No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (7 page)

A half-dozen of the halflings had grabbed hold of the edges of that door into the other world, and they were tugging for dear life so it would stay open, and pouring out of it was that entire herd of halflings! They were shoving and pushing and scrambling to get through, and there were a lot more of them, it seemed to me, than I had thought there were.

We just stood there and watched them until they all were through. We didn’t do a thing because there was not a thing we could do. And they stood there in a bunch, packed tight together, staring back at us.

The sheriff came alongside Pa. He pushed back his hat until it roosted on his neck. You could see that the sheriff was flabbergasted and I enjoyed it, for it had been apparent from the very first that the sheriff hadn’t believed a word he’d heard about the halflings.

I don’t know, maybe he still was thinking that it might be nothing but some sort of alien joke. You could see, without half trying, that the sheriff didn’t cotton to any aliens.

“How come,” he asked suspiciously, “that this one here has got a live-it on?”

So I told him and he blinked at me, dazed and dumfounded, but he said nothing back. I sure had shut him up.

Fancy Pants’ Pa had floated up while I was telling it and he said I told the truth, for he’d been there and seen it.

Everyone began to talk at once, but Fancy Pants’ Pa floated up a little higher and held up his hand to command attention.

“Just a moment, if you please,” he said. “Before we get down to more serious business, I have something you must hear. As you may suspect, knowing the episode of the skunk, my family undoubtedly has a great deal to answer for in this incident.”

A human saying things like that would sound silly and pompous, but Fancy Pants’ Pa could get away with it.

“So,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “I now announce to you that my malefactor son, for the forthcoming thirty days, must walk upon his feet. He must not float an inch. If the punishment does not seem sufficient—”

“It’s enough,” Pa cut in. “The boy has to learn his lesson, but there is no use being harsh with him.”

“Now, sir,” said Nature Boy’s Pa, being very formal, “it is not necessary—”

“I insist,” Fancy Pants’ Pa said. “I really must insist. It can be no other way.”

“Say,” bawled the sheriff, “will someone explain to me what this is all about?”

“Sheriff,” Pa said to him, “your understanding of this matter is of no great importance and it would take too long to explain. We have more important business we should be attending to.” He turned around a bit so he faced the crowd. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do next? It appears to me that we have some guests. And remembering that these critters are bearers of good luck, it would seem to me we should treat them as kindly as we can.”

“Pa,” I said, tugging at his coat sleeve, “I know how we can get them over on our side. Every one of them wants a live-it set.”

“That’s right,” spoke up Nature Boy. “All the time I was in there, they pestered me and pestered me about how to get the sets. All the time they squabbled over who would get to use Steve’s set next.”

“You mean,” the sheriff asked, in a weak voice, “that these things can talk?”

“Why, sure they can,” said Nature Boy. “They learn a lot more back in that world of theirs than you could ever guess.”

“Well, now,” Pa said with a lot of satisfaction, “if that is all they want, it’s not too great a price for us to pay to get us some good luck. We’ll just buy a lot of live-it sets. We can probably get them wholesale—”

“But if we get the live-its,” objected Butch’s Pa, “they’ll just lie around and use them and be of no help to us at all. They won’t need us any more. They’ll have all these patterns they need from the live-it sets.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Pa, “even if that should be true, we’ll get them off our necks. They won’t pester us with this bad luck they commit.”

“It won’t do us any good however you look at it,” declared Butch’s Pa, who had a mighty low opinion of the halflings. “They all live together. That’s the way it’s always been. They never helped an entire neighborhood, but just one man or family in the neighborhood. A whole tribe of them comes in and they give one family all the benefit. You couldn’t get them to split up and work for all of us.”

“If you jerks would listen,” said the halfling with the live-it on his head, “I can get you straightened out.”

It was a shock, I tell you, to hear him speak at all. He was the kind of thing you’d figure shouldn’t speak at all—just a sort of dummy. And the way he spoke and the tone he used made it even worse. It was the way Andy Carter always talked—either wild and blustering, or out of the corner of his mouth, sarcastic. After listening to Andy all these years, that poor halfling didn’t know any different.

Everyone just stood there, staring at the halfling who had spoken, while all the other halflings were nodding their heads in such mad agreement with him that I thought they’d snap their necks.

Pa was the first one to get his feet back under him.

“Go ahead,” he said to the halfling. “We all are listening.”

“We’ll make a deal with you,” said the halfling, using ornery words but speaking most respectful, “but you’ll have to level with us, see? We’ll work hard for you and guard against mishap, but we got to have the live-its and no mistake about it. One for each of us—and if I was you, mister, I wouldn’t try to chisel.”

“Well, now,” said Pa, “that sounds fair enough. But you mean all of us?”

“All of you,” the live-it halfling said.

“You mean you will split up?” asked Pa. “Each of us will have at least one of you? You won’t all live together any more?”

“I think, sir,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “that we can depend on that. I believe I understand what this gentleman is thinking. It is something that happened with the human race on Earth.”

“What happened here on Earth?” asked Pa, sort of flabbergasted.

“Why,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “the elimination of the need for social clustering. There was a time when the human race found it necessary to congregate in families and tribes for companionship and entertainment. Then the race got the record player and the radio and TV and there was less need for get-togethers. A man had entertainment of his own in his home. He need not move beyond his living room to be entertained. So the spectator and group sports simply petered out.”

“And you think,” asked Pa, “that the same thing will happen with the halflings if we gave them live-its?”

“Certainly,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa. “We supply them, as it were, entertainment for the home, personal entertainment. There will be no further need for tribal living.”

“You said it, pal!” the halfling said enthusiastically.

All the rest of them were nodding in agreement.

“But it’s still no good,” yelped Butch’s Pa, getting real riled. “They’re in this world now, and how do you get them back? And while they’re here, can they do anything for us?”

“You can stop shooting off your mouth right now,” the halfling said to Butch’s Pa with utmost respect. “We can’t do anything here for you, that’s sure. In this world of yours, we can’t see ahead. And to do you any good, we have to see ahead.”

“You mean that if we give you live-its, you’ll go back home again?” asked Pa.

“Sure,” said the halfling. “Back there is our home. Just try to keep us from it.”

“We won’t even try,” Pa said. “We might even push you back. We’ll give you the live-its and you get back there and start to work for us.”

“We’ll work for you hard,” said the halfling, “but not all the time. We take out some time for looking at the live-it. That all right with you?”

“Sure,” Pa agreed. “Sure, that’s O.K. with us.”

“All right,” said the halfling, “get us back where we belong.”

I turned around and walked out of the crowd, out to the edge of it. For it was all settled now and I had a belly full of it. It would be all right with me if we never had any more excitement in the neighborhood.

Up by the barn I saw Fancy Pants limping along on the ground. He was having a tough time walking. But I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. He had it coming.

I figured in just a little while I’d go up around the barn and clobber him for that time he mopped up the road with me.

It should be an easy job, I told myself, with him grounded by his Pa for thirty days.

Spaceship in a Flask

“Spaceship in a Flask” was purchased by
Astounding Science Fiction
early in 1941; they paid Cliff seventy-five dollars and published the story in July 1941. It is one of the many Simak stories that features a newspaperman protagonist, and it displays a bit of the culture of the era, which often included, among other things, crusty, streetwise reporters who lived in uneasy truces with mobsters—for a while.

—dww

Old Eli was plastered when I found him in the Sun Spot, one of the many disreputable dives situated against the walls of the domed city of New Chicago on the Twilight Belt of Mercury.

I had been afraid of that. As soon as I had heard the old Sunwarder was in town, I had set out to track him down by checking all the joints. The Sun Spot was the thirty-third.

Eli always was good for a story—the kind of a story the Solar Press ate up. No one in New Chicago believed a word he said, especially that yarn about being a couple of hundred years old. Some of the stuff he told about the Sunward side might be true, for few men ventured there, but the story about his age was just too much to swallow.

Most of his tales were alcoholic. He had to have a bit of glow to do much talking. But this time I saw he was pretty far gone.

He regarded me across the table with bleary eyes.

“I was a-comin’ to see you, son,” he cackled. “Kept thinkin’ all the time, ‘I gotta go see Sherm.’ “ He shoved the bottle at me. “Grab yourself a snort, son.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. Doctor’s orders. Got a lousy stomach.”

He guffawed in minor key and pounded the table in drunken mirth.

“I remember now. Doggone if I don’t. Always taking pills or something, ain’t you?”

“Capsules,” I said, icily. I can’t appreciate jokes about my stomach.

“Don’t need water nor nothin’ to wash them down,” he went on. “Just pop them into your mouth and swallow. Funniest danged thing I ever see. Me, I never took a pill without a heap of gaggin’.”

He hoisted the bottle and let it gurgle.

“What did you do this trip?” I asked.

“Not much of nothin’,” said Eli. “Couldn’t find a thing. This danged planet is getting’ too crowded. Too many prospectors runnin’ around. Bumped into a feller out there, I did. First time that has ever happened. Don’t like it. Have to go out to Pluto where a man’s got elbow room.”

He wrestled the bottle again and wiped his whiskers.

“Wouldn’t have come in at all ‘cept I had to bring Doc some of them salts of his.”

“What salts are those?” I asked.

“What! Ain’t I ever told you about them salts. Doc buys them off of me. Danged if I know why. Don’t seem to be good for nothin’.”

He reached into a bulging coat pocket, pulled forth a canvas bag and slung it on the table.

“Take a look,” he urged. “Maybe you can tell me what it is. Doc pays me good for it. Takes good care of me, too. Caught the fever out on Venus, long time ago. He gives me injections to fight it off.”

Eli stumbled a little over ‘injections’ but finally made it.

“Who is this Doc?” I asked quietly, afraid I’d scare him into silence. “One of the doctors here in town?”

“Nope. The big doc. The feller out at the sanitarium.”

“Dr. Vincent?”

“That’s the one,” said Eli. “Used to sell them to Dr. Anderson and Dr. Brown, too.”

I let that pass. It was just another one of old Eli’s tales. Both Anderson and Brown had been dead these many years, Anderson before Eli was born.

I opened the bag and poured part of its contents into one hand. Tiny, shining crystals winked, reflecting the lights above the bar.

“Took some to a chemist once,” said Eli, “but he said it wasn’t nothin’. Not valuable at least. Some peculiar combin … combi—”

“Combination.”

“That’s it. I didn’t tell him about Doc. Didn’t tell him nothin’. Thought maybe I’d made a find and could cash in on it. Thought maybe Doc was takin’ me for a ride. But the chemist said it wasn’t worth a thing. Offered to sell him some but he didn’t want any. Out of his line, he said.”

“Maybe you’d let me have some. Just a sample,” I suggested, still afraid of scaring him off. For I sensed, even then, that he was telling me something he shouldn’t tell.

He waved a generous hand.

“Take some. Take a lot. Take all you want.”

I felt in my pockets.

“I haven’t anything to put it in,” I said.

He cackled at me, hoisting the bottle.

“Fill up a couple of them pills of yours. Dump out the stuff that’s in them. Won’t do you any good. Likker’s the only thing for a touchy stomach.”

“Good idea,” I said, grinning at him.

I pulled three of the capsules apart, spilled out the powders, refilled them with the salts and carefully placed them in my vest pocket. The bag I shoved back across the table.

“Where do you find this stuff?” I asked.

Eli wagged a shaky finger.

“Secret,” he whispered, huskily.

His eyes, I saw, were blearier than ever. He wobbled even as he sat. But his hand snaked out with what amounted to instinct to cuddle the bottle.

“Good drinkin’ likker,” he mumbled. “Good for the stomach—”

His head drooped and rested on the table. The bottle tipped and the little remaining liquor splashed onto the floor.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said to the man behind the bar.

“Soon as he sobers up,” the man told me, “he’ll light out for Sunward. Been going there for years. Queer old duck. Figure there’s anything to him claiming he’s a couple hundred years old?”

“Not a chance,” I told him.

He held a glass up to the light, blew on it, polished it with a cloth until it shone.

“A bunch of the boys had him yarning good just before you came in. Marty Berg was setting them up.”

“About this time Marty always sets them up,” I told him. “Election day is getting close.”

I started to go and then turned back and laid a coin on the bar.

“When he wakes up give him a drink on me,” I said. “He’ll need one then. I’ll try to catch him again before he hits for Sunward.”

But I didn’t catch him again.

Twenty-four hours later they found old Eli’s body in the badlands just west of the city’s port. He had been killed by three vicious knife thrusts. The police said he had been dead twelve or eighteen hours.

Marty Berg was one of those men who can’t go back to Earth. Just what the trouble was no one knew and no one cared to ask. It might have been any number of things, for Marty’s talents are varied.

As a ward heeler in the North Wall precinct, he always delivered the vote. The methods he used were never questioned. What he got out of it no one really cared, for New Chicago had not as yet developed civic consciousness.

When he came into my office I gave him the glad hand, for he was a news source. More than once he’d tipped me off on political shenanigans.

“What’s the news on Eli?” he asked.

“None at all,” I told him. “The police are baffled.”

Marty wagged his head. “Too bad. I hope they catch the guy.”

“What can I do for you, Marty?”

“Just a little favor,” said Marty. “I hear you’re going to Earth for a bit of vacation—”

“In a day or two,” I said. “It’ll be good to see Earth again. A man sort of misses—”

And there I stopped, remembering about Marty not being able to go back.

But he didn’t seem to notice.

“You remember Chesty Lewis? The bird they hooked for forgery?”

“Sure, I met him a couple of times. The cops back in New York used to run him in every now and then.”

“He’s out again,” said Marty, “and I’d like to send him a little gift. Just a remembrance from an old pal. I thought maybe you’d take it along and hand it to him. I’d mail it but the mail rates—”

I could understand that. The mail rates
were
high.

Marty hauled a package from his pocket and set it on the desk.

I picked it up and shook it. “Listen, Marty, you wouldn’t be getting me into trouble, would you?”

He spread his hands. “Why should I be getting a friend of mine into any trouble? It’s just to save the mailing costs I’m doing this. I’ll tell you what it is. Just one of those sand flasks with different colored sands made into a pretty picture. A picture of a spaceship, this one is. A white ship out in space, with red sand like blasts shooting from the rockets—”

“Forget it, Marty,” I said. “I just wondered. Sure, I’ll take it.”

“Chesty will be nuts about it,” said Marty. “He always did like pretty things.”

Floyd Duncan, veteran chief of the New Chicago office of the Solar Bureau of Investigation, was the first to find the clue in old Eli’s murder and when he found it he didn’t believe it.

He growled at me when I came into his hangout, but I kidded him along and pretty soon he softened up.

“This case has got me down,” he growled.

“No clues?” I asked.

“Hell, yes,” he said. “I got a clue but it’s worse than not having one because it can’t be right.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“About one hundred years,” he said, rustling papers on his desk and trying to act ferocious.

“You’re all haywire,” I said. “Years haven’t anything to do with clues.”

“You ever heard of Dr. Jennings Anderson?” he asked me.

“The chap who built the sanitarium out on Sunward?”

“That’s the fellow. Built it one hundred fifty years ago. Doc was all of fifty then, himself. Put every dime he had in it. Thought he could cure the space dopes. For that matter the sanitarium is still trying to cure them, but not getting very far.”

I nodded, remembering Anderson’s story. The sanitarium out on the Sunward side still stood as a monument to his hopes and humanitarianism. Recognizing the space disease, which regularly struck down the men who roamed the trails between the planets, as a challenge to his knowledge and his love of humankind, he had constructed the sanitarium, had tried to cure the stricken spacemen by use of the radiations which slashed out from the Sun.

Duncan rattled some more papers and then went on. “Anderson died over one hundred years ago. He’s buried out there at the sanitarium. Folks back on Earth subscribed a pile of money to put up the shaft over his grave. Had to use zero metal. Only thing that will stand up in the radiations.”

I watched Duncan narrowly, wondering what he was getting at. He was right about Doc Anderson being dead, for I had seen the shaft myself, with his name inscribed on it.

“We found a brand-new dollar bill on old Eli,” said Duncan. “We checked for fingerprints. Found a lot of them. Money picks prints up fast, you know. We checked all the prints and they all check out to nothing—all except one.”

He ran blunt fingers through his iron-gray hair.

“That one print,” he told me, “Is that of old Doc Anderson!”

“But, look,” I blurted, “that can’t be right!”

“Of course it can’t be right,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

Back in my apartment I opened up the package Marty had given me and got the surprise of my life. For once, Marty had told the truth. The thing in the package really was a sand flask, one of those things the gift shops sell to tourists. Made of brilliant Mercutian sands, some of them are really bits of art.

The one I took out of the package wasn’t any piece of art, but it was a fair enough piece of work. I put it on a table and looked at it, wondering why Marty would be sending something like that to an egg like Chesty.

And the more I looked at it, the stronger grew the hunch that there was something wrong. Somewhere something didn’t tie together. This business of sending a sand flask to Chesty Lewis somehow didn’t click.

So I wrapped it up again and hid it in my dresser drawer. Then I went out and hunted through the shops until I found one just like it. I bought that one and wrapped it up and put it in the mails, addressing it to Chesty in care of a boardinghouse that I knew could get in touch with him.

Why I did a thing like that I can’t explain, even to this day. It was just a hunch, one of those unaccountable sixth senses that newsmen sometimes acquire. The whole deal had a phony ring, had put me on my guard.

Back in the apartment once again, I closed the blinds, turned off the lights and tried to go to sleep.

I was dog-tired, but I had a lot of trouble dropping off. My mind kept buzzing round.

I thought about old Eli and the new dollar bill with the one-hundred-year-old fingerprints upon it. I thought about Marty Berg sending a sand flask to Chesty Lewis and wondered if what I had just done would make any difference. I wondered about Doc Anderson, dead these hundred years or more, resting under the stele of zero metal.

Finally I did go to sleep, only to be wakened a short time later with severe stomach pains. Groping blindly on the bedside table I found a couple of capsules, swallowed them and waited for the pain to ease.

It was hours later when I finally awoke.

All sign of stomach distress was gone. I felt a good ten years younger, I told myself, lying there, reluctant to get up. It’s wonderful what a good long sleep will do.

Squaring off in front of the mirror after plugging in my razor, I noticed something funny about the face that stared back at me.

I leaned closer to the glass, trying to figure out what could be wrong. The image that stared back at me was me all right, but it had a different look. There weren’t nearly so many wrinkles and the baggy cheeks had filled up a little bit, and there was a slight flush of color in them.

But that wasn’t all.

The streak of gray on the left side of my head was gone! The hair was coal-black!

Alarmed, I rumpled my hair, searching for gray ones. There weren’t any.

It wasn’t until then I remembered the capsules.

A frantic search of the vest pocket where I had placed the ones filled with old Eli’s salts failed to locate them.

There was just one explanation. Absent-mindedly I had fished them out of the pocket, put them with the others on the bedside table.

Could it be that I had taken one of them when I had awakened? And if I had, would that account for the filled out cheeks, the disappearance of the gray streak?