Anywhere on Earth? Any time on Earth? And keep them open as long as we may need them?”

  “Catface says that is right. He can make them where you say and keep them open. Once you no longer need them, he will close them once again.”

  “How many? More than one?”

  “Many as you need.”

  “When could he start doing this?”

  “Right now. Say where you want to go, when you want to go.”

  “Tell him,” Rila said, “that we aren’t ready yet. It will take some time for us to get
ready and we’ll need to talk to him again. Perhaps several times.”

  “Miss, he say anytime you want. He’ll hang around and wait to talk with you.”

  TWELVE

  We sat at breakfast, with Hiram finishing his second helping of ham and eggs. Bowser dozed on his blanket in the corner.

  “The one thing in question,” said Rila, “is whether we can trust Catface.”

  “You can trust him, ma’am,” said Hiram. “I had a long talk with him before I came in to get you. He’s nice folks. Just like you and Mr. Steele.”

  “Well, that is fine,” said Rila, “but we must bear in mind that he is an alien. And a most peculiar one.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “We don’t know what aliens would be like. Compared with other aliens, he may not be peculiar.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. All head, no body. Or at least he hides his body. All you can see is a face sticking out of a tree or bush.”

  “Ezra saw a body. That night Ranger had Catface up a tree and Ezra drew a bead on him, but didn’t shoot.”

  “It was dark,” said Rila. “Ezra couldn’t see too much. Just the face when it looked at him. What I mean about not trusting him is that he may have a different ethical code, very likely has, a different way of looking at things. What might seem wrong to us might not be wrong at all to him.”

  “He’s been around ever since people settled here. A hundred years and more. He probably had some contact with the Indians long before then. He’s been watching all the time. He knows what humans are like. He’s astute; he’d soak up a lot of information. He knows what to expect of humans, probably something of what they would expect of him.”

  “Asa, are you ready to trust him, just flat out?”

  “No, I guess I do have some reservations.”

  Hiram got up from the table and put on his cap. “Me and Bowser are going for a walk,” he said.

  Bowser got up stiffly.

  “Don’t you want to sleep?” I asked. “You’ve been up all night.”

  “Later on, Mr. Steele.”

  “Remember, not a word of this to anyone.”