Clifford Simak - Shadow Of Life

There was, he knew, good reason to suspect it might have been a member of the old Martian race, although that, he told himself, would be sheer madness. The Martian race was dead.

And yet, Elmer without a doubt had played some part in placing him aboard the ship — and who else but the Martian race would Elmer be in league with? The Elmer had believed, as did the thing, that he would become one of the Preachers of Evil was evident. That his refusal to so become had enraged Elmer was equally apparent.

Elmer, of course, had taken steps which ordinarily would have protected him against being linked with the junket in space. The Preachers probably did not even dream Elmer had anything to do with their experiences.

For the hundredth time, Lathrop forced his thoughts back along the trail to that interval between the moment he had left the excavation site until the moment he had found himself aboard the spaceship. But the blank still existed — a black, tantalizing lack of memory. Whatever had transpired in that interval had been wiped clean from his brain. He knew now Elmer had done that, hadn’t bothered to supply him with fictitious memories to fill in the gap.

Granting, however, that Elmer was engineering the indoctrination of the Preachers, what could be his purpose? Why did he bother about it? What possible interest could he have in whether the human race knew of the evil that existed in the outer worlds — why be so insistent that the race hide from the danger rather than fight it? There was illogic somewhere — perhaps a racial illogic, a wrong way of thinking.

Another funny thing. What had happened to the ship? Of all the incredible happenings, that had been the most insane.

The creature had been right about the ship being automatic. Snicking, whispering controls had driven it back to Mars in a few weeks’ time, had brought it down to a bumpy landing not more than a mile from Elmer’s city. That, Lathrop knew, could be explained by engineering — but there was no explanation, no logic in what had happened when he left the ship and walked away.

The craft had shrunk, dwindling until it was almost lost in the sand, until it was no more than an inch or so in length. Lying there, it glistened like a crystal on the desert floor. Then it had shot upward, like a homing bee. Lathrop remembered ducking as it whizeed past his head, remembered watching it, a tiny speck that streaked straight toward the Martian city until he lost it in the glare of the setting sun.

That shrinking must have been automatic, too. There was no hand inside the ship to activate controls. Perhaps the action had become automatic when he opened the port to leave.

Starlight spattered through the narrow portholes in the spire and Lathrop shivered inside his space gear. It was cold there in the tower, for this part of the city was not conditioned against the Martian atmosphere as were some other portions, a concession for Earthly visitors.

From far below came a distant thud of metal striking metal, a rhythmic, marching sound that seemed to climb toward him. Lathrop sat, gun dangling from his knee, starlight sparkling on his helmet, brain buzzing with mystery. Suddenly, he sat erect, tense — that thudding sound was something climbing up the frosty stairs. He waited, wondering what new move might be afoot, realized with a twinge of terror that he was trapped here on the upper step.

Thought calls reached his brain. “Dr. Lathrop, are you up there? Dr. Lathrop!”

“I’m up here, Buster,” he called back. “What’s eating you?”

“Elmer wants to see you.”

Lathrop laughed, said nothing.

“But he really does,” insisted the robot. “There’s an old friend of yours with him. Dr. Carter.”

“It’s a trap,” said Lathrop. “You ought to think up a better one than that.”

“Aw, doc, forget it,” pleaded Buster. “It isn’t any trap. Carter’s really down there.”

“What’s he there for?” snapped Lathrop. “What’s Elmer got against him?”

“He wrote a book—”

Buster’s thoughts broke off in wild confusion.

“So he wrote a book.”

“Look, doc, I shouldn’t have said that,” whined Buster. “I wasn’t supposed to say it. You caught me unawares.”

“You should have made me believe Charlie was down there, all chummy with Elmer, waiting to talk me out of my foolishness. Elmer will chalk one up on you for this.”

“Elmer doesn’t need to know,” suggested Buster. The footsteps stopped. The tower swam in silence.

“I’ll think about it,” Lathrop finally said. “But I’m not promising anything. If I had a robot that tried to hide things from me, I’d junk him in a hurry.”

“Aren’t you going to come down, doc?”

“Nope,” said Lathrop. “You come up. I’m waiting for you. I have the gun ready. I won’t stand for any monkey business.”

The footsteps started again, slowly, reluctantly. They climbed for a long minute, then stopped again.

“Doc,” said Buster.

“Yes, what is it?”

“You won’t hurt me, doc. I got to bring you in this time. Elmer isn’t fooling.”

“Neither am I,” said Lathrop.

The thudding began again, came closer and closer, the frosty steps ringing to the heavy tread of the climbing robot. Buster’s bulk heaved itself up the last flight, moved out onto the landing. Facing the stairs, Buster stood waiting, his crystal lenses staring at the man.

“So you came to get me,” Lathrop said. He flipped the gun’s muzzle at Buster and chuckled.

“You have to come, doc,” said Buster. “You just have to come.”

“I’ll come,” said Lathrop, “but first you’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me a lot of things I need to know.”

A flood of protest washed out from Buster’s electronic brain. “I can’t,” he wailed. “I can’t!”

Lathrop leveled the gun, his gloved finger covering the button. His eyes grew steellike in the light from the stars.

“Why has Elmer got Charlie?” he demanded. “What did he say in that book?”

Buster hesitated. From where he sat, the Earthman could sense the confusion that tore him.

“O. K.,” said Lathrop calmly, “I’ll have to let you have it.”

“Wait!” shrieked Buster. “I’ll tell you!”

His thought-words were tumbling over one another. “Dr. Carter said the Martians might be still alive. Elmer doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want anyone to even think they’re still alive.”

“Are they?” snapped Lathrop.

“Yes. Yes, they’re still alive. But they aren’t here. They’re some place else. They went into another world. They were afraid of the things from outer space. So they made themselves small. Too small to be of any consequence. They reasoned that when the Evil Beings came they would pass right by them, never even guess that they were there.”

“The thing that took me out in space was a Martian, then?”

“Yes, they come out of their world, get big again, to take Earthmen out in space. To show them the evil out there, convince them they cannot fight it, hoping they, too, will do what the Martians did.”

Lathrop was silent, reflecting, trying to straighten out his mind. At the bottom of the stairs, Buster fidgeted.

“But, Buster, why do they do this? Why don’t they let us find out about these things in our own good time? Why don’t they let us work out our own salvation? Why do they insist on us following in their footsteps?”

“Because,” said Buster, “they know that they are right.”

So that was it. A strait-laced dogmatism that in itself portrayed the character and the nature of the Martian race. His guess concerning Elmer’s motives then were right, Lathrop knew. The wrong way of thought. A racial illogic that denied there might be many paths to truth. Coupled, perhaps, with an overdeveloped sense of rigid duty to fellow races. There were Earthly parallels.