The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (8 page)

“They say hello to you,” said Beasly. “They say welcome to you.”

“Well, all right, then, tell them – Say, how do you know all this!”

“Chuck tells me what they say and I tell you. You tell me and I tell him and he tells them. That's the way it works. That is what he's here for.”

“Well, I'll be –” said Taine. “So you can really talk to him.”

“I told you that I could,” stormed Beasly. “I told you that I could talk to Towser, too, but you thought that I was crazy.”

“Telepathy!” said Taine. And it was worse than ever now. Not only had the ratlike things known all the rest of it, but they'd known of Beasly, too.

“What was that you said, Hiram?”

“Never mind,” said Taine. “Tell that friend of yours to tell them I am glad to meet them and what can I do for them?”

He stood uncomfortably and stared at the three and he saw that their vests had many pockets and that the pockets were all crammed, probably with their equivalent of tobacco and handkerchiefs and pocket knives and such.

“They say,” said Beasly, “that they want to dicker.”

“Dicker?”

“Sure, Hiram. You know, trade.”

Beasly chuckled thinly. “Imagine them laying themselves open to a Yankee trader. That's what Henry says you are. He says you can skin a man on the slickest –”

“Leave Henry out of this,” snapped Taine. “Let's leave Henry out of something.”

He sat down on the ground and the three sat down to face him.

“Ask them what they have in mind to trade.”

“Ideas,” Beasly said.

“Ideas! That's a crazy thing –”

And then he saw it wasn't.

Of all the commodities that might be exchanged by an alien people, ideas would be the most valuable and the easiest to handle. They'd take no cargo room and they'd upset no economies – not immediately, that is – and they'd make a bigger contribution to the welfare of the cultures than trade in actual goods.

“Ask them,” said Taine, “what they'll take for the idea back of those saddles they are riding.”

“They say, what have you to offer?”

And that was the stumper. That was the one that would be hard to answer.

Automobiles and trucks, the internal gas engine – well, probably not. Because they already had the saddles. Earth was out-of-date in transportation from the viewpoint of these people.

Housing architecture – no, that was hardly an idea and, anyhow, there was that other house, so they knew of houses.

Cloth? No, they had cloth.

Paint, he thought. Maybe paint was it.

“See if they are interested in paint,” Taine told Beasly.

“They say, what is it? Please explain yourself.”

“O.K., then. Let's see. It's a protective device to be spread over almost any surface. Easily packaged and easily applied. Protects against weather and corrosion. It's decorative, too. Comes in all sorts of colors. And it's cheap to make.”

“They shrug in their mind,” said Beasly. “They're just slightly interested. But they will listen more. Go ahead and tell them.”

And that was more like it, thought Taine.

That was the kind of language that he could understand.

He settled himself more firmly on the ground and bent forward slightly, flicking his eyes across the three dead-pan, ebony faces, trying to make out what they might be thinking.

There was no making out. Those were three of the deadest pans he had ever seen.

It was all familiar. It made him feel at home. He was in his element.

And in the three across from him, he felt somehow subconsciously, he had the best dickering opposition he had ever met. And that made him feel good too.

“Tell them,” he said, “that I'm not quite sure. I may have spoken up too hastily. Paint, after all, is a mighty valuable idea.”

“They say, just as a favor to them, not that they're really interested, would you tell them a little more.”

Got them hooked, Taine told himself. If he could only play it right –

He settled down to dickering in earnest.

VI

Hours later Henry Horton showed up. He was accompanied by a very urbane gentleman, who was faultlessly turned out and who carried beneath his arm an impressive attaché case.

Henry and the man stopped on the steps in sheer astonishment.

Taine was squatted on the ground with a length of board and he was daubing paint on it while the aliens watched. From the daubs here and there upon their anatomies, it was plain to see the aliens had been doing some daubing of their own. Spread all over the ground were other lengths of half-painted boards and a couple of dozen old cans of paint.

Taine looked up and saw Henry and the man.

“I was hoping,” he said, “that someone would show up.”

“Hiram,” said Henry, with more importance than usual, “may I present Mr. Lancaster. He is a special representative of the United Nations.”

“I'm glad to meet you, sir,” said Taine. “I wonder if you would –”

“Mr. Lancaster,” Henry explained grandly, “was having some slight difficulty getting through the lines outside, so I volunteered my services. I've already explained to him our joint interest in this matter.”

“It was very kind of Mr. Horton,” Lancaster said. “There was this stupid sergeant –”

“It's all in knowing,” Henry said, “how to handle people.”

The remark, Taine noticed, was not appreciated by the man from the U.N.

“May I inquire, Mr. Taine,” asked Lancaster, “exactly what you're doing?”

“I'm dickering,” said Taine.

“Dickering. What a quaint way of expressing –”

“An old Yankee word,” said Henry quickly, “with certain connotations of its own. When you trade with someone you are exchanging goods, but if you're dickering with him you're out to get his hide.”

“Interesting,” said Lancaster. “And I suppose you're out to skin these gentlemen in the sky-blue vests –”

“Hiram,” said Henry, proudly, “is the sharpest dickerer in these parts. He runs an antique business and he has to dicker hard –”

“And may I ask,” said Lancaster, ignoring Henry finally, “what you might be doing with these cans of paint? Are these gentlemen potential customers for paint or –”

Taine threw down the board and rose angrily to his feet.

“If you'd both shut up!” he shouted. “I've been trying to say something ever since you got here and I can't get in a word. And I tell you, it's important –”

“Hiram!” Henry exclaimed in horror.

“It's quite all right,” said the U.N. man. “We
have
been jabbering. And now, Mr. Taine?”

“I'm backed into a corner,” Taine told him, “and I need some help. I've sold these fellows on the idea of paint, but I don't know a thing about it – the principle back of it or how it's made or what goes into it or –”

“But, Mr. Taine, if you're selling them the paint, what difference does it make –”

“I'm not selling them the paint,” yelled Taine. “Can't you understand that? They don't want the paint. They want the
idea
of paint, the principle of paint. It's something that they never thought of and they're interested. I offered them the paint idea for the idea of their saddles and I've almost got it –”

“Saddles? You mean those things over there, hanging in the air?”

“That is right. Beasly, would you ask one of our friends to demonstrate a saddle?”

“You bet I will,” said Beasly.

“What,” demanded Henry, “has Beasly got to do with this?”

“Beasly is an interpreter. I guess you'd call him a telepath. You remember how he always claimed he could talk with Towser?”

“Beasly was always claiming things.”

“But this time he was right. He tells Chuck, that funny-looking monster, what I want to say and Chuck tells these aliens. And these aliens tell Chuck and Chuck tells Beasly and Beasly tells me.”

“Ridiculous!” snorted Henry. “Beasly hasn't got the sense to be … what did you say he was?”

“A telepath,” said Taine.

One of the aliens had gotten up and climbed into a saddle. He rode it forth and back. Then he swung out of it and sat down again.

“Remarkable,” said the U.N. man. “Some sort of antigravity unit, with complete control. We could make use of that, indeed.”

He scraped his hand across his chin.

“And you're going to exchange the idea of paint for the idea of that saddle?”

“That's exactly it,” said Taine, “but I need some help. I need a chemist or a paint manufacturer or someone to explain how paint is made. And I need some professor or other who'll understand what they're talking about when they tell me the idea of the saddle.”

“I see,” said Lancaster. “Yes, indeed, you have a problem. Mr. Taine, you seem to me a man of some discernment –”

“Oh, he's all of that,” interrupted Henry. “Hiram's quite astute.”

“So I suppose you'll understand,” said the U.N. man, “that this whole procedure is quite irregular –”

“But it's not,” exploded Taine. “That's the way they operate. They open up a planet and then they exchange ideas. They've been doing that with other planets for a long, long time. And ideas are all they want, just the new ideas, because that is the way to keep on building a technology and culture. And they have a lot of ideas, sir, that the human race can use.”

“That is just the point,” said Lancaster. “This is perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened to we humans. In just a short year's time we can obtain data and ideas that will put us ahead – theoretically, at least – by a thousand years. And in a thing that is so important, we should have experts on the job –”

“But,” protested Henry, “you can't find a man who'll do a better dickering job than Hiram. When you dicker with him your back teeth aren't safe. Why don't you leave him be? He'll do a job for you. You can get your experts and your planning groups together and let Hiram front for you. These folks have accepted him and have proved they'll do business with him and what more do you want? All he needs is just a little help.”

Beasly came over and faced the U.N. man.

“I won't work with no one else,” he said. “If you kick Hiram out of here, then I go along with him. Hiram's the only person who ever treated me like a human –”

“There, you see!” Henry said, triumphantly.

“Now, wait a second, Beasly,” said the U.N. man. “We could make it worth your while. I should imagine that an interpreter in a situation such as this could command a handsome salary.”

“Money don't mean a thing to me,” said Beasly. “It won't buy me friends. People still will laugh at me.”

“He means it, mister,” Henry warned. “There isn't anyone who can be as stubborn as Beasly. I know; he used to work for us.”

The U.N. man looked flabbergasted and not a little desperate.

“It will take you quite some time,” Henry pointed out, “to find another telepath – leastwise one who can talk to these people here.”

The U.N. man looked as if he were strangling. “I doubt,” he said, “there's another one on Earth.”

“Well, all right,” said Beasly, brutally, “let's make up our minds. I ain't standing here all day.”

“All right,” cried the U.N. man. “You two go ahead. Please, will you go ahead? This is a chance we can't let slip through our fingers. Is there anything you want? Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, there is,” said Taine. “There'll be the boys from Washington and bigwigs from other countries. Just keep them off my back.”

“I'll explain most carefully to everyone. There'll be no interference.”

“And I need that chemist and someone who'll know about the saddles. And I need them quick. I can stall these boys a little longer, but not for too much longer.”

“Anyone you need,” said the U.N. man. “Anyone at all. I'll have them here in hours. And in a day or two there'll be a pool of experts waiting for you whenever you may need them – on a moment's notice.”

“Sir,” said Henry, unctuously, “that's most co-operative. Both Hiram and I appreciate it greatly. And now, since this is settled, I understand that there are reporters waiting. They'll be interested in your statement.”

The U.N. man, it seemed, didn't have it in him to protest. He and Henry went tramping up the stairs. Taine turned around and looked out across the desert.

“It's a big front yard,” he said.

The Observer

Presaging, perhaps, the until-now-unpublished “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” “The Observer” probably represents an experiment on the author's part, one in which he sought to portray a being discovering itself after an event that reminds me, irresistibly, of a computer recovering from a forced shutdown.

—dww

It existed. Whether it had slept and wakened, or been turned on, or if this might be the first instant of its creation, it had no way of knowing. There was no memory of other time, or place.

Words came to fit where it found itself. Words emerging out of nowhere, symbols quite unbidden – awakened or turned on or first appearing, as it had itself.

It was in a place of red and yellow. The land was red. The sky was yellow. A brightness stood straight above the red land in the yellow sky. Liquid ran gurgling down a channel in the land.

In a little time it knew more, had a better understanding. It knew the brightness was a sun. It knew the running liquid was a brook. It thought of the liquid as a compound, but it wasn't water. Life forms sprang from the redness of the soil. Their stems were green. They had purple fruits at the top of them.

It had the names now, identifying symbols it could use – life, liquid, land, sky, red, yellow, purple, green, sun, bright, water. Each instant it had more words, more names, more terms. And it could see, although seeing might not be the proper term, for it had no eyes. Nor legs. Nor arms. Nor body.

It had no eyes and seemed to have no body, either. It had no idea of position – standing up or lying down or sitting. It could look anywhere it wished without turning its head, since it hadn't any head. Although, strangely, it did seem to occupy a specific position in relation to the landscape.

It looked straight up into the sky at the brightness of the sun and could look directly at the brightness since it was seeing without eyes, without frail organic structures that might be harmed by brilliance.

The sun was a B8 star, five times more massive than the Sun, and it lay 3.76 A.U. distant from this planet.

Sun, capitalized? A.U.? Five? 3.76? Planet?

Sometime in the past – when past, where past, what past – it had known the terms, a sun that was capitalized, water that ran in brooks, the idea of a body and eyes. Or had it known them? Had it ever had a past in which it could have known them? Or were they simply terms that were being fed into it from another source, to be utilized as the need arose, tools – and there was yet another term – to be used in interpreting this place where it found itself? Interpreting this place for what? For itself? That was ridiculous, for it did not need to know, did not even care to know.

Knowing, how did it know? how did it know the sun was a B8 star, and what was a B8 star? How know its distance, its diameter, its mass just by looking at it? How know a star, for it had never seen a star before?

Then, even thinking this, it knew it had. It had known many suns, a long string of suns across the galaxy and it had looked at each of them and known its spectral type, its distance and diameter, its mass, its very composition, its age and probable length of remaining life, stable or variable, its spectral lines, any small peculiarities that might set it apart from other stars. Red giants, supergiants, white dwarfs, even one black dwarf. But mostly main sequence stars and the planets that went with them, for it made few stops at stars that had no planets.

Perhaps nothing had ever known more suns than it. Or knew more of suns than it.

And the purpose of all this? It tried to think of purpose, but there seemed no purpose. The purpose utterly escaped it. If there were, in fact, a purpose.

It stopped looking at the sun and looked at the rest of it, at all of it at once, at all the planetary surface in its sight – as if, it thought, it had eyes all around its nonexistent head. Why did it, it wondered, keep dwelling on this idea of a head and eyes? Had it, at one time perhaps, had a head and eyes? Was the ideal of head and eyes an old residual, perhaps a primitive, memory that persistently refused to go away, but that for some reason must linger and thrust itself forward at the slightest opportunity?

It tried to think it out, to reach back and grasp the idea or the memory and drag it squalling from its hole. And failed.

It concentrated on the surface. It was located – if located was the word – on a steep hillside with massive rock outcroppings. The hill shut off the view of one portion of the surface, but the rest lay bare before it to the horizon line.

The rest of the surface was level, except for one place, far distant, where what appeared to be a circular prominence arose. The top of the prominence was jagged and the sides were furrowed and it looked very like an ancient crater.

But the rest was level and through it ran several little streams of something that was liquid but was not water. The sparse vegetation stood up on its dark green stems, surmounted by its purple fruit and now it was apparent that there were several kinds of vegetation. The purple fruit vegetation at first had seemed to be the only vegetation because it was more abundant, and certainly more spectacular.

The soil seemed to be little more than sand. It put out a hand – no, not a hand, for it had no hand – but it thought of its action as putting out a hand. It put out a hand and thrust the fingers deep into the soil and the data on the soil came flowing into it. Sand. Almost pure sand. Silicon, some iron, some aluminum, traces of oxygen, hydrogen, potassium, magnesium. Almost no acidity. There were figures, percentages, but it hardly noticed. They simply passed along.

The atmosphere was deadly. Deadly to what? The radiation lancing in from the B-type star was deadly and again, deadly to what?

What do I have to know, it wondered. And there was another word it had not used before. I. Me. Myself. An entity. A self. A single thing, standing all alone, no part of another. A personality.

What am I? it asked. Where am I? And why? Why must I go on collecting all this data? What care I for soil, or radiation, or the atmosphere? Why should I have to know what kind of star is standing overhead? I have no body that can be affected by any of it. I seem to have no form. I only have a being. A disembodied entity. A nebulous I.

It desisted for a time, unmoving, doing nothing, collecting no more data, only looking at the red and yellow of the planet, the purple of the flowers.

Then, after a time, it took up its work again. It touched the rocky outcrops on the hillside, found the planes that lay between the layers, seeped into the rock, following the cleavages.

Limestone. Massive, hard limestone. Put down millennia ago at the bottom of the sea.

It paused for a moment, vaguely disturbed, then recognized the cause of its disturbance. Fossils!

Why should fossils disturb it, it asked itself and then suddenly it knew with something that amounted to excitement, or as close as it could come to what might be excitement. These were not the fossils of plants, primordial ancestors to those purple plants growing on the present surface. These were animals – well-organized forms of life, sophisticated in their structure, well up the evolutionary ladder.

So few of the other planets had any life at all, the few that did more often than not had only the simplest of vegetable life or, perhaps, tiny organisms on the borderline, things that might be slightly more than vegetable, but not yet animal. I should have known, it thought. The purple plants should have alerted me. For they are highly organized; they are not simple plants. On this planet, despite its deadly atmosphere and it deadly radiation and its liquid that is not water, evolutionary forces still had been at work.

It traced one particular fossil. Not large. A chitin covering, apparently, but still it had a skeleton of sorts. It had a head, a body, legs. It had a flattened tail for swimming in whatever evil chemical brew the ocean might have been. It had jaws for seizing and for holding. It had eyes, a great many more eyes, perhaps, than it had any need of. There were faint tracings of an alimentary canal, fragments of nerves here and there that were still preserved, or at least the canals in which they ran had been preserved.

And it thought of that faint, misty time when he –

He? First an I. And then a he.

Two identities – or rather two terms of identity.

No longer an it, but an I and he.

He lay thin and spread out along the tight seams of the limestone and knew the fossils and pondered on them. Especially that one particular fossil and that other misty time in which the first fossil had been found, the first time he had ever known there was such a thing as fossil. He recalled the finding of it and recalled its name as well. It had been called a trilobite. Someone had told him the name, but he could not remember who it might have been. A place so faint in time, so far in space, that all he had left of it was a fossil called a trilobite.

But there had been another time and another place and he was not new – he had not in that first instant of awareness been turned on, or newly hatched, or born. He had a history. There had been times of other awarenesses and he had held identity in those other times. Not new, he thought, but old. A creature with a past.

The thought of eyes, of body, or arms and legs – could all of them be memories from that other time or times? Could there have been a time when he did have a head and eyes, a body?

Or could he be mistaken? Could all of this be a phantom memory fashioned out of some happening, or event, or some combination of happenings and events that had occurred to some other being? Was it, perhaps, a misplaced memory, not of himself, but of something else? If the memory should prove to be his own, what had happened to him – what changes had been made?

He forgot the limestone and the fossils. He lay spread out in the fissures of the rock and stayed quiet and limp, hoping that out of the limpness and the quietness he might devise an answer. A partial answer came, an infuriating answer, unspecific and tantalizing. Not one place, but many; not one time, but many times. Not on one planet, but on many planets spaced over many light-years.

If all of this were true, he thought, there must be purpose in it. Otherwise, why the many planets and the data on those planets? And this was a new, unbidden thought – the data on the planets. Why the data? For what purpose was it gathered? Certainly not for himself, for he did not need the data, had no use for it. Could it be that he was only the gatherer, the harvester, the storer and communicator of the data that he gathered?

If not for himself, for whom? He waited for the answer to come welling up, for the memory to reassert itself, and in time he realized that he had gone groping back as far as he could go.

Slowly he withdrew from the rock, once more was upon the hillside above the red land beneath the yellow sky.

A portion of the nearby surface moved and as it moved, he saw that it was not a portion of the surface, but a creature that had a coloration which made it seem to be a part of the planet's surface. It moved quickly, as if a shadow had brushed along and blurred the surface. It moved in short and flowing motions, and when it stopped its motion it became a part of the surface, blending into it.

It was watching him, he knew, looking him over, although what there was to see of him he could not imagine. Sensitive, perhaps, to another personality, to another thing that shared with it that strange and undefinable quality which made up life. A force field, he wondered – was that what he was, a disembodied intelligence carried in a force field?

He stayed still so the thing could look him over. It moved in its short, flowing dashes, all around him. It left a furrowed track behind it, it kicked up little spurts of sand as it made its dashes. It moved in closer.

And he had it. He held it motionless, wrapped up as if he held it in many hands. He examined it, not closely, not analytically, but only enough so he could tell what kind of thing it was. Protoplasmic and heavily shielded against the radiations, even designed, perhaps – although he could not be sure – to take advantage of the energy contained in the radiation. An organism, more than likely, that could not exist without the radiations, that needed them as other creatures might need warmth, or food, or oxygen. Intelligent and laced with a multitude of emotions – not, perhaps, the kind of intelligence that could build a complex culture, but a high level of animal intelligence. Perhaps still evolving in its intelligence. Give it a few more million years and it might contrive a culture.

He turned it loose. It flowed away, moving rapidly, straight away from him. He lost sight of it, but still could follow its movement for a time by its unreeling track and the spurts of sand it kicked into the air.

There was much work to do. an atmospheric profile, an analysis of the soil and of the micro-organisms that it might contain, a determination of the liquid in the brook, an examination of the plant life, a geological survey, measurement of the magnetic field, the intensity of the radiation. But first there should be a general survey of the planet to determine what sort of place it was, a pin-pointing of those areas that might be of economic interest.

And there it was again, another word he had not had before. Economic.

He searched inside himself, inside the theoretical intelligence enclosed within the hypothetical force field, for the purpose that was hinted in that single word. When he found it, it stood out sharp and clear – the one thing he had found that was sharp and clear. What was here that could be used and what would be the cost of obtaining it? A treasure hunt, he thought. That was the purpose of him. It was clear immediately that he, himself, had no use for treasure of any kind at all. There must be someone else who would have a use for it. Although when he thought of treasure a pleasurable thrill went through him.

What might there be in it for him, he wondered, this location of a treasure? What had been the profit to him in the finding of all those other treasures on all those other planets – although, come to think of it, there had not been treasure on every one of them. And on some of the others where there'd been, it had been meaningless, for planetary conditions had been such that it could not be got at. Many of the planets, he recalled, far too many of them, were such that only a thing such as himself would dare even to approach them.