Текст книги "City"

Автор книги: Clifford D. Simak

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"They did that themselves," Joe told him.

"Anything else?"

Joe lifted his shoulders wearily. "How should I know?"

"But, man, you watched them. Even if you didn't keep notes, you watched."

Joe shook his head. "I haven't laid eyes on them for almost fifteen years. I only came today because I heard you here. These ants, you see, don't amuse me any more."

Grant's mouth opened, then shut tight again. Finally, he said: "So that's the answer. That's why you did it. Amusement."

There was no shame on Joe's face, no defence, just a pained expression that said he wished they'd forget all about the ants. His mouth said: "Sure. Why else?"

"That gun of mine. I suppose that amused you, too."

"Not the gun," said Joe.

Not the gun, Grant's brain said. Of course, not the gun, you dumb-bell, but you yourself. You're the one that amused him. And you're amusing him right now.

Fixing up old Dave Baxter's farm machinery, then walking off without a word, doubtless had been a screaming joke. And probably he'd hugged himself and rocked for days with silent mirth after that time up at the Webster house when he'd pointed out the thing that was wrong with old Thomas Webster's space drive.

Like a smart-Aleck playing tricks on an awkward puppy.

Joe's voice broke his thoughts.

"You're an enumerator, aren't you? Why don't you ask me the questions? Now that you've found me you can't go off and not get it down on paper. My age especially. I'm one hundred and sixty-three and I'm scarcely adolescent. Another thousand years at least."

He hugged his knobby knees against his chest and rocked slowly back and forth. "Another thousand years and if I take good care of myself-"

"But that isn't all of it," Grant told him, trying to keep his voice calm. "There is something more. Something that you must do for us."

"For us?"

"For society," said Grant. "For the human race."

"Why?"

Grant stared. "You mean that you don't care."

Joe shook his head and in the gesture there was no bravado, no defiance of convention. It was just blunt statement of the fact.

"Money?" suggested Grant.

Joe waved his hands at the hills about them, at the spreading river valley. "I have this," he said. "I have no need of money."

"Fame, perhaps?"

Joe did not spit, but his face looked like he had. "The gratitude of the human race?"

"It doesn't last," said Joe and the old mockery was in his words, the vast amusement just behind his lips.

"Look, Joe," said Grant and, hard as he tried to keep it out, there was pleading in his voice, "this thing I have for you to do is important... important to generations yet to come, important to the human race, a milestone in our destiny-"

"And why should I," asked Joe, "do something for someone who isn't even born yet? Why should I look beyond the years of my own life? When I die, I die, and all the shouting and the glory, all the banners and the bugles will be nothing to me. I will not knew whether I lived a great life or a very poor one."

"The race," said Grant.

Joe laughed, a shout of laughter. "Race preservation, race advancement. That's what you're getting at. Why should you be concerned with that? Or I?"

The laughter lines smoothed out around his mouth and he shook a finger in mock admonishment. "Race preservation is a myth... a myth that you all have lived by – a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him – so far as he's concerned there is no longer any race."

"You just don't care," said Grant.

"That," declared Joe, "is what I've been telling you."

He squinted at the pack upon the ground and a flicker of a smile wove about his lips. 'Perhaps," be suggested, "if it interested me-"

Grant opened up the pack, brought out the portfolio.

Almost reluctantly he pulled out the thin sheaf of papers, glanced at the title:

"Unfinished Philosophical-"

He handed it across, sat watching as Joe read swiftly and even as be watched he felt the sickening wrench of terrible failure closing on his brain.

Back in the Webster house he had thought of a mind that knew no groove of logic, a mind unhampered by four thousand years of mouldy human thought. That, he had told himself, might do the trick.

And here it was. But it still was not enough. There was something lacking – something he had never thought of, something the men in Geneva had never thought of, either. Something, a part of the human make-up that everyone, up to this moment, had taken for granted.

Social pressure was the thing that had held the human race together through all millennia – held the human race together as a unit just as hunger pressure had held the ants enslaved to a social pattern.

The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship – a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family.

Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it a man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack.

It had led to terrible things, of course – to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible.

And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not.

***

Grant felt the sun hot upon his back, heard the whisper of the wind that walked in the trees above him. And in some thicket a bird struck up a song.

Was this the trend of mutancy? This sloughing off of the basic instinct that made man a member of the race?

Had this man in front of him, reading the legacy of Juwain, found within himself, through his mutancy, a life so full that he could dispense with the necessity for the approval of his fellows? Had he, finally, after all these years, reached that stage of civilization where a man stood independent, disdaining all the artificiality of society?

Joe looked up.

"Very interesting," he said. "Why didn't he go ahead and finish it?"

"He died," said Grant.

Joe clucked his tongue inside his cheek. "He was wrong in one place." He flipped the pages, jabbed with a finger. "Right here. That's where the error cropped up. That's what bogged him down."

Grant stammered. "But... but there shouldn't be an error. He died, that's all. He died before he finished it."

Joe folded the manuscript neatly, tucked it in his pocket.

"Just as well," he said. "He probably would have botched it."

"Then you can finish it? You can-"

There was, Grant knew, no use of going on. He read the answer in Joe's eyes.

"You really think," said Joe and his words were terse and measured, "that I'd turn this over to you squalling humans?"

Grant shrugged in defeat. "I suppose not. I suppose I should have known. A man like you-"

"I," said Joe, "can use this thing myself."

He rose slowly, idly swung his foot, ploughing a furrow through the ant hill, toppling the smoking chimneys, burying the toiling carts.

With a cry, Grant leaped to his feet, blind anger gripping him, blind anger driving the hand that snatched out his gun.

"Hold it!" said Joe.

Grant's arm halted with the gun still pointing towards the ground.

"Take it easy, little man," said Joe. "I know you'd like to kill me, but I can't let you do it. For I have plans you see. And, after all, you wouldn't be killing me for the reason that you think."

"What difference would it make why I killed you?" rasped Grant. "You'd be dead, wouldn't you? You wouldn't be loose with Juwain's philosophy."

"But," Joe told him, almost gently, "that's not why you would kill me. You'd do it because you're sore at me for mussing up the ant hill."

"That might have been the reason first," said 'Grant. "But not now-"

"Don't try it," said Joe. "Before you ever pressed the trigger you'd be meat yourself."

Grant hesitated.

"If you think I'm bluffing," Joe taunted him, "go ahead and call me."

For a long moment the two stood face to face, the gun still pointing at the ground.

"Why can't you throw in with us?" asked Grant. "We need a man like you. You were the one that showed old Tom Webster how to build a space drive. The work you've done with ants-"

Joe was stepping forward, swiftly, and Grant heaved up the gun. He saw the fist coming at him, a hamlike, powerful fist that fairly whistled with its vicious speed.

A fist that was faster than his finger on the trigger.

***

Something wet and hot was rasping across Grant's face and he lifted a hand and tried to brush it off.

But it went on, licking across his face.

He opened his eyes and Nathaniel did a jig in front of them.

"You're all right," said Nathaniel. "I was so afraid-"

"Nathaniel!" croaked Grant. "What are you doing herw?"

"I ran away," Nathaniel told him. "I want to go with you."

Grant shook his head. "You can't go with me. I have far to go. I have a job to do."

He got to his hands and knees and felt along the ground. When his hand touched cold metal, he picked it up and slid it in the holster.

"I let him get away," he said, "and I can't let him go. I gave him something that belonged to all mankind and I can't let him use it."

"I can track," Nathaniel told him. "I track squirrels like everything."

"You have more important things to do than tracking,"

Grant told the dog. "You see, I found out something today. Got a glimpse of a certain trend – a trend that all mankind may follow. Not today nor to-morrow, nor even a thousand years from now. Maybe never, but it's a thing we can't overlook. Joe may be just a little farther along the path than the rest of us and we may be following faster than we think. We may all end up like Joe. And if that is what is happening, if that is where it all will end, you dogs have a job ahead of you."

Nathaniel stared up at him, worried wrinkles on his face.

"I don't understand," he pleaded. "You use words I can't make out."

"Look, Nathaniel. Men may not always be the way they are today. They may change. And, if they do, you have to carry on; you have to take the dream and keep it going. You'll have to pretend that you are men."

"Us dogs," Nathaniel pledged, "will do it."

"It won't come for thousands and thousands of years," said Grant. "You will have time to get ready. But you must know. You must pass the word along. You must not forget"

"I know," said Nathaniel. "Us dogs will tell the pups and the pups will tell their pups."

"That's the idea," said Grant.

He stooped and scratched Nathaniel's ear and the dog, tail wagging to a stop, stood and watched him climb the hill.

NOTES ON THE FOURTH TALE

Of all the tales this is the one which has occasioned the most anguish on the part of those who would seek some explanation and significance in the legend.

That it must be entirely myth and nothing else even Tige will admit. But if it is myth, what does it mean? If this tale is myth, are not all the others myth as well?

Jupiter, where the action takes place, is supposed to be one of the other worlds which may be found by crossing space. The scientific impossibility of the existence of such worlds has been noted elsewhere. And, if we are to accept Bounce's theory that the other worlds dealt with in the legend are none other than our own multiple worlds, it seems reasonable to suppose that such a world as the one described would have been located by this date. That there are certain of the cobbly worlds which are closed is common knowledge, but the reason for their closure is well known and none of them is closed because of conditions such as those described in this fourth tale.

Some scholars believe that the fourth tale is an interloper, that it has no business in the legend, that it is something which was picked up and inserted bodily. It is hard to accept this conclusion since the tale does tie in with the legend, furnishing one of the principal story pivots upon which the legend turns.

The character of Towser in this tale has been cited on many occasions as inconsistent with the essential dignity of our race.

Yet, while Towser may be distasteful to certain squeamish readers, he serves well as a foil for the human in the story.

It is Towser, not the human, who is first ready to accept the situation which develops; Towser, not the human, who is the first to understand. And Towser's mind, once it is freed from human domination, is shown to be at least the equal of the human's.

Towser, flea-bitten as he may be, is a character one need not be ashamed of.

Short as it is, this fourth tale probably is the most rewarding of the eight. It is one that recommends itself for thoughtful, careful reading.

IV. DESERTION

Four men, two by two, had gone into the howling maelstrom that was Jupiter and had not returned. They had walked into the keening gale – or rather, they had loped, bellies low against the ground, wet sides gleaming in the rain.

For they did not go in the shape of men.

Now the fifth man stood before the desk of Kent Fowler, head of Dome No. 3, Jovian Survey Commission.

Under Fowler's desk, old Towser scratched a flea, then settled down to sleep again.

Harold Allen, Fowler saw with a sudden pang, was young – too young. He had the easy confidence of youth, the face of one who never had known fear. And that was strange. For men in the domes of Jupiter did know fear – fear and humility.

It was hard for Man to reconcile his puny Self with the mighty forces of the monstrous planet.

"You understand," said Fowler, "that you need not do this. You understand that you need not go."

It was formula, of course. The other four had been told the same thing, but they had gone. This fifth one, Fowler knew, would go as well. But suddenly he felt a dull hope stir within him that Allen wouldn't go.

"When do I start?" asked Allen.

There had been a time when Fowler might have taken quiet pride in that answer, but not now. He frowned briefly.

"Within the hour," he said.

Allen stood waiting, quietly.

"Four other men have gone out and have not returned," said Fowler. "You know that, of course. We want you to return. We don't want you going off on any heroic rescue expedition. The main thing, the only thing is that you come back, that you prove man can live in a Jovian form. Go to the first survey stake, no farther, then come back. Don't take any chances. Don't investigate anything. Just come back."

Allen nodded. "I understand all that."

"Miss Stanley will operate the converter," Fowler went on. "You need have no fear on that particular score. The other men were converted without mishap. They left the converter in apparently perfect condition. You will be in thoroughly competent hands. Miss Stanley is the best qualified conversion operator in the Solar System. She has had experience on most of the other planets. That is why she's here."

Allen grinned at the woman and Fowler saw something flicker across Miss Stanley's face – something that might have been pity, or rage – or just plain fear. But it was gone again and she was smiling back at the youth who stood before the desk. Smiling in that prim, school-teacherish way she had of smiling, almost as if she hated herself for doing it

"I shall be looking forward," said Allen, "to my conversion."

And the way he said it, he made it all a joke, a vast ironic joke.

But it was no joke.

It was serious business, deadly serious. Upon these tests, Fowler knew, depended the fate of men on Jupiter. If the tests succeeded, the resources of the giant planet would be thrown open. Man would take over Jupiter as he already had taken over the other smaller planets. And if they failed – if they failed, Man would continue to be chained and hampered by the terrific pressure, the greater force of gravity, the weird chemistry of the planet. He would continue to be shut within the domes, unable to set actual foot upon the planet, unable to see it with direct, unaided vision, forced to rely upon the awkward tractors and the televisor, forced to work with clumsy tools and mechanisms or through the medium of robots that themselves were clumsy.

For Man, unprotected and in his natural form, would be blotted out by Jupiter's terrific pressure of fifteen thousand pounds per square inch, pressure that made terrestrial sea bottoms seem a vacuum by comparison.

Even the strongest metal Earthmen could devise couldn't exist under pressure such as that, under the pressure and the alkaline rains that forever swept the planet. It grew brittle and flaky, crumbling like clay, or it ran away in little streams and puddles of ammonia salts. Only by stepping up the toughness and strength of that metal, by increasing its electronic tension, could it be made to withstand the weight of thousands of miles of swirling, choking gases that made up the atmosphere. And even when that was done, everything had to be coated with tough quartz to keep away the rain – the liquid ammonia that fell as bitter rain.

Fowler sat listening to the engines in the sub-floor of the dome-engines that ran on endlessly, the dome never quiet of them. They had to run and keep on running, for if they stopped the power flowing into the metal walls of the dome would stop, the electronic tension would ease up and that would be the end of everything.

Towser roused himself under Fowler's desk and scratched another flea, his leg thumping hard against the floor.

"Is there anything else?" asked Allen.

Fowler shook his head. "Perhaps there's something you want to do," he said. "Perhaps you-"

He had meant to say write a letter and he was glad he caught himself quick enough so he didn't say it.

Allen looked at his watch. "I'll be there on time," he said. He swung around and headed for the door.

***

Fowler knew Miss Stanley was watching him and he didn't want to turn and meet her eyes. He fumbled with a sheaf of papers on the desk before him.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" asked Miss Stanley and she bit off each word with a vicious snap.

He swung around in his chair and faced her then. Her lips were drawn into a straight, thin line, her hair seemed skinned back from her forehead tighter than ever; giving her face that queer, almost startling death-mask quality.

He tried to make his voice cool and level. "As long as there's any need of it," he said. "As long as there's any hope."

"You're going to keep on sentencing them to death," she said. "You're going to keep marching them out face to face with Jupiter. You're going to shin here safe and comfortable andsend them out to die."

"There is no room for sentimentality, Miss Stanley," Fowler said, trying to keep the note of anger from his voice. "You know as well as I do why we're doing this. You realize that Man in his own form simply cannot cope with Jupiter. The only answer is to turn men into the sort of things that can cope with it. We've done it on the other planets.

"If a few men die, but we finally succeed, the price is small. Through the ages men have thrown away their lives on foolish things, for foolish reasons. Why should we hesitate, then, at a little death in a thing as great as this?"

Miss Stanley sat stiff and straight, hands folded in her lap, the lights shining on her greying hair and Fowler, watching her, tried to imagine what she might feel, what she might be thinking. He wasn't exactly afraid of her, but he didn't feel quite comfortable when she was around. Those sharp blue eyes saw too much, her hands looked far too competent.

She should be somebody's Aunt sitting in a rocking chair with her knitting needles. But she wasn't. She was the top-notch conversion unit operator in the Solar System and she didn't like the way he was doing things.

"There is something wrong, Mr. Fowler," she declared.

"Precisely," agreed Fowler. "That's why I'm sending young Allen out alone. He may find out what it is."

"And if he doesn't?"

"I'll send someone else."

She rose slowly from her chair, started towards the door, then stopped before his desk.

"Some day," she said, "you will be a great man. You never let a chance go by. This is your chance. You knew it was when this dome was picked for the tests. If you put it through, you'll go up a notch or two. No matter how many men may die you'll go up a notch or two."

"Miss Stanley," he said and his voice was curt, "young Allen is going out soon. Please be sure that your machine-"

"My machine," she told him icily, "is not to blame. It operates along the co-ordinates the biologists set up."

He sat hunched at his desk, listening to her footsteps go down the corridor.

What she said was true, of course. The biologists had set up the co-ordinates. But the biologists could be wrong. Just a hair-breadth of difference, one iota of digression and the converter would be sending out something that wasn't the thing they meant to send. A mutant that might crack up, go haywire, come unstuck under some condition or stress of circumstance wholly unsuspected.

For Man didn't know much about what was going on outside. Only what his instruments told him was going on.

And the samplings of those happenings furnished by those instruments and mechanisms had been no more than samplings, for Jupiter was unbelievably large and the domes were very few.

Even the work of the biologists in getting the data on the Lopers, apparently the highest form of Jovian life, had involved more than three years of intensive study and after that two years of checking to make sure. Work that could have been done on Earth in a week or two. But work that, in this case, couldn't be done on Earth at all, for one couldn't take a Jovian life form to Earth. The pressure here on Jupiter couldn't be duplicated outside of Jupiter and at Earth pressure and temperature the Lopers would simply have disappeared in a puff of gas.

Yet it was work that had to be done if Man ever hoped to go about Jupiter in the life form of the Lopers. For before the converter could change a man to another life form, every detailed physical characteristic of that life form must be known – surely and positively – with no chance of mistake.

***

Allen did not come back.

The tractors, combing the nearby terrain, found no trace of him, unless the skulking thing reported by one of the drivers had been the missing Earthman in Loper form.

The biologists sneered their most accomplished academic sneers when Fowler suggested the co-ordinates might be wrong. Carefully, they pointed out, the co-ordinates worked. When a man was put into the converter and the switch was thrown, the man became a Loper. He left the machine and moved away, out of sight, into the soupy atmosphere.

Some quirk, Fowler had suggested; some tiny deviation from the thing a Loper should be, some minor defect. If there were, the biologists said, it would take years to find it.

And Fowler knew that they were right.

So there were five men now instead of four and Harold Allen had walked out into Jupiter for nothing at all. It was as if he'd never gone so far as knowledge was concerned.

Fowler reached across his desk and picked up the personnel file, a thin sheaf of paper neatly clipped together. It was a thing he dreaded but a thing be had to do. Somehow, the reason for these strange disappearances must be found. And there was no other way than to send out more men.

He sat for a moment listening to the howling of the wind above the dome, the everlasting thundering gale that swept across the planet in boiling, twisting wrath.

Was there some threat out there, he asked himself? Some danger they did not know about? Something that lay in wait and gobbled up the Lopers, making no distinction between Lopers that were bonafide and Lopers that were men? To the gobblers, of course, it would make no difference.

Or had there been a basic fault in selecting the Lopers as the type of life best fitted for existence on the surface of the planet? The evident intelligence of the Lopers, he knew, had been one factor in that determination. For if the thing Man became did not have capacity for intelligence, Man could not for long retain his own intelligence in such a guise.

Had the biologists let that one factor weigh too heavily, using it to offset some other factor that might be unsatisfactory, even disastrous? It didn't seem likely. Stiffnecked as they might be, the biologists knew their business.

Or was the whole thing impossible, doomed from the very start? Conversion to other life forms had worked on other planets, but that did not necessarily mean it would work on Jupiter. Perhaps Man's intelligence could not function correctly through the sensory apparatus provided by Jovian life. Perhaps the Lopers were so alien there was no common ground for human knowledge and the Jovian conception of existence to meet and work together.

Or the fault might lie with Man, be inherent with the race. Some mental aberration which, coupled with what they found outside, wouldn't let them come back. Although it might not be an aberration, not in the human sense. Perhaps just one ordinary human mental trait, accepted as commonplace on Earth, would be so violently at odds with Jovian existence that it would blast human sanity.

***

Claws rattled and clicked down the corridor. Listening to them, Fowler smiled wanly. It was Towser coming back from the kitchen, where he had gone to see his friend, the cook.

Towser came into the room, carrying a bone. He wagged his tail at Fowler and flopped down beside the desk, bone between his paws. For a long moment his rheumy old eyes regarded his master and Fowler reached down a hand to ruffle a ragged ear.

"You still like me, Towser?" Fowler asked and Towser thumped his tail.

"You're the only one," said Fowler.

He straightened and swung back to the desk. His hand reached out and picked up the file.

Bennett? Bennett had a girl waiting for him back on Earth.

Andrews? Andrews was planning on going back to Mars Tech just as soon as he earned enough to see him through a year.

Olson? Olson was nearing pension age. All the time telling the boys how he was going to settle down and grow roses.

Carefully, Fowler laid the file back on the desk.

Sentencing men to death. Miss Stanley had said that, her pale lips scarcely moving in her parchment face. Marching men out to die while he, Fowler, sat here safe and comfortable.

They were saying it all through the dome, no doubt, especially since Allen had failed to return. They wouldn't say it to his face, of course. Even the man or men he called before this desk and told they were the next to go, wouldn't say it to him.

But be would see it in their eyes.

He picked up the file again. Bennett, Andrews, Olson. There were others, but there was no use in going on.

Kent Fowler knew that he couldn't do it, couldn't face them, couldn't send more men out to die.

He leaned forward and flipped up the toggle on the inter-communicator.

"Yes, Mr. Fowler."

"Miss Stanley, please."

He waited for Miss Stanley, listening to Towser chewing half-heartedly on the bone. Towser's teeth were getting bad.

"Miss Stanley," said Miss Stanley's voice.

"Just wanted to tell you, Miss Stanley, to get ready for two more."

"Aren't you afraid," asked Miss Stanley, "that you'll run out of them? Sending out one at a time, they'd last longer, give you twice the satisfaction."

"One of them," said Fowler, "will be a dog."

"A dog!"

"Yes, Towser."

He heard the quick, cold rage that iced her voice. "Your own dog! He's been with you all these years-"

"That's the point," said Fowler. "Towser would be unhappy if I left him behind."

***

It was not the Jupiter he had known through the televisor. He had expected it to be different, but not like this. He had expected a hell of ammonia rain and stinking fumes and the deafening, thundering tumult of the storm. He had expected swirling clouds and fog and the snarling flicker of monstrous thunderbolts.

He had not expected the lashing downpour would be reduced to drifting purple mist that moved like fleeing shadows over a red and purple sward. He had not even guessed the snaking bolts of lightning would be flares of pure ecstasy across a painted sky.

Waiting for Towser, Fowler flexed the muscles of his body, amazed at the smooth, sleek strength he found. Not a bad body, he decided, and grimaced at remembering bow he had pitied the Lopers when he glimpsed them through the television screen.

For it had been hard to imagine a living organism based upon ammonia and hydrogen rather than upon water and oxygen, hard to believe that such a form of life could know the same quick thrill of life that humankind could know. Hard to conceive of life out in the soupy maelstrom that was Jupiter, not knowing, of course, that through Jovian eyes it was no soupy maelstrom at all.

The wind brushed against him with what seemed gentle fingers and be remembered with a start that by Earth standards the wind was a roaring gale, a two-hundred-mile-an hour howler laden with deadly gases.

Pleasant scents seeped into his body. And yet scarcely scents, for it was not the sense of smell as he remembered it. It was as if his whole being was soaking up the sensation of lavender – and yet not lavender. It was something, he knew, for which he had no word, undoubtedly the first of many enigmas in terminology. For the words he knew, the thought symbols that served him as an Earthman would not serve him as a Jovian.

The lock in the side of the dome opened and Towser came tumbling out – at least he thought it must be Towser.

He started to call to the dog, his mind shaping the words he meant to say. But he couldn't say them. There was no way to say them. He had nothing to say them with.

For a moment his mind swirled in muddy terror, a blind fear that eddied in little puffs of panic through his brain.

How did Jovians talk? How Suddenly he was aware of Towser, intensely aware of the