Clifford Simak - The Thing in the Stone - And Other Stories

Thorne scowled. “You are trying to tell me they changed into the past.”

Daniels nodded. “Strange vegetation, funny-looking trees. In the earlier times, of course, no grass at all. Underbrush of ferns and scouring rushes. Strange animals, strange things in the sky. Sabretooth cats and mastodons, pterosaurs and uintatheres and—”

“All at the same time?” Thorne asked, interrupting. “All mixed up?”

“Not at all. The time periods I see seem to be true time periods. Nothing out of place. I didn’t know at first—but when I was able to convince myself that I was not hallucinating I sent away for books. I studied. I’ll never be an expert, of course—never a geologist or paleontologist—but I learned enough to distinguish one period from another, to have some idea of what I was looking at.”

Thorne took his pipe out of his mouth and perched it in the ash tray. He ran a massive hand through his wild hair.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “It simply couldn’t happen. You said all this business came on rather slowly?”

“To begin with it was hazy, the past foggily imposed upon the present, then the present would slowly fade and the past came in, real and solid. But it’s different now. Once in a while there’s a bit of flickering as the present gives way to the past—but mostly it simply changes, as if at the snap of a finger. The present goes away and I’m standing in the past. The past is all around me. Nothing of the present is left.”

“But you aren’t really in the past? Physically, I mean.”

“There are times when I’m not in it at all. I stand in the present and the distant hills or the river valley changes. But ordinarily it changes all around me, although the funny thing about it is that, as you say, I’m not really in it. I can see it and it seems real enough for me to walk around in it. I can walk over to a tree and put my hand out to feel it and the tree is there. But I seem to make no impact on the past. It’s as if I were not there at all. The animals do not see me. I’ve walked up to within a few feet of dinosaurs. They can’t see me or hear or smell me. If they had I’d have been dead a dozen times. It’s as if I were walking through a three-dimensional movie. At first I worried a lot about the surface differences that might exist. I’d wake up dreaming of going into the past and being buried up to my waist in a rise of ground that since has eroded away. But it doesn’t work that way. I’m walking along in the present and then I’m walking in the past. It’s as if a door were there and I stepped through it. I told you I don’t really seem to be in the past—but I’m not in the present, either. I tried to get some proof. I took a camera with me and shot a lot of pictures. When the films were developed there was nothing on them. Not the past—but what is more important, not the present, either. If I had been hallucinating, the camera should have caught pictures of the present. But apparently there was nothing there for the camera to take. I thought maybe the camera failed or I had the wrong kind of film. So I tried several cameras and different types of film and nothing happened. I got no pictures. I tried bringing something back. I picked flowers, after there were flowers. I had no trouble picking them but when I came back to the present I was empty-handed. I tried to bring back other things as well. I thought maybe it was only live things, like flowers, that I couldn’t bring, so I tried inorganic things—like rocks—but I never was able to bring anything back.”

“How about a sketch pad?”

“I thought of that but I never used one. I’m no good at sketching—besides, I figured, what was the use? The pad would come back blank.”

“But you never tried.”

“No,” said Daniels. “I never tried. Occasionally I do make sketches after I get back to the present. Not every time but sometimes. From memory. But, as I said, I’m not very good at sketching.”

“I don’t know,” said Thorne. “I don’t really know. This all sounds incredible. But if there should be something to it—Tell me, were you ever frightened? You seem quite calm and matter-of-fact about it now, but at first you must have been frightened.”

“At first,” said Daniels, “I was petrified. Not only was I scared, physically scared—frightened for my safety, frightened that I’d fallen into a place from which I never could escape—but also afraid that I’d gone insane. And there was the loneliness.”

“What do you mean—loneliness?”

“Maybe that’s not the right word. Out of place. I was where I had no right to be. Lost in a place where man had not as yet appeared and would not appear for millions of years. In a world so utterly alien that I wanted to hunker down and shiver. But I, not the place, was really the alien there. I still get some of that feeling every now and then. I know about it, of course, and am braced against it, but at times it still gets to me. I’m a stranger to the air and the light of that other time—it’s all imagination, of course.”

“Not necessarily,” said Thorne.

“But the greatest fear is gone now, entirely gone. The fear I was insane. I am convinced now.”

“How are you convinced? How could a man be convinced?”

“The animals. The creatures I see—”

“You mean you recognize them from the illustrations in those books you have been reading.”

“No, not that. Not entirely that. Of course the pictures helped. But actually it’s the other way around. Not the likenesses, but the differences. You see, none of the creatures are exactly like the pictures in the books. Some of them not at all like them. Not like the reconstruction the paleontologists put together. If they had been I might still have thought they were hallucinations, that what I was seeing was influenced by what I’d seen or read. I could have been feeding my imagination on prior knowledge. But since that was not the case, it seemed logical to assume that what I see is real. How could I imagine that Tyrannosaurus had dewlaps all the colors of the rainbow? How could I imagine that some of the sabretooths had tassels on their ears? How could anyone possibly imagine that the big thunder beasts of the Eocene had hides as colorful as giraffes?”

“Mr. Daniels,” said Thorne, “I have great reservations about all that you have told me. Every fiber of my training rebels against it. I have a feeling that I should waste no time on it. Undoubtedly, you believe what you have told me. You have the look of an honest man about you. Have you talked to any other men about this? Any other paleontologists or geologists? Perhaps a neuropsychiatrist?”

“No,” said Daniels. “You’re the only person, the only man I have talked with. And I haven’t told you all of it. This is really all just background.”

“My God, man—just background?”

“Yes, just background. You see, I also listen to the stars.”

Thorne got up from his chair, began shuffling together a stack of papers. He retrieved the dead pipe from the ash tray and stuck it in his mouth.

His voice, when he spoke, was noncommittal.

“Thank you for coming in,” he said. “It’s been most interesting.”

And that was where he had made his mistake. Daniels told himself. He never should have mentioned listening to the stars. His interview had gone well until he had. Thorne had not believed him, of course, but he had been intrigued, would have listened further, might even have pursued the matter, although undoubtedly secretly and very cautiously.

At fault, Daniels knew, had been his obsession with the creature in the stone. The past was nothing—it was the creature in the stone that was important and to tell of it, to explain it and how he knew that it was there, he must tell about his listening to the stars.