Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

Norman Blaine stopped when he was halfway between the door and desk; it was the quietness of the room, as well as the head sunk upon the chest, that told him what had happened.

He stopped and listened to the soft whirring of the clock upon the wall, a sound usually lost until this moment in this place. He heard the almost-inaudible flutter of a typewriter from across the hall, the far-off, muffled rumble of wheels rushing along the highway that ran past the Center.

He thought, with one edge of his mind : Death and peace and quiet, the three of them together, companions hand in hand. Then his mind recoiled upon itself and built up into a tight coil spring of horror.

Blaine took a slow step forward, then another one, walking across the carpeting that allowed no footfall sound. He had not as yet realized the full impact of what had happened there—that moments before the business agent had asked to speak to him; that he was the one to find Giesey dead; that his presence in the office might lead to suspicion of him.

He reached the desk and the phone was there in front of him, on one corner of the desk. He lifted the receiver and when the switchboard voice came, he said: “Protection, please.”

He heard the clicking as the signal was set up. “Protection.”

“Farris, please.”

Blaine started to shake, then—the muscles in his forearm jumping, others twitching in his face. He felt breathlessness rising in him, his chest constricting, a choking in his throat, and his mouth suddenly dry and sticky. He gritted his teeth and stopped the jumping muscles.

“Farris speaking.”

“Blaine. Fabrication.”

“Oh, yes, Blaine. What can I do for you?”

“Giesey called me up to see him; when I got here he was dead.”

There was a pause—not too long a pause. Then: “You’re sure he’s dead.”

“I haven’t touched him. He’s sitting in his chair; he looks dead to me.”

“Anyone else know?”

“No one. Darrell is out in the reception room, but …”

“You didn’t yell out that he was dead.”

“Not a word; I picked up the phone and called you.”

“Good boy! That’s using your head. Stay right there; don’t tell anyone, don’t let anyone in; don’t touch anything. We’re on our way.”

The connection clicked and Norman Blaine put the receiver back into the cradle.

The room was still at rest, squeezing out of the next few moments all the rest it could. Soon the fury would take up again; Paul Farris and his goons would come bursting in.

Blaine stood by the corner of the desk, uncertainly—waiting, too. And now that he had the time to think, now that the shock had partially worn away and the acceptance of the fact began to seep into his mind, new ideas came creeping in to plague him.

He had found Giesey dead, but would they believe that Blaine had found him dead? Would they ask Blaine how he could prove that he had found Lew Giesey dead?

What did he want to see you for? they’d ask. How often had Giesey called you in before? Do you have any idea why he called you in this time? Praise? Reprimand? Caution? Discussion of new techniques? Trouble in your department, maybe? Some deviation in your work. How’s your private life? Some indiscretion that you had committed?

He sweated, thinking of the questions.

For Farris was thorough. You had to be thorough and unrelenting—and tough—to head up Protection. You were hated from the start, and fear was a necessary factor to counteract the hatred.

Protection was necessary. The guild was an unwieldy organization for all its tight efficiency, and it must be kept in line. Intrigue must be rooted out. Deviationism—dickering with other unions—must be run down and have an end put to it. There must be no wavering in the loyalty of any members; and to effect all this, there was need of an iron hand.

Blaine reached out to clutch at the desk, then remembered that Farris had told him not to touch a thing.

He pulled his hand back, let it hang by his side, and that seemed awkward and unnatural. He put it in his pocket, and that seemed awkward, too. He put both his hands behind his back and clasped them, then teetered back and forth.

He fidgeted.

He swung around to look at Giesey, wondering if the head still rested on the chest, if the hands still gripped the chair arms. For a moment, Norman Blaine built up in his mind the little speculative fiction that Lew Giesey would not be dead at all, but would have raised his head and be looking at him. And if that were so, Blaine wondered how he would explain.

He needn’t have wondered; Giesey still was dead.

And now, for the first time, Norman Blaine began to see the man in relation to the room—not as a single point of interest, but as a man who sat in a chair, with the chair resting on the carpeting and the carpeting covering the floor.

Giesey’s uncapped pen lay upon the desk in front of him, resting where it had stopped after rolling off a sheaf of papers. Giesey’s spectacles lay beside the pen; off to one side was a glass with a little water left in the bottom of it; beside it stood the stopper of the carafe from which Giesey must recently have poured himself a drink.

And on the floor, beside Lew Giesey’s feet, was a single sheet of paper.

Blaine stood there, staring at the paper, wondering what it was. It was a form of some sort, he could see, and there was writing on it. He edged around the desk to get a better look at it, egged on by an illogical curiosity.

He bent low to read the writing, and a name came up and struck him in the face. Norman Blaine!

He bent swiftly and scooped the paper off the carpet. It was an appointment form, dated the day before yesterday and it appointed Norman Blaine as Administrator of Records, Dream Department, effective as of midnight of this day. It was duly signed and stamped as having been recorded.

John Roemer’s job, Blaine thought, the job that they had whispered about for weeks throughout the Center.

He had a fleeting moment of triumph. They’d picked him. He had been the man for the job! But there was more than triumph. He not only had the job, but he had the answers to the questions they would ask.

Why were you called in? they’d ask. Now he could answer them. With this paper in his pocket, he would have the answer.

But he didn’t have much time.

He laid the paper on the desk and folded it one third over, forcing himself to take the time to do it neatly. Then, just as neatly, he folded the other one third over and thrust it in his pocket. Then he turned again to face the door and waited.

The next moment, Paul Farris and a half dozen of his goons came stamping in.

Farris was a smooth operator. He was a top-notch policeman and had the advantage of looking like a college instructor. He was not a big man; he wore his hair slicked down, and his eyes were weak and wavery back of the spectacles.

He settled himself comfortably in the chair behind his desk and laced his hands over his belly. “I’ll have to ask you some questions,” he told Blaine. “Just for the record, naturally. The death is an open-and-shut one of suicide. Poison. We won’t know what kind until Doc gets the test run through.”

“I understand,” said Blaine.

And thought: I understand, all right. I know just how you work. Lull a man to sleep, then belt him in the guts.

“You and I have worked together for a long time,” said Farris. “Not together, exactly, but under the same roof and for the same purpose. We’ve got along fine; I know that we will continue in exactly the same way.”

“Why, certainly,” said Blaine.

“This appointment form,” said Farris; “you say you got it in an inter-office envelope.”