I straightened up and went down to the car. As I drove into town I kept thinking about the magic touch of kindness from the stars or if, perhaps, there might be upon this earth, coexistent with the human race, another race that had a different outlook and a different way of life. A race, perhaps, that had tried time and time again to ally itself with the humans and each time had been rejected and driven into hiding—sometimes by ignorance and superstition and again by a too-brittle knowledge of what was impossible. A race, perhaps, that might be trying once again.
J. H. was waiting for me, looking exactly like a cat sitting serenely inside a bird cage, with feathers on his whiskers. With him was a high brass flyboy, who had a rainbow of decorations spread across his jacket and eagles on his shoulders. They shone so bright and earnestly that they almost sparkled.
“Mark, this is Colonel Duncan,” said J. H. “He’d like to have a word with you.”
The two of us shook hands and the colonel was more affable than one would have expected him to be. Then J. H. left us in his office and shut the door behind him. The two of us sat down and each of us sort of measured up the other. I don’t know how the colonel felt, but I was ready to admit I was uncomfortable. I wondered what I might have done and what the penalty might be.
“I wonder, Lathrop,” said the colonel, “if you’d mind telling me exactly how it happened. How you found out about the brownies?”
“I didn’t find out about them, Colonel; it was just a gag.”
I told him about the Barnacle shooting off his mouth about no one on the staff ever showing any initiative, and how I’d dreamed up the brownie story to get even with him. And how the Barnacle had got even with me by running it.
But that didn’t satisfy the colonel. “There must be more to it than that,” he said.
I could see that he’d keep at me until I’d told it, anyhow; and while he hadn’t said a word about it, I kept seeing images of the Pentagon, and the chiefs of staff, and Project Saucer—or whatever they might call it now—and the FBI, and a lot of other unpleasant things just over his left shoulder.
So I came clean with him. I told him all of it and a lot of it, I granted, sounded downright silly.
But he didn’t seem to think that it was silly. “And what do you think about all this?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “They might come from outer space, or …”
He nodded quietly. “We’ve known for some time now that there have been landings. This is the first time they’ve ever deliberately called attention to themselves.”
“What do they want, Colonel? What are they aiming at?”
“I wish I knew.”
Then he said very quietly, “Of course, if you should write anything about this, I shall simply deny it. That will leave you in a most peculiar position at best.”
I don’t know how much more he might have told me—maybe quite a bit. But right then the phone rang. I picked it up and answered; it was for the colonel.
He said “Yes,” and listened. He didn’t say another word. He got a little white around the gills; then he hung up the phone.
He sat there, looking sick.
“What’s the matter, Colonel?”
“That was the field,” he told me. “It happened just a while ago. They came out of nowhere and swarmed all over the plane—polished it and cleaned it and made it spic and span, both inside and out. The men couldn’t do a thing about it. They just had to stand and watch.”
I grinned. “There’s nothing bad about that, Colonel. They were just being good to you.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “When they got it all prettied up, they painted a brownie on the nose.”
That’s just about all there’s to it as far as the brownies are concerned. The job they did on the colonel’s plane was, actually, the sole public appearance that they made. But it was enough to serve their purpose if publicity was what they wanted—a sort of visual clincher, as it were. One of our photographers—a loopy character by the name of Charles, who never was where you wanted him when you wanted him, but nevertheless seemed to be exactly on the spot when the unusual or disaster struck—was out at the airport that morning. He wasn’t supposed to be there; he was supposed to be covering a fire, which turned out luckily to be no more than a minor blaze. How he managed to wind up at the airport even he, himself, never was able to explain. But he was there and he got the pictures of the brownies polishing up the plane—not only one or two pictures, but a couple dozen of them, all the plates he had. Another thing—he got the pictures with a telescopic lens. He’d put it in his bag that morning by mistake; he’d never carried it before. After that one time he never was without it again and, to my knowledge, never had another occasion where he had to use it.
Those pictures were a bunch of lulus. We used the best of them on page one—a solid page of them—and ran two more pages of the rest inside. The AP got hold of them, transmitted them, and a number of other member papers used them before someone at the Pentagon heard about it and promptly blew his stack. But no matter what the Pentagon might say, the pictures had been run and whatever harm—or good—they might have done could not be recalled.
I suppose that if the colonel had known about them, he’d have warned us not to use them and might have confiscated them. But no one knew the pictures had been taken until the colonel was out of town, and probably back in Washington. Charlie got waylaid somehow—at a beer joint most likely—and didn’t get back to the office until the middle of the afternoon.
When he heard about it, J. H. paced up and down and tore his hair and threatened to fire Charlie; but some of the rest of us got him calmed down and back into his office. We caught the pictures in our final street edition, picked the pages up for the early runs next day, and the circulation boys were pop-eyed for days at the way those papers sold.
The next day, after the worst of the excitement had subsided, the Barnacle and I went down to the corner to have ourselves a couple. I had never cared too much for the Barnacle before, but the fact that we’d been fired together established a sort of bond between us; and he didn’t seem to be such a bad sort, after all.
Joe was as sad as ever. “It’s them brownies,” he told us, and he described them in a manner no one should ever use when talking of a brownie. “They’ve gone and made everyone so happy they don’t need to drink no more.”
“Both you and me, Joe,” said the Barnacle; “they ain’t done nothing for me, either.”
“You got your job back,” I told him.
“Mark,” he said, solemnly, pouring out another. “I’m not so sure if that is good or not.”
It might have developed into a grade-A crying session if Lightning, our most up-and-coming copy boy, had not come shuffling in at that very moment.
“Mr. Lathrop,” he said, “there’s a phone call for you.”
“Well, that’s just fine.”
“But it’s from New York,” said the kid.
That did it. It’s the first time in my life I ever left a place so fast that I forgot my drink.
The call was from one of the papers to which I had applied, and the man at the New York end told me there was a job opening in the London staff and that he’d like to talk with me about it. In itself, it probably wasn’t any better than the job I had, he said, but it would give me a chance to break in on the kind of work I wanted.
When could I come in? he asked, and I said tomorrow morning.
I hung up and sat back and the world all at once looked rosy. I knew right then and there those brownies still were working for me.
I had a lot of time to think on the plane trip to New York; and while I spent some of it thinking about the new job and London, I spent a lot of it thinking about the brownies, too.
They’d come to Earth before, that much at least was clear. And the world had not been ready for them. It ha
d muffled them in a fog of folklore and superstition, and had lacked the capacity to use what they had offered it. Now they tried again. This time we must not fail them, for there might not be a third time.
Perhaps one of the reasons they had failed before—although not the only reason—had been the lack of a media of mass communications. The story of them, and of their deeds and doings, had gone by word of mouth and had been distorted in the telling. The fantasy of the age attached itself to the story of the brownies until they became no more than a magic little people who were very droll, and on occasion helpful, but in the same category as the ogre, or the dragon, and others of their ilk.
Today it had been different. Today there was a better chance the brownies would be objectively reported. And while the entire story could not be told immediately, the people could still guess.
And that was important—the publicity they got. People must know they were back again, and must believe in them and trust them.
And why, I wondered, had one medium-sized city in the midwest of America been chosen as the place where they would make known their presence and demonstrate their worth? I puzzled a lot about that one, but I never did get it figured out, not even to this day.
Jo Ann was waiting for me at the airport when I came back from New York with the job tucked in my pocket. I was looking for her when I came down the ramp and I saw that she’d got past the gate and was running toward the plane. I raced out to meet her and I scooped her up and kissed her and some damn fool popped a flash bulb at us. I wanted to mop up on him, but Jo Ann wouldn’t let me.
It was early evening and you could see some stars shining in the sky, despite the blinding floodlights; from way up, you could hear another plane that had just taken off; and up at the far end of the field, another one was warming up. There were the buildings and the lights and the people and the great machines and it seemed, for a long moment, like a table built to represent the strength and swiftness, the competence and assurance of this world of ours.
Jo Ann must have felt it, too, for she said suddenly: “It’s nice, Mark. I wonder if they’ll change it.”
I knew who she meant without even asking.
“I think I know what they are,” I told her; “I think I got it figured out. You know that Community Chest drive that’s going on right now. Well, that’s what they are doing, too—a sort of Galactic Chest. Except that they aren’t spending money on the poor and needy; their kind of charity is a different sort. Instead of spending money on us, they’re spending love and kindness, neighborliness and brotherhood. And I guess that it’s all right. I wouldn’t wonder but that, of all the people in the universe, we are the ones who need it most. They didn’t come to solve all our problems for us—just to help clear away some of the little problems that somehow keep us from turning our full power on the important jobs, or keep us from looking at them in the right way.”
That was more years ago than I like to think about, but I still can remember just as if it were yesterday.
Something happened yesterday that brought it all to mind again.
I happened to be in Downing Street, not too far from No. 10, when I saw a little fellow I first took to be some sort of dwarf. When I turned to look at him, I saw that he was watching me; he raised one hand in an emphatic gesture, with the thumb and first finger made into a circle—the good, solid American signal that everything’s okay.
Then he disappeared. He probably ducked into an alley, although I can’t say for a fact I actually saw him go.
But he was right. Everything’s okay.
The world is bright, and the cold war is all but over. We may be entering upon the first true peace the human race has ever known.
Jo Ann is packing, and crying as she packs, because she has to leave so many things behind. But the kids are goggle-eyed about the great adventure just ahead. Tomorrow morning we leave for Peking, where I’ll be the first accredited American correspondent for almost thirty years.
And I can’t help but wonder if, perhaps, somewhere in that ancient city—perhaps in a crowded, dirty street; perhaps along the imperial highway; maybe some day out in the country beside the Great Wall, built so fearsomely so many years ago—I may not see another little man.
Death Scene
This story ended up being published for the first time in the October 1957 issue of Infinity Science Fiction, which was being edited by Larry Shaw at the time, but that only happened because the story had been rejected by H. F. Gold, John W. Campbell Jr., and Anthony Boucher (in his journal, Cliff tended to identify his markets by the names of their editors—perhaps an indication of the importance he placed on personal relations).
This is a story about the world finding a way to achieve total peace—but at the cost of it becoming a world different from the one everybody knew. And it’s sobering to ponder how a person could handle that transition. Would you be willing to pay any price for such a world?
—dww
She was waiting on the stoop of the house when he turned into the driveway and as he wheeled the car up the concrete and brought it to a halt he was certain she knew, too.
She had just come from the garden and had one arm full of flowers and she was smiling at him just a shade too gravely.
He carefully locked the car and put the keys away in the pocket of his jacket and reminded himself once again, “Matter-of-factly, friend. For it is better this way.”
And that was the truth, he reassured himself. It was much better than the old way. It gave a man some time.
He was not the first and he would not be the last and for some of them it was rough, and for others, who had prepared themselves, it was not so rough and in time, perhaps, it would become a ritual so beautiful and so full of dignity one would look forward to it. It was more civilized and more dignified than the old way had been and in another hundred years or so there could be no doubt that it would become quite acceptable. All that was wrong with it now, he told himself, was that it was too new. It took a little time to become accustomed to this way of doing things after having done them differently through all of human history.
He got out of the car and went up the walk to where she waited for him. He stooped and kissed her and the kiss was a little longer than was their regular custom—and a bit more tender. And as he kissed her he smelled the summer flowers she carried, and he thought how appropriate it was that he should at this time smell the flowers from the garden they both loved.
“You know,” he said and she nodded at him.
“Just a while ago,” she said. “I knew you would be coming home. I went out and picked the flowers.”
“The children will be coming, I imagine.”
“Of course,” she said, “They will come right away.”
He looked at his watch, more from force of habit than a need to know the time. “There is time,” he said. “Plenty of time for all of them to get here. I hope they bring the kids.”
“Certainly they will,” she said. “I went to phone them once, then I thought how silly.”
He nodded. “We’re of the old school, Florence. It’s hard even yet to accept this thing—to know the children will know and come almost as soon as we know. It’s still a little hard to be sure of a thing like that.”
She patted his arm. “The family will be all together. There’ll be time to talk. We’ll have a splendid visit.”
“Yes, of course,” he said.
He opened the door for her and she stepped inside.
“What pretty flowers,” he said.
“They’ve been the prettiest this year that they have ever been.”
“That vase,” he said. “The one you got last birthday. The blue and gold. That’s the one to use.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. On the dining table.”
She went to get the vase and he stood in the living room and thought how much he was a p
art of this room and this room a part of him. He knew every inch of it and it knew him as well and it was a friendly place, for he’d spent years making friends with it.
Here he’d walked the children of nights when they had been babies and been ill of cutting teeth or croup or colic, nights when the lights in this room had been the only lights in the entire block. Here the family had spent many evening hours in happiness and peace—and it had been a lovely thing, the peace. For he could remember the time when there had been no peace, nowhere in the world, and no thought or hope of peace, but in its place the ever-present dread and threat of war, a dread that had been so commonplace that you scarcely noticed it, a dread you came to think was a normal part of living.
Then, suddenly, there had been the dread no longer, for you could not fight a war if your enemy could look ahead an entire day and see what was about to happen. You could not fight a war and you could not play a game of baseball or any sort of game, you could not rob or cheat or murder, you could not make a killing in the market. There were a lot of things you could no longer do and there were times when it spoiled a lot of fun, for surprise and anticipation had been made impossible. It took a lot of getting used to and a lot of readjustment, but you were safe, at least, for there could be no war—not only at the moment, but forever and forever, and you knew that not only were you safe, but your children safe as well and their children and your children’s children’s children and you were willing to pay almost any sort of price for such complete assurance.
It is better this way, he told himself, standing in the friendly room. It is much better this way. Although at times it’s hard.
He walked across the room and through it to the porch and stood on the porch steps looking at the flowers. Florence was right, he thought; they were prettier this year than any year before. He tried to remember back to some year when they might have been prettier, but he couldn’t quite be sure. Maybe the autumn when young John had been a baby, for that year the mums and asters had been particularly fine. But that was unfair, he told himself, for it was not autumn now, but summer. It was impossible to compare summer flowers with autumn. Or the year when Mary had been ill so long—the lilacs had been so deeply purple and had smelled so sweet; he remembered bringing in great bouquets of them each evening because she loved them so. But that was no comparison, for the lilacs bloomed in spring.
The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 22