Clifford Simak - Ring Around the Sun

He could hear them talking now.

"A sly one," they would say. "He always was a sly one and not up to any good. His Ma and Pa were real good people, though. Beats hell how a son sometimes turns out even when his Ma and Pa were honest people."

He went through the lobby and out the door and into the street.

He stopped at a diner and ordered a cup of coffee and the waitress said to him, "Nice night, isn't it."

"Yes, it is," he said.

"You want anything to go with that coffee, mister?"

"No," said Vickers. "Just the coffee." He had money now — Ann had sent it quickly enough — but he found, not surprisingly, that he had no appetite, no desire at all for food.

She moved on up the counter and wiped off imaginary spots with a cloth she carried in her hand.

A top, he thought. Where did it tie in? He'd take the top to the house and spin it and would know once and for all if there were a fairyland — well, no, not exactly that. He'd know if he could get back into fairyland.

And the house. Where did the house tie in?

Or did either the house or the top tie in?

And if they didn't tie in, why had Horton Flanders written:

"Go back and travel the paths you walked in childhood. Maybe there you will find a thing you'll need — or something that is missing." He wished he could remember the exact words Flanders had used, but he could not.

So he had come back and he had found a top and, more than that, he had remembered fairyland. And why, he asked himself, in all the years since he had been eight years old, had he never before recalIed that walk in fairyland?

It had made a deep impression on him at the time, of that there was no doubt, for once he had remembered it had been as clear and sharp as if it had just happened.

But something had made him forget it, some mental block, perhaps. Something had made him forget it. And something had made him know that the metal mouse had wanted to be trapped. And something had made him instinctively refuse Crawford's proposition. _Something_.

The waitress came back down the counter and leaned on her elbow.

"They're starting a new picture at the Grand tonight," said the girl. "I'd love to see it, but I can't get off."

Vickers did not answer.

"You like pictures, mister?" asked the girl.

"I don't know," said Vickers. "I seldom go to them."

Her face said she sympathized with anyone who didn't. "I just live for them," she said. "They're so natural."

He looked up at her and saw that she wore the face of Everyone. It was the face of the two women who talked in the seat behind him on the bus; it was the face of Mrs. Leslie, saying to him, "Some of us are going to organize a Pretentionist Club…" It was the face of those who did not dare sit down and talk with themselves, the people who could not be alone a minute, the people who were tired without knowing they were tired and afraid without knowing that they were afraid.

And, yes, it was the face of Mrs. Leslie's husband, crowding drink and women into a barren life. It was the grinding anxiety that had become commonplace, that sent people fleeing for psychological shelters against the bombs of uncertainty.

Gaiety no longer was sufficient, cynicism had run out, and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place — at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else you need not be yourself.

He finished his coffee and went out into the quiet street.

Overhead a jet flashed past, streaking low, the mutter of its tubes bouncing back against the walls. He watched its lights draw twin lines of fire over the night horizon, and then went for a walk.

WHEN Vickers opened the door of the room, he saw that the top was gone. He had left it on the chair, gaudy in its new paint, and it wasn't on the chair or on the floor. He got down on his belly and looked underneath the bed and it wasn't there. It wasn't in the closet and it wasn't in the hall outside.

He came back into the room again and sat down on the edge of the bed.

After all the worry and the planning the top had disappeared. Who would have stolen it? What would anyone want with a battered top?

What had he himself wanted with it?

It seemed faintly ridiculous now, sitting on the edge of the bed in a strange hotel room, to ask himself these questions.

He had thought the top would buy his way into fairyland and now, in the white glare of the ceiling light, he wondered at himself for the madness of his antics.

Behind him, the door came open and he heard it and wheeled around.

In the door stood Crawford.

The man was even more massive than Vickers had remembered him. He filled the doorway and he stood motionless, without a single flicker, except for slowly winking eyelids.

Crawford said: "Good evening, Mr. Vickers. Won't you ask me to come in?"

"Certainly," said Vickers. "I was waiting for a call from you. I never thought that you would take the trouble to travel here in person."

And that was a lie, of course, because he'd not been waiting for a call.

Crawford moved ponderously across the room. "This chair looks strong enough to hold me. You don't mind, I hope."

"It's not my chair," said Vickers. "Go ahead and bust it."

It didn't break. It creaked and groaned, but it held.

Crawford relaxed and sighed. "I always feel so much better when I get a good strong chair beneath me."

"You tapped Ann's phone," said Vickers.

"Why, certainly. How else would I have found you? I knew that, sooner or later, you would call her."

"I saw the plane come in," said Vickers. "If I had thought that it was you, I'd driven out to meet you. I have a bone to pick with you."

"I don't doubt it," Crawford said.

"Why did you almost get me lynched?"

"I wouldn't have you lynched for all the world," said Crawford. "I'm too much in need of you."

"What do you need me for?"

"I don't know," said Crawford. "I thought maybe you would know."

"I don't know a thing," said Vickers. "Tell me, Crawford, what is all this about? You didn't tell the truth that day I came in to see you."

"I told you the truth, or at least part of it. I didn't tell you everything we knew."

"Why not?"

"I didn't know who you were."

"But you know now?"

"Yes, I know now," said Crawford. "You are one of them."

"One of whom?"

"One of the gadgeteers."

"What in hell makes you think so?"

"Analyzers. That's what the psych boys call them. Analyzers. The damn things are uncanny. I don't pretend to understand them."

"And the analyzers said there was something strange about me?"

"Yes," said Crawford. "That's about the way it is."

"If I am one of them, why come to me?" asked Vickers. "If I am one of them, you are fighting me. Remember? A world with its back against the wall. Surely, you remember."

"Don't say 'if," said Crawford. "You _are_ one of them all right, but quit acting as if I were an enemy."

"Aren't you?" asked Vickers. "If I am what you say I am, you are my enemy."

"You don't understand," said Crawford. "Let's try analogy. Let's go back to the day when the Cro-Magnon drifted into Neanderthaler territory…"

"Don't give rue analogy," Vickers told him. "Tell me what's on your mind."

"I don't like the situation," Crawford said. "I don't like the way things are shaping up."

"You forget that I don't know what the situation is."

"That's what I was trying to tell you with my analogy. You are the Cro-Magnon. You have the bow and arrow and the spear. I am the Neanderthaler. I only have a club. You have the knife of polished stone; I have a piece of jagged flint picked out of a stream bed. You have clothing fashioned out of hides and furs and I have nothing but the hair I stand in."