Ring Around the Sun

by Clifford D. Simak

  You could feel the world on edge, as tense as the sudden, strident ringing of a telephone in the dead of night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CLIFFWOOD after dark had the smell and feel of home and he drove along its streets and felt the lump of loss come into his throat, for it had been here that he had thought to settle down and spend his years in writing, in setting down on paper the thoughts that welled inside of him.

  His house was here and the furniture and the manuscript and the crudely carpentered shelf that held his freight of books, but it was his home no longer, and now, he knew, could never be again. And that wasn't all, he thought. The Earth, the original human earth — the earth with the capital E — was his home no longer and never again could be.

  He'd go and see Eb first and after he had seen Eb, he'd go to his own house, and get the manuscript. He could give the manuscript to Ann, he thought; she would keep it for him.

  On second thought, he'd have to find some other place, for he didn't want to see Ann — although that was not precisely the truth. He did want to see her, but knew he shouldn't, for now there lay between them the almost-certain knowledge that he and she were part of a single life.

  He pulled the car to a stop in front of Eb's house and sat there for a moment looking at it, wondering at the neatness of the house and yard, for Eb lived alone without wife or child, and it was not usual that a man alone would keep a place so tidy.

  He'd spend just a minute with Eb, would tell him what had happened, what was going on, would make arrangements to keep in touch with him, would learn from him whatever news might be worth knowing.

  He closed the car door and went across the walk, fumbling at the latch of the gate that opened to the yard. Moonlight came down through the trees and splotched the walk with light and he followed it to the porch, and now, for the first time, he noticed that there were no lights burning in the house.

  He rapped on the door, knowing from poker sessions and other infrequent visits that Eb had no doorbell.

  There was no answer. He waited and finally rapped again and then turned from the door and went down the walk. Maybe Eb was still down at the garage, putting in some overtime on an urgent repair job, or he might be down at the tavern, having a quick one with the boys.

  He'd sit out in the car and wait for Eb. It probably wouldn't be safe to go down into the village business section where he'd be recognized.

  A voice asked: "You looking for Eb?"

  Vickers spun around toward the voice. It was the next door neighbor, he saw, standing at the fence.

  "Yes," said Vickers. "I was looking for him."

  He was trying to remember who lived next to Eb, who this person across the fence might be. Someone that he knew, someone who might recognize him?

  "I'm an old friend of his," said Vickers. "Just passing through. Thought I'd stop and say hello."

  The man had stepped through a break in the fence and was coming across the lawn.

  The man asked: "How well did you know Eb?"

  "Not too well," said Vickers. "Haven't seen him in ten or fifteen years. Used to be kids together."

  "Eb is dead," the neighbor said.

  "Dead!"

  The neighbor spat. "He was one of them damned mutants."

  "No," protested Vickers. "No, he couldn't be!"

  "He was. We had another one, but he got away. We always had a suspicion Eb might have tipped him off."

  The bitterness and hatred of the neighbor's words filled Vickers with a feeling of sheer terror.

  The mob had killed Eb and they would kill _him_ if they knew he had returned to town. And in just a little while they'd know, for any minute now the neighbor would recognize him — now he knew who the neighbor was, the beefy individual who ran the meat market in the town's one chain store. His name was — but it didn't really matter.

  "Seems to me," the neighbor said, "I've seen you somewhere."

  "You must be mistaken. I've never been East before."

  "Your voice…"

  Vickers struck with all the power he had, starting the fist down low and bringing it up in a vicious arc, twisting his body to line it up behind the blow, to put the weight of his body behind the balled-up fist.

  He hit the man in the face and the impact of flesh on flesh, of bone on bone, made a whiplike sound and the man went down.

  Vickers did not wait. He spun away and went racing for the gate. He almost tore the car door from its hinges getting in. He thumbed the starter savagely and trod down on the gas and the car leaped down the street, spraying the bushes with gravel thrown by its frightened wheels.

  His arm was numb from the force of the blow he'd struck and when he held his hand down in front of the lighted dash panel, he saw that his knuckles were lacerated and slowly dripping blood.

  He had a few minutes' start; the neighbor might take that long to shake himself into a realization of what had happened. But once he was on his feet, once he could reach a phone, they'd start hunting him, screaming through the night on whining tires, with shotgun and rope and rifle.

  And he had to get away. Now he was on his own.

  Eb was dead, attacked without warning, surely, without a chance to escape to the other earth. Eb had been shot down or strung up or kicked to death. And Eb had been his only contact.

  Now there was no one but himself and Ann.

  And Ann, God willing, didn't even know that she was a mutant.

  He struck the main highway and swung down the valley, pouring on the gas.

  There was an old abandoned road some ten miles down the highway, he remembered. A man could duck a car in there and wait until it was safe to double back again. Although doubling back probably wouldn't be too safe.

  Maybe it would be better to take to the hills and hide out until the hunt blew over.

  No, he told himself, there was nothing safe.

  And he had no time to waste.

  He had to get to Crawford, had to head Crawford off the best way that he could. And he had to do it alone.

  The abandoned road was there, halfway up a long, steep hill. He wheeled the car into it and bumped along it for a hundred feet or so, then got out and walked back to the road.

  Hidden behind a clump of trees, he watched cars go screaming past, but there was no way to know if any of them might be hunting him.

  Then a rickety old truck came slowly up the hill, howling with the climb.

  He watched it, an idea growing in his mind.

  When it came abreast, he saw that it was closed in the back only with a high end gate.

  He ran out into the traffic lane and raced after it, caught up with it and leaped. His fingers caught the top of the end gate and he heaved himself clear of the road, scrambled over the gate and clambered over the piled up boxes stacked inside the truck.

  He huddled there, staring out at the road behind him. A hunted animal, he thought; hunted by men who once had been his friends.

  Ten miles or so down the road someone stopped the truck. A voice asked: "You see anyone up the road a ways? Walking, maybe?"

  "Hell, no," the truck driver said. "I ain't seen a soul."

  "We're looking for a mutant. Figure he must have ditched his car."

  "I thought we had all of them cleaned out," the driver said.

  "Not all. Maybe he took to the hills. If he did, we've got him."

  "You'll be stopped again," another voice said. "We phoned ahead both ways. They got road blocks set up."

  "I'll keep my eyes peeled," the driver said.

  "You got a gun?"

  "No."

  "Well, keep watching anyway."

  When the truck rolled on, Vickers saw the two men standing in the road. The moonlight glinted on the rifles that they carried.

  He set to work cautiously, moving some of the boxes, making himself a hideout.

  He needn't have bothered.

  The truck was stopped at three other road blocks. At none of them did anyone do more than flash a light inside th
e truck. They seemed half-hearted in their search, convinced that they wouldn't find a mutant that easily, perhaps thinking that this one had already vanished, as so many other forewarned mutants had done.

  But Vickers could not allow himself to take that avenue of escape. He had a job to do on this Earth.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  HE knew what he would find at the store, but he went there just the same, for it was the only place he could think of where he might establish contact. But the huge show window was broken and the house that had stood there was smashed as utterly as if it had stood in a cyclone's path.

  The mob had done its work.

  He stood in front of the gaping, broken window and stared at the wreckage of the house and remembered the day that he and Ann had stopped on their way to the bus station. The house, he recalled, had had a flying duck weather vane and a sun dial had stood in the yard and there had been a car standing in the driveway, but the car had disappeared completely. Dragged out into the street, probably, he thought, and smashed as his own car had been smashed in that little Illinois town.

  He turned away from the window and walked slowly down the street. It had been foolish to go to the showroom, he told himself, but there had been a chance — although the chance had been a slim one, as he knew all his chances were.

  He turned a corner and there, in a dusty square across the street, a good-sized crowd had gathered and was listening to someone who had climbed a park bench and was talking to them.

  Idly, Vickers walked across the street, stopped opposite the crowd.

  The man on the park bench had taken off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and loosened his tie. He talked almost conversationally, although his words carried clear across the park to where Vickers stood.

  "When the bombs come," asked the man, "what will happen then? They say don't be afraid. They say, stay on your jobs and don't be afraid. They have told you to stay and not be afraid, but what will they do when the bombs arrive? Will they help you then?"

  He paused and the crowd was tense, tense in a terrible silence. You could feel the knotted muscles that clamped the jaws tight shut and the hand that squeezed the heart until the body turned all cold. And you could sense the fear — "They will not help," the speaker told them, speaking slowly and deliberately. "They will not help you, for you will be past all help. You will be dead, my friends. Dead by the tens of thousands. Dead in the sun that flamed upon the city. Dead and turned to nothing. Dead and restless atoms.

  "You will die…."

  From far away came the sound of sirens and at the sound the crowd stirred restlessly, almost angrily.

  "You will die," the speaker said, "and there is no need to die, for there is another world that waits you.

  "Poverty is the key to that other world. Poverty is the ticket that will take you there. All you need to do is to quit your job and give away everything you have — and _throw_ away everything you have. You cannot go except with empty hands…"

  The sirens were closer and the crowd was murmuring, stirring, like some great animal arousing itself from sleep. The sound of its voice swept across the square like the sudden rustle of leaves in the wind that moved before a storm.

  The speaker raised his hand again and there was instant silence.

  "My friends," he said, "why don't you heed? The other world awaits. The poor go first. The poor and desperate, the ones for which this world you stand on has no further use. The only way you can go is in utter poverty, with empty hands, with no possessions.

  "In that other world there are no bombs. There is a beginning over, a starting over again. An entire new world, almost exactly like this world, with trees and grass and fertile land and game upon the hills and fish teeming in the rivers. The kind of place you dream of. And there is peace."

  There were more sirens now and they were getting closer.

  Vickers stepped off the sidewalk and dashed across the Street. A squad car screeched around a corner, skidding and whipping to get straightened out, its tires screaming on the pavement, its siren await as if in agony.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Almost at the curb, Vickers stumbled and went sprawling. Instinctively, he pulled himself to hands and knees and flicked a sidewise glance to see the squad car bearing down upon him and he knew he could not make it, that before he could get his feet beneath him the car would be upon him.

  A hand came down out of nowhere and fastened on his arm and jerked and he felt himself catapulting off the Street and across the sidewalk.

  Another squad car came around the corner, skidding and with flattened tires protesting, almost as if the first had returned to make a second entrance.

  The scattered crowd was running desperately.

  The hand tugged at his arm and hauled him erect and Vickers saw the man for the first time, a man in a ragged sweater, with an old knife-mark jagged across his cheek.

  "Quick," said the man, the knife-mark writhing with the words he spoke, teeth flashing in the whisker-shadowed face.

  He shoved Vickers into a narrow alleyway between two buildings and Vickers sprinted, shoulders hunched, between the walls of brick that rose on either side.

  He heard the man panting along behind him.

  "To your right," said the man. "A door."

  Vickers grasped the knob and the door swung open into a darkened hall.

  The man stepped in beside him and closed the door and they stood together in the darkness, gasping with their running, the sound of them beating like an erratic heart in the confining darkness.

  "That was close," the man said, "Those cops are getting on the ball. You no more than start a meeting and…"

  He did not finish the sentence. Instead he reached out and touched Vickers on the arm.

  "Follow me," he said. "Be careful. Stairs." Vickers followed, feeling his way down the creaky stairs, with the musty smell of cellar growing stronger with each step. At the bottom of the stairway, the man pushed aside a hanging blanket and they stepped into a dimly lighted room. There was an old, broken down piano in one corner and a pile of boxes in another and a table in the center, around which four men and two women sat.

  One of the men said, "We heard the sirens."

  Scar-face nodded. "Charley was just going good. The crowd was getting down to shouting."

  "Who's your friend, George?" asked another one. "He was running," said George. "Police car almost got him." They looked at Vickers with interest. "What's your name, friend?" asked George. Vickers told them.

  "Is he all right?" asked someone.

  "He was there," said George. "He was running."

  "But is it safe…"

  "He's all right," said George, but Vickers noted that he said it too vehemently, too stubbornly, as if he now realized that he might have made a mistake in bringing a total stranger here.

  "Have a drink," said one of the men. He shoved a bottle across the table toward Vickers.

  Vickers sat down in a chair and took the bottle. One of the women, the better-looking of the two, said to him, "My name is Sally."

  Vickers said, "I'm glad to know you, Sally." He looked around the table. None of the rest of them seemed ready to introduce themselves.

  He lifted the bottle and drank. It was cheap stuff. He choked a little on it.

  Sally said, "You an activist?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "An activist or purist?"

  "He's an activist," said George. "He was right in there with he rest of them."

  Vickers could see that George was sweating a little, afraid at he had made a mistake.

  "He sure as hell doesn't look like one," said one of the men.

  "I'm an activist," said Vickers, because he could see that was what they wanted him to be.

  "He's like me," said Sally. "He's an activist by principle, but a purist by preference. Isn't that right?" she asked Vickers.

  "Yes," said Vickers. "Yes, I guess that's it." He took another drink.

  "What's your perio
d?" Sally asked.

  "My period," said Vickers. "Oh, yes, my period." And he remembered the white, intense face of Mrs. Leslie asking him what historic period he thought would be the most exciting.

  "Charles the Second," he said.

  "You were a little slow on that one," said one of the men, suspiciously.

  "I fooled around some," said Vickers. "Dabbled, you know. Took me quite a while to find the one I liked."

  "But you settled on Charles the Second," Sally said.

  "That's right."

  "Mine," Sally told him, "is Aztec."

  "But, Aztec…"

  "I know," she said. "It really isn't fair, is it? There's so little known about the Aztecs, really. But that way I can make it up as I go along. It's so much more fun that way."

  George said, "It's all damn foolishness. Maybe it was all right to piddle around with diaries and pretending you were someone else when there was nothing else to do. But now we got something else to do."

  "George is right," nodded the other woman.

  "You activists are the ones who're wrong," Sally argued. "The basic thing in pretentionism is the ability to lift yourself out of your present time and space, to project yourself into another era."

  "Now, listen here," said George. "I…"

  "Oh, I agree," said Sally, "that we must work for this other world. It's the kind of opportunity we wanted all along. But that doesn't mean we have to give up…"

  "Cut it out," said one of the men, the big fellow at the table's end. "Cut out all this gabbling. This ain't no place for it."

  Sally said to Vickers, "We're having a meeting tonight. Would you like to come?"

  He hesitated. In the dim light he could see that all of them were looking at him.

  "Sure," he said. "Sure. It would be a pleasure."

  He reached for the bottle and took another drink, then passed it on to George.

  "There ain't nobody stirring for a while," said George. "Not until them cops have a chance to get cooled off a bit."

  He took a drink and passed the bottle on.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX