The Creator and Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  "I have been at the village," the Human said. "I am just out for a walk."

  "You are from outside?"

  "Yes," the Human told him, "I am from outside. My name is David Grahame."

  "Come in, David," said the man, opening the gate. "Come and rest with us. There will be food and we have an extra bed."

  He walked along the garden path with the man and came to the bench where the old lady sat.

  "My name is Jed," the man said, "and this is my mother, Mary, and the other of us is my daughter Alice."

  "So you finally came to us, young man," the old lady said to David.

  She patted the bench with a fragile hand. "Here, sit down beside me and let us talk awhile. Jed has chores to do and Alice will have to cook the supper. But I am old and lazy and I only sit and talk."

  Now that she talked, her eyes were brighter, but the calmness was still in them.

  "We knew you would come someday," she said. "We knew someone would come. For surely those who are outside would hunt their mutant kin."

  "We found you," David said, "quite by accident." "We? There are others of you?"

  "The others went away. They were not human and they were not interested."

  "But you stayed," she said. "You thought there would be things to find. Great secrets to he learned."

  "I stayed," said David, "because I had to stay."

  "But the secrets? The glory and the power?"

  David shook his head. "I don't think I thought of that. Not of power and glory. But there must be something else. You sense it walking in the village and looking at the homes. You sense a certain truth." "Truth," the old lady said. "Yes, we found the Truth." And the way she said it Truth was capitalized.

  He looked quickly at her and she sensed the unspoken, unguarded question that flicked across his mind.

  "No," she told him, "not religion. Just Truth. The plain and simple Truth."

  He almost believed her, for there was a quiet conviction in the way she said it, a deep and solid surety.

  "The truth of what?" he asked.

  "Why, Truth," the old lady said. "Just Truth."

  III

  It would be, of course, something more than a simple truth. It would have nothing to do with machines, and it would concern neither power nor glory. It would be an inner truth, a mental or a spiritual or a psychological truth that would have a deep and abiding meaning, the sort of truth that men had followed for years and even followed yet in the wish-worlds of their own creation.

  The Human lay in the bed close beneath the roof and listened to the night wind that blew itself a lullaby along the eaves and shingles. The house was quiet and the world was quiet except for the singing wind. The world was quiet, and David Grahame could imagine, lying there, how the galaxy would gradually grow quiet under the magic and the spell of what these human-folk had found.

  It must be great, he thought, this truth of theirs. It must be powerful and imagination-snaring and all-answering to send them back like this, to separate them from the striving of the galaxy and send them back to this pastoral life of achieved tranquillity in this alien valley, to make them grub the soil for food and cut the trees for warmth, to make them content with the little that they have.

  To get along with that little, they must have much of something else, some deep inner conviction, some mystic inner knowledge that has spelled out to them a meaning to their lives, to the mere fact and living of their lives, that no one else can have.

  He lay on the bed and pulled the covers up more comfortably about him and hugged himself with inner satisfaction.

  Man cowered in one corner of the galactic empire, a maker of gadgets, tolerated only because he was a maker of gadgets and because the other races never could be sure what he might come up with next; so they tolerated him and threw him crumbs enough to keep him friendly but wasted scant courtesy upon him.

  Now, finally, Man had something that would win him a place in the respect and the dignity of the galaxy. For a truth is a thing to be respected.

  Peace came to him and he would not let it in but fought against it so that he could think, so that he could speculate, imagining first that this must be the truth that the mutant race had found, then abandoning that idea for one that was even better.

  Finally the lullabying wind and the sense of peace and the tiredness of his body prevailed against him and he slept.

  The last thought that he had was, I must ask them. I must find out.

  But it was days before he asked them, for he sensed that they were watching, and he knew that they wondered if he could be trusted with the truth and if he was worthy of it.

  He wished to stay; but for politeness' sake he said that he must go and raised no great objection when they said that he must stay. It was as if each one of them knew this was a racial ritual that must be observed, and all were glad, once it was over and done with.

  He worked in the fields with Jed and got to know the neighbors up and down the valley; he sat long evenings talking with Jed and his mother and the daughter and with the other valley folk who dropped in to pass a word or two.

  He had expected that they would ask him questions, but they did not; it was almost as if they didn't care, as if they so loved this valley where they lived that they did not even think about the teeming galaxy their far ancestors had left behind to seek here on this world a destiny that was better than common human destiny.

  He did not ask them questions, either, for he felt them watching him, and he was afraid that questions would send them fleeing from the strangeness of him.

  But he was not a stranger. It took him only a day or two to know that he could be one of them, and so he made himself become one of them and sat for long hours and talked of common gossip that ran up and down the valley, and it was all kindly gossip. He learned many things-that there were other valleys where other people lived, that the silent, deserted village was something they did not fret about, although each of them seemed to know exactly what it was, that they had no ambition and no hope beyond this life of theirs, and all were well content.

  He grew content himself, content with the rose-gray mornings, with the dignity of labor, with the pride of growing things. But even as he grew content, he knew he could not be content, that he must find the truth they had found and must carry that truth back to the wait- ing galaxy. Before long a ship would be coming out to explore the village and to study it and before the ship arrived he must know the answer; when the ship arrived he must be standing on the ridge above the village to tell them what he'd found.

  One day Jed asked him, "You will be staying with us?"

  David shook his head. "I have to go back, Jed. I would like to stay, but I must go back."

  Jed spoke slowly, calmly. "You want the Truth? That's it?" "If you will give it to me," David said.

  "It is yours to have," said Jed. "You will not take it back."

  That night Jed said to his daughter, "Alice, teach David how to read our writing. It is time he knew."

  In the corner by the fireplace the old lady sat rocking in her chair. "Aye," she said. "It is time he read the Truth."

  IV

  The key had come by special messenger from its custodian five valleys distant, and now Jed held it in his hand and slid it into the lock of the door in the building that stood in the center of the old, quiet, long-deserted village.

  "This is the first time," Jed said, "that the door has been opened except for the ritualistic reading. Each hundred years the door is opened and the Truth is read so that those who are then living may know that it is so."

  He turned the key and David heard the click of the tumblers turning in the lock.

  "That way," said Jed, "we keep it actual fact. We do not allow it to become a myth.

  "It is," he said, "too important a thing to become a myth."

  Jed turned the latch and the door swung open just an inch or two.

  "I said ritualistic reading," he said, "and perhaps that is not quite right. Th
ere is no ritual to it. Three persons are chosen and they come here on the appointed day and each of them reads the Truth and then they go back as living witnesses. There is no more ceremony than there is with you and me."

  "It is good of you to do this for me," David said.

  "We would do the same for any of our people who should doubt the Truth," said Jed. "We are a very simple people and we do not believe in red tape or rules. All we do is live.

  "In just a little while," he said, "you will understand why we are simple people."

  He swung the door wide open and stepped to one side so that

  David might walk in ahead of him. The place was one large room and it was neat and orderly. There was some dust, but not very much.

  Half the room was filled to three quarters of its height with a machine that gleamed in the dull light that came from some source high in the roof.

  "This is our machine," said Jed.

  And so it was gadgetry, after all. It was another machine, perhaps a cleverer and sleeker machine, but it was still a gadget and the human race were still gadgeteers.

  "Doubtless you wondered why you found no machines," said Jed. "The answer is that there is only one, and this is it." "Just one machine!"

  "It is an answerer," said Jed. "A logic. With this machine, there is no need of any others."

  "You mean it answers questions?"

  "It did at one time," said Jed. "I presume it still would if there were any of us who knew how to operate it. But there is no need of asking further questions."

  "You can depend on it?" asked David. "That is, you can be sure that it tells the truth?"

  "My son," Jed said soberly, "our ancestors spent thousands of years making sure that it would tell the truth. They did nothing else. It was not only the life work of each trained technician, but the life work of the race. And when they were sure that it would know and tell the truth, when they were certain that there could be no slightest error in the logic of its calculations, they asked two questions of it."

  "Two questions?"

  "Two questions," Jed said. "And they found the Truth." "And the Truth?"

  "The Truth," Jed said, "is here for you to read. Just as it came out those centuries ago."

  He led the way to a table that stood in front of one panel of the great machine. There were two tapes upon the table, lying side by side. The tapes were covered by some sort of transparent preservative.

  "The first question," said Jed, "was this: `What is the purpose of the universe?' Now read the top tape, for that is the answer."

  David bent above the table and the answer was upon the tape:

  The universe has no purpose. The universe just happened.

  "And the second question…" said Jed, but there was no need for him to finish, for what the question had been was implicit in the wording of the second tape:

  Life has no significance. Life is an accident.

  "And that," said Jed, "is the Truth we found. That is why we are a simple people."

  David lifted stricken eyes and looked at Jed, the descendant of that mutant race that was to have brought power and glory, respect and dignity, to the gadgeteering humans.

  "I am sorry, son," said Jed. "That is all there is."

  They walked out of the room, and Jed locked the door and put the key into his pocket.

  "They'll be coming soon," said Jed, "the ones who will be sent out to explore the village. I suppose you will be waiting for them?" David shook his head. "Let's go back home," he said.

  The Thing in the Stone

  1

  He walked the hills and knew what the hills had seen through geologic time. He listened to the stars and spelled out what the stars were saying. He had found the creature that lay imprisoned in the stone. He had climbed the tree that in other days had been climbed by homing wildcats to reach the den gouged by time and weather out of the cliff's sheer face. He lived alone on a worn-out farm perched on a high and narrow ridge that overlooked the confluence of two rivers. And his next-door neighbor, a most ill-favored man, drove to the county seat, thirty miles away, to tell the sheriff that this reader of the hills, this listener to the stars was a chicken thief.

  The sheriff dropped by within a week or so and walked across the yard to where the man was sitting in a rocking chair on a porch that faced the river hills. The sheriff came to a halt at the foot of the stairs that ran up to the porch.

  'I'm Sheriff Harley Shepherd,' he said. 'I was just driving by. Been some years since I been out in this neck of the woods. You are new here, aren't you?'

  The man rose to his feet and gestured at another chair. 'Been here three years or so,' he said. 'The name is Wallace Daniels. Come up and sit with me.'

  The sheriff climbed the stairs and the two shook hands, then sat down in the chairs.

  'You don't farm the place,' the sheriff said.

  The weed-grown fields came up to the fence that hemmed in the yard.

  Daniels shook his head. 'Subsistence farming, if you can call it that. A few chickens for eggs. A couple of cows for milk and butter. Some hogs for meat — the neighbors help me butcher. A garden of course, but that's about the story.'

  'Just as well,' the sheriff said. 'The place is all played out. Old Amos Williams, he let it go to ruin. He never was no farmer.'

  'The land is resting now,' said Daniels. 'Give it ten years — twenty might be better — and it will be ready once again. The only things it's good for now are the rabbits and the woodchucks and the meadow mice. A lot of birds, of course. I've got the finest covey of quail a man has ever seen.'

  'Used to be good squirrel country,' said the sheriff. 'Coon, too. I suppose you still have coon. You have a hunter, Mr. Daniels?'

  'I don't own a gun,' said Daniels.

  The sheriff settled deeply into the chair, rocking gently.

  'Pretty country out here,' he declared. 'Especially with the leaves turning colors. A lot of hardwood and they are colorful. Rough as hell, of course, this land of yours. Straight up and down, the most of it. But pretty.'

  'It's old country,' Daniels said. 'The last sea retreated from this area more than four hundred million years ago. It has stood as dry land since the end of the Silurian. Unless you go up north, on to the Canadian Shield, there aren't many places in this country you can find as old as this.'

  'You a geologist, Mr. Daniels?'

  'Not really. Interested, is all. The rankest amateur. I need something to fill my time and I do a lot of hiking, scrambling up and down these hills. And you can't do that without coming face to face with a lot of geology. I got interested. Found some fossil brachiopods and got to wondering about them. Sent off for some books and read up on them. One thing led to another and — '

  'Brachiopods? Would they be dinosaurs, or what? I never knew there were dinosaurs out this way.'

  'Not dinosaurs,' said Daniels. 'Earlier than dinosaurs, at least the ones I found. They're small. Something like clams or oysters. But the shells are hinged in a different sort of way. These were old ones, extinct millions of years ago. But we still have a few brachiopods living now. Not too many of them.'

  'It must be interesting.'

  'I find it so,' said Daniels.

  'You knew old Amos Williams?'

  'No. He was dead before I came here. Bought the land from the bank that was settling his estate.'

  'Queer old coot,' the sheriff said. 'Fought with all his neighbors. Especially with Ben Adams. Him and Ben had a line fence feud going on for years. Ben said Amos refused to keep up the fence. Amos claimed Ben knocked it down and then sort of, careless-like, hazed his cattle over into Amos's hayfield. How you get along with Ben?'

  'All right,' Daniels said. 'No trouble. I scarcely know the man.'

  'Ben don't do much farming, either,' said the sheriff. Hunts and fishes, hunts ginseng, does some trapping in the winter. Prospects for minerals now and then.'

  'There are minerals in these hills,' said Daniels. 'Lead and zinc. But it would cost more to get i
t out than it would be worth. At present prices, that is.'

  'Ben always has some scheme cooking.' said the sheriff. 'Always off on some wild goose chase. And he's a pure pugnacious man. Always has his nose out of joint about something. Always on the prod for trouble. Bad man to have for an enemy. Was in the other day to say someone's been lifting a hen or two of his. You haven't been missing any, have you?'

  Daniels grinned. 'There's a fox that levies a sort of tribute on the coop every now and then. I don't begrudge them to him.'

  'Funny thing,' the sheriff said. 'There ain't nothing can rile up a farmer like a little chicken stealing. It don't amount to shucks, of course, but they get real hostile at it.'

  'If Ben has been losing chickens,' Daniels said, 'more than likely the culprit is my fox.'

  'Your fox? You talk as if you own him.'

  'Of course I don't. No one owns a fox. But he lives in these hills with me. I figure we are neighbours. I see him every now and then and watch him. Maybe that means I own a piece of him. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he watches me more than I watch him. He moves quicker than I do.'

  The sheriff heaved himself out of the chair.

  'I hate to go,' he said. 'I declare it has been restful sitting here and talking with you and looking at the hills. You look at them a lot, I take it.'

  'Quite a lot,' said Daniels.

  He sat on the porch and watched the sheriff's car top the rise far down the ridge and disappear from sight.

  What had it all been about? he wondered. The sheriff hadn't just happened to be passing by. He'd been on an errand. All this aimless, friendly talk had not been for nothing and in the course of it he'd managed to ask lots of questions.

  Something about Ben Adams, maybe? Except there wasn't too much against Adams except he was bone-lazy. Lazy in a weasely sort of way. Maybe the sheriff had got wind of Adams' off-and-on moonshining operation and was out to do some checking, hoping that some neighbor might misspeak himself. None of them would, of course, for it was none of their business, really, and the moonshining had built up no nuisance value. What little liquor Ben might make didn't amount to much. He was too lazy for anything he did to amount to much.