Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

Bishop floundered. “I can’t understand,” he said.

“Of course you can’t,” she said. “It’s an entirely new departure for you. Your culture is so constituted that there must be a certain physical assurance of each person’s wealth and worth. Here we do not need that physical assurance. Here each person carries in his head the simple bookkeeping of his worth and debts. It is there for him to know. It is there for his friends and business associates to see at any time they wish.”

“It isn’t business, then,” said Bishop. “Not business as I think of it.”

“Exactly,” said the girl.

“But I am trained for business, I spent—”

“Years and years of study. But on Earth’s methods of business, not on Kimon’s.”

“But there are businessmen here. Hundreds of them.”

“Are there?” she asked.

She was smiling at him. Not a superior smile, nor a taunting one—just smiling at him.

“What you need,” she said, “is contact with Kimonians. A chance to get to know your way around. An opportunity to appreciate our point of view and get the hang of how we do things.”

“That sounds all right,” said Bishop. “How do I go about it?”

“There have been instances,” said the girl, “when Earth people sold their services as companions.”

“I don’t think I’d care much for that. It sounds…well, like baby sitting or reading to old ladies or…”

“Can you play an instrument or sing?”

Bishop shook his head.

“Paint? Draw? Dance?”

He couldn’t do any of them.

“Box, perhaps,” she said. “Physical combat. That is popular at times, if it’s not overdone.”

“You mean prize fighting?”

“I think that is one way you describe it.”

“No, I can’t,” said Bishop.

“That doesn’t leave much,” she said as she picked up some papers.

“Transportation?” he asked.

“Transportation is a personal matter.”

And of course it was, he told himself. With telekinesis you could transport yourself or anything you might have a mind to move—without mechanical aid.

“Communications,” he said weakly. “I suppose that is the same?”

She nodded.

With telepathy, it would be.

“You know about transportation and communications, Mr. Bishop?”

“Earth variety,” said Bishop. “No good here, I gather.”

“None at all,” she said. “Although we might arrange a lecture tour. Some of us would help you put your material together.”

Bishop shook his head. “I can’t talk,” he said.

She got up.

“I’ll check around,” she said. “Drop in again. We’ll find something that you’ll fit.”

“Thanks,” he said and went back to the lobby.

He went for a walk.

There were no roads or paths.

There was nothing.

The hotel stood on the plain and there was nothing else.

No buildings around it. No village. No roads. Nothing.

It stood there, huge and ornate and lonely, like a misplaced thing.

It stood stark against the skyline, for there were no other buildings to blend into it and soften it and it looked like something that someone in a hurry had dumped down and left.

He struck out across the plain toward some trees that he thought must mark a watercourse and he wondered why there were no paths or roads, but suddenly he knew why there were no paths or roads.

He thought about the years he had spent cramming business administration into his brain and he remembered the huge book of excerpts from the letters written home from Kimon hinting at big business deals, at responsible positions.

And the thought struck him that there was one thing in common in all of the excerpts in the book—that the deals and positions were always hinted at, that no one had ever told exactly what he did.

Why did they do it? he asked himself. Why did they fool us all?

Although, of course, there might be more to it than he knew. He had been on Kimon for somewhat less than a full day’s time. I’ll look around, the Grecian blonde had said—I’ll look around, we’ll find something that you fit.

He went on across the plain and reached the line of trees and found the stream. It was a prairie stream, a broad, sluggish flow of crystal water between two grassy banks. Lying on his stomach to peer into the depths, he saw the flash of fishes far below him.

He took off his shoes and dangled his feet in the water and kicked a little to make the water splash, and he thought:

They know all about us. They know about our life and culture. They know about the leopard banners and how Senlac must have looked on Saturday, October 14, 1066, with the hosts of England massed upon the hilltop and the hosts of William on the plain below.

They know what makes us tick and they let us come and because they let us come, there must be some value in us.

What had the girl said, the girl who had floated to the stool and then left with her drink still standing and untouched. Faint amusement, she had said. You get used to it, she had said. If you don’t think too much about it, you get used to it.

See me in a week, she had said. In a week you and I can talk. And she had called him Buster.

Well, maybe she had a right to call him that. He had been starry-eyed and a sort of eager beaver. And probably ignorant-smug.

They know about us and how do they know about us?

Senlac might have been staged, but he didn’t think so—there was a strange, grim reality about it that got under your skin, a crawling sort of feeling that told you it was true, that that was how it had happened and had been. That there had been no Taillefer and that a man had died with his guts dragging in the grass and that the Englishmen had cried “Ut! Ut!” which might have meant almost anything at all or nothing just as well, but probably had meant “Out.”

He sat there, cold and lonely, wondering how they did it. How they had made it possible for a man to punch a button and live a scene long dead, to see the death of men who had long been dust mingled with the earth.

There was no way to know, of course.

There was no use to guess.

Technical information, Morley Reed had said, that would revolutionize our entire economic pattern.

He remembered Morley pacing up and down the room and saying: “We must find out about them. We must find out.”

And there was a way to find out.

There was a splendid way.

He took his feet out of the water and dried them with handfuls of grass. He put his shoes back on and walked back to the hotel sitting by itself.

The blond goddess was still at her desk in the Employment Bureau.

“About that baby-sitting job,” he said.

She looked startled for a moment—terribly, almost childishly startled; but her face slid swiftly back to its goddess-mask.

“Yes, Mr. Bishop.”

“I’ve thought it over,” he said. “If you have that kind of job I’ll take it.”

He lay in bed, sleepless, for a long time that night and took stock of himself and of the situation and he came to a decision that it might not be as bad as he thought it was.

There were jobs to be had, apparently. The Kimonians even seemed anxious that you should get a job. And even if it weren’t the kind of work a man might want, or the kind that he was fitted for, it at least would be a start. From that first foothold a man could go up—a clever man, that is. And all the men and women, all the Earthians on Kimon, certainly were clever. If they weren’t clever, they wouldn’t be there to start with.

All of them seemed to be getting along. He had not seen either Monty or Maxine that evening but he had talked to others and all of them seemed to be satisfied—or at least keeping up the appearance of being satisfied. If there were general dissatisfaction, Bishop told himself, there wouldn’t even be the appearance of being satisfied, for there is nothing that an Earthian likes better than some quiet and mutual griping. And he had heard none of it—none of it at all.