The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories (28 page)

In front of him he saw the grass again and there was no path leading into it. He knew that he was trapped, that he would never leave the village until he left it as the old man had, walking out of it and into nothingness. He did not move closer to the grass, for he knew there was terror there and he'd had enough of terror. You're a coward, he told himself.

Retracing the path back to the village, he kept a sharp lookout, going slowly so that he'd not miss the turnoff if it should be there. It was not, however. It once had been, he told himself, bemused, and he'd come walking up it, out of that other world he'd fled.

The village street was dappled by the moonlight shining through the rustling leaves. The house across the street still was dark, and there was an empty loneliness about it. Rand remembered that he had not eaten since the sandwich he had made that noon. There'd be something in the milkbox—he'd not looked in it that morning, or had he? He could not remember.

He went around the house to the back porch where the milkbox stood. The Milkman was standing there. He was more shadowy than ever, less well defined, with the moonlight shining on him, and his face was deeply shaded by the wide-brimmed hat he wore.

Rand halted abruptly and stood looking at him, astounded that the Milkman should be there. For he was out of place in the autumn moonlight. He was a creature of the early morning hours and of no other times.

“I came,” the Milkman said, “to determine if I could be of help.”

Rand said nothing. His head buzzed large and misty, and there was nothing to be said.

“A gun,” the Milkman suggested. “Perhaps you would like a gun.”

“A gun? Why should I want one?”

“You have had a most disturbing evening. You might feel safer, more secure, with a gun in hand, a gun strapped about your waist.”

Rand hesitated. Was there mockery in the Milkman's voice?

“Or a cross.”

“A cross?”

“A crucifix. A symbol …”

“No,” said Rand. “I do not need a cross.”

“A volume of philosophy, perhaps.”

“No!” Rand shouted at him. “I left all that behind. We tried to use them all, we relied on them and they weren't good enough and now …”

He stopped, for that had not been what he'd meant to say, if in fact he'd meant to say anything at all. It was something that he'd never even thought about; it was as if someone inside of him were speaking through his mouth.

“Or perhaps some currency?”

“You are making fun of me,” Rand said bitterly, “and you have no right …”

“I merely mention certain things,” the Milkman said, “upon which humans place reliance …”

“Tell me one thing,” said Rand, “as simply as you can. Is there any way of going back?”

“Back to where you came from?”

“Yes,” said Rand. “That is what I mean.”

“There is nothing to go back to,” the Milkman said. “Anyone who comes has nothing to go back to.”

“But the old man left. He wore a black felt hat and carried a cane. He dropped them and I found them.”

“He did not go back,” the Milkman said. “He went ahead. And do not ask me where, for I do not know.”

“But you're a part of this.”

“I am a humble servant. I have a job to do and I try to do it well. I care for our guests the best that I am able. But there comes a time when each of our guests leaves us. I would suspect this is a halfway house on the road to someplace else.”

“A place for getting ready,” Rand said.

“What do you mean?” the Milkman asked.

“I am not sure,” said Rand. “I had not meant to say it.” And this was the second time, he thought, that he'd said something he had not meant to say.

“There's one comfort about this place,” the Milkman said. “One good thing about it you should keep in mind. In this village nothing ever happens.”

He came down off the porch and stood upon the walk. “You spoke of the old man,” he said, “and it was not the old man only. The old lady also left us. The two of them stayed on much beyond their time.”

“You mean I'm here all alone?”

The Milkman had started down the walk, but now he stopped and turned. “There'll be others coming,” he said. “There are always others coming.”

What was it Sterling had said about man outrunning his brain capacity? Rand tried to recall the words, but now, in the confusion of the moment, he had forgotten them. But if that should be the case, if Sterling had been right (no matter how he had phrased his thought), might not man need, for a while, a place like this, where nothing ever happened, where the moon was always full and the year was stuck on autumn?

Another thought intruded and Rand swung about, shouting in sudden panic at the Milkman. “But these others? Will they talk to me? Can I talk with them? Will I know their names?”

The Milkman had reached the gate by now and it appeared that he had not heard.

The moonlight was paler than it had been. The eastern sky was flushed. Another matchless autumn day was about to dawn.

Rand went around the house. He climbed the steps that led up to the porch. He sat down in the rocking chair and began waiting for the others.

Founding Father

Cliff's journal shows that he mailed “Founding Father” to Horace Gold in December of 1956, and that Gold accepted it for publication just eight days later. It appeared in the May 1957 issue of
Galaxy Science Fiction
. The question is: How do you keep an immortal sane?

—dww

Winston-Kirby walked home across the moor just before the twilight hour and it was then, he felt, that the land was at its best. The sun was sinking into a crimson froth of clouds and the first gray-silver light began to run across the swales. There were moments when it seemed all eternity grew quiet and watched with held breath.

It had been a good day and it would be a good homecoming, for the others would be waiting for him with the dinner table set and the fireplace blazing and the drinks set close at hand. It was a pity, he thought, that they would not go walking with him, although, in this particular instance, he was rather glad they hadn't. Once in a while, it was a good thing for a man to be alone. For almost a hundred years, aboard the ship, there had been no chance to be alone.

But that was over now and they could settle down, just the six of them, to lead the kind of life they'd planned. After only a few short weeks, the planet was beginning to seem like home; in the years to come, it would become in truth a home such as Earth had never been.

Once again he felt the twinge of recurring wonder at how they'd ever got away with it. That Earth should allow six of its immortals to slip through its clutches seemed unbelievable. Earth had real and urgent need for all of its immortals, and that not one, but six, of them should be allowed to slip away, to live lives of their own, was beyond all logic. And yet that was exactly what had happened.

There was something queer about it, Winston-Kirby told himself. On the century-long flight from Earth, they'd often talked about it and wondered how it had come about. Cranford-Adams, he recalled, had been convinced that it was some subtle trap, but after a hundred years there was no evidence of any trap and it had begun to seem Cranford-Adams must be wrong.

Winston-Kirby topped the gentle rise that he had been climbing and, in the gathering dusk, he saw the manor house—exactly the kind of house he had dreamed about for years, precisely the kind of house to be built in such a setting—except that the robots had built it much too large. But that, he consoled himself, was what one had to expect of robots. Efficient, certainly, and very well intentioned and obedient and nice to have around, but sometimes pretty stupid.

He stood on the hilltop and gazed down upon the house. How many times had he and his companions, at the dinner table, planned the kind of house they would build? How often had they speculated upon the accuracy of the specifications given for this planet they had chosen from the Exploratory Files, fearful that it might not be in every actuality the way it was described?

But here, finally, it was—something out of Hardy, something from the Baskervilles—the long imagining come to comfortable reality.

There was the manor house, with the light shining from its windows, and the dark bulk of the outbuildings built to house the livestock, which had been brought in the ship as frozen embryos and soon would be emerging from the incubators. And there the level land that in a few more months would be fields and gardens, and to the north the spaceship stood after years of roving. As he watched, the first bright star sprang out just beyond the spaceship's nose, and the spaceship and the star looked for all the world like a symbolic Christmas candle.

He walked down the hill, with the first night wind blowing in his face and the ancient smell of heather in the air, and was happy and exultant.

It was sinful, he thought, to be so joyful, but there was reason for it. The voyage had been happy and the planet-strike successful and here he was, the undisputed proprietor of an entire planet upon which, in the fullness of time, he would found a family and a dynasty. And he had all the time there was. There was no need to hurry. He had all of eternity if he needed it.

And, best of all, he had good companions.

They would be waiting for him when he stepped through the door. There would be laughter and a quick drink, then a leisurely dinner, and, later, brandy before the blazing fire. And there'd be talk—good talk, sober and intimate and friendly.

It had been the talk, he told himself, more than anything else, which had gotten them sanely through the century of space flight. That and their mutual love and appreciation of the finer points of the human culture—understanding of the arts, love of good literature, interest in philosophy. It was not often that six persons could live intimately for a hundred years without a single spat, without a touch of cabin fever.

Inside the manor house, they would be waiting for him in the fire- and candlelight, with the drinks all mixed and the talk already started and the room would be warm with good fellowship and perfect understanding.

Cranford-Adams would be sitting in the big chair before the fire, staring at the flames and thinking, for he was the thinker of the group. And Allyn-Burbage would be standing, with one elbow on the mantel, a glass clutched in his hand and in his eyes the twinkle of good humor. Cosette-Middleton would be talking with him and laughing, for she was the gay one, with her elfin spirit and her golden hair. Anna-Quinze more than likely would be reading, curled up in a chair, and Mary-Foyle would be simply waiting, glad to be alive, glad to be with friends.

These, he thought, were the long companions of the trip, so full of understanding, so tolerant and gracious that a century had not dulled the beauty of their friendship.

Winston-Kirby hurried, a thing he almost never did, at the thought of those five who were waiting for him, anxious to be with them, to tell them of his walk across the moor, to discuss with them still again some details of their plans.

He turned into the walk. The wind was becoming cold, as it always did with the fall of darkness, and he raised the collar of his jacket for the poor protection it afforded.

He reached the door and stood for an instant in the chill, to savor the never-failing satisfaction of the massive timbering and the stout, strong squareness of the house. A place built to stand through the centuries, he thought, a place of dynasty with a sense of foreverness.

He pressed the latch and thrust his weight against the door and it came slowly open. A blast of warm air rushed out to greet him. He stepped into the entry hall and closed the door behind him. As he took off his cap and jacket and found a place hang them, he stamped and scuffed his feet a little to let the others know that he had returned.

But there were no greetings for him, no sound of happy laughter. There was only silence from the inner room.

He turned about so swiftly that his hand trailed across his jacket and dislodged it from the hook. It fell to the floor with a smooth rustle of fabric and lay there, a little mound of cloth.

His legs suddenly were cold and heavy, and when he tried to hurry, the best he could do was shuffle, and he felt the chill edge of fear.

He reached the entrance to the room and stopped, shocked into immobility. His hands went out and grasped the door jamb on either side of him.

There was no one in the room. And not only that—the room itself was different. It was not simply the companions who were gone. Gone, as well, were the rich furnishings of the room, gone the comfort and the pride.

There were no rugs upon the floor, no hangings at the windows, no paintings on the wall. The fireplace was a naked thing of rough and jagged stone. The furniture—the little there was—was primitive, barely knocked together. A small trestle table stood before the fireplace, with a three-legged stool pulled up to a place that was set for one.

Winston-Kirby tried to call. The first time, the words gurgled in his throat and he could not get them out. He tried again and made it: “Job! Job, where are you?”

Job came running from somewhere in the house. “What's the trouble, sir?”

“Where are the others? Where have they gone? They should be waiting for me.”

Job shook his head, just slightly, a quick move right and left. “Mister Kirby, sir, they were never here.”

“Never here! But they were here when I left this morning. They knew I'd be coming back.”

“You fail to understand, sir. There were never any others. There were just you and I and the other robots. And the embryos, of course.”

Winston-Kirby let go of the door and walked a few feet forward.

“Job,” he said, “you're joking.” But he knew something was wrong—robots never joke.

“We let you keep them as long as we could,” said Job. “We hated to have to take them from you, sir. But we needed the equipment for the incubators.”

“But this room! The rugs, the furniture, the –”

“That was all part of it, sir. Part of the dimensino.”

Winston-Kirby walked slowly across the room, used one foot to hook the three-legged stool out from the table. He sat down heavily.

“The dimensino?” he asked.

“Surely you remember.”

He frowned to indicate he didn't. But it was coming back to him, some of it, slowly and reluctantly, emerging vaguely after all the years of forgetfulness.

He fought against the remembering and the knowledge. He tried to push it back into that dark corner of his mind from which it came. It was sacrilege and treason—it was madness.

“The human embryos,” Job told him, “came through very well. Of the thousand of them, all but three are viable.”

Winston-Kirby shook his head, as if to clear away the mist that befogged his brain.

“We have the incubators all set up in the outbuildings, sir,” said Job. “We waited as long as we could before we took the dimensino equipment. We let you have it until the very last. It might have been easier, sir, if we could have done it gradually, but there is no provision for that. You either have dimensino or you haven't got it.”

“Of course,” said Winston-Kirby, mumbling just a little. “It was considerate of you. I thank you very much.”

He stood up unsteadily and rubbed his hand across his eyes.

“It's not possible,” he said. “It simply can't
be
possible. I lived for a hundred years with them. They were as real as I am. They were flesh and blood, I tell you. They were…”

The room still was bare and empty, a mocking emptiness, an alien mockery.

“It is possible,” said Job gently. “It is just the way it should be. Everything has gone according to the book. You are here, still sane, thanks to the dimensino. The embryos came through better than expected. The equipment is intact. In eight months or so, the children will be coming from the incubators. By that time, we will have gardens and a crop on the way. The livestock embryos will also have emerged and the colony will be largely self-sustaining.”

Winston-Kirby strode to the table, picked up the plate that was laid at the single place. It was lightweight plastic.

“Tell me,” he said. “Have we any china? Have we any glassware or silver?”

Job looked as near to startled as a robot ever could. “Of course not, sir. We had no room for more than just the bare essentials this trip. The china and the silver and all the rest of it will have to wait until much later.”

“And I have been eating ship rations?”

“Naturally,” said Job. “There was so little room and so much we had to take…”

Winston-Kirby stood with the plate in his hand, tapping it gently on the table, remembering those other dinners—aboard the ship and since the ship had landed—the steaming soup in its satiny tureen, the pink and juicy prime ribs, the huge potatoes baked to a mealy turn, the crisp green lettuce, the shine of polished silver, the soft sheen of good china, the –

“Job,” he said.

“Sir?”

“It was all delusion, then?”

“I am afraid it was. I am sorry, sir.”

“And you robots?”

“All of us are fine, sir. It was different with us. We can face reality.”

“And humans can't?”

“Sometimes it is better if they can be protected from it.”

“But not now?”

“Not any more,” said Job. “It must be faced now, sir.”

Winston-Kirby laid the plate down on the table and turned back to the robot. “I think I'll go up to my room and change to other clothes, I presume dinner will be ready soon. Ship rations, doubtless?”

“A special treat tonight,” Job told him. “Hezekiah found some lichens and I've made a pot of soup.”

“Splendid!” Winston-Kirby said, trying not to gag.

He climbed the stairs to the door at the head of the stairs.

As he was about to go into the room, another robot came tramping down the hall.

“Good evening, sir,” it said.

“And who are you?”

“I'm Solomon,” said the robot. “I'm fixing up the nurseries.”

“Soundproofing them, I hope.”

“Oh, nothing like that. We haven't the material or time.”

“Well, carry on,” said Winston-Kirby, and went into the room.

It was not his room at all. It was small and plain. There was a bunk instead of the great four-poster he had been sleeping in and there were no rugs, no full-length mirror, no easy chairs.

Delusion, he had said, not really believing it.

But here there was no delusion.

The room was cold with a dread reality—a reality, he knew, that had been long delayed. In the loneliness of this tiny room, he came face to face with it and felt the sick sense of loss. It was a reckoning that had been extended into the future as far as it might be—and extended not alone as a matter of mercy, of mere consideration, but because of a cold, hard necessity, a practical concession to human vulnerability.

For no man, no matter how well adjusted, no matter if immortal, could survive intact, in mind and body, a trip such as he had made. To survive a century under space conditions, there must be delusion and companionship to provide security and purpose from day to day. And that companionship must be more than human. For mere human companionship, however ideal, would give rise to countless irritations, would breed deadly cabin fever.