Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

Humor him, thought Decker to himself. Humor him.

“All right, then,” he thought. “We will stay. We will stay and we will be friendly. We will stay and teach you. We will give you the things we have brought for you and we will stay with you.”

“You will not leave,” said the matchstick man’s thought, and there was something so cold and logical and matter-of-fact about the way the thought was delivered that Decker suddenly was cold.

The humanoid meant it—meant every word he said. He was not being dramatic, nor was he blustering—but neither was he bluffing. He actually thought that the humans would not leave, that they would not live to leave the planet.

Decker smiled softly to himself.

“You will die here,” said the humanoid thought.

“Die?” asked Decker. “What is die?”

The matchstick man’s thought was pure disgust. Deliberately, he reached up, took off the headset and laid it carefully back upon the table.

Then he turned and walked away, and not a man made a move to stop him.

Decker took off his headset and slammed it on the table top.

“Jackson,” he said, “pick up that phone and tell the Legion to let him through. Let him leave. Don’t try to stop him.”

He sat limply in his chair and looked at the ring of faces that were watching him.

Waldron asked, “What is it, Decker?”

“He sentenced us to death,” said Decker. “He said that we would not leave the planet. He said that we would die here.”

“Strong words,” said Waldron.

“He meant them,” Decker said.

He lifted a hand, flipped it wearily. “He doesn’t know, of course,” he said. “He really thinks that he can stop us from leaving. He thinks that we will die.”

It was an amusing situation, really. That a naked humanoid should walk out of the jungle and threaten to do away with a human survey party, that he should really think that he could do it. That he should be so positive about it.

But there was not a single smile on any of the faces that looked at Decker.

“We can’t let it get us,” Decker said.

“Nevertheless,” Waldron declared, “we should take all precautions.”

Decker nodded. “We’ll go on emergency alert immediately,” he said. “We’ll stay that way until we’re sure … until we’re …”

His voice trailed off. Sure of what? Sure that an alien savage who wore no clothing, who had not a sign of culture about him, could wipe out a group of humans protected by a ring of steel, held within a guard of machines and robots and a group of fighting men who knew all there was to know concerning the refinements of dealing out swift and merciless extermination to anything that moved against them?

Ridiculous!

Of course it was ridiculous!

And yet the eyes had held intelligence. The being had not only intelligence, but courage. He had stood within a circle of—to him—alien beings, and he had not flinched. He had faced the unknown and said what there was to say, and then had walked away with a dignity any human would have been proud to wear. He must have guessed that the alien beings within the confines of the base were not of his own planet, for he had said that they should not have come, and his thought had implied that he was aware they were not of this world of his. He had understood that he was supposed to put on the headset, but whether that was an act more of courage than of intelligence one would never know—for you could not know if he had realized what the headset had been for. Not knowing, the naked courage of clamping it to his head was of an order that could not be measured.

“What do you think?” Decker asked Waldron.

“We’ll have to be careful,” Waldron told him evenly. “We’ll have to watch our step. Take all precautions, now that we are warned. But there’s nothing to be scared of, nothing we can’t handle.”

“He was bluffing,” Dickson said. “Trying to scare us into leaving.”

Decker shook his head. “I don’t think he was,” he said. “I tried to bluff him and it didn’t work. He’s just as sure as we are.”

The work went on. There was no attack.

The jets roared out and thrummed away, mapping the land. Field parties went out cautiously. They were flanked by robots and by legionnaires and preceded by lumbering machines that knifed and tore and burned a roadway through even the most stubborn of the terrain they went up against. Radio weather stations were set up at distant points, and at the base the weather tabulators clicked off on tape the data that the stations sent back.

Other field parties were flown into the special areas pinpointed for more extensive exploration and investigation.

And nothing happened.

The days went past.

The weeks went past.

The machines and robots watched and the legionnaires stood ready, and the men hurried with their work so they could get off the planet.

A bed of coal was found and mapped. An iron range was discovered. One area in the mountains to the west crawled with radioactive ores. The botanists found twenty-seven species of edible fruit. The base swarmed with animals that had been trapped as specimens and remained as pets.

And a village of the matchstick men was found.

It wasn’t much of a place. Its huts were primitive. Its sanitation was nonexistent. Its people were peaceful.

Decker left his chair under the striped pavilion to lead a party to the village.

The party entered cautiously, weapons ready but being very careful not to move too fast, not to speak too quickly, not to make a motion that might be construed as hostile.

The natives sat in their doorways and watched them. They did not speak and they scarcely moved a muscle. They simply watched the humans as they marched to the center of the village.

There the robots set up a table and placed a mentograph upon it. Decker sat down in a chair and put one of the headsets on his skull. The rest of the party waited off to one side. Decker waited at the table.

They waited for an hour and not a native stirred. None came forward to put on the other headset.

Decker took off the headset wearily and placed it on the table.

“It’s no use,” he said. “It won’t work. Go ahead and take your pictures. Do anything you wish. But don’t disturb the natives. Don’t touch a single thing.”

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his steaming face.

Waldron came and leaned on the table. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

Decker shook his head. “It haunts me,” he said. “There’s just one thing that I am thinking. It must be wrong. It can’t be right. But the thought came to me, and I can’t get rid of it.”

“Sometimes that happens,” Waldron said. “No matter how illogical a thing may be, it sticks with a man, like a burr inside his brain.”

“The thought is this,” said Decker. “That they have told us all they have to tell us. That they have nothing more they wish to say to us.”

“That’s what you thought,” said Waldron.

Decker nodded. “A funny thing to think,” he said. “Out of a clear sky. And it can’t be right.”

“I don’t know,” said Waldron. “Nothing’s right here. Notice that they haven’t got a single iron tool. Not a scrap of metal in evidence at all. Their cooking utensils are stone, a sort of funny stuff like soapstone. What few tools they have are stone. And yet they have a culture. And they have it without metal.”

“They’re intelligent,” said Decker. “Look at them watching us. Not afraid. Just waiting. Calm and sure of themselves. And that fellow who came into the base. He knew what to do with the headset.”

Waldron sucked thoughtfully at a tooth. “We’d better be getting back to base,” he said. “It’s getting late.” He held his wrist in front of him. “My watch has stopped. What time do you have, Decker?”