Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra

If you’re human, you can’t keep a thing around the house.

You’re always losing things and never finding them and you go charging through the place, yelling, cross-examining, blaming.

That’s the way it is in all families.

Just one warning—don’t try to figure out where all those things have gone or who might have taken them. If you have any notion of investigating, forget it. You’ll be happier! I’ll tell you how it was with me.

I’d bought the sheet of stamps on my way home from the office so I could mail out the cheques for the monthly bills. But I’d just sat down to write the cheques when Marge and Lewis Shaw dropped over. I don’t care much for Lewis and he barely tolerates me. But Marge and Helen are good friends, and they got to talking, and the Shaws stayed all evening.

Lewis told me about the work he was doing at his research laboratory out at the edge of town. I tried to switch him off to something else, but he kept right on. I suppose he’s so interested in his work that he figures everyone else must be. But I don’t know a thing about electronics and I can’t tell a microgauge from a microscope.

It was a fairly dismal evening and the worst of it was that I couldn’t say so. Helen would have jumped all over me for being antisocial.

So, the next evening after dinner, I went into the den to write the cheques and, of course, the stamps were gone.

I had left the sheet on top of the desk and now the desk was bare except for one of the Bildo-Bloeks that young Bill had outgrown several years before, but which still turn up every now and then in the most unlikely places.

I looked around the room. Just in case they might have blown off the desk, I got down on my hands and knees and searched under everything. There was no sign of the stamps.

I went into the living room, where Helen was curled up in a chair, watching television.

“I haven’t seen them, Joe,” she said. “They must be where you left them.”

It was exactly the kind of answer I should have expected.

“Bill might know,” I said.

“He’s scarcely been in the house all day. When he does show up, you’ve got to speak to him.”

“What’s the matter now?”

“It’s this trading business. He traded off that new belt we got him for a pair of spurs.”

“I can’t see anything wrong in that. When I was a kid…”

“It’s not just the belt,” she said. “He’s traded everything.

And the worst of it is that he always seems to get the best of it.”

“The kid’s smart.”

“If you take that attitude, Joe…”

“It’s not my attitude,” I said. “It’s the attitude of the whole business world. When Bill grows up…”

“When he grows up, he’ll be in prison. Why, the way he trades, you’d swear he was training to be a con man!”

“All right, I’ll talk to him.”

I went back into the den because the atmosphere wasn’t exactly as friendly as it might have been and, anyhow, I had to send out those cheques, stamps or no stamps.

I got the pile of bills and the cheque-book and the fountain pen out of the drawer. I reached out and picked up the Bildo-Block to put it to one side, so I’d have a good, clear space to work on. But the moment I picked it up, I knew that this thing was no Bildo-Block.

It was the fight size and weight and was black and felt like plastic, except that it was slicker than any plastic I had ever felt.

It felt as if it had oil on it, only it didn’t.

I set it down in front of me and pulled the desk lamp closer.

But there wasn’t much to see. It still looked like one of the Bildo-Blocks.

Turning it around, I tried to make out what it was. On the second turn, I saw the faint oblong depression along one side of it—a very shallow depression, almost like a scratch.

I looked at it a little closer and could see that the depression was machined and that within it was a faint red line. I could have sworn the red line flickered just a little. I held it there, studying it, and could detect no further flicker. Either the red had faded or I had been seeing things to start with, for after a few seconds I couldn’t be sure there was any line at all.

I figured it must have been something Bill had picked up or traded for. The kid is more than half pack-rat, but there’s nothing wrong with that, nor with the trading, either, for all that Helen says. It’s just the first signs of good business sense.

I put the block over to one side of the desk and went on with the cheques. The next day, during lunch hour, I bought some more stamps so I could mail them. And off and on, all day, I wondered what could have happened to that sheet of stamps.

I didn’t think at all about the block that had the oily feel.

Possibly I would have forgotten it entirely, except that when I got home, the fountain pen was missing.

I went into the den to get the pen and there the pen was, lying on top of the desk where I’d left it the night before. Not that I remembered leaving it there. But when I saw it there, I remembered having forgotten to put it back into the drawer.

I picked it up. It wasn’t any pen. It felt like a cylinder of cork, but much too heavy to be any kind of cork. Except that it was heavier and smaller, it felt something—somehow—like a fly rod.

Thinking of how a fly rod felt, I gave my hand a twitch, the way you do to cast a line, and suddenly it seemed to be, in fact, a fly rod. It apparently had been telescoped and now it came untelescoped and lengthened out into what might have been a rod. But the funny thing about it was that it went out only about four feet and then disappeared into thin air.

Instinctively, I brought it up and back to free the tip from wherever it might be. I felt the slack take up against a sudden weight and I knew I had something on the other end of it. Just like a fish feels, only it wasn’t fighting.

Then, as quickly as it happened, it unhappened. I felt the tension snap off and the weight at the other end was gone and the rod had telescoped again and I held in my hand the thing that looked like a fountain pen.

I laid it down carefully on the desk, being very certain to make no more casting motions, and it wasn’t until then that I saw my hand was shaking.

I sat down, goggling at the thing that looked like the missing fountain pen and the other thing that looked like a Bildo-Block.

And it was then, while I was looking at the two of them, that I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the little white dot in the centre of the desk.

It was on the exact spot where the bogus pen had lain and more than likely, I imagined, the exact spot where I’d found the Bildo-Block the night before. It was about a quarter of an inch in diameter and it looked like ivory.

I put out my thumb and rubbed it vigorously, but the dot would not rub off. I closed my eyes so the dot would have a chance to go away, and then opened them again, real quick, to surprise it ff it hadn’t. It still was there.

I bent over the desk to examine it. I could see it was inlaid in the wood, and an excellent job of inlaying, too. I couldn’t find even the faintest line of division between the wood and the dot.

It hadn’t been there before; I was sure of that. If it had been, I would have noticed it. What’s more, Helen would have noticed it, for she’s hell on dirt and forever after things with a dusting cloth. And to cinch the fact that it had not been there.

And no one sold a thing that looked like a fountain pen but could become a fly rod, the business end of which disappeared and hooked a thing you couldn’t even see—and which, the next time, might bring in whatever it had caught instead of losing it.