The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  He was reaching for the shirt when the stillness struck him—the peaceful, mellow stillness of an autumn afternoon. The peace of yellow leaf and the mellowness of the haze upon the distant hills and the winelike richness of the season.

  But the stillness was all wrong. There should be a gasping and a bubbling from the man upon the bed.

  With his shoulders hunched, as if against a blow, Blaine waited for the sound and there was no sound.

  He spun around and took a step toward the bed, then halted. For there was no reason for going near the bed. Riley’s swathed body lay still and quiet and the bubble on the lips was frozen there.

  “Doctor!” Blaine yelled. “Doctor!” running to the door, knowing even as he ran and yelled that he was being foolish, that his reaction was irrational.

  He reached the door and stopped. He put his hands against the jambs and leaned forward to thrust his head out into the corridor.

  The doctor was coming down the hall, hurrying, but not running.

  “Doctor,” whispered Blaine.

  The doctor reached the door. He put out a hand and pushed Blaine back into the room. He strode over to the bed.

  He stooped with his stethoscope placed against the mummy, then stepped back from the bed.

  He looked hard at Blaine.

  “And you are going where?” he asked.

  “He’s dead,” said Blaine. “His breathing stopped and it was a long time—”

  “Yes, he’s dead. He never had a chance. Even with gobathain he didn’t have a chance.”

  “Gobathian? That was what you used? That was why he was all wrapped up?”

  “He was broken,” said the doctor. “Like a toy someone had thrown on the floor and jumped on. He was—”

  He stopped and for a long, hard moment looked at Blaine.

  “What do you know about gobathian?” he asked.

  “I’ve heard of it,” said Blaine.

  And he’d heard of it, all right, he thought.

  “An alien drug,” the doctor said.

  “Used by an insect race. A warring insect race. And it’s done miracles. It can parch up a smashed and broken body. It can repair bones and organs. It can grow new tissue.”

  He glanced down at the swathed deadness, then looked back at Blaine.

  “You’ve read the literature?” he asked.

  “A popularization,” Blaine lied. “In a magazine.”

  And he could see again the seething madness of that jungle planet where he had stumbled on this drug the insects used—although in very truth they were not insects nor was it a drug they used.

  Although, he told himself, there was no need to quibble. Terminology, always difficult, had become impossible with the going to the stars. You used approximations and let it go at that. You did the best you could.

  “We’ll move you to another room,” the doctor told him.

  “No need of that,” said Blaine. “I was just about to leave.”

  “You can’t,” said the doctor, flatly. “I will not allow it. I won’t have you on my conscience. There’s something wrong with you, something very wrong. There’s no one to look after you—no friends, no people.”

  “I’ll get along. I always have before.”

  The doctor moved closer.

  “I have a feeling,” he said, “that you’re not telling me the truth—not the entire truth.”

  Blaine walked away from him. He reached the closet and got his shirt and put it on. He scuffed into his shoes. He picked up his jacket and shut the closet door, then turned around.

  “Now,” he said, “if you’ll just move aside, I’ll be going out.”

  There was someone coming down the corridor. Perhaps, Blaine thought, someone with the food the doctor promised. And maybe he should wait until the food arrived, for he needed it.

  But there was more than one person coming down the corridor— there were at least a pair of footsteps. Perhaps someone who had heard him yelling for the doctor, bearing down upon the room to see if help were needed.

  “I wish that you would change your mind,” the doctor said. “Aside from the feeling you need help, there also is the matter of formalities—”

  Blaine heard no more of what he had to say, for the walkers had reached the door and were standing just outside of it, looking in the room.

  Harriet Quimby, cool as ice, was saying: “Shep, how did you wind up here! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  And the telepathic undertone hit him like a whiplash: Give! Quick! Fill me in!

  Just claim me, that is all (ferocious woman dragging errant urchin behind her with no ceremony). If you do that they’ll let me go. Found me lying underneath a willow tree—

  (Drunk who had somehow climbed into a garbage can and can’t get out of it, top hat tilted on one ear, nose snapping and flashing like an advertising sign, crossed eyes registering a rather mild surprise).

  No, not that, Blaine pleaded. Just stretched out underneath the tree, dead to all the world. He thinks there’s something wrong with me—There is—

  But not what he—

  And Godfrey Stone was saying, smoothly, friendly, with a half-relieved, half-worried smile: “So you’ve been having the old trouble. Too much liquor, I suppose. You know the doctor told you—”

  “Ah, hell,” protested Blaine, “just a snort or two. Not enough—”

  “Aunt Edna has been wild,” said Harriet. “She imagined all sorts of things. You know what an imaginer she is. She was convinced you were gone for good and all this time.” Godfrey! Godfrey! Three years—Take it easy, Shep. No time now. Get you out of here.

  Dr. Wetmore said: “You people know this man? A relative of yours?”

  “Not relatives,” said Stone. “Just friends. His Aunt Edna—”

  “Well, let’s go,” said Blaine.

  Stone glanced questioningly at the doctor and Wetmore nodded.

  “Stop at the desk,” he said, “and pick up his release. I’ll phone it down. They’ll want your names.”

  “Gladly,” said Stone. “And thank you very much.”

  “It’s quite all right.”

  Blaine stopped at the door and turned back to the doctor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t tell the truth. I am not proud of it.”

  “All of us,” the doctor said, “hive moments in which we can take no pride. You are not alone.”

  “Good-by, doctor.”

  “So long,” said the doctor. “Take care of yourself.”

  Then they were going down the corridor, the three of them abreast.

  Who was in that other bed? asked Stone.

  A man by the name of Riley. Riley!

  A truck driver.

  Riley! He was the man we were looking for. We just ran into you.

  Stone halted and half turned to go back.

  No use, said Blaine. He’s dead. And his truck?

  Smashed. He ran off the road. “Oh, Godfrey!” Harriet cried.

  He shook his head at her. “No use,” he said. “No use.”

  Hey, what is going on?

  We’ll tell you all of it. First, let’s get out of here.

  Stone seized him by the elbow and hustled him along.

  Just one thing? How is Lambert Finn mixed up in all of this?

  “Lambert Finn,” Stone said vocally, “is the most dangerous man in the world today.”

  TO BE CONTINUED

  Third of Four Parts. He had a super-library in his head—the knowledge of a millions-of-years old entity. With the one slight difficulty that there wasn’t any index, no order, and way to use it when he wanted to!

  Synopsis

  There finally comes a time, in 1973 or thereabouts, when Man realizes that he is barred from space by solar radiations.

  But where science jailed to take Man to the stars, another method proves successful. Working against the tide of public scorn and laughter, a group of men develop paranormal kinetics, which, among other things, allow men to go to
the stars, in mind, but not in body.

  A center called Fishhook—since it is a fishing into space—is established in Mexico and from here men go out in mind, accompanied by machines designed for exploration and exploitation of the planets which circle other suns.

  The ideas, materials and techniques which are brought back from the stars are given worldwide distribution by Fishhook through a chain of retail outlets which are known as Trading Posts.

  Because of certain economic pressures brought about by Fishhook’s operation, Fishhook is hated by a good part of the world. But the world can’t get along without it. Like it or not, Fishhook is an established fact which the world must accept.

  There is also another basis of hatred—the revival of superstition, which has been largely brought about by the early, faddish use of paranormal kinetics without an understanding of their purpose. To many people paranormal kinetics still are magic and the people who possess paranormal powers are regarded as warlocks and witches. Once again people are afraid of the dark. They paint hex signs on their gates and gables as safeguards against goblin, witch and werewolf. And outside of Fishhook they hunt down the paranormal people—called parries. Their hatred and the hunting down of parries is urged on by a new crop of puritanical reformers, who profess to see paranormal kinetics as something utterly evil.

  The story opens about a century after the establishment of Fishhook. Shepherd Blaine, an explorer for Fishhook, discovers a sprawling intelligence which he thinks of as the Pinkness on a distant planet. As a way of greeting, the Pinkness swaps minds with him and Blaine goes back to Fishhook as two persons—himself and the Pinkness.

  Blaine has been warned by a friend, Godfrey Stone, who has picked up an alienness on a trip to another star, that if he ever should become alien he must flee Fishhook immediately. Stone himself had disappeared after phoning to warn Blaine.

  Upon his return to Fishhook, Blaine eludes Kirby Rand, Fishhook security chief, and with the help of Harriet Quimby, mysterious newspaper reporter, flees across the border into the United States.

  There, however, at a little town just across the border, the two of them are attacked by a mob which spots them as parries. A sheriff, intervening, runs Harriet out of town and throws Blaine in jail. While Blaine is there he is visited by Father Flanagan, the parish priest, who displays considerable curiosity about paranormal people.

  The mob comes for Blaine and the sheriff hands him over. Blaine is taken out to be hanged. But he escapes through the mechanism of the mind of the Pinkness, which takes him hack half an hour or so in time.

  The past is a dreary place. There is nothing living. Blaine presumes that all life rides on the crest of the present and leaves no traces in the past—all that is left in the past are the skeletons and shadows of the inorganic or the dead.

  Escaping in this wise from the town where the people were about to hang him. Blame gams his way back to the present and meets up with a frightened trucker named Riley. The man’s truck, an ancient funk heap that barely holds together, is painted with hex signs and carries a mystery cargo. The man himself carries a shotgun loaded with silver shot to protect himself from the dwellers of the darkness.

  Harriet has told Blaine, if they should be separated, to go to Pierre, South Dakota, and ask for her there. So when the trucker says he is going in that direction and asks Blaine if he wants to ride and drive the truck at night, while Riley rides shotgun, Blaine jumps at the chance.

  They have almost reached South Dakota when, one night, they are jumped by a coven of witches—actually a group of teen-age paranormal levitators out on a midnight lark. Blaine snatches the shotgun from Riley’s hands and orders the parries off. One of the parries, a beautiful girl named Anita Andre w, recognizing Blaine as a paranormal, offers to help get him where he wants to go, but he stays with Riley.

  Riley, suspicious of Blaine, sends him out at the next stop to buy a bag of hamburgers and some coffee, then drives off and leaves him stranded.

  Finding a willow thicket in which to hide himself, Blaine thinks back along the chain of circumstances which has brought him here. Thinking of the place where he found the Pinkness he suddenly finds himself back with the Pinkness once again, having traveled there without the benefit of the paranormal devices, the so-called star machines, used by Fishhook.

  He and the Pinkness talk and Blaine learns that the Pinkness is an apparently deathless creature which has no memory of its beginning, no concept of an end, and that it has visited mentally millions of planets scattered through billions of cubic light-years. Its mind is cluttered with a junk heap of information which the Pinkness is constitutionally unable to sort out and put to use. Blaine realizes, with a start, that he himself has this same information, through virtue of having a carbon copy of the mind of the Pinkness superimposed upon his own mind. If he can classify it and make it available, it will be his to use.

  When he returns to Earth he finds himself in a hospital His body had been found, in deep coma, and brought there. In the bed alongside him lies a dying Riley. Riley’s truck has gone off the road. Before he dies he tries to give Blaine a message for someone named Finn.

  Blaine, searching back through his memory, recalls a Lambert Finn, who years before had been a Fishhook explorer, but had come back from the stars a screaming maniac.

  Blaine is rescued from the hospital by Godfrey Stone and Harriet Quimby and as they leave the place Blaine asks Stone about Lambert Finn.

  “Lambert Finny Stone tells him, “is the most dangerous man in the world today!”

  Part 3

  XIX

  “DON’T YOU think we should drive a little farther?” Harriet asked. “If that doctor should get suspicious . . . .”

  Stone wheeled the car into the drive.

  “Why should he get suspicious?”

  “He’ll get to thinking. He’s puzzled by what happened to Shep and he’ll get to wondering. After all. our story had a lot of holes in it.”

  “For one thought up on the moment, I thought we did real well.”

  “But we’re only ten miles out of town.”

  “I’ll want to go back tonight. I have to do some checking on what became of Riley’s truck.”

  He braked the car to a halt in front of the unit marked Office.

  “Run your head into a noose, you mean,” said Harriet.

  The man who had been sweeping off the steps walked over to the car.

  “Welcome, folks,” he said, heartily. “What can The Plainsman do for you?”

  “Have you two connecting?”

  “It just so happens,” said the man, “we have. Nice weather we been having.”

  “Yes, very splendid weather.”

  “Might turn cold, though. Any day. It is getting late. I can remember when we had snow—”

  “But not this year,” said Stone. “No, not this year. You were saying you wanted two connecting.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Drive right on, straight ahead. Numbers 10 and 11. I’ll get the keys and be right along.”

  Stone lifted the car on gentle jets and slid down the roadway. Other cars were parked cozily against their units. People were unloading trunks. Others were siding in chairs on the little patios. Down at the far end of the parkway a foursome of old codgers were loudly pitching horseshoes.

  The car skidded into the space before No. 10 and settled easily to the ground.

  Blaine got out and held the door for Harriet.

  And it was good, he thought, it was almost like home to be with these two again—with two who had been lost and now were here again. No matter what might happen, he was with his own once more.

  The motel sat atop the bluffs above the river and from where he stood he could see the wide sweep of terrain north and east—the bald, brown bluffs and the erosion of the timbered gullies and ravines that ran down to the river valley, where a tangled expanse of ragged woods hemmed in the chocolate-flowing stream which meandered with an uneasiness of purpose, as
if it could not quite make up its mind where it wished to go, leaving behind it, as landmarks of its indecision, isolated ponds and lakes and crazily winding sloughs as erratic in their course as the river ever could be.

  There was a cleanness and a roominess that caught one’s imagination. There was a breath of freshness and the sense of space.

  The manager came trotting down the walk, jangling a couple of keys. He unlocked the doors and flung them open.

  “You’ll find everything O.K., he said. “We are very careful. There are shutters for all windows and the locks, throughout, are the best available. You’ll find a supply of hex signs and good-luck charms in the supply cabinet. We used to have them installed, but we found our guests have their own ideas on how they are best used.”

  “That,” said Stone, “is very thoughtful of you.”

  “It is good,” said the manager, “to be snug and under cover.”

  “You said a mouthful, pal,” said Stone.

  “And we have a restaurant up front—”

  “We’ll be using it,” said Harriet. “I am almost starved.”

  “You can stop on your way,” said the manager, “and sign the register, if you would.”

  “Of course,” said Harriet.

  He handed her the keys and went jogging up the walk, bobbing and bowing in merry host-ship to the occupants of the other units.

  “Let’s get inside,” said Stone.

  He held the door for Harriet and Blaine, then stepped in himself and closed the door behind him.

  The interior of the room was dim and shadowed and there was a dean, neutral, public smell about it. It was not a home, thought Blaine, nor yet a house. It was a shelter, that was all it was. A huddling place against the fall of night:

  Harriet tossed the keys down on a dresser and turned around to look around the room.

  “And you,” she said to Blaine. “Whatever happened to you? I went back to that place on the border and the town was in a stew. Something dreadful had happened. I never found out what. I never had a chance to learn. I had to get out fast.”

  “I got away,” Blaine told her.

  Stone held out his hand. “You did it better than I did. You got clean away.”