Clifford Simak - Why Call Them Back from Heaven

Mona Campbell was gone and now he'd be going, too. Not that he had anywhere to go, but simply because there was no point in staying here. He'd go walking down the road and he'd wander aimlessly, for there would be no purpose in his going. He'd live off the land. He would manage somehow and he'd probably wander south, for in a few more months this country would grow cold and snow would fall.

Southwest, perhaps, he thought. To the desert country and the mountains, for that was a place he had often thought he would like to see.

Mona Campbell was gone and why had she gone? Because, perhaps, she feared that he might betray her in the hope he might be reinstated as a human being. Or, perhaps, because she knew now she should not have told him what she did and through the telling of it now felt that she was vulnerable.

She had fled, not to protect herself, but to protect the world. She walked the lonely road because she could not bear to let mankind know it had been wrong for almost two centuries. And because the hope she had found in the Hamal math was too poor and frail a thing to stand up against the elaborate social structure man himself had forged.

The Holies were right, he thought—as mankind itself had been right for many centuries in the faith it held. Although, he knew, the Holies would reject out of hand the evidence of life's foreverness because it held no promise of everlasting glory, nor the sound of silver trumpets.

For it promised nothing beyond life going on into eternity. It did not say what form that life would take or even if it would have a form. But it was evidence, he thought, and that was better than mere faith, for faith was never more, even at the best, than the implied hope for evidence.

Frost came down off the porch and started across the yard, toward the sagging gate. He could go anywhere he wished and he might as well get started. There was no packing to be done and no plans to make, for everything he had was the clothes upon his back—the clothes that once had belonged to a man named Amos Hicklin—and without a purpose, there was no sense in making plans.

He had reached the gate and was pulling it open when the car came down the road, breaking suddenly out of the woods that grew close up to the house.

He stood astonished, with his hand upon the gate, and the first thing that he thought was that Mona Campbell had come back, that she'd forgotten something, or had changed her mind, and was coming back again.

Then he saw there were two people in the car and that the both of them were men and by that time the car had pulled up before the gate and stopped.

A door of the car came open and one of the men stepped out.

"Dan," said Marcus Appleton, "how good to find you here. And especially when we were least expecting you."

He was affable and jolly, as if they were good friends.

"I suppose," said Frost, "I could say the same of you. There've been times I've expected you to come popping out at me, but surely not today."

"Well, that's all right," said Appleton. "Any time at all. That suits me just fine. I had not expected I'd bag the two of you."

"The two?" asked Frost. "You're talking riddles, Marcus. There is no one here but me."

The driver had gotten out of the other door and now came around the car. He was a big man and he had a face that squinted and he wore a big gun on his hip.

"Clarence," said Appleton, "go on in the house and bring out the Campbell gal."

Frost came through the gate and stood aside so Clarence could go through it. He watched the man go across the yard, climb the stairs, and enter the house. He turned around then, to face Appleton.

"Marcus," he asked, "who do you expect to find?"

Appleton grinned at him. "Don't play dumb," he said. "You must know. Mona Campbell. You remember her."

"Yes. The woman in Timesearch. The one who disappeared."

Appleton nodded. "Boys down at the sector station spotted someone living here several weeks ago. When they flew over on a rescue mission. Then, a week or so ago, the same woman they had seen here came in, bringing a snakebit man. Said she'd found him on the road. Said she was just passing through. It was dark and they didn't get too good a look at her, but it was good enough. We put two and two together."

"You flunked out," Frost told him. "There has been no one here. No one here but me."

"Dan," said Appleton, "there's the matter of a murder charge that could be filed against you. If there's something you can tell us, we might forget we found you. Let you walk away."

"Walk how far?" asked Frost. "To decent bullet range, then get me in the back?"

Appleton shook his head. "A deal's a deal," he said. "We want you, of course, but the one we came looking for, the one we really want, is Mona Campbell."

"There's nothing to tell you, Marcus," said Frost. "If there were, I'd be tempted to pick up your deal— and bet with myself whether you would keep it. But Mona Campbell's not been here. I've never seen the woman."

Clarence came out of the house, walked heavy-footed to the gate.

"There's no one in there, Marcus," he said. "No sign of anyone."

"Well, now," said Appleton, "she must be hiding somewhere."

"Not in the house," said Clarence. "Would you say," asked Appleton, "that this gentleman might know?"

Clarence swung his head around and squinted hard at Frost.

"He might," said Clarence. "There's just a chance he might."

"Trouble is," said Appleton, "he's not of a mind to talk." Clarence swung a beefy hand, so fast there was no time to duck. It caught Frost across the face and drove him backward. He struck the fence and slumped. Clarence stopped and grasped his shirt and lifted him and swung the hand again.

Brightly colored pinwheels exploded inside Frost's head and he found himself crawling on his hands and knees, shaking his head to get rid of the flaming pin-wheels. Blood was dribbling from his nose and there was a salt taste in his mouth.

The hand reached down and lifted him again and set him on his feet. Swaying, he fought to stay erect.

"Not again," Appleton said to Clarence. "Not right away, at least. Maybe now he'll talk."

He said to Frost, "You want some more of it?" "The hell with you," said Frost.

The hand struck again and he was down once more and he wondered vaguely, as he tried to regain his feet, why he'd said exactly what he had. It had been a dumb thing to say. He'd not intended to say it and then he'd said it, and look at what it got him. He crawled to a sitting position and looked at the two men. Appleton had lost his look of easy amusement. Clarence stood poised and watching him.

Frost put up a hand and wiped his face. It came away smeared with dust and blood.

"It's easy, Dan," Appleton said to him. "All you have to do is tell us where Mona Campbell is. Then you can walk away. We haven't even seen you." Frost shook his head.

"If you don't," said Appleton, "Clarence here will beat you to death. He likes that kind of work and it might take quite a little while. And the thought strikes me that the boys from the sector station might not arrive in time. You know that sometimes happens. They're just a little late and it's too bad, of course, but there isn't much that can be done about it." Clarence moved a step closer.

"I mean it, Dan," said Appleton. "Don't think I am fooling."

Frost struggled to get his feet beneath him, poised to rise. Clarence took another step toward him and started to reach down. Frost launched himself at the two treelike legs in front of him, felt his shoulder smash into them and sprawled flat upon his face. He rolled away blindly and got his feet beneath him and straightened. Clarence was stretched upon the ground. Blood flowed across his face from a gash upon his head, apparently inflicted when, falling, he had struck a fence post.