New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) (15 page)

He looked around for shade and there was no shade, nothing big enough to cast a shadow for anything bigger than the scuttling, squeaking lizard.

Blaine lifted his hands and looked at them; they were tanned so deeply, that for a moment, he thought that they were black. He wore a pair of ragged trousers, chewed off between knee and ankle, and a tattered shirt, plastered to his back with sweat. He wore no shoes, and wondered about that until he lifted his feet and saw the horn-like callouses that had grown upon them to protect them from the heat and rocks.

Wondering dimly what he might be doing here, what he had been doing a moment before, what he was supposed to do, Norman Blaine stood and stared off across the desert. There was not a thing to see—just the red and yellow and the sand and heat.

He shuffled his feet in the sand, digging holes with his toes, then smoothing them out again with the flat of his calloused feet. Then the memory of who he was, and what he had meant to do, came seeping slowly back. It came in snatches and in driblets, and a great deal of it did not seem to make much sense.

He had left his home village that morning to travel to a city. There was some important reason why he should make the trip, although for the life of him he could not think of the reason. He had come from thataway and he was going thisaway; he wished that he could at least remember the name of his home village. It would be embarrassing if he met someone who asked him where he hailed from, and he could not tell them. He wished, too, that he could remember the name of the city he was going to, but that didn’t matter quite so much. After a time, he’d get there and learn the name.

He started down the road, going thisaway, and he seemed to remember that he had a long way to travel yet. Somehow or other, he’d fooled around and lost a lot of time; it behooved him to get a hustle on if he expected to reach the city before nightfall.

He saw the black dot moving on the road and now it seemed much closer.

He was not afraid of the black dot and that was encouraging, he told himself. But when he tried to figure out why it should be so encouraging, Blaine simply couldn’t say.

And because he had wasted a lot of time and had a long way yet to go, he broke into a trot. He legged it down the road as fast as he could go, despite the roughness of the trail and the hotness of the sun. As he ran he slapped his pockets and found that in one of them he carried certain objects. He knew immediately that the objects were of more than ordinary value; in a little while, he’d know what the objects were.

The black dot drew nearer; finally, it was close enough so that Blaine could see it was a large cart with wooden wheels. It was drawn by a fly-blown camel; a man sat upon the seat of the cart, beneath a tattered umbrella that, at one time, might have been colorful but now was leached by the sun to a filthy gray.

He approached the cart, still running, and finally drew abreast of it. The man yelled something at the camel, which stopped.

“You took your time,” he said. “Now get up here; get a wiggle on.”

“I was detained,” said Blaine.

“You were detained,” sneered the other man, and thrust the reins at Blaine, jumping off the cart.

Blaine yelled at the camel and slapped him with the reins; he wondered what in hell was going on, and he was back in the cubicle again. His shirt was stuck against his back with perspiration, and he could feel the heat of the desert sun fading from his face.

He lay for a long moment, gathering his wits, reorienting himself. Beside him the reel moved slowly, bunching up the tape against the helmet slot. Blaine reached out a hand and stopped it, slowly spun it backwards to take up the tape.

Then the horror of it dawned upon him, and for a moment he was afraid that he might cry out; but the cry died in his throat and he lay there motionless, frozen with the realization of what had happened.

He swung his feet off the cot and jerked the reel from its holder, stripping the tape out of the helmet. He turned the reel on its side and read the number and the name. The name was Jenkins, and the number was the identifying code he’d punched into the dream machine that very afternoon. There could be no mistake about it. The reel held the Jenkins dream. It was the reel that would be sent down in another day or two, when Jenkins came to take the Sleep.

And Jenkins, who had hankered for a big-game hunting trip, who had wanted to spend the next two hundred years on a shooting orgy, would find himself standing in a red and yellow desert on a track that could be called a road only by the utmost courtesy; in the distance he would see a moving dot, that would turn out later to be a camel and a cart.

He’d find himself in a desert with ragged pants and tattered shirt and with something in his pocket of more than ordinary value—but there would be no jungles and no veldt; there’d be no guns and no safari. There’d be no hunting trip at all.

How many others?
Blaine asked himself.
How many others failed to get the dream they wanted?
And what was more:
Why had they failed to get the dream they wanted?

Why had the dreams been substituted?

Or
had
they been substituted? Had Myrt—

He shook his head at that one. The great machine did what it was told. It took in the symbols and equations and it chattered and it clanked and thundered, and it spun the dream that was asked of it.

Substitution was the only answer, for the dreams were monitored in this very cubicle. No dream went out until someone had checked to see that it was the dream ordered by the Sleeper.

Collins had lived out five hundred years in a world which lacked the profit concept. And the red and yellow desert—what kind of world was that? Norman Blaine had not been there long enough to know; but there was one thing he did know—that, like Collins’ world, the Jenkins world was one no one would ask to live in.

The cart had wooden wheels and had been pulled by camel-power; that might mean that it was a world in which the idea of mechanized transportation never had been thought of. But it might, as well, be any one of a thousand other kinds of cultures.

Blaine opened the door of the cubicle and went out. He put the reel back in the rack and stood for a moment in the center of the icy room. After a moment, he realized that it was not the room that was icy, but himself.

This afternoon, when he had talked with Lucinda Silone, Blaine had thought of himself as a dedicated person, had thought of the Center and the guild as a place of dedication. He had talked unctuously of the fact there must be no taint upon the guild, that it must at all times perform its services so as to merit the confidence of anyone who might apply for Sleep.

And where was that dedication now? Where was the public confidence?

How many others had been given substituted dreams? How long had this been going on? Five hundred years ago, Spencer Collins had been given a dream that was not the dream he wanted. So the tampering had been going on five hundred years, at least.

And how many others in the years to come?

Lucinda Silone—what kind of dream would she get? Would it be the mid-nineteenth century plantation or some other place? How many of the dreams that Blaine had helped in fabricating had been changed?

He thought of the girl who had sat across the desk from him that morning—the honey color hair and the blue eyes, the milky whiteness of her skin, the way she talked, the things she had said, and the others that she had not said.

She, too,
he thought.

And there was an answer to that. He moved swiftly toward the door.

VIII

He climbed the steps and rang the bell; a voice told him to come in.

Lucinda Silone sat in a chair beside a window. There was only one light—a dim light—in the far corner of the room, so that she sat in shadow. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “You do the investigating, too.”

“Miss Silone …”

“Come in and have a seat. I’m quite willing to answer any questions; you see, I am still convinced …”

“Miss Silone,” said Blaine, “I came to tell you not to take the Sleep. I came to warn you; I have …”

“You fool,” she said. “You utter, silly fool.”

“But …”

“Get out of here,” she told him.

“But it’s …”

She rose out of her chair and there was scorn in every line of her. “So I can’t take a chance. Go ahead; tell me it’s dangerous. Go on and tell me it’s a trick. You fool—I knew all that before I ever came.”

“You knew …”

They stood for a moment in tense silence, each staring at the other. “And now
you
know.” And she said something else he had thought himself not half an hour before: “How about that dedication now?”

“Miss Silone, I came to tell you …”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she said. “Go back home and forget you know it; you’ll be more comfortable that way. Not dedicated, maybe, but much more comfortable. And you’ll live a good deal longer.”

“There is no need to threaten …”

“Not a threat, Blaine; just a tip. If word should get to Farris that you know, you could count your life in hours. And I could see that the tip got round to Farris. I know just the way to do it.”

“But Farris …”

“He’s dedicated, too?”

“Well, no, perhaps not. I don’t …”

The thought was laughable. Paul Farris dedicated!

“When I come back to Center,” she said, speaking evenly and calmly, “we’ll proceed just as if this had never happened. You’ll make it your personal business to see that my Sleep goes through, without a hitch. Because if you don’t, word will get to Farris.”

“But why is it so important that you take the Sleep, knowing what you do?”

“Maybe I’m Entertainment,” she said. “You rule out Entertainment, don’t you? You asked me if I was Entertainment and you were very foxy while you were doing it. You fob off Entertainment because you’re afraid they’ll steal your Dreams for solidiographs. They tried to do it once, and you’ve been jumpy ever since.”

“You’re not Entertainment.”

“You thought so this morning. Or was that all an act?”

“It was an act,” Blaine admitted miserably.

“But this tonight isn’t an act,” she said coldly, “because you’re scared as you’ve never been before. Well, keep on being scared. You have a right to be.”

She stood for a moment, looking at him in disgust. “And now get out.”

IX

Philo did not meet him at the gate, but ran out of a clump of shrubbery, barking in high welcome, when he swung the car around the circle drive and stopped before the house. “Down, Philo,” Blaine told him. “Down.”

He climbed out of the car and Philo moved, quietly now, to stand beside him; in the quietness of the night, he could hear the click of the dog’s toenails upon the bluestone walk. The house stood large and dark, although a light burned beside the door. He wondered how it was that houses and trees always seemed larger in the night, as if with the coming of the dark they took on new dimensions.

A stone crunched underneath a footstep and he swung around. Harriet stood on the path. “I was waiting for you,” she said. “I thought you’d never come. Philo and I were waiting, and …”

“You gave me a start,” he told her. “I thought that you were working.”

She moved swiftly forward and the light from the entrance lamp fell across her face. She was wearing a low-cut dress that sparkled in the light, and a sparkling veil was flung across her head so that it seemed she was surrounded by a thousand twinkling stars. “There was someone here,” she told him.

“Someone …”

“I drove up the back way. There was a car out front, and Philo was barking. I saw three of them come out the door, dragging a fourth. He was fighting and struggling, but they hurried him along and pushed him in the car. Philo was nipping at them, but they paid him no attention, they were in such a hurry. I thought at first it might be you, but then I saw it wasn’t. The three were dressed like goons and I was a little frightened. I sped up and drove past and tore out on the highway, as fast as I could go, and …”

“Now, wait a minute,” Blaine cautioned. “You’re going too fast; take your time and tell me …”

“Then, later, I drove back, without my lights, and parked the car at my place. I came across the woods and I’ve been waiting for you.”

She paused, breathless with her rush of words.

He reached out, put his fingers underneath her chin, tipped up her face and kissed her.

She brushed his hand away. “At a time like this,” she said.

“Any time, at all.”

“Norm, are you in trouble? Is someone after you?”

“There may be several who are after me.”

“And you stand around and slobber over me.”

“I just happened to think,” he said, “of what I have to do.”

“What do you have to do?”

“Go see Farris. He invited me; I forgot until just now.”

“But you forget. I said goons …”

“They weren’t goons. They were dressed to look like goons.”

For now, suddenly, Norman Blaine saw it as a single unit with a single purpose—saw at last the network of intrigue and of purpose that he had sought since that morning.

First, there had been the Buttonholer who had collared him; then Lucinda Silone who had wished a dream of dignity and peace; and after that, Lew Giesey, dead behind his battered desk—and finally the man who had spent five hundred years in a culture that had not discovered profit.

“But Farris …”

“Paul Farris is a friend of mine.”

“He is no one’s friend.”

“Just like that,” said Blaine, thrusting out two fingers, pressed very close together.

“I’d be careful just the same.”

“Since this afternoon, Farris and I are conspiratorial pals. We are in a deal together; Giesey died …”

“I know. What has that to do with this sudden friendship?”

“Before he died, Giesey put an appointment through. I’m moving up to Records.”

“Oh, Norm. I’m so glad!”

“I had hoped you’d be.”

“Then what is it all about?” she asked. “Tell me what is going on. Who was that man the goons dragged out of here?”

“I told you—they weren’t goons.”