Out of Their Minds (24 page)

Authors: Clifford D. Simak

BOOK: Out of Their Minds

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“My friend,” said Treasury, “takes this incident too seriously. I cannot bring myself, nor, I suspect, can many others in this room, to regard it as of any validity at all. To give the color of acceptance to this ridiculous situation by debating it on even the most hypothetical grounds seems to me to be degrading and not in keeping with the dignity of orderly procedure.”

“Hear! Hear!” the Devil said.

“We have taken enough of your impudence,” the FBI said to the Devil. “It is not in the best American tradition for a council of state to be insulted by such outbursts of malicious nonsense delivered by something, or someone, who can have no actual basis in fact.”

“That does it!” the Devil raged. “No basis in fact, you say. I'll show you nincompoops. Next comes the wheel and electricity and then I will be back and we have a better basis, maybe, for some forthright dealing.”

Saying which, he reached out and grabbed me by the arm. “Leave us go,” he said.

We went, no doubt in a flash of evil-smelling light and smoke. In any case, the world went away again and there was the blackness and the howling of the winds and when the blackness fell away we were back on the sidewalk outside the White House fence.

“Well,” the Devil said, triumphantly, “I guess I told them, kid. I took the pompous hides off their four-flushing backs. Did you see their faces when I called them nincompoops?”

“Yes, you did well,” I said, disgusted. “You have all the finesse of a hog.”

He rubbed his hands together. “And now,” he said, “the wheels.”

“Lay off it,” I warned him. “You'll wreck this world of ours and then what will happen to that precious world of yours â¦”

But the Devil wasn't listening to me. He was looking over my shoulder and down the street and there was a funny look upon his face. The crowd that had ringed the Devil in when I first had found him had disappeared, but there were a number of people in the park across the street and these people now were shouting in an excited fashion.

I swung around to look.

Less than half a block away and bearing down upon us with great rapidity was Don Quixote astride the running bag of bones that served him as a charger. His helmet was down and the shield was up. The leveled lance was aglitter in the sun. Behind him Sancho Panza applied an enthusiastic whip to his donkey, which humped along in a stiff-legged gait not unlike a startled rabbit. While he applied the whip with one hand, Sancho Panza held the other arm out stiffly to one side, clutching a bucket. There was some sort of liquid in the bucket and it slopped alarmingly as the donkey tried its best to keep up with the storming charger. And behind the two of them came a prancing unicorn, shining white in the brilliant sunlight, with its slender horn a breathtaking lance of silver. It moved daintily and easily and was a thing of utter grace, and seated upon it, riding it sidesaddle fashion, was Kathy Adams.

The Devil reached out a hand for me, but I knocked his arm away and made a grab at him. I clutched him about the middle and as I did so I kicked my foot backward, forcing it between two iron palings of the fence. I didn't really think what I was doing; I didn't plan it, and I'm not sure I knew at the time exactly why I did it. But apparently there was some subconscious thought inside of me that informed me that it just possibly might work. If I could divert the Devil from taking off to some other place for no longer than a second, Don Quixote would be down upon him and, if his aim were true, he'd have the Devil spitted on his lance. And there was also something about being securely anchored if I were to do it and another something about the effect of iron upon the Devil, and that, I suppose, was the reason I struck my foot between the palings.

The Devil was squirming to get away, but I hung onto him, with my arms locked about his middle. His hide stank and my face, where I had it pressed against his chest, was wet with his greasy sweat. He was struggling and cursing horribly and beating at me with his fists, but out of the corner of one eye I saw the lance point flashing in toward us. The beat of clopping hooves came closer and then the lance point struck with a squashy sound and the Devil fell away. I let go of him and fell upon the sidewalk, with my foot still between the palings.

I twisted around and saw that the lance had caught the Devil in the shoulder and had him pinned against the fence. He was squirming and mewling. He waved his arms and froth ran out of the corners of his mouth.

Don Quixote raised a hand and tried to flip his visor up. It stuck. He wrenched at it so hard that he jerked the entire helmet off his head. It flew from his fingers and clanked upon the sidewalk.

“Varlet,” Don Quixote cried, “I call on you to yield and to give your bounden pledge you will henceforth desist from any further interference in the world of man.”

“To hell and damnation with you,” the Devil raged. “I will yield to no busybody of a do-gooder that spends his time sniffing out crusades. And of all of them, there is none worse than you, Quixote. You can sense a good deed a million light years off and you are off hell-bent to do it. And I'll have none of it. You understand that, I'll have none of it!”

Sancho Panza had leaped off the donkey and was running forward with the bucket which, I now saw, had a dipper in it. In front of the Devil, he halted and with the dipper splashed some of the liquid on the Devil. The liquid boiled and hissed and the Devil writhed in agony.

“Water!” Sancho Panza cried in glee. “Blessed by the good St. Patrick and most potent stuff.”

He let the Devil have another dipper of it. The Devil writhed and screamed.

“Pledge!” Don Quixote shouted.

“I yield,” the Devil yelled. “I yield and pledge.”

“And further pledged,” said Don Quixote grimly, “that all mischief you here have caused will endâand that immediately.”

“I will not,” the Devil screamed. “Not all my work undone!”

Sancho Panza flung the dipper on the sidewalk and clutched the pail in both his hands, poised to hurl its entire contents on the Devil.

“Hold!” the Devil shouted. “Avast that cursed water! I do entirely yield and pledge everything you ask.”

“Then,” Don Quixote said, with a certain courtliness, “our mission here is done.”

I didn't see them go. There wasn't even a flicker of their going: They just suddenly were gone. There was no Devil, no Don Quixote, no Sancho Panza and no unicorn. But Kathy was running toward me and I thought it strange she could run so well with her ankle sprained. I tried to jerk my foot free of the fence so I could get up to greet her, but the foot was tightly stuck between the palings and I could not get it loose.

She went down on her knees beside me. “We're home again!” she cried. “Horton, we are home!”

She leaned down to kiss me and across the street the crowd cheered loudly and ribaldly at the kiss.

“My foot is stuck,” I said.

“Well, pull it loose,” she told me, smiling through tears of happiness.

I tried to pull it loose and couldn't. It hurt when I pulled on it. She got up and went to the fence and tried to work it free, but it still stayed stuck.

“I think the ankle's swelling,” she said and sat down upon the sidewalk, laughing. “The two of us,” she cried. “We have something with our ankles. First mine, now yours.”

“Your ankle is all right,” I said.

“They had magic at the castle,” she told me. “A most wonderful old magician with a long white beard and a funny cap and gown with stars all over them. It was the nicest place I've ever seen. So genteel and polite. I could have stayed forever if you had been there with me. And the unicorn. He was the nicest, sweetest thing. You saw the unicorn?”

“I saw the unicorn,” I said.

“Horton, who are those men coming down across the lawn?”

I had been so busy looking at her and so glad that she was back, that I'd not been looking at the lawn. When I did look, I saw them. The President was in the lead, running toward the fence, and behind him streamed the other people who'd been in the room.

The President reached the fence and stopped. He regarded me with something less than friendliness.

“Horton,” he demanded, “what the hell is going on out here?”

“My foot is caught,” I said.

“To hell with your foot,” he said. “That isn't what I mean. I swear I saw a knight and a unicorn.”

The others were crowding close up against the fence.

A guard shouted from up by the gate. “Hey! Everybody look! There's a car coming down the street!”

Sure enough, there was.

“But what about his foot?” Kathy asked, indignantly. “We can't get it loose and his ankle's swelling. I'm afraid it's sprained.”

“Someone had better get a doctor,” said the Secretary of State. “If the cars are running, the phones may be working, too. How are you feeling, Horton?”

“I'm all right,” I said.

“And get someone down here with a hacksaw,” said the President. “For the love of God, we got to saw his foot loose.”

So I stayed there on the sidewalk and Kathy sat beside me, waiting for the doctor and the hacksaw man.

Disregarding the crowd inside the fence, some of the White House squirrels came sneaking out on the sidewalk to see what was going on. They sat up most daintily, with their forepaws crossed upon their chest, begging for a handout.

And the cars, more and more of them, went on rolling past.

About the Author

During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D. Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the
Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
writing fiction in his spare time.

Simak was best known for the book
City
, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel
Way Station
. In 1953
City
was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1326-0

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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