The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories (22 page)

“Get out of here,” screamed Carter. “Get out before I have the cops come and throw you out.”

“You forget,” said Webster, “that I came in to talk about the
houses.”

“It won't do you any good,” snarled Carter. “You can stand and talk until doomsday for all the good it does. Those houses burn. That's final.”

“How would you like to see the loop a mass of rubble?” asked Webster.

“Your comparison,” said Carter, “is grotesque.”

“I wasn't talking about comparisons,” said Webster.

“You weren't –” The mayor stared at him. “What were you talking about then?”

“Only this,” said Webster. “The second the first torch touches the houses, the first shell will land on the city hall. And the second one will hit the First National. They'll go on down the line, the biggest targets first.”

Carter gaped. Then a flush of anger crawled from his throat up into his face.

“It won't work, Webster,” he snapped. “You can't bluff me. Any cock-and-bull story like that –”

“It's no cock-and-bull story,” declared Webster. “Those men have cannons out there. Pieces from in front of Legion halls, from the museums. And they have men who know how to work them. They wouldn't need them, really. It's practically point-blank range. Like shooting the broad side of a barn.”

Carter reached for the radio, but Webster stopped him with an upraised hand.

“Better think a minute, Carter, before you go flying off the handle. You're on a spot. Go ahead with your plan and you have a battle on your hands. The
houses
may burn but the loop is wrecked. The businessmen will have your scalp for that.”

Carter's hand retreated from the radio.

From far away came the sharp crack of a rifle.

“Better call them off,” warned Webster.

Carter's face twisted with indecision.

Another rifle shot, another and another.

“Pretty soon,” said Webster, “it will have gone too far. So far that you can't stop it.”

A thudding blast rattled the windows of the room. Carter leaped from his chair.

Webster felt the blood drain from his head, felt suddenly cold and weak. But he fought to keep his face straight and his voice calm.

Carter was staring out the window, like a man of stone.

“I'm afraid,” said Webster, “that it's gone too far already.”

The radio on the desk chirped insistently, red light flashing.

Carter reached out a trembling hand and snapped it on.

“Carter,” a voice was saying. “Carter. Carter.”

Webster recognized that voice—the bull-throated tone of Police Chief Jim Maxwell.

“What is it?” asked Carter.

“They had a big gun,” said Maxwell. “It exploded when they tried to fire it. Ammunition no good, I guess.”

“One gun?” asked Carter. “Only one gun?”

“I don't see any others.”

“I heard rifle fire,” said Carter.

“Yeah, they did some shooting at us. Wounded a couple of the boys. But they've pulled back now. Deeper into the brush. No shooting now.”

“O.K.,” said Carter, “go ahead and start the fires.”

Webster started forward. “Ask him, ask him –”

But Carter clicked the switch and the radio went dead.

“What was it you wanted to ask?”

“Nothing,” said Webster. “Nothing that amounted to anything.”

He couldn't tell Carter that Gramp had been the one who knew about firing big guns. Couldn't tell him that when the gun exploded Gramp had been there.

He'd have to get out of here, get over to the gun as quickly as possible.

“It was a good bluff, Webster,” Carter was saying. “A good bluff, but it petered out.”

The mayor turned to the window that faced towards the
houses
.

“No more firing,” he said. “They gave up quick.”

“You'll be lucky,” snapped Webster, “if six of your policemen come back alive. Those men with the rifles are out in the brush and they can pick the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards.”

Feet pounded in the corridor outside, two pairs of feet racing toward the door.

The mayor whirled from his window and Webster pivoted around.

“Gramp!” he yelled.

“Hi, Johnny,” puffed Gramp, skidding to a stop.

The man behind Gramp was a young man and he was waving something in his hand—a sheaf of papers that rustled as he waved them.

“What do you want?” asked the mayor.

“Plenty,” said Gramp.

He stood for a moment, catching back his breath, said between puffs:

“Meet my friend, Henry Adams.”

“Adams?” asked the mayor.

“Sure,” said Gramp. “His granddaddy used to live here. Out on Twenty-seventh Street.”

“Oh,” said the mayor and it was as if someone had smacked him with a brick. “Oh, you mean F. J. Adams.”

“Bet your boots,” said Gramp. “Him and me, we marched into Berlin together. Used to keep me awake nights telling me about his boy back home.”

Carter nodded to Henry Adams. “As mayor of the city,” he said, trying to regain some of his dignity, “I welcome you to –”

“It's not a particularly fitting welcome,” Adams said. “I understand you are burning my property.”

“Your property!” The mayor choked and his eyes stared in disbelief at the sheaf of papers Adams waved at him.

“Yeah, his property,” shrilled Gramp. “He just bought it. We just come from the treasurer's office. Paid all the back taxes and penalties and all the other things you legal thieves thought up to slap against them houses.”

“But, but –” the mayor was grasping for words, gasping for breath. “Not all of it. Perhaps just the old Adams property.”

“Lock, stock and barrel,” said Gramp, triumphantly.

“And now,” said Adams to the mayor, “if you would kindly tell your men to stop destroying my property.”

Carter bent over the desk and fumbled at the radio, his hands suddenly all thumbs.

“Maxwell,” he shouted. “Maxwell, Maxwell.”

“What do you want?” Maxwell yelled back.

“Stop setting those fires,” yelled Carter. “Start putting them out. Call out the fire department. Do anything. But stop those fires.”

“Cripes,” said Maxwell, “I wish you'd make up your mind.”

“You do what I tell you,” screamed the mayor. “You put out those fires.”

“All right,” said Maxwell. “All right. Keep your shirt on. But the boys won't like it. They won't like getting shot at to do something you change your mind about.”

Carter straightened from the radio.

“Let me assure you, Mr. Adams,” he said, “that this is all a big mistake.”

“It is,” Adams declared solemnly. “A very great mistake, mayor. The biggest one you ever made.”

For a moment the two of them stood there, looking across the room at one another.

“Tomorrow,” said Adams, “I shall file a petition with the courts asking dissolution of the city charter. As owner of the greatest portion of the land included in the corporate limits, both from the standpoint of area and valuation, I understand I have a perfect legal right to do that.”

The mayor gulped, finally brought out some words.

“Upon what grounds?” he asked.

“Upon the grounds,” said Adams, “that there is no further need of it. I do not believe I shall have too hard a time to prove my case.”

“But … but … that means …”

“Yeah,” said Gramp, “you know what it means. It means you are out right on your ear.”

“A park,” said Gramp, waving his arm over the wilderness that once had been the residential section of the city. “A park so that people can remember how their old folks lived.”

The three of them stood on Tower Hill, with the rusty old water tower looming above them, its sturdy steel legs planted in a sea of waist-high grass.

“Not a park, exactly,” explained Henry Adams. “A memorial, rather. A memorial to an era of communal life that will be forgotten in another hundred years. A preservation of a number of peculiar types of construction that arose to suit certain conditions and each man's particular tastes. No slavery to any architectural concepts, but an effort made to achieve better living. In another hundred years men will walk through those houses down there with the same feeling of respect and awe they have when they go into a museum today. It will be to them something out of what amounts to a primeval age, a stepping stone on the way to the better, fuller life. Artists will spend their lives transferring those old houses to their canvases. Writers of historical novels will come here for the breath of authenticity.”

“But you said you meant to restore all the houses, make the lawns and gardens exactly like they were before,” said Webster. “That will take a fortune. And after that, another fortune to keep them in shape.”

“I have too much money,” said Adams. “Entirely too much money. Remember, my grandfather and father got into atomics on the ground floor.”

“Best crap player I ever knew, your granddaddy was,” said Gramp. “Used to take me for a cleaning every pay day.”

“In the old days,” said Adams, “when a man had too much money, there were other things he could do with it. Organized charities, for example. Or medical research or something like that. But there are no organized charities today. Not enough business to keep them going. And since the World Committee has hit its stride, there is ample money for all the research, medical or otherwise, anyone might wish to do.

“I didn't plan this thing when I came back to see my grandfather's old house. Just wanted to see it, that was all. He'd told me so much about it. How he planted the tree in the front lawn. And the rose garden he had out back.

“And then I saw it. And it was a mocking ghost. It was something that had been left behind. Something that had meant a lot to someone and had been left behind. Standing there in front of that house with Gramp that day, it came to me that I could do nothing better than preserve for posterity a cross section of the life their ancestors lived.”

A thin blue thread of smoke rose above the trees far below.

Webster pointed to it. “What about them?”

“The Squatters stay,” said Adams, “if they want to. There will be plenty of work for them to do. And there'll always be a house or two that they can have to live in.

“There's just one thing that bothers me. I can't be here all the time myself. I'll need someone to manage the project. It'll be a lifelong job.”

He looked at Webster.

“Go ahead, Johnny,” said Gramp.

Webster shook his head. “Betty's got her heart set on that place out in the country.”

“You wouldn't have to stay here,” said Adams. “You could fly in every day.”

From the foot of the hill came a hail.

“It's Ole,” yelled Gramp.

He waved his cane. “Hi, Ole. Come on up.”

They watched Ole striding up the hill, waiting for him, silently.

“Wanted to talk to you, Johnny,” said Ole. “Got an idea. Waked me out of a sound sleep last night.”

“Go ahead,” said Webster.

Ole glanced at Adams. “He's all right,” said Webster. “He's Henry Adams. Maybe you remember his grandfather, old F. J.”

“I remember him,” said Ole. “Nuts about atomic power, he was. How did he make out?”

“He made out rather well,” said Adams.

“Glad to hear that,” Ole said. “Guess I was wrong. Said he never would amount to nothing. Daydreamed all the time.”

“How about that idea?” Webster asked.

“You heard about dude ranches, ain't you?” Ole asked.

Webster nodded.

“Place,” said Ole, “where people used to go and pretend they were cowboys. Pleased them because they really didn't know all the hard work there was in ranching and figured it was romantic-like to ride horses and –”

“Look,” asked Webster, “you aren't figuring on turning your farm into a dude ranch, are you?”

“Nope,” said Ole. “Not a dude ranch. Dude farm, maybe. Folks don't know too much about farms any more, since there ain't hardly no farms. And they'll read about the frost being on the pumpkin and how pretty a –”

Webster stared at Ole. “They'd go for it, Ole,” he declared. “They'd kill one another in the rush to spend their vacation on a real, honest-to-God, old-time farm.”

Out of a clump of bushes down the hillside burst a shining thing that chattered and gurgled and screeched, blades flashing, a cranelike arm waving.

“What the –” asked Adams.

“It's that dadburned lawn mower!” yelped Gramp.

Mirage

This story, sold to
Amazing Stories
in 1950 under the title “Mirage,” ended up being published as “Seven Came Back,” although Cliff reverted to the original title in subsequent publications. (For some reason, I have always liked it as “Seven Came Back”—I used the name once in another book, in tribute—but in deference to the author I include the story here with its intended title.) “Mirage” displays Cliff's fascination with dying civilizations (he mentions, at one point, the “scholarly investigation of the symbolic water jugs” of Mars, and it might bear noting that a Martian water jug played a pivotal part of one of his earlier stories, “Shadow of Life”)—as well as his belief in the brotherhood of the living.

A planet has to be really, really old, before even its animals are able to talk. …

—dww

They came out of the Martian night, six pitiful little creatures looking for a seventh.

They stopped at the edge of the campfire's lighted circle and stood there, staring at the three Earthmen with their owlish eyes.

The Earthmen froze at whatever they were doing.

“Quiet,” said Wampus Smith, talking out of the corner of his bearded lips. “They'll come in if we don't make a move.”

From far away came a faint, low moaning, floating in across the wilderness of sand and jagged pinnacles of rock and the great stone buttes.

The six stood just at the firelight's edge. The reflection of the flames touched their fur with highlights of red and blue and their bodies seemed to shimmer against the backdrop of the darkness on the desert.

“Venerables,” Nelson said to Richard Webb across the fire.

Webb's breath caught in his throat. Here was a thing he had never hoped to see. A thing that no human being could ever hope to see.

Six of the Venerables of Mars walking in out of the desert and the darkness, standing in the firelight. There were many men, he knew, who would claim that the race was now extinct, hunted down, trapped out, hounded to extinction by the greed of the human sand men.

The six had seemed the same at first, six beings without a difference; but now, as Webb looked at them, he saw those minor points of bodily variation which marked each one of them as a separate individual. Six of them, Webb thought, and there should be seven.

Slowly they came forward, walking deeper into the campfire's circle. One by one they sat down on the sand facing the three men. No one said a word and the tension built up in the circle of the fire while far toward the north the thing kept up its keening, like a sharp, thin blade cutting through the night.

“Human glad,” Wampus Smith said finally, talking in the patois of the desert. “He waited long.”

One of the creatures spoke, its words half English, half Martian, all of it pure gibberish to the ear that did not know.

“We die,” it said. “Human hurt for long. Human help some now. Now we die, human help?”

“Human sad,” said Wampus and even while he tried to make his voice sad, there was elation in it, a trembling eagerness, a quivering as a hound will quiver when the scent is hot.

“We are six,” the creature said. “Six not enough. We need another one. We do not find the seven, we die. Race die forever now.”

“Not forever,” Smith told them.

The Venerable insisted on it. “Forever. There other sixes. No other seven.”

“How can human help?”

“Human know. Human have Seven somewhere?”

Wampus shook his head.

“Where we have Seven?”

“In cage. On Earth. For human to see.”

Wampus shook his head again.

“No Seven on Earth.”

“There was one,” Webb said softly. “In a zoo.”

“Zoo,” said the creature, tonguing the unfamiliar word. “We mean that. In cage.”

“It died,” said Webb. “Many years ago.”

“Human have one,” the creature insisted. “Here on planet. Hid out. To trade.”

“No understand,” said Wampus but Webb knew from the way he said it that he understood.

“Find Seven. Do not kill it. Hide it. Knowing we come. Knowing we pay.”

“Pay? What pay?”

“City,” said the creature. “Old city.”

“That's your city,” Nelson said to Webb. “The ruins you are hunting.”

“Too bad we haven't got a Seven,” Wampus said. “We could hand it over and they'd lead us to the ruins.”

“Human hurt for long,” the creature said. “Human kill all Sevens. Have good fur. Women human wear it. High pay for Seven fur.”

“Lord, yes,” said Nelson. “Fifty thousand for one at the trading post. A cool half million for a four-skin cape made up in New York.”

Webb sickened at the thought of it, at the casual way in which Nelson mentioned it. It was illegal now, of course, but the law had come too late to save the Venerables. Although a law, come to think of it, should not have been necessary. A human being, in all rightness…an intelligent form of life, in all rightness, should not hunt down and kill another intelligent being to strip off its pelt and sell it for fifty thousand dollars.

“No Seven hid,” Wampus was saying. “Law says friends. No dare hurt Seven. No dare hide Seven.”

“Law far off,” said the creature. “Human his own law.”

“Not us,” said Wampus. “We don't monkey with the law.”

And that's a laugh, thought Webb.

“You help?” asked the creature.

“Try, maybe,” Wampus told them cagily. “No good, though. You can't find. Human can't find.”

“You find. We show city.”

“We watch,” said Wampus. “Close watch. See Seven, bring it. Where you be?”

“Canyon mouth.”

“Good,” said Wampus. “Deal?”

“Deal,” said the creature.

Slowly the six of them got to their feet and turned back to the night again.

At the edge of the firelit circle they stopped. The spokesman turned back to the three men.

“By,” he said.

“Good-by,” said Wampus.

Then they were gone, back into the desert.

The three men sat and listened for a long time, not knowing what they listened for, but with ears taut to hear the slightest sound, trying to read out of sound some of the movement of life that surged all around the fire.

On Mars, thought Webb, one always listens. That is the survival price. To watch and listen and be still and quiet. And ruthless, too. To strike before another thing can strike. To see or hear a danger and be ready for it, be half a second quicker than it is quick. And to recognize that danger once you see or hear it.

Finally Nelson took up again the thing he had been doing when the six arrived, whetting his belt knife to a razor sharpness on a pocket whetstone.

The soft, sleek whirr of metal traveling over stone sounded like a heartbeat, a pulse that did not originate within the fire-light circle, but something that came out of the darkness, the pulse and beat of the wilderness itself.

Wampus said: “It's too bad, Lars, that we don't know where to pick us up a Seven.”

“Yeah,” said Lars.

“Might turn a good deal,” Wampus said. “Likely to be treasure in that old city. All the stories say so.”

Nelson grunted. “Just stories.”

“Stones,” said Wampus. “Stones so bright and polished they could put your eyes out. Sacks of them. Tire a man out just packing them away.”

“Wouldn't need more than one load,” Nelson declared. “Just one load would set you up for life.”

Webb saw that both of them were looking at him, squinting their eyes against the firelight.

He said, almost angrily: “I don't know about the treasure.”

“You heard the stories,” Wampus said.

Webb nodded. “Let's say it this way. I'm not interested in the treasure. I don't expect to find any.”

“Wouldn't mind if you did, would you?” Lars asked.

“It doesn't matter,” Webb told him. “One way or the other.”

“What do you know about this city?” Wampus demanded and it wasn't just conversation, it was a question asked with an answer expected, for a special purpose. “You been muttering around and dropping hints here and there but you never came cold out and told us.”

For a moment, Webb stared at the man. Then he spoke slowly. “Just this. I figured out where it might be. From a knowledge of geography and geology and some understanding of the rise of cultures. I figured where the grass and wood and water would have been when Mars was new and young. I tried to locate, theoretically, the likeliest place for a civilization to arise. That's all there's to it.”

“And you never thought of treasure?”

“I thought of finding out something about the Martian culture,” Webb said. “How it rose and why it fell and what it might be like.”

Wampus spat. “You aren't even sure there is a city,” he said disgustedly.

“Not until just now,” said Webb. “Now I know there is.”

“From what them little critters said?”

Webb nodded. “From what they said. That's right.”

Wampus grunted and was silent.

Webb watched the two across the campfire from him.

They think I'm soft, he thought. They despise me because I'm soft. They would leave me in a minute if it served their purpose or they'd put a knife into me without a second thought if that should serve their purpose…if there was something that I had they wanted.

There had been no choice, he realized. He could not have gone alone into this wilderness, for if he'd tried he probably wouldn't have lived beyond the second day. It took special knowledge to live here and a special technique and a certain kind of mind. A man had to develop a high survival factor to walk into Mars behind the settlements.

And the settlements now were very far away. Somewhere to the east.

“Tomorrow,” Wampus said, “we change directions. We go north instead of west.”

Webb said nothing. His hand slid around cautiously and touched the gun at his belt, to make sure that it was there.

It had been a mistake to hire these two, he knew. But probably none of the others would have been better. They were all of a breed, a toughened, vicious band of men who roamed the wilderness, hunting, trapping, mining, taking what they found. Wampus and Nelson had been the only two at the post when he had arrived. All the other sand men had gone a week before, back to their hunting grounds.

At first they had been respectful, almost fawning. But as the days went on they felt surer of their ground and had grown insolent. Now Webb knew that he'd been taken for a sucker. The two stayed at the post, he knew now, for no other reason than that they were without a grubstake. He was that grubstake. He supplied them with the trappings they needed to get back into the wilderness. Once he had been a grubstake, now he was a burden.

“I said,” declared Wampus, “that tomorrow we go north.”

Webb still said nothing.

“You heard me, didn't you?” asked Wampus.

“The first time,” Webb said.

“We go north,” said Wampus, “and we travel fast.”

“You got a Seven staked out somewhere?”

Lars snickered. “Ain't that the damnedest thing you ever heard of? Takes seven of them. Now with us, it just takes a man and woman.”

“I asked you,” said Webb to Wampus, “if you have a Seven caged up somewhere?”

“No,” said Wampus. “We just go north, that's all.”

“I hired you to take me west.”

Wampus snarled at him. “I thought you'd say that, Webb. I just wanted to know exactly how you felt about it.”

“You want to leave me stranded here,” said Webb. “You took my money and agreed to guide me. Now you have something else to do. You either have a Seven or you think you know where you can find one. And if I knew and talked, you would be in danger. So there's only one of two things that you can do with me. You can kill me or you can leave me and let something else do the job for you.”

Lars said: “We're giving you a choice, ain't we?”

Webb looked at Wampus and the man nodded. “You got your choice, Webb.”

He could go for his gun, of course. He could get one of them, most likely, before the other one got him. But there would be nothing gained. He would be just as dead as if they shot him out of hand. As far as that went he was as good as dead anyhow, for hundreds of miles stretched between him and the settlements and even if he were able to cross those many miles there was no guarantee that he could find the settlements.

“We're moving out right now,” said Wampus. “Ain't smart to travel in the dark, but ain't the first time that we had to do it. We'll be up north in a day or two.”

Lars nodded. “Once we get back to the settlements, Webb, we'll h'ist a drink to you.”

Wampus joined in the spirit of the moment. “Good likker, Webb. We can afford good likker then.”

Webb said nothing, did not move. He sat on the ground, relaxed.

And that, he told himself, was the thing that scared him. That he could sit and know what was about to happen and be so unconcerned about it.

Perhaps it had been the miles of wilderness that made it possible, the harsh, raw land and the vicious life that moved across the land…the ever-hungering, ever-hunting life that prowled and stalked and killed. Here life was stripped to its essentials and one learned that the line between life and death was a thin line at best.

“Well,” said Wampus finally, “what will it be, Webb.”

“I think,” said Webb, gravely, “I think I'll take my chance on living.”

Lars clucked his tongue against his teeth. “Too bad,” he said. “We was hoping it'd be the other way around. Then we could take all the stuff. As it is, we got to leave you some.”

“You can always sneak back,” said Webb, “and shoot me as I sit here. It would be an easy thing.”