The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (9 page)

There had been attempts, he remembered now, to recall him from some of the planets when it had become apparent they had no economic worth and that to further explore them would be a waste of time. He had resisted those attempts; he had ignored the summons to return to wherever it was he went when he did return. Because, in his simplistic ethic, when there was a job to do he did it and he did not quit until the job was done. Having started something, he was incapable of leaving off until it had been finished. It was a part of him, this single-minded stubbornness; it was a characteristic that was necessary to do the work he did.

If they had it one way, they could not have it two. He either was, or wasn't. He did the job, or didn't. He was so made that he had an interest in each problem that was presented him and would not leave off until he'd wrung the problem dry. They had to go along with that and they knew it now; they no longer bothered trying to recall him from a non-productive planet.

They? he asked himself, and remembered faintly other creatures such as he had been. They had indoctrinated him, they had made him what he was and they used him as they used the priceless planets he had found, but he did not mind the using, for it was a life and the only life he had. It either had been this life, or no life at all. He tried to recall circumstances, but something moved to block the recall. Exactly as he never could recall in all entirety, but only in fragments, the other planets he had visited. That, he thought at the time, might be a great mistake, for experience he had gathered on the other planets might have been valuable as guide lines on the one to which he currently had been sent. But for some reason, they did not allow it, but did their imperfect best to wipe from his memory all past experiences before he was sent out again. To keep him clear, they said; to guard him from confusion; to send a bright new mind, freed of all encumbrances, out to each new planet. That was why, he knew, he always arrived upon each planet groping for a meaning and purpose, with the feeling of being newly born to this particular planet and to nowhere else.

He did not mind. It still was a life and he saw a lot of places – very different places – and saw them, no matter what conditions might obtain, in perfect safety. For there was nothing that could touch him – tooth, or claw, or poison, no matter what the atmosphere, no matter what the radiation, there was nothing that could touch him. There was nothing of him to be touched. He walked – no, not walked, but moved – in utter nonchalance through all the hells the galaxy could muster.

A second sun was rising, a great swollen, brick-red star pushing its way above the horizon, with the first one just beginning to slide towards the west – as a matter of convenience, he thought of the big red one as rising in the east.

K2, he read it, thirty times, or so, the diameter of the Sun with a surface temperature that was possibly no more than 4,000 degrees. A binary system and maybe more than that; there might be other suns that he still had yet to see. He tried to calculate the distance, but that would not be possible with any accuracy until the giant had moved higher in the sky, until it had moved above the horizon that now bisected it.

But the second sun could wait, all the rest of it could wait. There was one thing he must see. He had not realized it before, but now he knew there was one thing about the landscape that had been nagging him. The crater did not fit. It had all the appearances of a crater, but it had no right to be there. It could not be volcanic, for it sat in the middle of a sandy terrain and the limestone thrusting from the hillside was sedimentary rock. There was no trace of igneous rock, no ancient lava flows. And the same objections still would hold if the crater had been formed by meteoric impact, for any meteorite that threw up a crater of that size would have turned tons of material into a molten mass and would have thrown out a sheet of magma, of which there was no sign.

He began drifting slowly in the direction of the crater. Beneath him the terrain remained unchanged – the red soil, the purple fruit and little else.

He came to rest – if that is what his action could be called – on the crater's rim and for a moment failed to understand what he was seeing.

Some sort of shining substance extended all around the rim and sloped inward to the center to form what appeared to be a concave mirror. But it was not a mirror, for it was nonreflective.

Then, quite suddenly, an image formed upon it and if he could have caught his breath, he would have.

Two creatures, one large, the other smaller, stood on a ledge above a deep cut in the earth, with a striated sandstone bluff rising up above them. The smaller one was digging in the bluff with a hand tool of some sort – a hand tool that was grasped in what must be a hand, which was attached to an arm and the arm hooked up to a body, which had a head and eyes.

Myself, he thought – the smaller one, myself.

He felt a weakness and a haziness and the image in the mirror seemed to be trying to pull him down to join and coalesce with this image of himself. The gates of memory opened and the old, restricted data came pouring in upon him – the terms and relationships – and he cried out against it and tried to push it back, but it would not push back. It was as if someone were holding him so he could not get away and, with a mouth close against his ear, was telling him things he did not wish to know.

Humans, father, son, a railroad cut, the Earth, the finding of that first trilobite. Relentlessly the information came pouring into him, into the intellectual force field that he had become, that he had evolved into, or been engineered into, and that had been a comfort and a refuge until this very moment.

His father wore an old sweater, with holes in the elbows of the sleeves, and an old pair of black trousers that were baggy at the knees. He smoked an ancient pipe with a fire-charred bowl and a stem half-bitten through, and he watched with deep paternal interest as the boy, working carefully, dug out the tiny slab of stone that bore the imprint of an ancient form of life.

Then the image flickered and went out and he sat (?) upon the crater's rim, with the dead mirror sweeping downward to its center, showing nothing but the red and blue reflections of the suns.

Now he knew, he thought. He knew, not what he was, but what he once had been – a creature that had walked upon two legs, that had a body and two arms, a head and eyes and a mouth that cried out in excited triumph at the finding of a trilobite. A creature that walked proudly and with misplaced confidence, for it had none of the immunity against its environment such as he now possessed.

From that feeble, vulnerable creature, how had he evolved?

Could it be death, he wondered, and was aghast at death, which was a new concept. Death, an ending, and there was no end, never would be one; a thing that was an intellect trapped within a force field could exist forever. But somewhere along the way, somewhere in the course of evolution, or of engineering, could death have played a part? Must a man come to death before he came to this?

He sat upon the crater's rim and knew the surface of the planet all about him – the red of land, the yellow of the sky, the green and purple of the flowers, the gurgle of the liquid running in its courses, the red and blue of suns and the shadows that they cast, the running thing that threw up spurts of sand, the limestone and the fossils.

And something else as well and with the sensing of that something else a fear and panic he had never known before. Had never had the need to know, for he had been protected and immune, untouchable, secure, perhaps even in the center of a sun. There had been nothing that could get at him, no way he could be reached.

But that was true no longer, for now he could be reached. Something had torn from him an ancient memory and had shown it to him. Here, on this planet, there was a factor that could get at him, that could reach into him and tear from him something even he had not suspected.

He screamed a question and phantom echoes ran across the land, bouncing back to mock him. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Fainter and fainter and the only answers were the echoes.

It could afford not to answer him, he knew. It need not answer him. It could sit smug and silent while he screamed the question, waiting until it wished to strip other memories from him, memories for its own strange use, or to further mock him.

He was safe no longer. He was vulnerable. Naked to this thing that used a mirror to convince him of his own vulnerability.

He screamed again and this time the scream was directed to those others of his kind who had sent him out.

Take me back! I am naked! Save me!

Silence.

I have worked for you – I have dug out the data for you – I have done my job – You owe me something now!

Silence.

Please!

Silence.

Silence – and something more than silence. Not only silence, but an absence, a not being there, a vacuum.

The realization came thudding hard into his understanding. He had been abandoned, all ties with him had been cut – in the depth of unguessed space, he had been set adrift. They had washed their hands of him and he was not only naked, but alone.

They knew what had happened. They knew everything that ever happened to him, they monitored him continuously and would know everything he knew. And they had sensed the danger, perhaps even before he, himself, had sensed it. Had recognized the danger, not only to himself, but to themselves as well. If something could get to him, it could trace back the linkage and get to them as well. So the linkage had been cut and would not be restored. They weren't taking any chances. It had been something that had been emphasized time and time again. You must remain not only unrecognized, but entirely unsuspected. You must do nothing that will make you known. You must never point a finger at us.

Cold, callous, indifferent. And frightened. More frightened, perhaps, than he was. For now they knew there was something in the galaxy that could become aware of the disembodied observer they had been sending out. They could never send another, if indeed they had another, for the old fear would be there. And perhaps an even greater fear – based upon the overriding suspicion that the linkage had been cut not quite soon enough, that this factor which had spotted their observer had already traced it back to them.

Fear for their bodies and their profits …

Not for their bodies, a voice said inside him. Not their biologic bodies. There are no longer any of your kind who have biologic bodies …

Then what? he asked.

An extension of their bodies, carrying on the purpose those with bodies gave them in a time when the bodies still existed. Carried on mindlessly ever since, but without a purpose, only with a memory of a purpose …

Who are you? he asked. How do you know all this? What will you do with me?

In a very different way, it said, I am one like you. You can be like me. You have your freedom now.

I have nothing, he said.

You have yourself, it said. Is that not enough?

But is self enough? he asked.

And did not need an answer.

For self was the basis of all life, all sentience. The institutions, the cultures, the economics were no more than structures for the enhancement of the self. Self now was all he had and self belonged to him. It was all he needed.

Thank you, sir, said he, the last human in the universe.

Trail City's Hot-Lead Crusaders

Cliff Simak wrote this story under the name “Gunsmoke Goes to Press,” but it was published, in the September 1944 issue of
New Western Magazine,
under a new title … and these days it's likely that many readers will miss the play on words in the new title. If you've read a few Westerns, you probably know that “hot lead” is a euphemism for a gunfight – but the protagonist of this story is a frontier newspaper editor in the days when newspaper publishing often required melting down and recasting the lead alloy used to set type on the printing press. (As it turned out, “Gunsmoke Goes to Press” was retained as a chapter heading in the newly titled story.)

Clifford D. Simak seems to have had some following in Western literature of the era – in this case, his story was the topmost of the two listed on the front cover of the magazine, and it appeared as the first story in the magazine. Cliff's journal shows that he was paid $120 for it during a period when the cover price of the magazine was fifteen cents. Several characters in the story bear the names of towns in the area of Wisconsin where Cliff grew up, and the protagonist bears as a last name the name of Cliff's younger brother, Carson.

—dww

Chapter One
Hit the Trail, Or Die!

Morgan Carson, editor of the
Trail City Tribune,
knew trouble when he saw it – and it was walking across the street straight toward his door.

Dropping in alone, either Jackson Quinn, the town's lone lawyer, or Roger Delavan, the banker, would have been just visitors stopping by to pass the time of day. But when they came together, there was something in the wind.

Jake the printer clumped in from the back room, stick of type clutched in his fist, bottle joggling in hip pocket with every step he took, wrath upon his ink-smeared face.

“Ain't you got that damned editorial writ yet?” he demanded. “Holy hoppin' horntoads, does a feller have to wait all day?”

Carson tucked the pencil behind his ear. “We're getting visitors,” he said.

Jake shifted the cud of tobacco to the left side of his face and squinted beneath bushy eyebrows at the street outside.

“Slickest pair of customers I ever clapped an eye on,” he declared. “I'd sure keep my peepers peeled, with them jaspers coming at me.”

“Delavan's not so bad,” said Carson.

“Just pick pennies off a dead man's eyes, that's all,” said Jake.

He spat with uncanny accuracy at the mouse-hole in the corner.

“Trouble with you,” he declared, “is you're sweet on that dotter of hisn. Because she's all right, you think her old man is too. Nobody that goes around with Quinn is all right. They're just a couple of cutthroats, in with that snake Fennimore clear up to their hips.”

Quinn and Delavan were stepping to the boardwalk outside the
Tribune
office. Jake turned and shuffled toward the back.

The door swung open and the two came in, Quinn huge, square-shouldered, flashy even in a plain black suit; Delavan quiet and dignified with his silvery hair and bowler hat.

“This is a pleasure,” Carson said. “Two of the town's most distinguished citizens, both at once. Could I offer you a drink?”

He bent and rummaged in a deep desk drawer, came up empty-handed.

“Nope,” he said, “I can't. Jake found it again.”

“Forget the drink,” said Quinn. He seated himself on Carson's desk and swung one leg back and forth. Delavan sat down in a chair, prim and straight, like a man who dreads the job he has to do.

“We came in with a little business proposition,” said Quinn. “We have a man who's interested in the paper.”

Carson shook his head. “The
Tribune's
not for sale.”

Quinn grinned, pleasantly enough. “Don't say that too quickly, Carson. You haven't heard the price.”

“Tempt me,” invited Carson.

“Ten thousand,” said Quinn, bending over just a little as if to keep it confidential.

“Not enough,” said Carson.

“Not enough!” gasped Quinn. “Not enough for this?” He swept his hand at the dusty, littered room. “You didn't pay a thousand for everything you have in the whole damned place.”

“Byron Fennimore,” Carson told him levelly, “hasn't got enough to buy me out.”

“Who said anything about Fennimore?”

“I did,” snapped Carson. “Who else would be interested? Who else would be willing to pay ten thousand to get me out of town?”

Delavan cleared his throat. “I would say, Morgan, that should have nothing to do with it. After all, a business deal is a business deal. What does it matter who makes the offer?”

He cleared his throat again. “I offer the observation,” he pointed out, “merely as a friend. I have no interests in this deal myself. I just came along to take care of the financial end should you care to sell.”

Carson eyed Delavan. “Ten thousand,” he asked, “spot cash? Ten thousand on the barrel-head?”

“Say the word,” said Quinn, “and we'll hand it to you.”

Carson laughed harshly. “I'd never get out of town with it.”

Quinn spoke softly. “That could be part of the deal,” he said.

“Nope,” Carson told him, “ten thousand is too much for the paper. I'd sell the paper – just the paper, mark you – for ten thousand. But I won't sell my friends. I won't sell myself.”

“You'd be making a stake out of it, wouldn't you?” asked Quinn. “Isn't that what you came here for?”

Carson leaned back in his chair, hooked his thumbs in his vest and stared at Quinn. “I don't suppose,” he said, “that you or Fennimore could understand why I came here. You aren't built that way. You wouldn't know what I was talking about if I told you I saw Trail City as a little cowtown that might grow up into a city.

“Gentlemen, that's exactly what I saw. And I'm here, in on the ground floor. I'll grow up with the town.”

“Have you stopped to think,” Quinn pointed out, “that you might not grow up at all? Might just drop over dead, suddenlike, some day?”

“All your gunslicks are poor shots,” said Carson. “They've missed me every time so far.”

“Maybe up to now the boys haven't been trying too hard?”

“I take it,” said Carson, “they'll try real hard from now on.”

He flicked a look at Delavan. The man was uneasy, embarrassed, twirling the bowler hat in his hands.

“Let's stop beating around the bush,” suggested Carson. “I don't know why you tried it in the first place. As I understand it, Fennimore will give me ten thousand if I quit bucking him, forget about electing Purvis for sheriff and get out of town. If not, the Bar Y boys turn me into buzzard bait.”

“That's about it,” said Quinn.

“You don't happen to be hankering after my blood, personally?” asked Carson.

Quinn shook his head. “Not me. I'm no gunslinger.”

“Neither am I,” Carson told him. “Leastwise not professionally. But from now on I'm not wearing this gun of mine for an ornament. I'm going to start shooting back. You can noise that around, sort of gentle-like.”

“The boys,” said Quinn, sarcastically, “will appreciate the warning.”

“And you can tell Fennimore,” said Carson, “that his days are over. The days of free range and squeezing out the little fellow are at an end. Maybe Fennimore can stop me with some slugs. Maybe he can stop a lot of men. But he can't stop them forever.

“The day is almost here when Fennimore can't fix elections and hand-pick his sheriffs, when he can't levy tribute on all the businessmen in town, when he can't hog all the water on the range.”

“Better put that in an editorial,” said Quinn.

“I have,” declared Carson. “Don't you read my paper?”

Quinn turned toward the door and Delavan arose. He fumbled just a little with his hat before he put it on. “You're coming to the house tonight for supper, aren't you?” he asked.

“I thought so, up to now,” said Carson.

“Kathryn is expecting you,” the banker said.

Quinn swung around. “Sure, go ahead, Carson. Nothing personal in this, you understand.”

Carson rose slowly. “I didn't think there was. You wouldn't have a man planted along the way, would you?”

“What a thought,” said Quinn. “No, my friend, when we get you, it'll be in broad daylight.”

Carson followed them to the door, stood on the stoop outside to watch them leave. They crossed the street toward the bank, the dust puffing up from their boots to shimmer momentarily in the slanting rays of the westering sun.

A horse cantered down the street, coming from the east, its rider slouching in the saddle. A hen scratched industriously in the dust and clucked to an imaginary brood. The sun caught the windows of the North Star Saloon, directly opposite the newspaper office, and turned the glass to glittering silver.

Trail City,
thought Editor Morgan Carson, looking at it. Just a collection of shacks today. The North Star and the bank and sheriff's office with the jail behind it. The livery stable and the new store with the barber shop in one corner.

A frontier town, with chickens clucking in the dust and slinking dogs that stopped to scratch for fleas. But someday a great town, a town with trains and water tower instead of a creaking windmill, a town of shining glass and brick.

A man was coming down the steps of the North Star, a big man stepping lightly. Carson watched him abstractedly, recognized him as one of Fennimore's hired hands, probably in town on some errand.

The man started across the street and stopped. His voice came quietly across the narrow stretch of dust.

“Carson!”

“Yes,” said Carson. And something in the way the man stood there, something in the single word, something in the way the man's face looked beneath the droopy hat, made him stiffen, tensed every nerve within him.

“I'm calling you,” said the man, and it was as if he had asked for a match to light his smoke. No anger, no excitement, just a simple statement.

For a single instant time stood still and stared. Even as the man's hands drove for the gun-butts at his thighs, the street seemed frozen in a motionlessness that went on forever.

And in that timeless instant, Carson knew his own hand was swooping for his gun, that the weapon's butt was in his fist and coming out.

Then time exploded and took up again and Carson's gun was swinging up, easily, effortless, simple as pointing one's finger. The other man's guns were coming up, too, a glitter of steel in the sunlight.

Carson felt his gun buck against his hand, saw the look of surprise that came upon the other's face, heard the blast of the single shot ringing in his ears.

The man out in the street was sagging, sagging like a slowly collapsing sack, as if the strength were draining from him in the dying day. His knees buckled and the guns, still unfired, dropped from his loosened fingers. As if something had pushed him gently, he pitched forward on his face.

For an instant more, the stillness held, a stillness even deeper than before. The man on the horse had reined up and was motionless, the scratching hen was a feathery statue of bewilderment.

Then doors slammed and voices shouted; feet pounded on the sidewalks. The saloon porch boiled with men. Bill Robinson, white apron around his middle, ducked out of the store. The barber came out and yelled. His customer, white towel around his neck, lather on his face, was pawing for his gun, swearing at the towel.

Two men came from the sheriff's office and walked down the street, walked toward Carson, standing there, still with gun in hand. They walked past the dead man in the street and came on, while the town stood still and watched.

Carson waited for them, fighting down the fear that welled within him, the fear and anger. Anger at the trap, at how neatly it had worked.

The door slammed behind him and Jake was beside him, a rifle in his hand.

“What's the matter, kid?” he asked.

Carson motioned toward the man lying in the dust.

“Called me,” he said.

Jake shifted his cud of tobacco to the north cheek.

“Dang neat job,” he said.

Sheriff Bert Bean and Stu Leonard, the deputy, stopped short of the sidewalk.

“You do that?” asked Bean, jerking a thumb toward the dust.

“I did,” admitted Carson.

“That bein' the case,” announced Bean, “I'm placin' you under arrest.”

“I'm not submitting to arrest,” said Carson.

The sheriff's jaw dropped. “You ain't submittin' – you what!”

“You heard him,” roared Jake. “He ain't a-going with you. Want to do anything about it?”

Bean lifted his hands towards his guns, thought better of it, dropped them to his side again.

“You better come,” Bean said with something that was almost pleading in his voice. “If you don't, I got ways to make you.”

“If you got ways,” yelped Jake, “get going on 'em. He's calling your bluff.”

The four men stood motionless for a long, dragging moment.

Jake broke the tension by jerking his rifle down. “Get going,” he yelled. “Start high-tailing it back to your den, or I'll bullet-dance you back there. Get out of here and tell Fennimore you dassn't touch Carson 'cause you're afraid he'll gun-whip you out of town.”

The crowd, silent, motionless until now, stirred restlessly.

“Jake,” snapped Carson, “keep an eye on that crowd out there.”

Jake spat with gusto, snapped back the hammer of the gun. The click was loud and ominous in the quiet.

Carson walked slowly down the steps toward the sidewalk, and Bean and Leonard backed away. Carson's gun was in his hand, hanging at his side, and he made no move to raise it, but as he advanced the two backed across the street.