The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two

by Clifford D. Simak

THAT IS ALL. PROCEED AS IF THE VEGAN WERE ONE OF YOUR OWN.

  Enoch cleared the machine and went back across the room. He stood above the Hazer, getting up his nerve to bend and lift the body to place it on the sofa. He shrank from touching it. It was so unclean and terrible, such a travesty on the shining creature that had sat there talking with him.

  Since he met the Hazers he had loved them and admired them, had looked forward to each visit by them—by any one of them. And now he stood, a shivering coward who could not touch one dead.

  It was not the horror only, for in his years as keeper of the station, he had seen much of pure visual horror as portrayed in alien bodies. And yet he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people.

  It was something else, he knew, some other unknown factor quite apart from horror, that he felt. And yet this thing, he reminded himself, was a friend of his. And as a dead friend, it demanded honor from him, it demanded love and care.

  Blindly he drove himself to the task. He stooped and lifted it. It had almost no weight at all, as if in death it had lost a dimension of itself, had somehow become a smaller thing and less significant. Could it be, he wondered, that the golden haze might have a weight all of its own?

  He laid the body on the sofa and straightened it as best he could. Then he went outside and, lighting the lantern in the shed, went down to the barn.

  It had been years since he had been there, but nothing much had changed. Protected by a tight roof from the weather, it had stayed snug and dry. There were cobwebs hanging from the beams and dust was everywhere. Straggling clumps of ancient hay, stored in the mow above, hung down through the cracks in the boards that floored the mow. The place had a dry, sweet, dusty smell about it, all the odors of animals and manure long gone.

  Enoch hung the lantern on the peg behind the row of stanchions and climbed the ladder to the mow. Working in the dark, for he dared not bring the lantern into this dust heap of dried-out hay, he found the pile of oaken boards far beneath the eaves.

  Here, he remembered, underneath these slanting eaves, had been a pretended cave in which, as a boy, he had spent many happy rainy days when he could not be outdoors. He had been Robinson Crusoe in his desert island cave, or some now nameless outlaw hiding from a posse, or a man holed up against the threat of scalp-hunting Indians. He had had a gun, a wooden gun that he had sawed out of a board, working it down later with draw-shave and knife and a piece of glass to scrape it smooth. It had been something he had cherished through all his boyhood days—until that day, when he had been twelve, that his father, returning home from a trip to town, had handed him a rifle for his very own.

  He explored the stack of boards in the dark, determining by the feel the ones that he would need. These he carried to the ladder and carefully slid down to the floor below.

  Climbing down the ladder, he went up the short flight of stairs to the granary, where the tools were stored. He opened the lid of the great tool chest and found that it was filled with long deserted mice nests. Pulling out handfuls of the straw and hay and grass that the rodents had used to set up their one-time housekeeping, he uncovered the tools. The shine had gone from them, their surface grayed by the soft patina that came from long disuse, but there was no rust upon them and the cutting edges still retained their sharpness.

  Selecting the tools he needed, he went back to the lower part of the barn and fell to work. A century ago, he thought, he had done as he was doing now, working by lantern light to construct a coffin. And that time it had been his father lying in the house.

  The oaken boards were dry and hard, but the tools still were in shape to handle them. He sawed and planed and hammered and there was the smell of sawdust. The barn was snug and silent, the depth of hay standing in the mow drowning out the noise of the complaining wind outside.

  He finished the coffin and it was heavier than he had figured, so he found the old wheelbarrow, leaning against the wall back of the stalls that once had been used for horses, and loaded the coffin on it. Laboriously, stopping often to rest, he wheeled it down to the little cemetery inside the apple orchard.

  And here, beside his father’s grave, he dug another grave, having brought a shovel and a pickax with him. He did not dig it as deep as he would have liked to dig, not the full six feet that was decreed by custom, for he knew that if he dug it that deep he never would be able to get the coffin in. So he dug it slightly less than four, laboring in the light of the lantern, set atop the mound of dirt to cast its feeble glow. An owl came up from the woods and sat for a while, unseen, somewhere in the orchard, muttering and gurgling in between its hoots. The moon sank toward the west and the ragged clouds thinned out to let the stars shine through.

  Finally it was finished, with the grave completed and the casket in the grave and the lantern flickering, the kerosene almost gone, and the chimney blacked from the angle at which the lantern had been canted.

  Back at the station, Enoch hunted up a sheet in which to wrap the body. He put a Bible in his pocket and picked up the shrouded Vegan and, in the first faint light that preceded dawn, marched down to the apple orchard. He put the Vegan in the coffin and nailed shut the lid, then climbed from the grave.

  Standing on the edge of it, he took the Bible from his pocket and found the place he wanted. He read aloud, scarcely needing to strain his eyes in the dim light to follow the text, for it was from a chapter that he had read many times:

  In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you …

  Thinking, as he read it, how appropriate it was; how there must need be many mansions in which to house all the souls in the galaxy­—and of all the other galaxies that stretched, perhaps interminably­, through space. Although if there were understanding, one might be enough.

  He finished reading and recited the burial service, from memory, as best he could, not being absolutely sure of all the words. But sure enough, he told himself, to make sense out of it. Then he shoveled in the dirt.

  The stars and moon were gone and the wind had died. In the quietness of the morning, the eastern sky was pearly pink.

  Enoch stood beside the grave, with the shovel in his hand.

  “Good bye, my friend,” he said.

  Then he turned and, in the first flush of the morning, went back to the station.

  16

  Enoch got up from his desk and carried the record book back to the shelf and slid it into place.

  He turned around and stood hesitantly.

  There were things that he should do. He should read his papers. He should be writing up his journal. There were a couple of papers in the latest issues of the Journal of Geophysical Research that he should be looking at.

  But he didn’t feel like doing any of them. There was too much to think about, too much to worry over, too much to mourn.

  The watchers still were out there. He had lost his shadow people. And the world was edging in toward war.

  Although, perhaps, he should not be worrying about what happened to the world. He could renounce the world, could resign from the human race any time he wished. If he never went outside, if he never opened up the door, then it would make no difference to him what the world might do or what might happen to it. For he had a world. He had a greater world than anyone outside this station had ever dreamed about. He did not need the Earth.

  But even as he thought it, he knew he could not make it stick. For, in a very strange and funny way, he still did need the Earth.

  He walked over to the door and spoke the phrase and the door came open. He walked into the shed and it closed behind him.

  He went around the corner of the house and sat down on the steps that led up to the porch.

  This, he thought, was where it all had started. He had been sitting here that summer day of long ago when the
stars had reached out across vast gulfs of space and put the finger on him.

  The sun was far down the sky toward the west and soon it would be evening. Already the heat of the day was falling off, with a faint, cool breeze creeping up out of the hollow that ran down to the river valley. Down across the field, at the edge of the woods, crows were wheeling in the sky and cawing.

  It would be hard to shut the door, he knew, and keep it shut. Hard never to feel the sun or wind again, to never know the smell of the changing seasons as they came across the Earth. Man, he told himself, was not ready for that. He had not as yet become so totally a creature of his own created environment that he could divorce entirely the physical characteristics of his native planet. He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.

  He should do this oftener, Enoch thought, come out here and sit, doing nothing, just looking, seeing the trees and the river to the west and the blue of the Iowa hills across the Mississippi, watching the crows wheeling in the skies and the pigeons strutting on the ridgepole of the barn.

  It would be worth while each day to do it, for what was another hour of aging? He did not need to save his hours—not now he didn’t. There might come a time when he’d become very jealous of them and when that day came, he could hoard the hours and minutes, even the seconds, in as miserly a fashion as he could manage.

  He heard the sound of the running feet as they came around the farther corner of the house, a stumbling, exhausted running, as if the one who ran might have come a far way.

  He leapt to his feet and strode out into the yard to see who it might be and the runner came stumbling toward him, with her arms outstretched. He put out an arm and caught her as she came close to him, holding her close against him so she would not fall.

  “Lucy!” he cried. “Lucy! What has happened, child?”

  His hands against her back were warm and sticky and he took one of them away to see that it was smeared with blood. The back of her dress, he saw, was soaked and dark.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her away from him so he could see her face. It was wet with crying and there was terror in the face—and pleading with the terror.

  She pulled away from him and turned around. Her hands came up and slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it slide halfway down her back. The flesh of the shoulders were ribboned by long slashes that still were oozing blood.

  She pulled the dress up again and turned to face him. She made a pleading gesture and pointed backward down the hill, in the direction of the field that ran down to the woods.

  There was motion down there, someone coming through the woods, almost at the edge of the old deserted field.

  She must have seen it, too, for she came close against him, shivering, seeking his protection.

  He bent and lifted her in his arms and ran for the shed. He spoke the phrase and the door came open and he stepped into the station. Behind him he heard the door go sliding shut.

  Once inside, he stood there, with Lucy Fisher cradled in his arms, and knew that what he’d done had been a great mistake—that it was something that, in a sober moment, he never would have done, that if he’d given it a second thought, he would not have done it.

  But he had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than himself, should have ever crossed the threshold.

  But it was done and there was no way to change it. Once across the threshold, there was no way to change it.

  He carried her across the room and put her on the sofa, then stepped back. She sat there, looking up at him, smiling very faintly, as if she did not know if she were allowed to smile in a place like this. She lifted a hand and tried to brush away the tears that were upon her cheeks.

  She looked quickly around the room and her mouth made an O of wonder.

  He squatted down and patted the sofa and shook a finger at her, hoping that she might understand that he meant she should stay there, that she must go nowhere else. He swept an arm in a motion to take in all the remainder of the station and shook his head as sternly as he could.

  She watched him, fascinated, then she smiled and nodded, as if she might have understood.

  He reached out and took one of her hands in his own, and holding it, patted it as gently as he could, trying to reassure her, to make her understand that everything was all right if she only stayed exactly where she was.

  She was smiling now, not wondering, apparently, if there were any reason that she should not smile.

  She reached out her free hand and made a little fluttering gesture toward the coffee table, with its load of alien gadgets.

  He nodded and she picked up one of them, turning it admiringly in her hand.

  He got to his feet and went to the wall to take down the rifle.

  Then he went outside to face whatever had been pursuing her.

  17

  Two men were coming up the field toward the house and Enoch saw that one of them was Hank Fisher, Lucy’s father. He had met the man, rather briefly, several years ago, on one of his walks. Hank had explained, rather sheepishly and when no explanation had been necessary, that he was hunting for a cow which had strayed away. But from his furtive manner, Enoch had deduced that his errand, rather than the hunting of a cow, had been somewhat on the shady side, although he could not imagine what it might have been.

  The other man was younger. No more, perhaps, than sixteen or seventeen. More than likely, Enoch told himself, he was one of Lucy’s brothers.

  Enoch stood by the porch and waited.

  Hank, he saw, was carrying a coiled whip in his hand, and looking at it, Enoch understood those wounds on Lucy’s shoulders. He felt a swift flash of anger, but tried to fight it down. He could deal better with Hank Fisher if he kept his temper.

  The two men stopped three paces or so away.

  “Good afternoon,” said Enoch.

  “You seen my gal?” asked Hank.

  “And if I have?” asked Enoch.

  “I’ll take the hide off of her,” yelled Hank, flourishing the whip.

  “In such a case,” said Enoch, “I don’t believe I’ll tell you anything.”

  “You got her hid,” charged Hank.

  “You can look around,” said Enoch.

  Hank took a quick step forward, then thought better of it.

  “She got what she had coming to her,” he yelled. “And I ain’t finished with her yet. There ain’t no one, not even my own flesh and blood, can put a hex on me.”

  Enoch said nothing. Hank stood, undecided.

  “She meddled,” he said. “She had no call to meddle. It was none of her damn’ business.”

  The young man said, “I was just trying to train Butcher. Butcher,” he explained to Enoch, “is a coon hound pup.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “He wasn’t doing nothing wrong. The boys caught a young coon the other night. Took a lot of doing. Roy, here, had staked out the coon—tied it to a tree. And he had Butcher on a leash. He was letting Butcher fight the coon. Not hurting anything. He’d pull Butcher off before any damage could be done and let them rest a while. Then he’d let Butcher at the coon again.”

  “It’s the best way in the world,” said Roy, “to get a coon dog trained.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “That is why they caught the coon.”

  “We needed it,” said Roy, “to train this Butcher pup.”

  “This all is fine” said Enoch, “and I am glad to hear it. But what has it got to do with Lucy?”

  “She interfered,” said Hank. “She tried to stop the training. She tried to grab Butcher away from Roy, here.”

  “For a dummy,” Roy said, “she is a mite too uppity.”

  “You hush your mouth,” his father
told him sternly, swinging around on him.

  Roy mumbled to himself, falling back a step.

  Hank turned back to Enoch.

  “Roy knocked her down,” he said. “He shouldn’t have done that. He should have been more careful.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Roy said. “I just swung my arm out to keep her away from Butcher.”

  “That is right,” said Hank. “He swung a bit too hard. But there wasn’t any call for her doing what she did. She tied Butcher up in knots so he couldn’t fight that coon. Without laying a finger on him, mind you, she tied him up in knots. He couldn’t move a muscle. That made Roy mad.”

  He appealed to Enoch, earnestly, “Wouldn’t that have made you mad?”

  “I don’t think it would,” said Enoch. “But then, I’m not a coon-dog man.”

  Hank stared in wonder at this lack of understanding.

  But he went on with his story. “Roy got real mad at her. He’d raised that Butcher. He thought a lot of him. He wasn’t going to let no one, not even his own sister, tie that dog in knots. So he went after her and she tied him up in knots, just like she did to Butcher. I never seen a thing like it in all my born days. Roy just stiffened up and then he fell down to the ground and his legs pulled up against his belly and he wrapped his arms around himself and he laid there on the ground, pulled into a ball. Him and Butcher, both. But she never touched that coon. She never tied him in no knots. Her own folks is all she touched.”

  “It didn’t hurt,” said Roy. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

  “I was sitting there,” said Hank, “braiding this here bull whip. Its end had frayed and I fixed a new one on it. And I seen it all, but I didn’t do a thing until I saw Roy there, tied up on the ground. And I figured then it had gone far enough. I am a broad-minded man; I don’t mind a little wart-charming and other piddling things like that. There have been a lot of people who have been able to do that. It ain’t no disgrace at all. But this thing of tying dogs and people into knots …”

  “So you hit her with the whip,” said Enoch.