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

Doc hemmed and hawed, but finally he agreed.

“I’ll wait in the car,” he said. “You call me if you need me.”

He went crunching on down the driveway to where he had the car parked, and I went inside the house.

“Lester,” I said to the robot, “I’ve got to talk to Wilbur. It’s important.”

“No more sad stories,” Lester warned. “He’s had enough today.”

“No. I got a proposition.”

“Proposition?”

“A deal. A business arrangement.”

“All right,” said Lester. “I will get him up.”

It took quite a bit of getting up, but finally we had him fought awake and sitting on the bed.

“Wilbur, listen carefully,” I told him. “I have something right down your alley. A place where all the people have big and terrible troubles and an awful sadness. Not just some of them, but every one of them. They are so sad and troubled they can’t live with other people …”

Wilbur struggled off the bed, stood swaying on his feet.

“Lead me to ‘em, pal,” he said.

I pushed him down on the bed again. “It isn’t as easy as all that. It’s a hard place to get into.”

“I thought you said—”

“Look, I have a friend who can arrange it for you. But it might take some money—”

“Pal,” said Wilbur, “we got a roll of cash. How much would you need?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Lester, hand it over to him so he can make this deal.”

“Boss,” protested Lester, “I don’t know if we should.”

“We can trust Sam,” said Wilbur. “He is not the grasping sort. He won’t spend a cent more than is necessary.”

“Not a cent,” I promised.

Lester opened the door in his chest and handed me the roll of hundred-dollar bills and I stuffed it in my pocket.

“Now you will wait right here,” I told them, “and I’ll see this friend of mine. I’ll be back soon.”

And I was doing some fast arithmetic, wondering how much I could dare gouge out of Doc. It wouldn’t hurt to start a little high so I could come down when Doc would roar and howl and scream and say what good friends we were and how he always had given me a bottle at Christmas and at Easter.

I turned to go out into the living room and stopped dead in my tracks.

For standing in the doorway was another Wilbur, although when I looked at him more closely I saw the differences. And before he said a single word or did a single thing, I had a sinking feeling that something had gone wrong.

“Good evening, sir,” I said. “It’s nice of you to drop in.”

He never turned a hair. “I see you have guests. It shall desolate me to tear them away from you.”

Behind me, Lester was making noises as if his gears were stripping, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that Wilbur sat stiff and stricken and whiter than a fish.

“But you can’t do that,” I said. “They only just showed up.”

“You do not comprehend,” said the alien in the doorway. “They are breakers of the law. I have come to get them.”

“Pal,” said Wilbur, speaking to me, “I am truly sorry. I knew all along it would not work out.”

“By this time,” the other alien said to Wilbur, “you should be convinced of it and give up trying.”

And it was plain as paint, once you came to think of it, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. For if Earth was closed to the adventurers who’d gathered the indoctrination data …

“Mister,” I said to the alien in the doorway, “there are factors here of which I know you ain’t aware. Couldn’t you and me talk the whole thing over alone?”

“I should be happy,” said the alien, so polite it hurt, “but please understand that I must carry out a duty.”

“Why, certainly,” I said.

The alien stepped out of the doorway and made a sign behind him and two robots that had been standing in the living room just out of my line of vision came in.

“Now all is secure,” said the alien, “and we can depart to talk. I will listen most attentively.”

So I went out into the kitchen and he followed me. I sat down at the table and he sat across from me.

“I must apologize,” he told me gravely. “This miscreant imposes upon you and your planet.”

“Mister,” I told him back, “you have got it all wrong. I like this renegade of yours.”

“Like him?” he asked, horrified. “That is impossible. He is a drunken lout and furthermore than that—”

“And furthermore than that,” I said, grabbing the words right from his mouth, “he is doing us an awful lot of good.”

The alien looked flabbergasted. “You do not know that which you say! He drags from you your anxieties and feasts upon them most disgustingly, and he puts them down on record so he can pull them forth again and yet again to your eternal shame, and furthermore than that—”

“It’s not that way at all,” I shouted. “It does us a lot of good to pull out our anxieties and show them—.”

“Disgusting! More than that, indecent!” He stopped. “What was that?”

“Telling our anxieties does us good,” I said as solemnly as I could. “It’s a matter of confession.”

The alien banged an open palm against his forehead and the feathers on his catfish mouth stood straight out and quivered.

“It could be true,” he said in horror. “Given a culture so primitive and so besodden and so shameless …”

“Ain’t we, though?” I agreed.

“In our world,” said the alien, “there are no anxieties—well, not many. We are most perfectly adjusted.”

“Except for folks like Wilbur?”

“Wilbur?”

“Your pal in there,” I said. “I couldn’t say his name, so I call him Wilbur. By the way …”

He rubbed his hand across his face, and no matter what he said, it was plain to see that at that moment he was loaded with anxiety. “Call me Jake. Call me anything. Just so we get this mess resolved.”

“Nothing easier,” I said. “Let’s just keep Wilbur here. You don’t really want him, do you?”

“Want him?” wailed Jake. “He and all the others like him are nothing but a headache. But they are our problem and our responsibility. We can’t saddle you.”

“You mean there are more like Wilbur?”

Jake nodded sadly.

“We’ll take them all,” I said. “We would love to have them. Every one of them.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Sure we are,” I said. “That is why we need them.”

“You are certain, without any shadow of your doubt?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Pal,” said Jake, “you have made a deal.”

I stuck out my hand to shake on it, but I don’t think he even saw my hand. He rose out of the chair and you could see a vast relief lighting up his face.

Then he turned and stalked out of the kitchen.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I yelled. For there were details that I felt we should work out. But he didn’t seem to hear me.

I jumped out of the chair and raced for the living room, but by the time I got there, there was no sign of Jake. I ran into the bedroom and the two robots were gone, too. Wilbur and Lester were in there all alone.

“I told you,” Lester said to Wilbur, “that Mr. Sam would fix it.”

“I don’t believe it, pal,” said Wilbur. “Have they really gone? Have they gone for good? Is there any chance they will be coming back?”

I raised my arm and wiped off my forehead with my sleeve. “They won’t bother you again. You are finally shut of them.”

“That is excellent,” said Wilbur. “And now about this deal.”

“Sure,” I said. “Give me just a minute. I’ll go out and see the man.”

I stepped out on the stoop and stood there for a while to get over shaking. Jake and his two robots had come very close to spoiling everything. I needed a drink worse than I had ever needed one, but I didn’t dare take the time. I had to get Doc on the dotted line before something else turned up.