Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  “You mean,” asked Harrington, “that I’ve been here before?”

  “Almost every Saturday,” she told him, surprised. “Every Saturday for years. You like our cherry pie. You always have a piece of our cherry pie.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  But, actually, he had no inkling of this place, unless, good God, he thought, unless he had been pretending all the time that it was some other place, some gold-plated eatery of very great distinction.

  But it was impossible, he told himself, to pretend as big as that. For a little while, perhaps, but not for thirty years. No man alone could do it unless he had some help.

  “I had forgotten,” he told the waitress. “I’m somewhat upset tonight. I wonder if you have a piece of that cherry pie.”

  “Of course,” the waitress said.

  She took the pie off the shelf and cut a wedge and slid it on the plate. She put the plate down in front of him and laid a fork beside it.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t hide the magazine. You must pay no attention to it—or to anything. Not to any of the things that people say or what other people write. All of us around here are so proud of you.”

  She leaned across the counter toward him.

  “You mustn’t mind,” she said. “You are too big to mind.”

  “I don’t believe I do,” said Hollis Harrington.

  And that was the solemn truth, for he was too numb to care. There was in him nothing but a vast wonderment that filled his being so there was room for nothing else.

  “I am willing,” the stranger in the corner of the booth had told him many years ago. “I am willing to make a deal with you.”

  But of the deal he had no recollection, no hint of terms or of the purpose of it, although possibly he could guess.

  He had written for all of thirty years and he had been well paid for it—not in cash and honor and acclaim alone—but in something else as well. In a great white house standing on a hill with a wilderness of grounds, with an old retainer out of a picture book, with a Whistler’s mother, with a romantic bittersweetness tied to a gravestone symbol.

  But now the job was done and the pay had stopped and the make-believe had ended.

  The pay had stopped and the delusions that were a part of it were gone. The glory and the tinsel had been stripped out of his mind. No longer could he see an old and battered car as a sleek, glossy machine. Now, once again, he could read aright the graving on a stone. And the dream of a Whistler’s mother had vanished from his brain—but had been once so firmly planted that on this very evening he actually had driven to a house and an address that was a duplicate of the one imprinted on his imagination.

  He had seen everything, he realized, overlain by a grandeur and a lustre out of story books.

  But was it possible, he wondered. Could it be made to work? Could a man in all sanity play a game of make-believe for thirty years on end? Or might he be insane?

  He considered it calmly and it seemed unlikely, for no insanity could have written as he had written; that he had written what he thought he had was proved by the senator’s remarks tonight.

  So the rest had been make-believe; it could be nothing else. Make-believe with help from that faceless being, whoever he might be, who had made a deal with him that night so long ago.

  Although, he thought, it might not take much help. The propensity to kid one’s self was strong in the human race. Children were good at it; they became in all reality all the things they pretended that they were. And there were many adults who made themselves believe the things they thought they should believe or the things they merely wanted to believe for their peace of mind.

  Surely, he told himself, it would be no great step from this kind of pretending to a sum total of pretending.

  “Mr. Harrington,” asked the waitress, “don’t you like your pie?”

  “Certainly,” said Harrington, picking up the fork and cutting off a bite.

  So pretending was the pay, the ability to pretend without conscious effort a private world in which he moved alone. And perhaps it was even more than that—perhaps it was a prior condition to his writing as he did, the exact kind of world and life in which it had been calculated, by whatever means, he would do his best.

  And the purpose of it?

  He had no idea what the purpose was.

  Unless, of course, the body of his work was a purpose in itself.

  The music in the radio cut off and a solemn voice said: “We interrupt our program to bring you a bulletin. The Associated Press has just reported that the White House has named Senator Johnson Enright as secretary of state. And now, we continue with our music….”

  Harrington paused with a bite of pie poised on the fork, halfway to his mouth.

  “The hallmark of destiny,” he quoted, “may rest upon one man!”

  “What was that you said, Mr. Harrington?”

  “Nothing. Nothing, miss. Just something I remembered. It’s really not important.”

  Although, of course, it was.

  How many other people in the world, he wondered, might have read a certain line out of one of his books? How many other lives might have been influenced in some manner from the reading of a phrase that he had written?

  And had he had help in the writing of those lines? Did he have actual talent or had he merely written the thoughts that lay in other minds? Had he had help in writing as well as in pretending? Might that be the reason now he felt so written out?

  But however that might be, it was all over now. He had done the job and he had been fired. And the firing of him had been as efficient and as thorough as one might well expect—all the mumbo-jumbo had been run in competent reverse, beginning with the man from the magazine this morning. Now here he sat, a humdrum human being perched upon a stool, eating cherry pie.

  How many other humdrum humans might have sat, as he sat now, in how many ages past, released from their dream-life as he had been released, trying with no better luck than he was having to figure out what had hit them? How many others, even now, might still be living out a life of make-believe as he had lived for thirty years until this very day?

  For it was ridiculous, he realized, to suppose he was the only one. There would be no point in simply running a one-man make-believe.

  How many eccentric geniuses had been, perhaps, neither geniuses nor eccentric until they, too, had sat in some darkened corner with a faceless being and listened to his offer?

  Suppose—just suppose—that the only purpose in his thirty years had been that Senator Johnson Enright should not retire from public life and thus remain available to head the state department now? Why, and to whom, could it be so important that one particular man got one certain post? And was it important enough to justify the use of one man’s life to achieve another’s end?

  Somewhere, Harrington told himself, there had to be a clue. Somewhere back along the tangled skein of those thirty years there must be certain signposts which would point the way to the man or thing or organization, whatever it might be.

  He felt dull anger stirring in him, a formless, senseless, almost hopeless anger that had no direction and no focal point.

  A man came in the door and took a stool one removed from Harrington.

  “Hi, Gladys,” he bellowed.

  Then he noticed Harrington and smote him on the back. “Hi, there, pal,” he trumpeted. “Your name’s in the paper.”

  “Quiet down, Joe,” said Gladys. “What is it that you want?”

  “Gimme a hunk of apple pie and a cuppa coffee.”

  The man, Harrington saw, was big and hairy. He wore a Teamsters badge.

  “You said something about my name being in the paper.”

  Joe slapped down a folded paper.

  “Right there on the front page. The story there w
ith your picture in it.”

  He pointed a grease-stained finger.

  “Hot off the press,” he yelped and burst into gales of laughter.

  “Thanks,” said Harrington.

  “Well, go ahead and read it,” Joe urged boisterously. “Or ain’t you interested.”

  “Definitely,” said Harrington.

  The headline said:

  NOTED AUTHOR WILL RETIRE

  “So you’re quitting,” blared the driver. “Can’t say I blame you, pal. How many books you written?”

  “Fourteen,” said Harrington.

  “Gladys, can you imagine that! Fourteen books! I ain’t even read that many books in my entire life…”

  “Shut up, Joe,” said Gladys, banging down the pie and coffee.

  The story said:

  Hollis Harrington, author of See My Empty House, which won him the Nobel prize, will retire from the writing field with the publication of his latest work, Come Back, My Soul.

  The announcement will be made in this week’s issue of Situation magazine, under the byline of Cedric Madison, book editor.

  Harrington feels, Madison writes, that he has finally, in his forthcoming book, rounded out the thesis which he commenced some thirty years and thirteen books ago…

  Harrington’s hand closed convulsively upon the paper, crumpling it.

  “Wassa matter, pal?”

  “Not a thing,” said Harrington.

  “This Madison is a jerk,” said Joe. “You can’t believe a thing he says. He is full of…”

  “He’s right,” said Harrington. “I’m afraid he’s right.”

  But how could he have known? He asked himself. How could Cedric Madison, that queer, devoted man who practically lived in his tangled office, writing there his endless stream of competent literary criticism, have known a thing like this? Especially, Harrington told himself, since he, himself, had not been sure of it until this very morning.

  “Don’t you like your pie?” asked Joe. “And your coffee’s getting cold.”

  “Leave him alone,” said Gladys, fiercely. “I’ll warm up his coffee.”

  Harrington said to Joe: “Would you mind if I took this paper?”

  “Sure not, pal. I’m through with it. Sports is all I read.”

  “Thanks,” said Harrington. “I have a man to see.”

  The lobby of the Situation building was empty and sparkling—the bright, efficient sparkle that was the trademark of the magazine and the men who made it.

  The 12-foot globe, encased in its circular glass shield, spun slowly and majestically, with the time-zone clocks ranged around its base and with the keyed-in world situation markers flashing on its surface.

  Harrington stopped just inside the door and glanced around, bewildered and disturbed by the brightness and the glitter. Slowly he oriented himself. Over there the elevators and beside them the floor directory board. There the information counter, now unoccupied, and just beyond it the door that was marked:

  HARVEY

  Visiting Hours

  9 to 5 on Week Days

  Harrington crossed to the directory and stood there, craning his neck, searching for the name. And found it.

  CEDRIC MADISON… 317

  He turned from the board and pressed the button for the elevator.

  On the third floor the elevator stopped and he got out of it and to his right was the newsroom and to his left a line of offices flanking a long hall.

  He turned to the left and 317 was the third one down. The door was open and he stepped inside. A man sat behind a desk stacked high with books, while other books were piled helter-skelter on the floor, and still others bulged the shelves upon the walls.

  “Mr. Madison?” asked Harrington and the man looked up from the book that he was reading.

  And suddenly Harrington was back again in that smoky, shadowed booth where long ago he’d bargained with the faceless being—but no longer faceless. He knew by the aura of the man and the sense of him, the impelling force of personality, the disquieting, obscene feeling that was a kind of psychic spoor.

  “Why, Harrington!” cried the faceless man, who now had taken on a face. “How nice that you dropped in! It’s incredible that the two of us…”

  “Yes, isn’t it,” said Harrington.

  He scarcely knew he said it. It was, he realized, an automatic thing to say, a putting up of hands to guard against a blow, a pure and simple defense mechanism.

  Madison was on his feet now and coming around the desk to greet him, and if he could have turned and run, Harrington would have fled. But he couldn’t run; he was struck and frozen; he could make no move at all beyond the automatic ones of austere politeness that had been drilled into him through thirty years of simulated aristocratic living.

  He could feel his face, all stiff and dry with the urbane deadpan that he had affected—and he was grateful for it, for he knew that it would never do to show in any way that he had recognized the man.

  “It’s incredible that the two of us have never met,” said Madison, “I’ve read so much of what you’ve written and liked so much everything I’ve read.”

  “It’s good of you to say so,” said the urbane, unruffled part of Harrington, putting out his hand. “The fault we have never met is entirely mine. I do not get around as much as I really should.”

  He felt Madison’s hand inside his own and closed his fingers on it in a sense of half-revulsion, for the hand was dry and cold and very like a claw. The man was vulture-like—the tight, dessicated skin drawn tight across the death-head face, the piercing, restless eyes, the utter lack of hair, the knife-like slash of mouth.

  “You must sit down,” said Madison, “and spend some time with me. There are so many things we have to talk about.”

  There was just one empty chair; all the others overflowed with books. Harrington sat down in it stiffly, his mouth still dry with fear.

  Madison scurried back behind the desk and hunched forward in his chair.

  “You look just like your pictures,” he declared.

  Harrington shrugged. “I have a good photographer—my publisher insists.”

  He could feel himself slowly coming back to life, recovering from the numbness, the two of him flowing back together into the single man.

  “It seems to me,” he said, “that you have the advantage of me there. I cannot recall I’ve ever seen your picture.”

  Madison waved a waggish finger at him. “I am anonymous,” he said. “Surely you must know all editors are faceless. They must not intrude themselves upon the public consciousness.”

  “That’s a fallacy, no doubt,” Harrington declared, “but since you seem to value it so much, I will not challenge you.”

  And he felt a twinge of panic—the remark about editorial facelessness seemed too pat to be coincidental.

  “And now that you’ve finally come to see me,” Madison was saying, “I fear it may be in regard to an item in the morning papers.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Harrington said smoothly, “that is why I’m here.”

  “I hope you’re not too angry.”

  Harrington shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, I came to thank you for your help in making up my mind. I had considered it, you see. It was something I told myself I should do, but…”

  “But you were worried about an implied responsibility. To your public, perhaps; perhaps even to yourself.”

  “Writers seldom quit,” said Harrington. “At least not voluntarily. It didn’t seem quite cricket.”

  “But it was obvious,” protested Madison. “It seemed so appropriate a thing for you to do, so proper and so called-for, that I could not resist. I confess I may have wished somewhat to influence you. You’ve tied up so beautifully what you set out to say so many years ago in this last book of yours that it would be a s
hame to spoil it by attempting to say more. It would be different, of course, if you had need of money from continued writing, but your royalties—”

  “Mr. Madison, what would you have done if I had protested?”

  “Why, then,” said Madison, “I would have made the most abject apology in the public prints. I would have set it all aright in the best manner possible.”

  He got up from the desk and scrabbled at a pile of books stacked atop a chair.

  “I have a review copy of your latest book right here,” he said. “There are a few things in it I’d like to chat about with you.”

  He’s a clue, thought Harrington, watching him scrabble through the books—but that was all he was. There was more, Harrington was sure, to this business, whatever it might be, than Cedric Madison.

  He must get out of here, he knew, as quickly as he could, and yet it must be done in such a manner as not to arouse suspicion. And while he remained, he sternly warned himself, he must play his part as the accomplished man of letters, the final gentleman.

  “Ah, here it is!” cried Madison in triumph.

  He scurried to the desk, with the book clutched in his hand.

  He leafed through it rapidly.

  “Now, here, in chapter six, you said…”

  The moon was setting when Harrington drove through the massive gates and up the curving driveway to the white and stately house perched upon its hill.

  He got out of the car and mounted the broad stone steps that ran up to the house. When he reached the top, he halted to gaze down the moon-shadowed slope of grass and tulips, whitened birch and darkened evergreen, and he thought it was the sort of thing a man should see more often—a breathless moment of haunting beauty snatched from the cycle that curved from birth to death.

  He stood there, proudly, gazing down the slope, letting the moonlit beauty, the etching of the night soak into his soul.

  This, he told himself, was one of those incalculable moments of experience which one could not anticipate, or afterwards be able to evaluate or analyze.

  He heard the front door open and slowly turned around.