Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

Down at the end of the lane, we heard Ernie backing the police car out of the way. Pretty soon he came walking up to us.

“They’ll be here right away.”

He sat down with us. We didn’t say anything about what had happened. I guess we were all afraid to talk.

In less than fifteen minutes, the air base descended on us. First there was an ambulance and they loaded the pilot aboard and left in a lot of dust.

Behind the ambulance was a fire rig and behind the fire rig was a jeep with the colonel in it. Behind the colonel’s jeep were other jeeps and three or four trucks, all loaded with men, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the place was swarming.

The colonel was red in the face and you could see he was upset. After all, why wouldn’t he be? This was the first time a plane had ever collided in mid-air with a car.

The colonel came tramping up to Slade and he started hollering at Slade and Slade hollered right back at him and I wondered why they were sore at one another, but that wasn’t it at all. That was just the way they talked when they got excited.

All around, there was a lot of running here and there and a lot more hollering, but it didn’t last too long. Before the colonel got through yelling back and forth with Slade, the entire area was ringed in with men and the situation was in Air Force hands.

When the colonel finished talking with Slade, he walked over to me.

“So it was your car,” he said. The way he said it, you’d thought it was my fault.

“Yes, it was,” I told him, “and I’m going to sue you. That was a darn good car.”

The colonel went on looking at me as if I had no right to live, then suddenly seemed to recognize me.

“Say, wait a minute,” he said. “Weren’t you in to see me the other day?”

“I sure was. I told you about my skunks. It was one of them that was in Old Betsy.”

“Hold up there, old-timer,” said the colonel. “You lost me. Let’s hear that again.”

“Old Betsy was the car,” I explained, “and the skunk was in her. When your jet crashed into it, he rode a fender down.”

“You mean the skunk—the fender—the—”

“It just sort of floated down,” I finished telling him.

“Corporal,” the colonel said to Slade, “have you further use for this man?”

“Just drunkenness,” said Slade. “Not worth mentioning.”

“I’d like to take him back to the base with me.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Slade said in a quivery kind of voice.

“Come on, then,” said the colonel and I followed him to the jeep.

We sat in the back seat and a soldier drove and he didn’t waste no time. The colonel and I didn’t talk much. We just hung on and hoped that we’d live through it. At least, that’s the way I felt.

Back at the base, the colonel sat down at his desk and pointed at a chair for me to sit in. Then he leaned back and studied me. I was sure glad I had done nothing wrong, for the way he looked at me, I’d just have had to up and confess it if I had.

“You said some queer things back there,” the colonel started. “Now suppose you just rear back comfortable in that chair and tell me all about it, not leaving out a thing.”

So I told him all about it and I went into a lot of detail to explain my viewpoint and he didn’t interrupt, but just kept listening. He was the best listener I ever ran across.

When I was all finished, he reached for a pad and pencil.

“Let’s get a few points down,” he said. “You say the car had never operated by itself before?”

“Not that I know of,” I answered honestly. “It might have practiced while I wasn’t looking, of course.”

“And it never flew before?”

I shook my head.

“And when it did both of these things, there was this skunk of yours aboard?”

“That’s right.”

“And you say this skunk glided down in a fender after the crash?”

“The fender tipped over and the critter ran into the woods.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little strange that the fender should glide down when all the other wreckage fell ker-plunk?”

I admitted that it did seem slightly strange.

“Now about this skunk. You say it purred?”

“It purred real pretty.”

“And waved its tail?”

“Just like a dog,” I said.

The colonel pushed the pad away and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms and sort of hugged himself.

“As a matter of personal knowledge,” he told me, “gained from years of boyhood trapping, I can tell you that no skunk purrs or ever wags its tail.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, indignant, “but I wasn’t that drunk. I’d had a drink or two to while away the time I was waiting for the jet. But I saw the skunk real plain and I knew he was a skunk and I can remember that he purred. He was a friendly cuss. He acted as if he liked me and he—”

“Okay,” the colonel said. “Okay.”

We sat there looking at one another. All at once, he grinned.

“You know,” he said, “I find quite suddenly that I need an aide.”

“I ain’t joining up,” I replied stubbornly. “You couldn’t get me within a quarter mile of one of them jets. Not if you roped and tied me.”

“A civilian aide. Three hundred a month and keep.”

“Colonel, I don’t hanker none for the military life.”

“And all the liquor you can drink.”

“Where do I sign?” I asked.

And that is how I got to be the colonel’s aide.

I thought he was crazy and I still think so. He’d been a whole lot better off if he’d quit right there. But he had an idea by the tail and he was the kind of gambling fool who’d ride a hunch to death.

We got along just fine, although at times we had our differences. The first one was over that foolish business about confining me to base. I raised quite a ruckus, but he made it stick.

“You’d go out and get slobbered up and gab your head off,” he told me. “I want you to button up your lip and keep it buttoned up. Why else do you think I hired you?”

It wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t a blessed thing to do. I never had to lift my hand to do a lick of work. The chow was fit to eat and I had a place to sleep and the colonel kept his word about all the liquor I could drink.

For several days, I saw nothing of him. Then one afternoon, I dropped around to pass the time of day. I hadn’t more than got there when a sergeant came in with a bunch of papers in his hand. He seemed to be upset.

“Here’s the report on that car, sir,” he said.

The colonel took the papers and leafed through a few of them. “Sergeant, I can’t make head nor tail of this.”

“Some of it I can’t, either, sir.”

“Now this?” said the colonel, pointing.

“That’s a computer, sir.”

“Cars don’t have computers.”

“Well, sir, that’s what I said, too. But we found the place where it was attached to the engine block.”

“Attached? Welded?”

“Well, not exactly welded. Like it was a part of the block. Like it had been cast as a part of it. There was no sign of welding.”

“You’re sure it’s a computer?”

“Connally said it was, sir. He knows about computers. But it’s not like any he’s ever seen before. It works on a different principle than any he has seen, he says. But he says it makes a lot of sense, sir. The principle, that is. He says—”

“Well, go on!” the colonel yelled.

“He says its capacity is at least a thousand times that of the best computer that we have. He says it might not be stretching your imagination too far to say that it’s intelligent.”

“How do you mean—intelligent?”

“Well, Connally says a rig like that might be capable of thinking for itself, sir.”