Over the River and Through the Woods

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Yes. I mentioned I’d been there. You said you’d heard of it.”

  “Heard of it. Hell, I was there the day it happened—August 15th, 778. An observer, not a participant. A cowardly little bastard who tagged along behind the noble band of Gascons who did in Charlemagne. Gascons, hell. That’s the fancy name for them. They were Basques, pure and simple. The meanest crew of men who ever drew the breath of life. Some Basques may be noble, but not this band. Not the kind of warriors who’d stand up face to face with the Franks. They hid up in the pass and rolled rocks down on all those puissant knights. But it wasn’t the knights who held their interest. It was the wagon train. They weren’t out to fight a war or to avenge a wrong. They were out for loot. Although little good it did them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It was this way,” said Luis. “They knew the rest of the Frankish army would return when the rearguard didn’t come up and they had not the stomach for that. They stripped the dead knights of their golden spurs, their armor and fancy clothes, the money bags they carried and loaded all of it on the wagons and got out of there. A few miles further on, deep in the mountains, they holed up and hid. In a deep canyon where they thought they would be safe. But if they should be found, they had what amounted to a fort. A half mile or so below the place they camped, the canyon narrowed and twisted sharply. A lot of boulders had fallen down at that point, forming a barricade that could have been held by a handful of men against any assault that could be launched against it. By this time, I was a long way off. I smelled something wrong, I knew something most unpleasant was about to happen. That’s another thing about this survival business. You develop special senses. You get so you can smell out trouble, well ahead of time. I heard what happened later.”

  He lifted the bottle and had another drink. He handed it to Boyd.

  “Don’t leave me hanging,” said Boyd. “Tell me what did happen.”

  “In the night,” said Luis, “a storm came up. One of those sudden, brutal summer thunderstorms. This time it was a cloudburst. My brave fellow Gascons died to the man. That’s the price of bravery.”

  Boyd took a drink, lowered the bottle, held it to his chest, cuddling it.

  “You know about this,” he said. “No one else does. Perhaps no one had ever wondered what happened to those Gascons who gave Charlemagne the bloody nose. You must know of other things. Christ, man, you’ve lived history. You didn’t stick to this area.”

  “No. At times I wandered. I had an itching foot. There were things to see. I had to keep moving along. I couldn’t stay in one place any length of time or it would be noticed that I wasn’t aging.”

  “You lived through the Black Death,” said Boyd. “You watched the Roman legions. You heard first hand of Attila. You skulked along on Crusades. You walked the streets of ancient Athens.”

  “Not Athens,” said Luis. “Somehow Athens was never to my taste. I spent some time in Sparta. Sparta, I tell you—that was really something.”

  “You’re an educated man,” said Boyd. “Where did you go to school?”

  “Paris, for a time, in the fourteenth century. Later on at Oxford. After that at other places. Under different names. Don’t try tracing me through the schools that I attended.”

  “You could write a book,” said Boyd. “It would set new sales records. You’d be a millionaire. One book and you’d be a millionaire.”

  “I can’t afford to be a millionaire. I can’t be noticed and millionaires are noticed. I’m not in want. I’ve never been in want. There’s always treasure for a skulker to pick up. I have caches here and there. I get along all right.”

  Luis was right, Boyd told himself. He couldn’t be a millionaire. He couldn’t write a book. In no way could he be famous, stand out in any way. In all things, he must remain unremarkable, always anonymous.

  The principles of survival, he had said. And this part of it, although not all of it. He had mentioned the art of smelling trouble, the hunch ability. There would be, as well, the wisdom, the street savvy, the cynicism that a man would pick up along the way, the expertise, the ability to judge character, an insight into human reaction, some knowledge concerning the use of power, power of every sort, economic power, political power, religious power.

  Was the man still human, he wondered, or had he, in twenty thousand years, become something more than human? Had he advanced that one vital step that would place him beyond humankind, the king of being that would come after man?

  “One thing more,” said Boyd. “Why the Disney paintings?”

  “They were painted some time later than the others,” Luis told him. “I painted some of the earlier stuff in the cave. The fishing bear is mine. I knew about the grotto. I found it and said nothing. No reason I should have kept it secret. Just one of those little items one hugs to himself to make himself important. I know something you don’t know—silly stuff like that. Later I came back to paint the grotto. The cave art was so deadly serious. Such terribly silly magic. I told myself painting should be fun. So I came back, after the tribe had moved and painted simply for the fun of it. How did it strike you, Boyd?”

  “Damn good art,” said Boyd.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t find the grotto and I couldn’t help you. I knew you had seen the cracks in the wall; I watched you one day looking at them. I counted on your remembering them. And I counted on you seeing the fingerprints and finding the pipe. All pure serendipity, of course. I had nothing in mind when I left the paint with the fingerprints and the pipe. The pipe, of course, was the tip-off and I was confident you’d at least be curious. But I couldn’t be sure. When we ate that night, here by the campfire, you didn’t mention the grotto and I was afraid you’d blown it. But when you made off with the bottle, sneaking it away, I knew I had it made. And now the big question. Will you let the world in on the grotto paintings?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  “I’d just as soon you didn’t.”

  “Okay,” said Boyd. “Not for the time at least. Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything you want?”

  “You’ve done the best thing possible,” said Luis. “You know who I am, what I am. I don’t know why that’s so important to me, but it is. A matter of identity, I suppose. When you die, which I hope will be a long time from now, then, once again, there’ll be no one who knows. But the knowledge that one man did know, and what is more important, understood, will sustain me through the centuries. A minute—I have something for you.”

  He rose and went into the tent, came back with a sheet of paper, handing it to Boyd. It was a topographical survey of some sort.

  “I’ve put a cross on it,” said Luis. “To mark the spot.”

  “What spot?”

  “Where you’ll find the Charlemagne treasure of Roncesvalles. The wagons and the treasure would have been carried down the canyon in the flood. The turn in the canyon and the boulder barricade I spoke of would have blocked them. You’ll find them there, probably under a deep layer of gravel and debris.”

  Boyd looked up questioningly from the map.

  “It’s worth going after,” said Luis. “Also it provides another check against the validity of my story.”

  “I believe you,” said Boyd. “I need no further evidence.”

  “Ah, well,” said Luis, “it wouldn’t hurt! And now, it’s time to go.”

  “Time to go! We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Later, perhaps,” said Luis. “We’ll bump into one another from time to time. I’ll make a point we do. But now it’s time to go.”

  He started down the path and Boyd sat watching him.

  After a few steps, Luis halted and half-turned back to Boyd.

  “It seems to me,” he said in explanation, “it’s always time to go.”

  Boyd stood and watched him move down the trail toward the village. There was about the moving figure a deep sense of loneliness—the most lonely man in
all the world.

  STATEMENT OF LIMITATION

  Over the River and Through the Woods by Clifford D. Simak has been published in a limited edition hardcover edition of 874 copies and in a special deluxe, leather-bound edition, autographed by Poul Anderson and numbered 1-100. A further boxed, deluxe leather-bound edition, autographed by Poul Anderson, is lettered A-Z.

  BONUS SHORT-STORY

  RULE 18

  Clifford D. Simak was awarded a posthumous retro Hugo for this novelette in 2014. It is reproduced here as first published in the July 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction

  A Novelette by

  CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

  A rule defeated Earth teams in the annual Earth-Mars football game—till a coach pulled the prize bright trick of—quite literally—all time!

  Rule XVIII—Each player on the respective teams must be able to present documentary evidence that he is of pure blood of the planet upon whose team he plays for an unbroken span of at least ten generations. Verification of the aforesaid documentary evidence and approval of the players upon this point shall be the duty of the Interplanetary Athletic Control Board.—From the eligibility section of the Official Rule Book for the Annual Terrestrial-Martian Football Game.

  Year 2479

  THE MIGHTY bowl resounded to the throaty war cry of the Druzecs, ancient tribe of the Martian Drylands. The cry seemed to blast the very dome of the sky. The purple and red of the Martian stands heaved tumultuously as the Martian visitors waved their arms and screamed their victory. The score was 19–0. For the sixty-seventh consecutive year the Martians had defeated the Earth team. And for the forty-second consecutive year the Terrestrial team had failed to score even a single point.

  There had been a time when an Earth eleven occasionally did defeat the Red Warriors. But that had been years ago. It was something that oldsters, mumbling in their beards, told about as if it were a legendary tale from the ancient past. Evil days had fallen upon the Gold and Green squads.

  And again this year the pick of the entire Earth, the Terrestrial crack football machine, had been trampled underfoot by the smashing forward wall of Martians, slashed to bits by the ferocious attack of the Red Planet backfield.

  Not that the Earth had not tried. Every team member had fought a heart-rending game, had put forth every ounce of strength, every shred of football sense, every last trickle of stout courage. Not that the Earth team was not good. It was good. It was the pick of the entire world, an All-Terrestrial eleven, selected on its merits of the preceding year and trained for an entire year under the mentorship of August Snelling, one of the canniest coaches the game had ever known. It was neither of these. It was just that the Martian team was better.

  Bands blared. The two teams were trailed off the field. The Martian victory cry continued to rend the skies, rolling in wave after successive wave from leathern throats.

  The Earth stands were emptied quietly, but the Martians remained, trumpeting their prowess. When the Martians did leave the amphitheatre, they took over the city of New York after the manner of football crowds since time immemorial. They paraded their mascot, the grotesque, ten-legged zimpa, through the streets. Some of them got drunk on Martian bocca, a potent liquor banned by law from sale on Earth, but always available in hundreds of speakeasies throughout the city. There were a few clashes between Martian and Earth delegations and some of the Martians were jailed. New York would be a bedlam until the Martian Special, huge space liner chartered for the game, roared out of its cradle at midnight for the return run to Mars.

  IN THE editorial rooms of the Evening Rocket Hap Folsworth, sports-writer extraordinary, explained it in a blur of submerged rage and admitted futility.

  “They just don’t grow them big enough or strong enough on Earth anymore,” he declared. “We are living too damn easy. We’re getting soft. Each generation is just a bit softer than the last. There’s no more hard work to be done. Machines do things for us. Machines mine ores, raise crops, manufacture everything from rocket ships to safety pins. All we got to do is push levers and punch buttons. A hell of a lot of muscle you can develop punching a button.

  “Where did they get the famous players of the past? Of a couple, three hundred years ago, or of a thousand years ago, if you like?” Hap blared. “I’ll tell you where they got them! They got them out of mines and lumber camps and off the farms—places where you had to have guts and brawn to make a living.

  “But we got smart. We fixed it so nobody has to work anymore. There are husky Earth lads, lots of them—in Martian mining camps and in Venus lumber camps and out on the Ganymede engineering projects. But every damn one of them has got Martian or Venusian blood in his veins. And Rule Eighteen says you got to be lily-pure for ten generations. If you ask me, that’s a hell of a rule.”

  Hap looked around to see how his audience was taking his talk. All of them seemed to be in agreement and he went on. What he was saying wasn’t new. It had been said thousands of times by thousands of sports-writers in thousands of different ways, but Hap recited it after each game. He enjoyed doing it. He chewed off the end of a Venus-weed cigar and went on.

  “The Martians aren’t soft. Their planet is too old and exhausted and nature-ornery for them to be soft. They got brawn and guts and their coaches somehow manage to pound some football sense into their thick heads. Why, football is just their meat—even if we did teach them the game.”

  He lit his cigar and puffed contentedly.

  “Say,” he asked as the others stood in respectful silence, “has anyone seen Russell today?”

  They shook their heads.

  The sports-writer considered the answer and then said, without emotion, “When he does show up, I’m going to boot him right smack-dab into the stratosphere. I sent him out two days ago to get an interview with Coach Snelling and he hasn’t showed up yet.”

  “He’ll probably be around next week,” suggested a copy boy. “He’s probably just sleeping one off somewhere.”

  “Sure, I know,” mourned Hap, “and when he does come in, he’ll drag in a story so big the chief will kiss him for remembering us.”

  COACH August Snelling delivered his annual after-the-Martian-game oration to his team.

  “When you went out on the field today,” he told them. “I praised you and pleaded with you to get out there and do some of the things I taught you to do. And what did you do? You went out there and you laid down on me. You laid down on the Earth. You laid down on five hundred thousand people in the stands who paid good hard cash to see a football game. You let those big dumbbells push you all over the lot. You had a dozen good plays, everyone of them good for ground. And did you use them? You did not!

  “You’re a bunch of lollipops. A good punch in the ribs and you roll over and bark. Maybe there’ll be some of you on the team next year and maybe there won’t. But if there are, I want you to remember that when we go up to Mars I intend to bring back that trophy if I have to steal it. And if I don’t, I’ll stop the ship midway and dump you all out. And then jump out myself.”

  But this didn’t mean much. For Coach Snelling, ace of the Earth coaches, had said the same thing, in substance, to Earth teams after each Martian game for the last twenty years.

  TANTALIZING shadows, queer, alien shadows flitted in the ground glass of the outré machine. Alexis Androvitch held his breath and watched. The shadows took form, then faded, but they had held tangible shape long enough for Alexis to glimpse what he wished to see, a glimpse that filled him with a supreme sense of triumph.

  The first step was completed. The second would be harder, but now that the first was accomplished—now that he really had some proof of his theories—progress would be faster.

  Alexis snapped off the machine and stepped to a bowl. There he washed his hands. Shrugging into a coat, he opened the door and trudged up the steps to the street above.

  On the avenue he was greeted by the raucous cries of the auto-newsstands, “Earth loses 19–0…Read all about it…Ex
tra…Extra…” repeating over and over the words recorded on the sound film within them.

  Customers placed coins in the slot, shoved a lever, and out came a paper with huge purple headlines and natural-color photo reproductions of the game.

  The vari-colored neon street lamps flicked on. Smoothly operating street machines slid swiftly down the broad, glassy pavement. Overhead purred the air-lane traffic.

  From somewhere came the muffled sound of the Drylands war cry as the Martians continued their celebration of victory.

  Alexis Androvitch walked on, unmindful of the war cries, of the blaring newsstands. He was not interested in athletics. He was on his way to a garden to enjoy a glass of beer and a plate of cheese.

  RUSH CULVER, Wisconsin ’45, was struggling with calculus. Exams stared him in the face and Rush freely admitted that he was a fool for having chosen math instead of zoology. Somehow or other he wasn’t so bright at figures.

  It was late. The other fellows in the house were asleep hours ago. A white moon painted the windows of the house opposite in delicate silver squares and rectangles. A night wind sighed softly in the elms outside. A car raced up State Street and the old clock in the music hall tower tolled out the hour with steady beat of bell.

  Rush mopped his brow and dug deeper into his book.

  He failed to hear the door of his room open softly and close again. He did not turn about until he heard the scuff of feet on the floor.

  A tall stranger stood in the room.

  Rush looked at him with something of disgust. He was dressed in purple shorts and a semi-metallic shirt that flashed and glinted in the soft rays of the desk lamp. His feet were shod in sandals. His head was verging on the bald and his face was pale, almost as if he had resorted to face powder.