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

Behind Goff and the stranger were Munn, Nancy and the cook, with a look of scared wonder on their faces.

Goff gave the stranger a shove that sent him reeling out into the center of the room.

“I found him skulking by the barns,” he said, his voice shaking with anger. “He won’t answer questions. He pretends he doesn’t know how he got here. He keeps mumbling all the time about how bright everything is.”

The man turned slowly around to face them and for the first time Wolfe saw that his lips were ashen, his eyes glazed, filmed over with what appeared to be fright.

“It was all bright,” he stammered. “The sky—like the sun!”

Wolfe said calmly, “Won’t you have a chair, please?”

The man hesitated, the dazed look deepening in his eyes.

“That one over there,” said Wolfe.

The man shambled to Wolfe’s desk, and sat down.

“He’s either crazy,” said Goff, “or he’s putting on an act.”

Nancy had shut the door and was standing with her back against it, her eyes very wide. “That’s a funny suit he’s wearing,” she said.

“He’s a funny man,” said Goff, disgusted.

Wolfe walked toward the chair and the man cringed away from him. “You needn’t be afraid,” Wolfe told him. “I am glad that you are here.”

“How could he have gotten in?” Goff asked angrily. “No one could have climbed that fence—and the radar hasn’t shown a thing.”

“I think I know,” said Wolfe. “I think I know exactly how he did it.”

And if what he believed was true, he told himself, Hourglass was a failure.

“So it was bright,” Wolfe said.

The man nodded. His jaw muscles had begun to twitch spasmodically. “We weren’t soon enough,” he muttered. “I’m sorry.”

“What year was it, friend?” asked Wolfe.

The man seemed not to hear.

“What year was it, man? We’ve got to know. What date did the Pleiadeans attack?”

“Just a minute or so ago,” said the man. “December twenty-ninth, twenty five, ninety-five.”

“There’s your answer, Goff,” said Wolfe, without turning, still looking at the man.

Goff protested angrily. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“Yes, he does,” said Wolfe. “Hourglass was a failure. We never found time travel. Not the way we meant to find it. The people found it, but we didn’t—”

“It was white bright,” wailed the man. “It was far off and bright, and it moved so fast it covered all the sky. Then I—found myself here.”

Wolfe stood stiffly by the chair, imagining once again what it would be like—the sudden blaze of brightness and the darker masses that were fragments of a shattered planet suddenly turned molten.

But there would be an instant, just before the terror hit and death closed down when there might be time enough—time enough to trigger within the brains of men this new, developing, last-minute safety valve.

A survival factor, he had told himself, and here was evidence, proof, of its existence—a survival factor against the day when there would be no time to run and no place to hide.

And Hourglass was a failure, he thought. What would happen now?

As if aware of his thoughts, Nancy crossed and stood beside him, looking at the man huddled in the chair.

“We’d better get him into bed,” she said. “He’s close to shock. Cook, have you got some soup?”

“Right away,” said the cook, ducking out the door.

“Give me a hand, Doc,” said Goff.

Wolfe stepped to one side and watched the two of them help the man to his feet and walk him down the hall.

Nancy tugged at his sleeve. “What does it all mean, Gil?”

“It means we’ve failed,” said Wolfe. “It means we have as an innate faculty within us the ability to travel in time, but have failed to develop, soon enough, techniques for controlling it. We can go tumbling past-ward, perhaps even future-ward, but all we shall ever do is tumble. We can’t ourselves determine when or where. It’s still purely a random manifestation of what is perhaps the most powerful force in the physical universe.”

“Then there will be war!”

“There is war now,” Wolfe told her, grimly. “Some two hundred years in the future Earth has been blasted into a glowing cinder by a total conversion bomb.”

“Meow,” said Molly, the cat.

Wolfe jerked up his head. Molly stood in the doorway, as disreputable as ever, politely waiting to be invited in.

“Hello, Molly,” Nancy greeted her. “How is the family?”

Molly waltzed across the floor, her proud tail erect and waving. Muttering little conversational purrs and yowls, she rubbed against Wolfe’s trouser-leg.

“You shouldn’t roam about all night,” he told her, stroking her chin. “Do you want that big rabbit in the woodpile to sneak up, and grab you?”

Molly didn’t seem disturbed by the thought. She closed her eyes and purred.

“She should start being careful soon,” said Nancy. “She has only four lives left.”

“Four lives left?” asked Wolfe. “Oh, sure, I forgot. A cat has nine.”

He stared at Nancy for a moment, then down at Molly. “Good Lord,” he said. “I never thought of it.”

“Of Molly’s lives?” asked Nancy.

“No, not that at all. Don’t you see—we have the same situation here. We went ahead and we failed. But now at least one person from the final hours of Hourglass and the Earth has come back to us and he may not be the last. So we start again, with the help of those returning men and women, and we go ahead once more. This time, because of our increased knowledge, we may make it. But even if we fail again, there’ll be others returning after every setback, and Hourglass can make a fresh start and eventually a time will come…”

He rubbed a hand hard against his face. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Doc will have to check it. I’m not completely sure, by any means. There are so many questions still to be answered. Are there many alternative futures, or must our one future be correct, precisely as we planned to correct the past?”

“But you really believe,” said Nancy, “that we shall have a second chance.”

“And a third, a fourth and a fifth,” said Wolfe. “More—if we should need them. If it holds true the first time, it should hold true again and again.”

The phone was ringing now. Wolfe stepped to the desk and picked it up.

“This is Hughes,” an angry voice said.

“How are you, Mr. Hughes?”

“What’s going on?” demanded Hughes. “We’re being flooded with reports from all parts of the world about strangers showing up. There are thousands of them. They say they’re from the future!”

“They’re refugees,” said Wolfe.

“This is one you’re pegged with,” Hughes raged at him. “This is squarely in your lap.”

Wolfe slammed the receiver down so forcefully that it bounced.

The guard had quitted his post, and was fidgeting at the door.

“There are three men out here, sir,” he said. “They seem to be confused.’

“Send them in,” said Wolfe. “I’ve been expecting them.”

The guard was hesitant.

Wolfe lost his temper then.

“Get them in!” he almost shouted. “We have work to do!”

The guard turned and went down the hall.

It was all right, Wolfe thought.

He was tied up in knots again.

I have often suggested that the quintessential Clifford D. Simak story is one in which the alien comes to ordinary people; but this is not one of those stories, because old Mose Abrams is not “ordinary people”—in fact, most of the ordinary people around him think he’s strange. Nonetheless, Cliff’s portrait of Mose is utterly compelling and unforgettable, and I find it tantalizing that any journal Cliff might have had for 1959 does not survive, and that, for that reason, the only note I’ve found regarding what I’m sure is this story is a brief entry from the 1958 journal, in which Cliff states, on December 26, that he “got started on story about the alien who rose from death.”