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

And it was Clay. The painting, unfinished as it was, could not be mistaken. Even if one had not known that Clay had spent the last days of his life within this village, he still would have known that the work was Clay’s. The clean outline was there, the authority of craftsmanship combined with the restrained quality, the masterly understatement, the careful detail and the keen sharp color. But there was something else as well—a certain happiness, a humble happiness that had no hint of triumph.

“He did not finish it,” said Lathrop. “He did not have the … (there was no word for time). He (discontinued) before he finished it.”

“His brushandpaints discontinued. He sat and looked at it.”

So that was it. That was how it happened. Clay’s paints had given out and there had been no place, no way—perhaps no time—in which he could have gotten more.

So Reuben Clay had sat in this burrow and looked at his last painting, knowing it was the last painting he would ever do, propped there against the wall, and had known the hopelessness of ever finishing the great canvas he had started. Although more than likely Clay had never thought of it as great. His paintings, for him, had never been more than an expression of himself. To him they had been something that lay inside himself, waiting to be transferred into some expression that the universe could see, a sort of artistic communication from Clay to all his fellow creatures.

“Rest yourself,” said the gnome. “You are tired.”

“Thanks,” said Lathrop.

He sat down on the hard-packed floor, with his back against the wall, opposite the painting.

“You knew him,” said the gnome.

Lathrop shook his head.

“But you came seeking him.”

“I sought word of him.”

How could one, he wondered, explain to the little gnome what he sought in Clay, or why he’d tracked him down when all the universe forgot? How could one explain to these people, who were color-blind and more than likely had no conception of what a painting was—how could one explain the greatness that was Clay’s? The technique that lived within his hands, the clean, quick sense of color, the almost unworldly ability to see a certain thing exactly as it was.

To see the truth and to reproduce that truth—not as a single facet of the truth, but the entire truth in its right perspective and its precise color, and with its meaning and its mood pinpointed so precisely that one need but look to know.

That may have been why I sought him, thought Lathrop. That may be why I’ve spent twenty Earth years and a barrel of money to learn all the facts of him. The monograph I some day will write on him is no more than a faint attempt to rationalize my search for facts—the logic that is needed to justify a thing. But it was the truth, thought Lathrop. That’s the final answer of what I sought in Clay—the truth that lay in him and in his painting. Because I, too, at one time worked in truth.

“It is magic,” said the gnome, staring at the painting.

“Of a sort,” said Lathrop. And that probably had been why, at first, they had accepted Clay, in the expectation that some of his magic might rub off on them. But not entirely, perhaps; certainly not toward the end. For Clay was not the sort of simple, unassuming man these simple creatures would respect and love.

They’d let him live among them, more than likely finally as one of them, probably without the thought of payment for his living space and food. He may have worked a little in the fields and he may have puttered up things, but he would have been essentially their guest, for no alien creature could fit himself economically into such a simple culture.

They had helped him through his final days and watched him in his dying and when he had finally died they’d done to him a certain act of high respect and honor.

What was that word again? He could not remember it. The indoctrination had been inadequate; there were word gaps and blank spaces and blind spots and that was wholly understandable in a place like this.

He saw the gnome was waiting for him to explain the magic, to explain it better than Clay had been able to explain it. Or maybe Clay had not attempted to explain, for they might not have asked him.

The gnome waited and hoped and that was all, for he could not ask. You do not ask another race about the details of their magic.

“It is a … (no word for representation, no word for picture) … place that Clay saw. He tried to bring it back to life. He tried to tell you and I what he had seen. He tried to make us see it, too.”

“Magic,” said the gnome.

Lathrop gave up. It was impossible. To the gnome it was simple magic. So be it—simple magic.

It was a valley with a brook that gurgled somberly and with massive trees, and a deep wash of light that was more than sunlight lay over all of it. There was no living creature in it and that was typical, for Clay was a landscape artist without the need of people or of other creatures.

A happy place, thought Lathrop, but a solemn happiness. A place to run and laugh, but not to run too swiftly nor to laugh too loudly, for there was a lordly reverence implicit in the composition.

“He saw many places,” Lathrop told the gnome. “He put many places on a (no word for canvas or board or plane) … on a flat like that. Many different planets. He tried to catch the… (no word for spirit) … the way that each planet looked.”

“Magic,” said the gnome. “His was powerful magic.”

The gnome moved to the far wall of the room and poked up a peat fire in a primitive stove fashioned out of mud. “You are hungry,” said the gnome.

“I ate.”

“You must eat with us. The others will be coming. It is too dark to work.”

“I will eat with you,” said Lathrop.

For he must break the bread with them. He must be one of them if he were to carry out his mission. Perhaps not one of them as Clay had been one of them, but at least accepted. No matter what horrendous and disgusting thing should comprise the menu, he must eat with them.

But it was more than likely that the food would not be too bad. Roots and vegetables, for they had gardens. Pickled insects, maybe, and perhaps some alcoholic concoction he’d have to be a little careful with.

But no matter what it was, he would have to eat with them and sleep with them and be as friendly and as thoughtful as Clay had been thoughtful and friendly.

For they’d have things to tell him, data that he’d given up all hope of getting, the story of the final days of Reuben Clay. Perhaps even some clue to the mystifying “lost years,” the years when Clay had dropped completely out of sight.

He sat quietly, thinking of how the trail had come to an end, out near the edge of the galaxy, not too many light-years from this very place. For year on absorbing year he had followed Clay’s trail from star to star, gathering data on the man, talking with those who’d known him, tracking down one by one the paintings he had made. And then the trail had ended. Clay had left a certain planet and no one knew where he’d gone; for years Lathrop had searched for some hint to where he’d gone, and had been close to giving up when he finally had found evidence that Clay had come to this place to die. But the evidence had strongly indicated that he had not come here directly from where the trail stopped, but had spent several years at some other place. So there was still a gap in the story that he followed—a gap of lost years, how many years there was no way of knowing.

Perhaps here, in this village, he might get a clue to where Clay had spent those years. But, he told himself, it could be no more than a clue. It could not be specific, for these little creatures had no concept of time or otherwhere.