The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  The mutants made a man and turned him loose and watched him and allowed him to develop and set a spying mechanism that they called a bug to watch him, a little mechanical mouse that could be smashed with a paperweight.

  And in the proper time they jolted him—jolted him for what? They stirred up his fellow townsmen so he fled a lynching party; they planned for him to find a toy out of childhood and waited to see if the toy might not trip a childhood association; they fixed it so he would drive a Forever car when they knew that driving such a car could cause him to be mobbed.

  And after they had jolted an android, what happened to him then?

  What became of the androids once they had been used for the purpose of their making?

  He had told Crawford that when he knew what was going on, he’d talk to him again. And now he knew something of what was going on and Crawford might be very interested.

  He walked on through the woods, with its massive trees and its deep-laid forest mold and thick matting of old leaves, with its mosses and its flowers and its strange silence filled with uncaring and with comfort.

  He had to find Ann Carter. He had to tell her. Together, the two of them would somehow stand against it.

  He halted beside the great oak tree and stared up at its leaves and tried to clear his mind, to wipe it clean of the chaos of his thinking so he could start fresh again.

  There were two things that stood out above all others:

  He had to get back to the parent Earth.

  He had to find Ann Carter.

  XXXIV

  HE did not see the man until the voice startled him into turning.

  “Good morning, stranger,” said the man, standing just a few feet away, a great, tall, strong man dressed much as a farm hand or a factory worker, but with a jaunty, peaked cap and a brilliant feather stuck into it.

  Despite the rudeness of his clothing, there was nothing of the peasant about the man, but a cheerful self-sufficiency that reminded Vickers of someone he’d read about and he tried to think who it might be, and he thought of Robin Hood.

  Across the man’s shoulder was a strap that held a quiver full of arrows and in his hand he held a bow. Two young rabbits hung lifeless from his belt and the blood dripping from them had smeared his trouser leg.

  “Good morning,” said Vickers, shortly.

  He didn’t like the idea of this man popping up from nowhere.

  “You’re another one of them,” the man said.

  “Another one of what?”

  The man laughed. “We get one of you every once in a while. Someone who has blundered through and doesn’t know where he is. I’ve often wondered what happened to them before we were settled here or what happens to them when they pop through a long way from any settlement.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Another thing you don’t know,” said the man, “is where you are.”

  “I have a theory,” Vickers retorted. “This is a second earth.”

  “You got it pegged pretty close. You’re better than most of them. They just flounder around and gasp and won’t believe it when we tell them this is earth number two.”

  “That’s neat,” said Vickers. “Earth Number Two, is it? And what about Number Three?”

  “It’s there, waiting until we need it. Worlds without end, waiting until we need them. We can go on pioneering for generation after generation. A new earth for each new generation if we have to, but they say we won’t be needing them that fast.”

  “They?” challenged Vickers. “Who are they?”

  “The mutants,” said the man. “The local ones live in the Big House. You didn’t see the Big House?”

  VICKERS shook his head warily.

  “You must have missed it, coming up the ridge. A big brick place with a white picket fence around it and other buildings that look like barns, only they aren’t barns.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “No,” said the man. “They are laboratories and experimental buildings and there is one building that is fixed up for listening.”

  “Why do they have a place for listening? Seems to me you could listen almost anywhere. You and I can listen without having a special place fixed up for us.”

  “They listen to the stars,” the man told him.

  “They listen . . .” began Vickers, and then remembered Flanders sitting on the porch in Cliffwood, rocking in the chair and saying that great pools and reservoirs of knowledge existed in the stars, that it was there for the taking and you might not need rockets to go there and get it, but might reach out with your mind and that you’d have to sift and winnow, but you’d find much that you could use.

  “Telepathy?” asked Vickers.

  “That’s it,” said the man. “They don’t listen to the stars really, but to people who live on the planets of the stars. Now ain’t that the screwiest thing you ever heard of—listening to the stars!”

  “Yes, I guess it is.”

  “But they get ideas from these people. They don’t talk to them, I guess, just listen in on them. They catch some of the things they’re thinking and some of the things they know and a lot of it can be used and a lot of it don’t make no sense at all. But it’s the truth, so help me, mister.”

  “My name is Vickers. Jay Vickers.”

  “Well, I’m glad to know you, Mr. Vickers. My name is Asa Andrews.”

  He held out his hand and Vickers took it and his grip was hard and sure.

  And now, he knew that this was no Robin Hood. Here before him stood an American pioneer, the man who carried the long rifle from the colonies to the hunting grounds of Kentucky. Here were the alert stance, the independence, the quick good will and wit, the steady self-reliance. Here, once again, in the forests of Earth No. 2, was another pioneer type, sturdy and independent and a good man for a friend.

  “These mutants must be the people who are putting out the everlasting razor and all that other stuff in the gadget shops,” said Vickers.

  “You catch on quick,” said Andrews. “We’ll go up to the Big House in a day or two and you can talk to them.”

  HE shifted the bow from one hand to another. “Look, Vickers, did you leave someone back there? A wife and some kids, maybe?”

  “No one,” said Vickers. “Not a single soul:”

  “If you had, we’d have gone up to the Big House right away and told them about it and they would have fixed it up to bring the wife and kids through, too. That’s the only thing about this place—once you get here, there’s no going back. Although why anyone would want to go back is more than I can figure out. So far as I know, no one has wanted to.”

  He looked Vickers up and down, laughter tugging at his mouth.

  “You look all gaunted down,” he said. “You ain’t been eating good.”

  “Just fish and some venison I found. And berries.”

  “The old lady will have the victuals on. We’ll get some food into you and those whiskers off and I’ll have the kids heat up some water and you can take a bath, and then we can sit and talk. We got a lot to talk about.”

  He led the way, with Vickers following, down the ridge through the heavy timber.

  They came out on the edge of a cleared field green with growing corn.

  “That’s my place down there,” said Andrews. “Down at the hollow’s head. You can see the smoke.”

  “Nice field of corn you have,” Vickers said.

  “Knee-high by the Fourth. And over there is Jake Smith’s place. You can see the house if you look a little close. And just beyond the hogsback are John Simmon’s fields. There are other neighbors, but you can’t see from here.”

  They climbed the barbed wire fence and went across the field, walking between the corn rows.

  “It’s different here,” said Andrews, “than back on Earth. I was working in a factory there and living in a place that you wouldn’t keep animals in. Then the factory shut down and there was no money. I went to the carbohydrates people and the
y kept the family fed. Then the landlord threw us out. The carbohydrates people had been so friendly that I went to them and told them what had happened. They were the only ones I knew of that I could turn to. After a day or two, one of them came around and told us about this place—except, of course, he didn’t tell us what it really was. He said it was a brand-new territory that was opening up and there was free land for the taking and help to get you on your feet and that I could make a living and have a house instead of a two-by-four apartment in a stinking tenement and I said that we would go. He warned me that if we went, we couldn’t come back again and I asked him who would want to?”

  “You’ve never regretted it?” asked Vickers.

  “It was the luckiest thing that ever happened to us. Fresh air for the kids and all you want to eat and a place to live with no landlord to throw you out. No dues to pay and no taxes to scrape up. Just like in the history books.”

  “The history books?”

  “When America was opened up and the pioneers piled in. Land for the taking. More land than anyone can use, so rich you just scratch the ground a little and throw in some seed and you got a crop. Land to plant things in and wood to burn and build with and you can walk out at night and the sky is full of stars and the air is so clean it seems to hurt your nose when you draw it in.”

  ANDREWS turned and looked at Vickers, his eyes hard.

  “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said, as if daring Vickers to contradict him.

  “But these mutants,” said Vickers. “Don’t they get into your hair? Don’t they lord it over you?”

  “They don’t do anything but help us. They send us a robot to help out with the work when we need to have some help and they send a robot that lives with us nine months of the year to teach the kids. One robot teacher for each family. Now ain’t that something? Your own private teacher, just like you went out and hired yourself a high-toned private tutor like the rich folks back on Earth.”

  “And you don’t resent these mutants? You don’t hate them because they know more than you do?”

  “Mister,” said Asa Andrews, “you don’t want to let anyone around these parts hear you talking like that. When we first came, they explained it all to us. They had indoct—indoctrin—”

  “Indoctrination courses.”

  “That’s it. They told us what the score was. They explained the rules. There aren’t many.”

  “Like not having any firearms,” said Vickers.

  “That’s one of them. How did you know that?”

  “You’re hunting with a bow.”

  “Another one is that if you get into a row with anybody and can’t settle it peaceable, the two of you go up to the Big House and let them settle it. And if you get sick, you’re to let them know right away so they can send you a doctor and whatever else you need. The rules work to your benefit.”

  “How about work?”

  “Work?”

  “You have to earn some money, don’t you?”

  “Not yet,” said Andrews. “The mutants give us everything we want or need. All we do is grow the food. This is what they call—what was that word?—this is what they call the pastoral-feudal stage. You ever hear a word like that?”

  “But they must have factories,” Vickers persisted, ignoring the question. “Places where they make the razor blades and stuff. They’d need men to work in them.”

  “They use robots. Just lately they started making a car that can last forever. The plant is just a distance from here. But they use robots to do the entire job. You know what a robot is.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Vickers.

  They climbed the fence that edged the corn field and walked across a pasture toward the house.

  Someone yelled a joyous greeting and a half a dozen kids came running down the hill, followed by yelping dogs. A woman came to the door of the house, built of peeled logs. She waved to them and Andrews waved back and then the kids and dogs descended on them in a yelping, howling, happy pack.

  XXXV

  VICKERS lay in bed, in the loft above the kitchen, and listened to the wind pattering on bare feet across the shingles just above his head. He turned and burrowed his head into the goose-down pillow and beneath him the corn-shuck mattress rustled in the dark.

  He was clean, washed clean in the tub behind the house, with water heated in a kettle on an outdoor fire, lathering himself with soap while Andrews sat on a nearby stump and talked and the children played in the yard and the dogs lay sleeping in the Sun, twitching their hides to chase away the flies.

  He had eaten, two full meals of food such as he had forgotten could exist after days of half-cooked fish and half-rotten venison—cornbread and sorghum and young rabbits fried in a smoking skillet, with creamed new potatoes and greens the children had gone out and gathered and a salad of watercress pulled from the spring below the house and for supper fresh eggs just taken from the nest.

  He had shaved, with the children ringed around him watching, after Andrews had seated him on a stump and had used the scissors to trim away the beard.

  And after that he and Andrews had sat on the steps and talked. Andrews had said that he knew of a place that was crying for a house—a tucked-in place just across the hill, with a spring a step or two away and some level ground on a bench above the creek where a man could lay out his fields. There was wood in plenty for the house, great, tall trees, and Andrews said that he would help him cut them. When the logs were ready, the neighbors would come in for the raising and Jake would bring along some of the corn that he’d been cooking and Ben would bring his fiddle and they’d have themselves a hoedown when the house was up. If they needed help beyond what the neighbors could supply, all they’d have to do was send word up to the Big House and the mutants would send a gang of robots. But that probably wouldn’t be necessary, Andrews had said. The neighbors were a willing lot and always ready to help; glad, too, to see another family moving in.

  Once the house was built, said Andrews, Simmons had some daughters that Vickers might want to have a look at, although you could do your picking blind if you wanted to, for they were a likely lot. Andrews had dug Vickers in the ribs with his elbow and had laughed uproariously and Jean, Andrews’ wife, who had come out to sit with them a while, had smiled shyly at him and then had turned to watch the children playing in the yard.

  After supper, Andrews had showed him with some pride the books on the shelf in the living room and had said that he was reading them, something he had never done before—something he had never wanted to do before, nor had the time to do. Vickers, looking at the books, had found Homer and Shakespeare, Montaigne and Austen, Thoreau and Steinbeck.

  “You mean you’re reading these?” he asked.

  Andrews had nodded. “Reading them and liking them, mostly. Once in a while I find it a little hard to wade through them, but I keep at it. Jean likes Austen best.”

  It was a good life here, said Andrews, the best life they’d ever known and Jean smiled her agreement and the kids had lost an argument about letting the dogs come in and sleep the night with them.

  HERE again was the American frontier, but idealized and bookish, with all the frontier’s advantages and none of its terror and its hardship. Here was a paternal feudalism, the Big House on the hill serving as the castle that looked down across the fields where happy people took their living from the soil. Here was a time for resting and for gathering strength. And here was peace. No talk of war, no taxes to fight a war, or to prevent a war by a proved willingness to fight.

  Here was—what had Andrews said?—the pastoral-feudal stage. And after that came what stage? The pastoral-feudal stage for resting and thinking, for getting thoughts in order, for establishing once again the bond between Man and soil, the stage in which was prepared the way for the development of a culture that would be better than the one they had left.

  This was one earth of many earths. How many others? Hundreds, thousands, millions? Earth following earth, and no
w all the earths lay open.

  He tried to figure it out and he thought he saw the pattern that the mutants planned. It was simple and it was brutal, but it was workable.

  There was an Earth that was a failure. Somewhere, on the path that led up from apedom, they had taken the wrong turning and had traveled since that day a long road of misery. There was brilliance in these people, and goodness, and ability—but they had poured their brilliance and their ability into channels of hate and arrogance and their goodness had been buried in selfishness.

  They were worth the saving, as a drunkard or a criminal is worthy of rehabilitation. But to save them, you must get them out of the neighborhood they live in, out of the slums of human thought and method.

  To do this, you must break the world they live in and you must have a plan to break it and after it is broken, you must have a program that leads to a better world.

  But first of all, there must be a plan of action.

  FIRST you shattered the economic systems on which old Earth was built. You shattered it with Forever cars and everlasting razor blades and with synthetic carbohydrates that would feed the hungry. You destroyed industry by producing things that industry could not duplicate and when you shattered industry, war was impossible and half the job was done.

  But then you left people without jobs, so you fed them with carbohydrates while you tried to ferry them to the following earths that lay waiting for them. If there wasn’t room enough on Earth No. 2, you sent some of them to No. 3 and maybe No. 4, so that you had no crowding, so there was room enough for all. On the new earths there was a beginning again, a chance to dodge the errors and skirt the dangers that had bathed Old Earth in blood for countless centuries.

  On these new earths you could build any sort of culture that you wished. You could even experiment, aim at one culture on Earth No. 2 and a slightly different one on No. 3 and yet a different one on No. 4. And after a thousand years or so, you could compare these cultures and see which one was best and consult the bales of data you had kept and pinpoint each mistake in each particular culture. In time you could arrive at a formula for the best in human cultures.