Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  It wasn’t only the matter of playing a game, but of paying a price as well. There would be a price for peace and we’d have to pay the price.

  For there would be more than one set of factors.

  There would be the set that showed a war was coming. And there would be another set which would show that beyond a certain point the hard-won formula for peace simply wouldn’t work.

  It would work, perhaps, for a Type 10 culture, but beyond that, the factors involved might get so complicated that the formula would collapse under its own weight. A Type 10 culture might be able to deal with a factor which represented the cornering of the market on a certain food, but they could not deal with a factor which represented the complexity of galactic banking.

  The formula might work for a Type 10 culture, but it might not work for Type 9; it might be utterly worthless for Type 8.

  So the Googles not only played the game, but they paid the price of peace. And the price of peace was to run the other way. They retreated from advancement. They went clear back to 14 and they stayed there for a while, then went forward rather swiftly, but not as far as they were before they retrogressed. They went back voluntarily, and they stayed back, so they wouldn’t fight a war.

  They went back not because war was less likely in a Type 14 culture than in a Type 10 culture, but they went back so that the formula, once it had been used, would be effective; they stayed back so that they had some room to advance before they again reached the point beyond which the formula would break down.

  But how would they go back? How would they retreat from a 10 to a 14 culture? Retrogress—sure they would retrogress. They would leave their comfortable village and go back and live in squalor and all the time the gameboard and the pieces and the position values they had earned in their Type 10 existence would be safely locked away inside the god-house. There would come the day when they had advanced far enough so they could play the game, and they played it then, according to the rules and with what they had—unless they hit the jackpot, and a spaceship from a higher culture landed in their midst and handed them on a silver platter, as it were, a load of atom bombs to be used in a bow-and-arrow war.

  Sheldon sat down at his desk, and held his head in his hands.

  How much, he asked himself, how much more did we give them than they had before? Have we wrecked the formula? Have we given them so much that this village just outside the ship can bust the formula wide open? How much tolerance would there be? How far could they advance before a Type 10 culture and still be within the safety limit?

  He got up and paced the floor again.

  It’s probably all right, he told himself. They’ve played the game for five hundred years we know of—for how many thousands of years more than that we simply cannot know. They would not willingly break down the formula; they would know the limit. For there must be a deeply ingrained fear of war within their very culture, or otherwise they would not continue to subscribe to the formula. And it’s a simple formula, really. Simple. Like falling off a log! Except—how did a people deliberately retrogress?

  Hypnotism? Hypnotism wouldn’t work, for what would happen to the hypnotist? He’d remain as a random and dangerous factor.

  A clever machine, perhaps, except the Googles had no machines at all. So it couldn’t be machines.

  Drugs, maybe.

  There was a root, and out of the root a drug was made to fight a disease peculiar to a certain sector of the galaxy—the babu root. Zan was the only place where the babu plant was grown.

  “Good Lord” said Sheldon, “I didn’t think of that. I read about it. What was that disease?”

  He dug out his reels and put them in the viewer and found the dissertation on the use of the babu root, and he found the name of the disease, which was unpronounceable. He looked through the index of his reels and found a reel with the medical information, and there were few lines on that strange disease:

  …nervous disorder, with high emotional tensions involved, in many cases stressing a sense of guilt, arising from the inability to forget past experiences. The drug induces a complete state of forgetfulness, from which the patient gradually recovers, retaining basic precepts, rather than the welter of detailed experiences, the impingement of which contributes to his condition.

  That’s it, of course! That’s the perfect answer!

  The Googles ate of the babu root, perhaps ceremonially, and they forgot, and in the forgetting they sloughed their culture from them, retrogressing four entire culture points. Then, after a time, the effect of the babu root would gradually wear away and they would remember, and remembering, advance up the cultural scale. They would remember, not the details of their former culture, but only its basic precepts, and in that way they’d not climb as high as they had been before. In that way they’d leave a margin through which they would advance toward the next crisis. Then once again, they’d eat of the babu root and once again war would be averted.

  For, while the game would determine who would have won the war if one had been fought, the forgetting and the slow recovery from the babu would wipe out the cause of war, would remove the crisis point.

  The formula worked because, even before they played the game, the factors of war would have been upset and the crisis point have already disappeared.

  “God forgive us,” Sheldon said, “our little grasping souls.”

  He went back to the desk and sat down. With a hand that suddenly was heavy, he reached out and thumbed up the communicator for a call to Hart.

  “What is it now?” rasped Hart.

  “Get out of here,” Sheldon ordered. “Get off this planet as quickly as you can.”

  “But the root…”

  “There isn’t any root,” said Sheldon. “Not any more, there isn’t any root.”

  “I have a contract.”

  “Not now,” said Sheldon. “It is null and void, contrary to galactic interests.”

  “Contrary!” He could hear Hart choking on his rage. “Look here, Co-ordinator, they need that root out in sector 12. They need …”

  “They’ll synthesize it,” Sheldon said. “If they want it they’ll have to synthesize it. There is something more important …”

  “You can’t do this,” said Hart.

  “I can,” said Sheldon. “If you think I can’t, try me out and see.”

  He snapped the toggle down and waited, sweating out the issue.

  Then minutes passed before he heard the men running in the ship below, preparing for blast-off.

  He watched the planet fade behind them as the ship fled into space.

  Courage, he said to himself, thinking of the Googles, the bare, cold courage of it. I hope it’s not too late. I hope we didn’t tempt them too far. I hope they can offset the damage that we did.

  There must have been a day when the Googles were a great race, building a great civilization—greater, perhaps, than any culture now in the galaxy. For it would have taken a fantastically advanced people to have done what they have done. It was no job for a Type 10 culture, nor for a Type 6 culture, which is the best that Earth itself can boast.

  It had taken intelligence and great compassion, sharp analytical ability, and sober objectivity to figure out the factors and how they could be used.

  And it had taken courage beyond imagination to activate the course those ancient Googles had worked out—to trade a culture that might have reached Type 2 or 3, for a Type 10 culture, because their plan for peace would not work beyond a Type 10 culture.

  Once having worked, it must now continue working. All the courage of the race must not now be lost. It is a formula that must not be allowed to fail. It must not be allowed to fail because of the profit that traders made out of the babu root. It must not be allowed to fail through contact with other uncouth creatures who might be higher on the cultural yardstick, but who are without the common sense and
the courage of the Googles.

  And another thing—we must not run the chance that the babu root became a mere article of commerce. We could not blind the Googles to the greater value of the root, the value in which lay the greatest hope the galaxy had known.

  Sheldon went back to the chart he’d made and checked through the information which the Googles had pumped out of the crew, and it added up to just slightly more than a Type 10 culture—a Type 9R, perhaps. And that was dangerous, but probably not too much so, for the Type 10A, if the Googles ever got that far, probably still represented a certain margin of safety. And there was the matter of the lag in the culture, due to the babu-eating, which would probably add an additional safety margin.

  But it had been close. Too close for comfort. It demonstrated another factor, the factor of temptation—and that was something that could not be allowed to continue.

  He went back to the record reels and spent hours studying the invoices, and once again he saw the cold, stark courage and the insistent dedication of the Googles.

  There was not a single item on any of the invoices which went beyond a Type 10 culture.

  Imagine, he told himself, settling for a better hoe when they could have had atomic engines!

  Imagine, for five hundred years, refusing merchandise and comfort that would have made the Googles a greater people and a happier and more leisured people.

  Greater and happier—and, more than likely, dead.

  Once long ago, in mighty cities now hidden in the dust of the planet’s surface, the Googles must have learned the terrible bitterness of a most artful and accomplished war and must have recoiled from the death and agony and the blind futility, and the knowledge of that day still dwelt within the minds of the Googles of today.

  And that knowledge the galaxy could not afford to lose.

  Sheldon picked up the chart and rolled it into a cylinder and slipped a couple of rubber bands around it. He put the reels away.

  For five hundred years the Googles had held out against the lure of traders who would have given them anything they asked for the babu root. Traders who, even if they had known the truth, still would have willingly and thoughtlessly wrecked the protective Type 10 culture for the sake of profit.

  They had held out for five hundred years. How much longer could they hold out? Not forever, certainly. Perhaps not for a great deal longer.

  The chief and his tribe had weakened momentarily in acquiring information beyond the Type 10 culture limit. Might that not mean that already the moral fiber was weakening, that the years of trading had already sown their poison?

  And if the Googles had not held out—if they did not hold out—the galaxy then would be the poorer and the bloodier.

  For the day would come, many years from now perhaps, when it might be safe to make a survey, to conduct a study of this great thing the Googles had accomplished.

  And out of that study certainly would come the first great step toward peace throughout the galaxy, a hint as to how the principle might apply without the stultifying need of a static culture.

  But the study itself could not be made for many years. Not until the random factors of the last five hundred years of trade had been swept away.

  He sat down at the desk, pulled out the voice-writer, and inserted a sheet of paper.

  He spoke a heading which the machine printed quickly:

  RECOMMENDATION FOR THE INDEFINITE CLOSING OF THE PLANET ZAN TO ALL VISITORS AND TRADERS.

  Way for the Hangtown Rebel!

  “Way for the Hangtown Rebel!” was originally published in the May 1945 issue of Ace-High Western Stories. Cliff Simak’s journals do not mention that he ever wrote a story with that title, and it seems likely that the title was a concoction of the editorial staff of the magazine—but one journal does show that Cliff was paid $150 in 1945 for a story called “Gunsmoke Letter,” and the action in this story is indeed precipitated by a letter (of course, that could be said about “Gunsmoke Interlude,” too …).

  Another point of interest is the fact that the saloon owner in this story was named Joe Carson—Carson was the first name of Cliff’s younger brother, and his name turns up in a number of Cliff’s stories, particularly in the early years of Cliff’s career …

  —dww

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hemp Greeting for a Stranger

  The gallows were grim and shining new with the yellowness of lumber that had never braved the elements. Like a deliberate signboard of warning, they stood in the vacant lot, gleaming in the sun.

  Steve Burns’ hands tightened on the reins and even though the day was bright and warm, he felt the coldness of the challenging gallows.

  “Getting fancy,” he told himself, staring at the gallows. Most places were satisfied with a good stout cottonwood. But not Skull Crossing—they had this man-made apparatus that was evidently ready for business.

  Slowly Burns swung the horse around and headed down the street.

  Burns pulled up in front of the livery barn and spoke to an oldster tipped back on a chair.

  “Got some extra hay and oats?” he asked.

  “Yup,” the man told him and then added, “the saloon’s just down that dirt street.”

  Burns grinned and slid from the gray, handing over the reins.

  “Was looking at that contraption up the street,” he said. “Must be expecting some heavy business.”

  The livery man spat through a broken front tooth. “Already got the business. Fixing to string up some ornery hombres the sheriff caught out in the hills. Mex gang that’s been raising hell for a year or two. Dang near cleaned out the valley.”

  “Noticed some abandoned ranches coming in,” said Burns. “Wondered what it was all about.”

  “Yup,” declared the man. “Getting so it wasn’t safe to go out nights. Hay stacks burned. People killed. Cattle all run off.”

  “So the ranchers up and left,” said Burns.

  “That’s it, stranger. Spent a lot of time trying to hunt down the lobos, but they never found their hideout. Bad country, them hills out back where they holed up.”

  “But the sheriff found the gang.”

  The livery man spat through the broken tooth again. “Tell you how it is, stranger. Sheriff sort of works up a little extra steam every time election date gets close.”

  “Think I’ll head for a drink,” said Burns and walked down the empty street.

  After the blaze of sun outside, the interior of the Longhorn bar was a place of shadows. Burns stopped just inside the swinging doors, stood blinking until forms began to take dim shape. The bartender leaned on the bar, staring out the window. In one corner some men were playing cards and others stood around and watched.

  Burns strode toward the bar. “Set it out,” he told the barkeep. “I aim to cut some dust out of my throat.”

  The bartender moved deliberately, reaching for a bottle.

  “Burns!” The word snapped like a whip across the room.

  Steve spun from the bar, hands streaking for his guns.

  In the dim light he saw one of the men who had been watching the game coming toward him.

  The man’s face was a blur and his body blended with the shadows that still hung in the corner. But there was no mistaking the poise of the body, no question about those moving hands, already hitting leather.

  Burns’ mind clicked blank with sudden concentration, everything else wiped out except that figure in the center of the room. Time stretched taut in the brittle silence and Burns, watching the smudge of the other’s face, knew that his own hands were moving swiftly, that his guns were coming out…as if by rote.

  Burns dodged swiftly and behind him he heard the crash of shattered glass as a bullet swept past his cheek and hit the backbar.

  Then Steve’s own guns were now talking, bucking against his wrists, coughing with a twin pre
cision that set the glasses to jiggling on the bar.

  Before him the smudge of face bent forward, hung for a single instant as the shadowy body jerked to the impact of the bullets, then slid to the floor.

  Steve let his hands fall to his side, smelled the acrid smoke that trickled from his gun barrels, stared at the black, hunched thing in the center of the room.

  Men were stirring out of the corner, plainer now that his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, moving slowly and cautiously, with their hands hanging at their sides.

  Feet pounded on the porch outside and the batwing doors smashed open. A huge man entered and walked toward Steve Burns. Wary, with thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, and the sunlight from the open doors striking fire against the nickel-plated star pinned upon his vest.

  He stopped six feet away and stared, eyes squinted until they were little more than slits. He nodded at the guns.

  “You’re handy with them things.”

  “Only when I have to be,” Burns answered.

  “How come that Kagel knew you?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Steve replied.

  “He called you by name,” the sheriff growled. “You must have met him somewhere.”

  Burns shook his head. “He had my name, all right. But I don’t recognize his handle. Maybe it’s a new one.”

  “Maybe if we rolled him over,” suggested a voice and Burns’ eyes flicked toward the man who’d spoken. Squat, square of shoulders, smooth. Pearl stickpin gleaming in the black cravat that bunched above the ornate vest.

  Slowly Steve holstered his guns. “Let’s take a look,” he said. “I’ll tell you if I know him.”

  It was the last thing that he wanted to do, he admitted to himself. But it was a thing he had to do. One suspicious move and the burly sheriff would be making trouble.

  They moved across the floor to stand above the dead man. Callously, the sheriff turned the body over with his toe and it flopped grotesquely on its back, arms flung out, limp head lolling.

  Burns’ face felt stiff, as if a mask had enclosed his flesh. He couldn’t show the slightest flicker of expression, he knew, for the sheriff would be watching with those squinted eyes.