New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) (14 page)

Philo leaped out quickly and Blaine got out more slowly. It had been a tiring day, he told himself. Now that he was home, he suddenly was tired.

He stood for a moment, looking at the house. It was a good house, he thought; a good place for a family—if he ever could persuade Harriet to give up her news career.

A voice said: “All right. You can turn around now. And take it easy; don’t try any funny stuff.”

Slowly Blaine turned. A man stood beside the car in the gathering dusk. He held a glinting object in his hand and he said, “There’s nothing to be afraid of; I don’t intend you any harm. Just don’t get gay about it.”

The man’s clothes were wrong; they seemed to be some sort of uniform. And his words were wrong. The inflection was a bit off color, concise and crisp, lacking the slurring of one word into another which marked the language. And the phrases—
funny stuff; don’t get gay.

“This is a gun I have. No monkey business, please.”

Monkey business
.

“You are the man who escaped,” said Blaine.

“That I am.”

“But how …”

“I rode all the way with you. Hung underneath the car; those dumb cops didn’t think to look.”

The man shrugged. “I regretted it once or twice. You drove further than I hoped. I almost let go a time or two. “

“But me? Why did you …”

“Not you, mister; anyone at all. It was a way to hide—a means to get away.”

“I don’t read you,” Blaine told him. “You could have made a clean break; you could have let go at the gate. The car was going slow then. You could have sneaked away right now. I’d never noticed you.”

“And been picked up as soon as I showed myself. The clothes are a giveaway. So is my speech. Then there’s my eating habits, and maybe even the way I walk. I would stick out like a bandaged thumb.”

“I see,” said Blaine. “All right, then; put up the gun. You must be hungry. We’ll go in and eat.”

The man put away the gun. He patted his pocket. “I still have it, and I can get it fast. Don’t try any swifties.”

“O.K.,” said Blaine. “No swifties.” Thinking: Picturesque.
Swifties
. Never heard the word. But it had a meaning; there could be no doubt of that.

“By the way, how did you get that gun?”

“That’s something,” said the man, “I’m not telling you.”

VI

His name, the fugitive said, was Spencer Collins. He’d been in suspension for five hundred years; he’d come out of it just a month before. Physically, he said, he was as good a man as ever—fifty-five, and well preserved. He’d paid attention to himself all his life—had eaten right, hadn’t gone without sleep, had exercised both mind and body, knew something about psychosomatics.

“I’ll say this for your outfit,” he told Blaine, “you know how to take care of a sleeper’s body. I was a little gaunt when I came out; a little weak; but there’d been no deterioration.”

Norman Blaine chuckled. “We’re at work at it constantly. I don’t know anything about it, of course, but the biology boys are at it all the time—it’s a continuing problem with them. A practical problem. During your five hundred years you probably were shifted a dozen times or more—to a better receptacle each time, with improvements in the operation. You got the benefit of the new improvements as soon as we worked them out.”

Collins had been a professor of sociology, he said, and he’d evolved a theory. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t go into what it was.”

“Why certainly,” said Blaine.

“It’s not of too much interest except to the academic mind. I presume you’re not an academic mind.”

“I suppose I’m not.”

“It involved long-term social development,” Collins told him. “I figured that five hundred years should show some indication of whether I had been right or wrong. I was curious. It’s rough to figure out a thing, then up and die without ever knowing if it comes true or not.”

“I can understand.”

“If you doubt me in any detail you can check the record.”

“I don’t doubt a word of it,” said Blaine.

“You are used to screwball cases.”

“Screwball?”

“Loopy. Crazy.”

“I see many screwball cases,” Blaine assured him.

But nothing quite so screwball as this, he thought. Nothing quite so crazy as sitting on the patio beneath the autumn stars, on his own home acres, talking to a man five centuries out of time. If he were in Readjustment, of course, he’d be accustomed to it, would not think it strange at all; Readjustment worked continually with cases just like this.

Collins was fascinating. His inflection betrayed the change in the spoken language, and there were those slang words always cropping up—idioms of the past that had somehow missed fire and found no place within the living language, although many others had survived.

At dinner there had been dishes the man had tackled with distrust, others that he’d eaten with disgust showing on his face, yet too polite to refuse them outright—determined, perhaps, to do his best to fit into the culture in which he found himself.

There were certain little mannerisms and affectations that seemed pointless now; performed too often, they could become distinctly irritating. These were actions like stroking his chin when he was thinking, or popping joints by pulling at his fingers. That last one, Blaine told himself, was unnerving and indecent. Perhaps in the past it had not been ill-bred to fiddle with one’s body. He’d have to look that one up, he told himself, or maybe ask someone. The boys in Readjustment would know—they’d know a lot of things.

“I wonder if you’d tell me,” Blaine asked,—”this theory of yours. Did it work out the way you thought it would?”

“I don’t know. You’ll agree, perhaps, that I’ve scarcely been in a position to find out.”

“I suppose that’s true. But I thought you might have asked.”

“I didn’t ask,” said Collins.

They sat in the evening silence, looking out across the valley.

“You’ve come a long way in the last five hundred years,” Collins finally said. “When I went to sleep, we were speculating on the stars and everyone was saying that the light speed limit had us licked on that. But today …”

“I know,” said Blaine. “Another five hundred years …”

“You could go on forever and forever—sleep a thousand years and see what had happened. Then another …”

“It wouldn’t be worth it.”

“You’re telling me,” said Collins.

A nighthawk skimmed above the trees and planed into the sky in jerky, fluttering motions, busy catching insects. “That doesn’t change,” said Collins. “I can remember nighthawks …”

He paused, then asked, “What are you going to do with me?”

“You’re my guest.”

“Until the keepers come.”

“We’ll talk about it later; you are safe tonight.”

“There is one thing you’ve been wondering about; I’ve watched it gnawing at you.”

“Why you ran away.”

“That is it,” said Collins.

“Well?”

“I chose a dream,” said Collins, “such as you might expect. I asked a professorial retreat—a sort of idealized monastery where I could spend my time in study, where I could live with other men who could talk my language. I wanted peace—a walk along a quiet river, a good sunset, simple food, time for reading and for thinking …”

Blaine nodded appreciatively. “A good choice, Collins; there should be more like it.”

“I thought so, too,” said Collins. “It was what I wanted.”

“It proved enjoyable?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Wouldn’t know?”

“I never got it.”

“But the Dream was fabricated …”

“I got a different dream.”

“There was some mistake.”

“No mistake,” said Collins; “I am sure there wasn’t.”

“When you ask a certain dream,” Blaine began, speaking stiffly, but Collins cut him short. “There was no mistake, I tell you. The dream was substituted.”

“How could you know that?”

“Because the dream they gave me wasn’t one that anyone would ask for. Not even one that ever would be thought of. It was one that was deliberately tailored for some reason I can’t figure out. It was a different world.”

“An alien world!”

“Not alien; it was Earth, all right—but a different culture. I lived five hundred years in that world, every minute of five hundred years. The dream pattern was not shortened as I understand they often are, telescoping a thousand years of Sleep into a normal lifetime. I got the works, the full five hundred years. I know what the score is when I tell you that it was a deliberately fashioned dream—no mistake at all—but fashioned for a purpose.”

“Now let’s not rush ahead so fast,” protested Blaine. “Let us take it easy. The world had a different culture?”

“It was a world,” said Collins, “in which the profit motive had been eliminated, in which the concept of profit never had been thought of. It was the same world that we have, but lacking in all the factors and forces which in our world stem from the profit motive. To me, of course, it was utterly fantastic, but to the natives of the place—if you can call them that—it seemed the normal thing.”

He watched Blaine closely. “I think you’ll agree,” he said, “that no one would want to live in a world like that. No one would ask a Dream like that.”

“Some economist, perhaps …”

“An economist would know better. And, aside from that, there was a terribly consistent pattern to the dream that no one without prior knowledge could ever figure out to put into a dream.”

“Our machine …”

“Your machine would have no more prior knowledge than you yourself. No more, at least, than your best economist. And another thing—that machine is illogical; that’s the beauty of it. It needn’t think in logic. It shouldn’t, because that would spoil the Dream. A Dream should not be logical.”

“And yours was logical?”

“Very logical,” said Collins. “You can figure out the factors hell to breakfast and you can’t tell what will happen until you see a thing in action. That is logic for you.”

He rose and walked across the patio, then walked back again, stood facing Blaine. “That’s why I ran away. There’s something dirty going on; I can’t trust that gang of yours.”

“I don’t know,” said Blaine. “I simply do not know.”

“I can clear out if you want me to; no need to get yourself messed up in a deal like this. You took me in and fed me, gave me clothes, and you listened to me. I don’t know how far I can get, but …”

“No,” said Blaine, “you’re staying here. This is something that needs investigation, and I may need you later on. Keep out of sight. Don’t mind the robots. We can trust them; they won’t talk.”

“If they smell me out,” said Collins, “I’ll manage to get off your land before they nab me. Caught, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Norman Blaine rose slowly and held out his hand. Collins took it in a swift, sure grip. “It’s a deal.”

“It’s a deal,” echoed Blaine.

VII

At night, the Center was a place of ghosts, its deserted corridors ringing with their emptiness. Men worked throughout the building, Blaine knew—the Readjustment force; the Conditioners; the Tank Room gang, but there was no sign of them.

A robot guard stepped out of his embrasure. “Who goes there?”

“Blaine. Norman Blaine.”

The robot stood for a second, whirring gently, searching through its memory banks to find the name of Blaine. “Identification,” it said.

Blaine held up his identification disk. “Pass, Blaine,” the robot said, then tried an amenity. “Working late?”

“Something I forgot,” Blaine told it.

He went along the corridor and took the elevator, got out at the sixth.

Another robot stopped him. He identified himself.

“You’re on the wrong floor, Blaine.”

“New appointment.” He showed the robot the form.

“All right, Blaine,” it said.

Blaine went along the corridor and found the door to Records. He tried six keys before he hit the right one and the door swung open.

He closed the door behind him and waited until he could see a little before he found the light switch.

There was a front office; off it, a door led into the record stacks. What he sought should be here somewhere, Blaine told himself. Myrt would have finished it hours before—the Jenkins dream of big game hunting in the steaming jungle.

It would not have been filed as yet, might not be filed at all, for Jenkins would be coming in to take the Sleep in just a day or two. Perhaps there was a rack somewhere where the dreams-to-be-called-for were placed against their use.

He walked around a desk and looked about the room. Filing cabinets, more desks, a testing cubicle, a drink and lunch dispenser, and a rack in which were stacked half a dozen reels.

He walked swiftly to the rack and picked up the first reel. He found the Jenkins Dream five reels down and stood with it in his hand, wondering just how insane a man could get.

Collins must be mistaken, or there had been some mistake—or it was all a lie, directed to what purpose he had no idea. It simply couldn’t be, Blaine told himself, that a dream would be deliberately substituted.

But he had come this far. Thus far he had made a fool out of himself …

He shrugged; he might just as well go all the way now that he was here.

Reel in hand, Norman Blaine walked into the testing cubicle and closed the door behind him. He inserted the reel and set the time at thirty minutes; then he put the cap upon his head and lay down upon the bed. Reaching out, he turned on the mechanism.

There was a faint whirring of the mechanism. Something puffed into his face and the whirr was gone; the cubicle was gone and Blaine stood in a desert, or what seemed to be a desert.

The landscape was red and yellow; there was a sun, and heat rose up from sand and rocks to strike him in the face. He raised his head to stare out at the horizons and saw that they lay far distant, for the land was flat. A lizard ran, squeaking, from the shade of one rock to the shadow of another. Far in the hot silk-blue of the sky a bird was circling.

He saw that he stood upon a road of sorts; it wound across the desert’s face until it was lost in the heat-wavers that rose up from the tortured ground. And far off on the road a black speck travelled slowly.