Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

“No, I don’t,” said Granther. “Not him especially. I mean the whole kit and caboodle of us. Because, don’t you see, everybody who joins in this galactic culture that they are stewing up out there must contribute something and must likewise give up something—things that don’t fit in with the new ideas. And the human race has done just like the rest of them, except we haven’t given up a thing. Oh, on the surface, certainly. But everything we’ve given up is still back here, being kept alive by a bunch of subsidized barbarians on an old and gutted planet that a member of this fine galactic culture wouldn’t give a second look.”

“He’s horrible,” said Grandma. “Don’t pay attention to him. He’s got a mean and ornery soul inside that withered carcass.”

“And what is Man?” yelled Granther. “He’s mean and ornery, too, when he has to be. How could we have gone so far if we weren’t mean and ornery?”

And there was some truth in that, thought Paxton. For what humanity was doing here was deliberate doublecrossing. Although, come to think of it, he wondered, how many other races might be doing the very selfsame thing or its equivalent?

And, if you were going to do it, you had to do it right. You couldn’t take the human culture and enshrine it prettily within a museum, for then it would become no more than a shiny showpiece. A fine display of arrowheads was a pretty thing to look at, but a man would never learn to chip a flint into an arrowhead by merely looking at a bunch of them laid out on a velvet-covered board. To retain the technique of chipping arrows, you’d have to keep on chipping arrows, generation after generation, long after the need of them was gone. Fail by one generation and the art was lost.

And the same necessarily must be true of other human techniques and other human arts. And not the purely human arts alone, but the unique human flavor of other techniques which in themselves were common to many other races.

Elijah brought in an armload of wood and dumped it down upon the hearth, heaped an extra log or two upon the fire, then brushed itself off carefully.

“You’re wet,” said Grandma.

“It’s raining, madam,” said Elijah, going out the door.

And so, thought Paxton, Project Continuation kept on practicing the old arts, retaining within a living body of the race the knowledge of their manipulation and their use.

So the section on politics practiced politics and the section on diplomacy set up seemingly impossible problems in diplomacy and wrestled with those problems. And in the project factories, teams of industrialists carried on in the old tradition and fought a never-ending feud with the trade unionism teams. And, scattered throughout the land, quiet men and women painted and composed and wrote and sculpted so that the culture that had been wholly human would not perish in the face of the new and wonderful galactic culture that was evolving from the fusion of many intelligences out in the farther stars.

And against what day, wondered Paxton, do we carry on this work? Is it pure and simple, and perhaps even silly, pride? Is it no more than a further expression of human skepticism and human arrogance? Or does it make the solid sense that old Granther thinks it does?

“You’re in Politics, you say,” Granther said to Paxton. “Now that is what I’d call a worthwhile thing to save. From what I hear, this new culture doesn’t pay too much attention to what we call politics. There’s administration, naturally, and a sense of civic duty and all that sort of nonsense—but no real politics. Politics can be a powerful thing when you need to win a point.”

“Politics is a dirty business far too often,” Paxton answered. “It’s a fight for power, an effort to override and overrule the principles and policies of an opposing body. In even its best phase, it brought about the fiction of the minority, with the connotation that the mere fact of being a minority carries with it the penalty of being to a large extent ignored.”

“Still, it could be fun. I suppose it is exciting.”

“Yes, you could call it that,” said Paxton. “This last exercise we carried out was one with no holds barred. We had it planned that way. It was described somewhat delicately as a vicious battle.”

“And you were elected President,” said Nelson.

“That I was, but you didn’t hear me say I was proud of it.”

“But you should be,” Grandma insisted. “In the ancient days, it was a proud thing to be elected President.”

“Perhaps,” Paxton admitted, “but not the way my party did it.”

It would be so easy, he thought, to go ahead and tell them, for they would understand. To say: I carried it too far. I blackened my opponent’s name and character beyond any urgent need. I used all the dirty tricks. I bribed and lied and compromised and traded. And I did it all so well that I even fooled the logic that was the referee, which stood in lieu of populace and voter. And now my opponent has dug up another trick and is using it on me.

For assassination was political, even as diplomacy and war were political. After all, politics was little more than the short-circuiting of violence; an election was held rather than a revolution. But at all times the partition between politics and violence was a thin and flimsy thing.

He finished off his brandy and put the glass down on the table.

Granther picked up the bottle, but Paxton shook his head.

“Thank you,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I shall go to bed soon. I must get an early start.”

He never should have stopped here. It would be unforgivable to embroil these people in the aftermath of the exercise.

Although, he told himself, it probably was unfair to call it the aftermath—what was happening would have to be a part and parcel of the exercise itself.

The doorbell tinkled faintly and they could hear Elijah stirring in the hall.

“Sakes alive,” said Grandma, “who can it be this time of night? And raining outdoors, too!”

It was a churchman.

He stood in the hall, brushing water from his cloak. He took off his broad-brimmed hat and swished it to shake off the raindrops.

He came into the room with a slow and stately tread.

All of them arose.

“Good evening, Bishop,” said old Granther. “You were fortunate to find the house in this kind of weather and we’re glad to have Your Worship.”

The bishop beamed in fine, fast fellowship.

“Not of the church,” he said. “Of the project merely. But you may use the proper terms, if you have a mind. It helps me stay in character.”

Elijah, trailing in his wake, took his cloak and hat. The bishop was arrayed in rich and handsome garments.

Granther introduced them all around and found a glass and filled it from the bottle.

The bishop took it and smacked his lips. He sat down in a chair next to the fire.

“You have not dined, I take it,” Grandma said. “Of course you haven’t—there’s no place out there to dine. Elijah, get the bishop a plate of food, and hurry.”

“I thank you, madam,” said the bishop. “I’ve had a long, hard day. I appreciate all you’re doing for me. I appreciate it more than you can ever know.”

“This is our day,” Granther said merrily, refilling his own glass for the umpteenth time. “It is seldom that we have any guests at all and now, all of an evening, we have two of them.”

“Two guests,” said the bishop, looking straight at Paxton. “Now that is fine, indeed.”

He smacked his lips again and emptied the glass.

In his room, Paxton closed the door and shot the bolt full home.

The fire had burned down to embers and cast a dull glow along the floor. The rain drummed faintly, half-heartedly, on the window pane.