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

“Peace, the deeper concept of peace, is not for the human race, never was meant for the human race. Conflict is our meat. The desire to beat the other fellow to it, the hankering for glorification, the tendency to heave out one’s chest and say, ‘I’m the guy that done it,’ the satisfaction of tackling a hard job and doing it, even looking for a hard job just for the hell of doing it.”

A springtime breeze blew softly through the window. A bird sang and a hushed clock ticked.

There were faces in the blackness that loomed before the speeding spaceship. Faces that swirled in the blackness and shouted. All sorts of faces. Old men and babies. Well-dressed man-about-town and tramp in tattered rags. Women, too. Women with flying hair and tear-streaked cheeks. All shouting, hooked hands raised in anger.

Faces that protested. Faces that pleaded. Faces that damned and called down curses.

Harrison Kemp passed a hand slowly across his eyes and when he took it away the faces were gone. Only space leered back at him.

But he couldn’t shake from his mind the things those mouths had said, the words the tongues had shaped.

“What have you done? You have taken Sanctuary from us!”

Sanctuary! Something the race had leaned upon, had counted on, the assurance of a cure, a refuge from the mental mania that ranged up and down the worlds.

Something that was almost God. Something that was the people’s friend—a steadying hand in the darkness. It was something that was there, always would be there, a shining light in a troubled world, a comforter, something that would never change, something one could tie to.

And now?

Kemp shuddered at the thought.

One word and he could bring all that structure tumbling down about their ears. With one blow he could take away their faith and their assurance. With one breath he could blow Sanctuary into a flimsy house of cards.

For him, he knew, Sanctuary was gone forever. Knowing what he knew, he never could go back. But what about those others? What about the ones who still believed? Might it not be better that he left them their belief? Even if it led down a dangerous road. Even if it were a trap.

But was it a trap? That was a thing, of course, that he could not know. Perhaps, rather, it was the way to a better life.

Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps he should have stayed and accepted what Sanctuary offered.

If a human being, as a human being, could not carry out his own destiny, if the race were doomed to madness, if evolution had erred in bringing man along the path he followed what then? If the human way of life were basically at fault, would it not be better to accept a change before it was too late? On what basis, after all, could mankind judge?

In years to come, working through several generations, Sanctuary might mold mankind to its pattern, might change the trend of human thought and action, point out a different road to travel.

And if that were so, who could say that it was wrong?

Bells were ringing. Not the bells he had heard back on Sanctuary, nor yet the bells he remembered of a Sunday morning in his own home town, but bells that came hauntingly from space. Bells that tolled and blotted out his thoughts.

Madness. Madness stalking the worlds. And yet, need there be madness? Findlay wasn’t mad—probably never would go mad.

Kemp’s brain suddenly buzzed with a crazy-quilt of distorted thought:

Sanctuary … Pluto … Johnny Gardner …. what is life … we’ll try again—

Unsteadily he reached out for the instrument board, but his fingers were all thumbs. His mind blurred and for one wild moment of panic he could not recognize the panel before him—for one long instant it was merely a curious object with colored lights and many unfamiliar mechanisms.

His brain cleared momentarily and a thought coursed through it—an urgent thought. Man need not go mad!

Spencer Chambers! Spencer Chambers had to know!

He reached for the radio and his fingers wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t go where he wanted them to go.

Kemp set his teeth and fought his hand, fought it out to the radio-control knobs, made his fingers do the job his brain wanted them to do, made them work the dials, forced his mouth to say the things that must be said.

“Kemp calling Earth. Kemp calling Earth. Kemp calling—”

A voice said, “Earth. Go ahead, Kemp.”

His tongue refused to move. His hand fell from the set, swayed limply at his side.

“Go ahead, Kemp,” the voice urged. “Go ahead Kemp. Go ahead, Kemp.”

Kemp grappled with the grayness that was dropping over him, fought it back by concentrating on the simple mechanics of making his lips and tongue move as they had to move.

“Spencer Chambers,” he croaked.

“You should have stayed in Sanctuary,” blared a voice in his head. “You should have stayed. You should have—”

“Spencer Chambers speaking,” said a voice out of the radio. “What is it, Kemp?”

Kemp tried to answer, couldn’t.

“Kemp!” yelled Chambers. “Kemp, where are you? What’s the matter? Kemp—”

Words came from Kemp’s mouth, distorted words, taking a long time to say, jerky—

“No time … one thing. Hunch. That’s it. Chambers … hunch—”

“What do you mean, lad?” yelled Chambers.

“Hunches. Have to play …. hunches. Everyone hasn’t … got … them. Find … those … who … have—”

There was silence. Chambers was waiting. A wave of grayness blotted out the ship, blotted out space—then light came again.

Kemp gripped the side of his chair with one hand while the other swayed limply at his side. What had he been saying? Where was he? One word buzzed in his brain. What was that word?

Out of the past came a snatch of memory.

“Findlay,” he said.

“Yes, what about Findlay?”

“Hunches like … instinct. See … into … future—”

The radio bleated at him. “Kemp! What’s the matter? Go on. Do you mean hunches are a new instinct? Tell me. Kemp!”

Harrison Kemp heard nothing. The grayness had come again, blotting out everything. He sat in his chair and his hands hung dangling. His vacant eyes stared into space.

The ship drove on.

On the floor lay a stick, a club Harrison Kemp had picked up on Sanctuary.

The intercommunications set buzzed. Fumbling, Chambers snapped up the tumbler.

“Mr. Allen is here,” said the secretary’s voice.

“Send him in,” said Chambers.

Allen came in, flung his hat on the floor beside a chair, sat down.

“Boys just reported they found Kemp’s ship,” he said. “Easy to trace it. Radio was wide open.”

“Yes?” asked Chambers.

“Loony,” said Allen.

Chambers’ thin lips pressed together. “I was afraid so. He sounded like it. Like he was fighting it off. And he did fight it off. Long enough, at least, to tell us what he wanted us to know.”

“It’s queer,” Monk said, “that we never thought of it. That someone didn’t think of it. It had to wait until a man on the verge of insanity could think of it.”

“It may not work,” said Chambers, “but it’s worth a try. Hunches, he said, are instinct—a new instinct, the kind we need in the sort of world we live in. Once, long ago, we had instinct the same as animals, but we got rid of it, we got civilized and lost it. We didn’t need it any longer. We substituted things for it. Like law and order, houses and other safeguards against weather and hunger and fear.

“Now we face new dangers. Dangers that accompany the kind of civilization we have wrought. We need new instinct to protect us against those dangers. Maybe we have it in hunches or premonition or intuition or whatever name you want to hang on it. Something we’ve been developing for a long time, for the past ten thousand years, perhaps, never realizing that he had it.”