Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Webster slid back his chair, opened a desk drawer, took out a sheaf of papers.

One eye on the televisor plate, he snapped over the toggle that called his secretary.

“Yes, Mr. Webster.”

“I’m going to call on Mr. Fowler,” said Webster. “If a call comes through—”

The secretary’s voice shook just a little. “If one does, sir, I’ll contact you right away.”

“Thanks,” said Webster.

He snapped the toggle back.

They’ve heard of it already, he thought. Everyone in the whole building is standing around with their tongues hanging out, waiting for the news.

Kent Fowler lounged in a chair in the garden outside his room, watching the little black terrier dig frantically after an imagined rabbit.

“You know, Rover,” said Fowler, “you aren’t fooling me.”

The dog stopped digging, looked over his shoulder with grinning teeth, barked excitedly. Then went back to digging.

“You’ll slip up one of these days,” Fowler told him, “and say a word or two and I’ll have you dead to rights.”

Rover went on digging.

Foxy little devil, thought Fowler. Smarter than a whip. Webster sicked him on me and he’s played the part, all right. He’s dug for rabbits and he’s been disrespectful to the shrubs and he’s scratched for fleas—the perfect picture of a perfect dog. But I’m on to him. I’m on to all of them.

A foot crunched in the grass and Fowler looked up.

“Good evening,” said Tyler Webster.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d come,” said Fowler shortly. “Sit down and give it to me—straight. You don’t believe me, do you?”

Webster eased himself into the second chair, laid the sheaf of papers in his lap.

“I can understand how you feel,” he said.

“I doubt if you can,” snapped Fowler. “I came here, bringing news that I thought was important. A report that had cost me more than you can imagine.”

He hunched forward in his chair. “I wonder if you can realize that every hour I’ve spent as a human being has been mental torture.”

“I’m sorry,” said Webster. “But we had to be sure. We had to check your reports.”

“And make certain tests?”

Webster nodded.

“Like Rover over there?”

“His name isn’t Rover,” said Webster, gently. “If you’ve been calling him that, you’ve hurt his feelings. All the dogs have human names. This one’s Elmer.”

Elmer had stopped his digging, was trotting toward them. He sat down beside Webster’s chair, scrubbed at his dirt-filled whiskers with a clay-smeared paw.

“What about it, Elmer?” asked Webster.

“He’s human, all right,” said the dog, “but not all human. Not a mutant, you know. But something else. Something alien.”

“That’s to be expected,” said Fowler. “I was a Loper for five years.”

Webster nodded. “You’d retain part of the personality. That’s understandable. And the dog would spot it. They’re sensitive to things like that. Psychic, almost. That’s why we put them on the mutants. They can sniff one out no matter where he is.”

“You mean that you believe me?”

Webster rustled the papers in his lap, smoothed them out with a careful hand. “I’m afraid I do.”

“Why afraid?”

“Because,” Webster told him, “you’re the greatest threat mankind’s ever faced.”

“Threat! Man, don’t you understand? I’m offering you… offering you—”

“Yes, I know,” said Webster. “The word is Paradise.”

“And you’re afraid of that?”

“Terrified,” said Webster. “Just try to envision what it would mean if we told the people and the people all believed. Everyone would want to go to Jupiter and become a Loper. The very fact that the Lopers apparently have life spans running into thousands of years would be reason enough if there were no others.

“We would be faced by a system-wide demand that everyone immediately be sent to Jupiter. No one would want to remain human. In the end there would be no humans—all the humans would be Lopers. Had you thought of that?”

Fowler licked his lips with a nervous tongue. “Certainly. That is what I had expected.”

“The human race would disappear,” said Webster, speaking evenly. “It would be wiped out. It would junk all the progress it has made over thousands of years. It would disappear just when it is on the verge of its greatest advancement.”

“But you don’t know,” protested Fowler. “You can’t know. You’ve never been a Loper. I have.” He tapped his chest. “I know what it is like.”

Webster shook his head. “I’m not arguing on that score. I’m ready to concede that it may be better to be a Loper than a human. What I can’t concede is that we would be justified in wiping out the human race—that we should trade what the human race has done and will do for what the Lopers might do. The human race is going places. Maybe not so pleasantly nor so clear-headedly nor as brilliantly as your Lopers, but in the long run I have a feeling that it will go much farther. We have a racial heritage and a racial destiny that we can’t throw away.”

Fowler leaned forward in his chair. “Look,” he said, “I’ve played this fair. I came straight to you and the World Committee. I could have told the press and radio and forced your hand, but I didn’t do it.”

“What you’re getting at,” suggested Webster, “is that the World Committee doesn’t have the right to decide this thing themselves. You’re suggesting that the people have their say about it.”

Fowler nodded, tight-lipped.

“Frankly,” said Webster, “I don’t trust the people. You’d get mob reaction. Selfish response. Not a one of them would think about the race, but only of themselves.”

“Are you telling me,” asked Fowler, “that I’m right, but you can’t do a thing about it?”

“Not exactly. We’ll have to work out something. Maybe Jupiter could be made a sort of old folks’ home. After a man had lived out a useful life—”

Fowler made a tearing sound of disgust deep inside his throat. “A reward,” he snapped. “Turning an old horse out to pasture. Paradise by special dispensation.”

“That way,” Webster pointed out, “we’d save the human race and still have Jupiter.”

Fowler came to his feet in a swift, lithe motion. “I’m sick of it,” he shouted. “I brought you a thing you wanted to know. A thing you spent billions of dollars and, so far as you knew, hundreds of lives, to find out. You set up reconversion stations all over Jupiter and you sent out men by dozens and they never came back and you thought that they were dead and still you sent out others. And none of them came back—because they didn’t want to come back, because they couldn’t come back, because they couldn’t stomach being men again. Then I came back and what does it amount to? A lot of high-flown talk … a lot of quibbling … questioning me and doubting me. Then finally saying I am all right, but that I made a mistake in coming back at all.”

He let his arms fall to his side and his shoulders drooped.

“I’m free, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t need to stay here.”

Webster nodded slowly. “Certainly, you are free. You were free all the time. I only asked that you stay until I could check.”

“I could go back to Jupiter?”

“In the light of the situation,” said Webster, “that might be a good idea.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t suggest it,” said Fowler, bitterly. “It would be an out for you. You could file away the report and forget about it and go on running the Solar System like a child’s game played on a parlor floor. Your family has blundered its way through centuries and the people let you come back for more. One of your ancestors lost the world the Juwain philosophy and another blocked the effort of the humans to co-operate with the mutants—”