The Complete Serials

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Even if I saw something, I’d probably not recognize it,” said Norton. “I thought maybe they would try to move the dead visitor somewhere. To the university down at Minneapolis, maybe. But I guess it’s just too large. That thing must weigh tons.”

  “Maybe they will later on,” said Kathy, “but as I understand it, it was important to get some tissue samples as soon as possible, if what they are getting can be called tissue.”

  Norton lifted the glasses to his face, stared through them for a long time, then took them down, handing them to Kathy.

  “I’ve never seen such tight security,” said Kathy. “Nor set up so fast. Chet and I got here only a few hours after you phoned us, but by that time, they had it buttoned up. Ordinarily, there would be some sort of public relations setup to give you some idea of what might be going on. But here there’s nothing. Not even someone around to tell you there’ll be no information. We’re just locked out.”

  “Washington probably figures this is important. Top secret.”

  “Sure they do,” said Kathy. “And more than that, they were caught flat-footed and had to move fast. Who would have expected that one of the visitors would die and they’d have a shot at it. When we write about how tight the security is, the government will complain. Claiming we are over emphasizing.”

  “In a little while,” said Norton, “Lone Pine will be swarming with newsmen. Like it was before. Maybe then someone will be able to jar something loose.”

  “I tried,” said Kathy, “but there’s no one to jar. Just those silly, flatfaced guardsmen who won’t let you through. Most of them won’t even talk to you. Not even the officers. Usually officers will talk, at least a little, to show you how important they are, if for no other reason. I tell you, Frank, I don’t even know why I’m here. I could just as well have stayed back in the newsroom. Here I’m not doing any good. I don’t know what the hell I’ll tell Johnny when I phone him. Maybe someone else could have done better. Maybe Jay . . .”

  “I don’t see how,” said Norton. “As you say, there’s no one here to talk to.”

  “What beats me,” said Kathy, “is that there aren’t even any rumors. In a tight security situation such as this, there are always rumors. Someone had heard something and are embroidering on it. But here there isn’t even that. Stiffy is just as empty as I am. You’d expect that by now Stiffy would have heard something that he could enlarge a bit and pass on. Nor Sally, either. If she’d heard something, I’m sure she’d tell me.”

  “You got to hang in there,” said Norton. “If you hang in long enough . . .”

  “Jerry and I were going to have dinner tonight,” said Kathy. “Both of us were counting on it. It’s been a long time since we’ve shared a dinner—a sit-down dinner, not just grabbing a hamburger at a fast-food joint. Poor Jerry, he’s had a bleak time of it. Six years as a student, living hand to mouth, picking up odd jobs so he can get the little money that he needs, living in a tiny room. I thought we should get married. Then, at least, he’d have a decent place to live, but he would have none of that. He refused to let a woman support him. The man has pride and I respect him for it, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling sorry for him, and he’d be sore if he knew I felt sorry for him. So I can’t show it. We could have shacked up and that would have made it easier for the two of us, but neither of us wanted that. There’s nothing really wrong with it; a lot of people do. But both of us shied away from it. I don’t know. It seemed sort of cheap and both of us agreed . . .”

  “It’ll work out,” said Norton, trying to comfort her. “He’s only got a little while before he has his doctorate and then he’ll get a job . . .”

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she said. “I shouldn’t, but it just came out of me. Frank, why should I be telling this to you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Norton, “but I am glad you could. If it helped you any, I am glad you could.”

  They sat silent for a time in the autumn afternoon.

  Finally, Norton said, “In a day or two, before the end of the week, I’ll be taking a few days off. I do it every fall.

  Usually earlier than this. This matter of the visitors makes me late this year. I’ll drive up through the wilderness area, a canoe strapped to the top of the car. I’ll park beside a little river that I know and will spend a few days canoeing. A sort of farewell to the autumn wilderness, a few days with it before bad weather closes in. I just paddle along and look, taking it easy, not pushing myself. I won’t work at it. Maybe do a little fishing. Mostly looking, though.”

  “It sounds nice,” said Kathy.

  “I was thinking. Why don’t you phone Jerry and ask him to come up here. Tell Johnny you’re taking some vacation. The two of you join me on this little jaunt. You get away from your deadlines, Jerry from his classes. It would do the both of you a world of good.”

  “I think it would,” said Kathy, “but we can’t. I used up all my vacation time in June and Jerry’s got his thesis.”

  “I’m sorry,” Norton said. “It would have been nice to have had the two of you along.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Kathy. “Thanks so much for asking.”

  35. WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The President came into the press office as Porter was preparing to leave. The press secretary rose from his desk, surprised, and said, “You are working late, sir.”

  “And so are you,” said the President. “I saw your light and decided to come in.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Only listen to me,” said the President. “I need someone I can sit down with and take off my shoes.”

  He walked to a sofa against the wall and dropped into it, slouching, stretching out his legs, locking his hands behind his head.

  “Dave,” he asked, “is all of this really happening or am I having a bad dream?”

  “I fear,” said Porter, “that it is happening. Although there are times when I ask myself the same question.”

  “Can you see an end to it? A logical end?”

  Porter shook his head. “Not at this point, I can’t. But I have a sort of in-grown faith that it will work out. Even the worst situations usually do.”

  “All day long,” said the President, “I have people hammering at me. Things they want me to do. Actions they want me to take. Probably silly things, but to the people who advocate them, I don’t suppose they’re silly. I have a stack of letters asking me to designate a day of prayer. I have phone calls from men I have always regarded as reasonable suggesting a proclamation calling for a day of prayer. And I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to call a day of prayer. Sure, presidents at various times have asked the people to observe a day of prayer, but only on occasions that patently call for prayer, and I don’t think this situation does.”

  “It stems from all the religious fervor this business has stirred up,” said Porter. “When people don’t know what else to do, they suddenly turn to religion, or what for them may pass for religion. It constitutes a mystic retreat into unreality. It is a search for an understanding of forces that are beyond our capability to understand, a seeking for some symbol that will bridge the gap to understanding.”

  “Yes, I realize all that,” said the President, “and, in a way, I can sympathize with it. But to call for prayer right now would over emphasize the problem that we face. What’s happening baffles the hell out of me, but I feel no sense of panic. Maybe I’m wrong, Dave. Should I be feeling panic?”

  “I don’t think so,” Porter said. “It’s not a matter of panic. What is driving these people to urge a day of prayer is the obsessive urge of the suddenly devout to force everyone else into at least a simulation of their state of mind.”

  “I’ve tried over the last hour or so,” said the President, “to sit quietly by myself and try, somehow, to get straight in my mind what we are really facing. Thinking, I suppose, that if I could get that straight in my mind, I might just possibly be able to figure what to do. The first th
ing I told myself was that, as of the moment, we are not facing any threat of violence or coersion. The visitors, as a matter of fact, have been quite well behaved. It looks to me as if they may be making an effort to understand the sort of society we have, although there must be some aspects of it that are hard for them to understand. And if they are doing this, I told myself, then they must intend to operate within the parameters of our society in the best way that they can. I can’t be sure of this, of course, but that’s the way it looks and I gain some measure of reassurance from it. Of course, at any time at all, something might happen that will change it. The police down in that Alabama town where the visitor sat down in the stadium arrested a bunch of dimwits trying to get into the stadium with a box of dynamite. I suspect they intended to blow up the visitor.”

  “Even had they succeeded,” said Porter, “they probably would have failed. It would take more than a box of dynamite, most likely, to inconvenience one of the visitors.”

  “What you say is true, Dave, if the data from Whiteside’s firing test is accurate and I assume it is. But it would have been a deliberate act of aggression that could change the attitude of the visitors toward us. Until we know a whole lot more than we know now, we can’t afford to commit an act of violence, even an unintentional act of violence. I have a feeling that the visitors, if they put their minds to it, could outdo us in violence. I’d not like to come down to a shooting match with them.”

  “We do need to know a lot more about them,” said Porter. “How is Allen making out with the dead visitor? Have you heard anything from him?”

  “Only that the investigation is underway. He’s doing the preliminary work on the spot. Once that is done, an effort might be made to move the body to some facility where the work can be carried out under more favorable circumstances.”

  “Moving it might be quite a chore.”

  “I am told there are ways it can be done. I understand the Army Corps of Engineers is working on the problem.”

  “Any indication of why the visitor might have died?”

  “It’s funny that you should have asked that, Dave. That is one of the first questions that popped into my mind. Seems to me that when something dies, the inclination always is to ask the cause of death. All of us are very much concerned with life and death. H. G. Wells popped into my mind immediately. His Martians died because they were defenseless against the diseases of the Earth. I wondered if some bacterium, some virus, some fungus might have done the visitor in. But the cause of its death apparently was a question that Allen never thought of. At least, he said nothing about it. He was just excited that one of them had been delivered into his hands. There is something about that guy that gives me the cold shivers every now and then. Dammit, there are times when he doesn’t seem human. He’s too much the scientist. To him the scientists are a brotherhood set apart from the rest of humanity. That attitude bothers us. The chances are that Allen and his men will learn something about the visitor that it might not be wise to advertise. I have tried to impress this on him and I think he understands, but I can’t be sure. I know how you feel about this, Dave, but . . .”

  “If there is information that shouldn’t be made public in the interest of national security,” said Porter, “than I’d go along with holding it back. What I object to is secrecy for the sake of secrecy. I am confident the findings from the dead visitor can be handled. Certainly, there will be something that can be safely announced. If there is enough of that sort of information, the media can be satisfied. Some of them may suspect the full story is not being told, but there’s not too much for them to complain about. What worries me are the people who are doing the investigating. The press could get to some of them.”

  “I warned Allen on that. He is using only men in his own department—not the people he recruited from outside. He swears that he can trust them. It is unlikely that anyone can get to them, let alone talk to them. We’ve got a security net around Lone Pine a snake couldn’t wriggle through.”

  The President hoisted himself to his feet and started for the door, then came back and sat down again.

  “There’s another thing I don’t like,” he said. “It’s that goddamned U.N. There is a push to declare that the visitors are an international, not an internal, matter. You are aware of it, of course.”

  Porter nodded. “I had some rather sharp questions on it at today’s briefing. For a while, the boys had me skating on thin ice.”

  “The resolution is going to be voted,” said the President. “Sure as hell it will. There’s no way we can stop it. Only half a dozen governments will stand with us. We’ve twisted all sorts of arms, but there is little we can do. All our little sanctimonious underprivileged brothers that we’re breaking our ass to help will vote against us.”

  “They can pass the resolution. They’ll play hell enforcing it.”

  “Sure, I know that, but we’ll get a bloody nose for all the world to see. We’ll drop a lot of prestige.”

  “Maybe it is time to let the prestige go. This is our show. We are the ones who have the visitors on our backs.”

  “Dave, you may be right. But there are other considerations. State is frantic at the prospect.”

  “State is always frantic.”

  “I know. But it’s not only State and the U.N. resolution. There are others who are giving us heat. The environmentalists are up in arms because we are doing nothing to protect our wilderness areas against the visitors. The lumber interests are howling to high heaven. The farmers, seeing visitors come down and roost in the middle of their fields, are getting restless. The airlines are threatening to cut their schedule. The entire business world is in an uproar. The stock markets are reacting like a yo-yo. At times, I catch myself thinking and I know it’s wrong to think it, but I can’t help it—why did it have to be us? Why couldn’t it have been Europe or South America, or even at times, God help me, the Soviet Union?”

  “I can understand how you might feel that way,” said Porter. “There is so damn much . . .”

  “If only I could win once in a while,” said the President. “If I didn’t have to fight so hard for every inch of progress. Take the energy bill. It all makes sense, it is all possible within the state of the art. I could bring in hundreds of top notch engineers who would swear that the plan is practical. A solar energy farm in the deserts of the Southwest, a few more millions to nail down a cryogenic transmission and storage system. Another year is all it would take, the engineers tell me, a few more million. Enough energy to power the entire country, a transmission system that could distribute or store the energy with virtually no loss of power. But does Congress see it that way? Hell, no, they don’t see it that way. Half of them are in the clutches of the big energy corporations, the other half so stupid that it’s a wonder they can find their way home when they leave the Capitol . . .”

  “Some day,” said Porter. “Some day they’ll come around to it. Soon or late, they’ll have to see . . .”

  “Sure,” said the President, “some day. I’ll tell you when that some day will be. When gasoline costs five bucks a gallon and you have to wait in line for yours to get the three gallons your ration card allows you. When you go cold in the winter because you can’t afford to use enough natural gas to keep warm. When you find that you use 25-watt light bulbs to hold down the lighting bill . . .”

  36. IOWA

  The sun had set and the early evening dusk was settling in when Jerry Conklin turned into the gas station.

  “Fill the tank and check the oil,” Jerry told the attendant.

  While the attendant was busy at the pump, Jerry walked to the edge of the road. The station was on the outskirts of one of the many small villages through which he’d driven; a quiet little trading center for the farming country that surrounded it. The town, the same as all the others; was made up of rows of small, neat houses and a tidy business district. Lights were coming on in some of the houses and there was little traffic on the road. An evening hush had fallen
over the community, broken now and then by the yapping of a dog.

  Jerry stood at the side of the road, looking up and down it. Within himself the ache still persisted. He had been stupid, he told himself, driven by an illogical need that he could not define. He should have known, he told himself, that the trip would come to nothing. It had been silly to think that 101 would recognize him—although, in a way, it might have recognized him. But if it had been recognition, he could find no comfort in it.

  He had driven to the farmhouse late in the afternoon after several failures to find the place and having to stop along the way for further directions.

  The farmer had been in the farmyard, puttering around with a hammer and nails, repairing a pigpen fence.

  “Yeah, it’s still sitting there, guarding the field,” he had said. “But it won’t do you no good to go over there. You’re welcome if you want to try, but I know what will happen. I’d go with you, but I got work to do. These hogs have been breaking out of here and I have to repair the fence so I can keep them in.”

  Jerry had walked to the field. Old 101 sat there, in a hayfield off to one side of the plowed strip of land. It made no move to chase him off. It just kept sitting there. He had walked out to it and walked around it, staring up at it, trying to remember how it had looked when it had landed on the bridge. But while the memory of it straddling the river, with the bridge gone to kindling wood under its impact, still was sharp and clear, he found it difficult to equate it now with the way it had appeared the time he first had set eyes upon it. Somehow it seemed smaller now, although, God knows, it was still big enough.

  He had walked around it and moved up close against it, laying his hands upon it to feel the soft warmness of it. He had patted it gently and poked it with a playful fist. And it gave no sign.

  “Tell me,” he had said to it. “Tell me what I need to know.”

  It had told him nothing. It had paid no attention to him. But he was sure it knew that he was there. How he could be so sure of that, he did not know.