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

“I know you’ve checked, but invisibility can be a pretty elusive attribute.”

Strang shook his head. “We know, we absolutely know, that it’s not invisibility. They go somewhere. They move, in either time or space. If only I could find why they go, I might be able to work out the ‘where.’”

“You like these critters, Joel?”

“Perhaps. Let’s say I’ve become accustomed to them. I think sometimes they may be beginning to accept me as well. But I can’t be sure. If there could be some understanding. …”

“I know,” said Wolfe. “I know.”

He turned from the cage and began to walk away. Strang walked with him for a short distance.

“No sign of Henderson?” he asked.

“Henderson is gone,” Wolfe told him.

“Like Tuckerman?”

“I’m sure, like Tuckerman.”

“Gil, will we ever know?”

“I can’t answer that question,” said Wolfe. “You realize, of course, how ridiculous our position is—how ridiculous it has been from the very start of Hourglass. It’s as if someone had asked us to find out how to halt the sun, or make it stand still. Except that in the case of Hourglass they expect us to find out how to move through time. It was taken for granted that we needed time travel. They said, ‘Well, let’s get it, then.’ So they set up a project and they called it Hourglass and they said to Hourglass: ‘In another three hundred years or so we’ll expect you to be traveling in time.’”

“We’ll get it, Gil.”

Wolfe reached out and clapped Strang on the shoulder.

“Thanks a lot,” he said.

Wolfe walked out into the barnyard, into the sudden blast of sunlight that left him blinking, able to see only through the narrow slits of half-closed lids.

He smelled the hot dryness of summer, the combined smells of sleeping dust, of too-green leaves, of uncut hayfield, of old and peeling paint. He heard far off the cooing of a dove and from near at hand the dry rustle of sparrows’ wings and realized that the cooing and the rustle did little more than emphasize the silence which lay across vast acres—acres cut off by security fence and security guards and deep official silence.

So they had set up Hourglass and they had kept it secret. They had insisted that no one must know what Hourglass was seeking, and when, and if, discovery came it must be kept under wraps. Beyond everything else, no one must know what time travel would be used for.

And for once they had played it smart. Hourglass had been set up on this ancient farm, set up quietly without the usual fanfare of brand new, gleaming buildings, or the sudden influx of a great army of governmental functionaries. It had started in low gear without rousing more than passing wonderment among the country folk, and since nothing of importance had leaked out workers on the project had been spared the necessity of furious denials.

That it had been done with so much imagination almost two centuries in the past, he thought, only served to underline the vast importance which had been attached to it from the first and the equally stubborn determination that it remain a closely guarded official secret.

Wolfe saw the flicker of a white dress coming down the pathway from the house and knew that it was Nancy Foster, his secretary, come in search of him. Nancy was pretty and efficient and conscientious, and no matter where he went she always managed to run him down, and keep him sedulously at the job.

Nancy, he was certain, was an undercover agent for Security. But that was all right with him. He was just a slob doing as well as he could manage in a job that was too big for any one man, and Security could look him over with tests and charts any time Nancy gave the word.

He walked across the barnyard and saw that Nancy had stopped at the end of the brick walk, and was waiting for him. She was staying in the shade, and her face looked strained.

“Goff’s up at the house,” she said. “He has someone with him.”

“Thanks, Nancy,” said Wolfe. “I’ll go right up.”

“Is there something wrong, Gil?”

“I don’t think so, Nancy. Why?”

“This man with Goff. I’m almost sure he’s from Central.”

Wolfe forced himself to laugh. “We don’t pull them quite so big, Nancy. We’re not that important.”

“His name is Hughes,” said Nancy. “Sidney Wadsworth Hughes.” She giggled a little at the name.

“It almost rhymes,” said Wolfe.

The sentry at the door was still standing stiff and straight, but his affability had not diminished. “Did you see the kittens, sir?” he asked.

“No,” said Wolfe. “I didn’t get around to it. I’ll look in on them tomorrow.”

“They’re worth your while,” the sentry told him without a quiver of expression.

Goff and Hughes were waiting for him in the office. Hughes, Wolfe saw, was a big man—definitely a polished sort of customer. Hardly the sort of person, Wolfe told himself, who could be easily worsted in an argument. Goff introduced them. “Hughes is from Central Security,” he said.

Wolfe shook hands with Hughes, thinking—Nancy’s a pretty damned good judge of character.

“I’ll run along,” said Goff. “I’ve got some work to do. When you’re ready, give me a call, and I’ll send around a car for you.”

“Thank you, Goff,” said Hughes. It was definitely a dismissal.

“Could I rustle up a drink for you?” asked Wolfe.

“Later, perhaps,” said Hughes. “Right now you and I have a great deal to talk about.”

There was something a little off-key about the start of the interview. It was too urgent, too taut to be dramatic, although there was a sense of drama in it. No good would come of it, thought Wolfe.

He wondered if it might be about Henderson. Henderson’s disappearance was the only subject he could think of that could have brought a man from Central to his office. But Henderson was a closed book. Goff had done the kind of job that left no doubt of that. Every fact, every facet of the disappearance had been covered and investigated. The entire story—or as much of it as was ever likely to be known—was down in official black and white.

Hughes sat down ponderously in a chair, and placed his briefcase beside him.

“I understand that a man has disappeared,” he said.

Wolfe nodded.

“Goff was telling me about it,” said Hughes. “It checks with the Tuckerman affair.”

“Goff is a good man,” said Wolfe. It was skirting the edge of heresy, he knew, for a project head to praise his own security chief. But he just didn’t give a damn. Hughes was turning out to be a shade too pompous.

“I didn’t come here to talk about Henderson, however,” said Hughes. “I came to tell you that we’ve found Tuckerman.”

Wolfe straightened in his chair. He sat momentarily frozen, half by involuntary self-control—an almost innate determination not to show emotion—and half by the steel-cold realization that if what Hughes said was true a large segment of Hourglass’ hope had just gone down the drain.

“But that’s impossible,” he said at last. “It doesn’t make—“ He was stopped by the half-smile on the face of the man opposite him.

“I shall qualify that,” Hughes told him. “We didn’t find Tuckerman himself . But we have his fingerprints, and we can reconstruct what must have happened. Some of it, at least.”

Hughes paused for some reaction, but Wolfe remained rigidly silent. Finally Wolfe said. “Go ahead. You were talking about some fingerprints.”

“We found his fingerprints on a hospital record,” said Hughes, “dating from the year nineteen fifty-eight.”

Wolfe sat hunched inside himself, feeling elation beginning to seep into his soul. He saw that Hughes was watching him, with the half-smile still on his lips—an expression of inner amusement that was not quite condescending, but very close to it.