Clifford Simak - The Ghost of a Model T - And Other Stories

The swamp had a deadly look about it—and it waited. Confident and assured, certain that no one could cross it. All its traps were set and all its nets were spread and it had a patience that no man could match.

Perhaps, he thought, it did not really wait. Maybe it was just a little silly to imagine that it waited. Rather, perhaps, it was simply an entity that did not care. A human life to it was nothing. To it a human life was no more precious than a snake’s life, or the life of a dragonfly, or of a tiny fish. It would not help and it would not warn and it had no kindness.

He shivered, thinking of this great uncaring. An uncaring that was even worse than if it waited with malignant forethought. For if it waited, at least it was aware of you. At least it paid you the compliment of some slight importance.

Even in the heat of the day, he felt the slimy coldness of the swamp reaching out for him and he shrank back from it, knowing as he did that he could not face it. Despite all the brave words he had mouthed, all his resolution, he would not dare to face it. It was too big for a man to fight—it was too green and greedy.

He hunkered in upon himself, trying to compress himself into a ball of comfort, although he was aware that there was no comfort. There never would be comfort, for now he’d failed himself.

In a little while, he thought, he’d have to get up from where he crouched and go down to the huts. And once he went down there, he knew he would be lost, that he would become one with those others who likewise could not face the swamp. He would live out his life there, fishing for some food, chopping a little wood, caring for the sick, and sitting listless in the sun.

He felt a flare of anger at the system which would sentence a man to such a life as that and he cursed the robots, knowing as he cursed that they were not the ones who were responsible. The robots were a symbol only of the health law situation.

They had been made the physicians and the surgeons to the human race because they were quick as well as steady, because their judgment was unfrayed by any flicker of emotion, because they were as dedicated as the best of human doctors ever had been, because they were tireless and unthinking of themselves.

And that was well and good. But the human race, as it always did, had gone overboard. It had made the robot not only the good and faithful doctor, but it had made him guardian and czar of human health, and in doing this had concocted a metallic ogre.

Would there ever be a day, he wondered, when humans would be done for good and all with its goblins and its ogres?

The anger faded out and he crouched dispirited and afraid and all alone beside the black waters of the swamp.

A coward, he told himself. And there was a bitter taste inside his brain and a weakness in his belly.

Get up, he told himself. Get up and go down to the huts.

But he didn’t. He stayed, as if there might be some sort of reprieve, as if he might be hoping that from some unknown and unprobed source he might dredge up the necessary courage to walk into the swamp.

But the hope, he knew, was a hollow hope.

He had come to the end of hope. Ten years ago he could have done it. But not now. He’d lost too much along the way.

He heard the footsteps behind him and threw a look across his shoulders.

It was Kitty.

She squatted down beside him.

“Eric is getting the stuff together,” she told him. “He’ll be along in a little while.”

“The stuff?”

“Food. A couple of machetes. Some rope.”

“But I don’t understand.”

“He was just waiting for someone who had the guts to tackle it. He figures that you have. He always said one man didn’t have a chance, but maybe two men had. Two men, helping one another, just might have a chance.”

“But he told me…”

“Sure. I know what he told you. What I told you, too. And even in the face of that, you never wavered. That is how we knew.”

“We?”

“Of course,” said Kitty. “The three of us. I am going, too.”

It took the swamp four days to beat the first of them.

Curiously, it was Eric, the youngest and the strongest.

He stumbled as they walked along a narrow ridge of land, flanked by tangled brush on one hand, by a morass on the other.

Alden, who was following, helped him to his feet, but he could not stand. He staggered for a step or two, then collapsed again.

“Just a little rest,” Eric panted. “Just a little rest and then I’ll be able to go on.”

He crawled, with Alden helping, to a patch of shade, lay flat upon his back, a limp figure of a man.

Kitty sat beside him and stroked his hair back from his forehead.

“Maybe you should build a fire,” she said to Alden. “Something hot may help him. All of us could use a bit of something.”

Alden turned off the ridge and plunged into the brush. The footing was soft and soggy and in places he sank in muck half way to his knees.

He found a small dead tree and pulled branches off it. The fire, he knew, must be small, and of wood that was entirely dry, for any sign of smoke might alert the patrol that flew above the swamp.

Back on the ridge again, he used a machete to slice some shavings off a piece of wood and stacked it all with care. It must start on one match, for they had few matches.

Kitty came and knelt beside him, watching.

“Eric is asleep,” she said. “And it’s not just tuckered out. I think he has a fever.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” said Alden. “We’ll stay here until morning. He may feel better, then. Some extra rest may put him on his feet.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We’ll stay another day,” he said. “The three of us together. That’s what we said back there. We would stick together.”

She put out a hand and laid it on his arm.

“I was sure you’d say that,” she said. “Eric was so sure and he was so right. He said you were the man he had been waiting for.”

Alden shook his head. “It’s not only Eric,” he declared. “It’s not only us. It’s those others back there. Remember how they helped us? They gave us food, even when it meant they might go a bit more hungry. They gave us two fishhooks out of the six they had. One of them copied the map that Doc had carried. They fixed up a pair of shoes for me because they said I wasn’t used to going without shoes. And they all came to see us off and watched until we were out of sight.”

He paused and looked at her.

“It’s not just us,” he said. “It’s all of us…all of us in Limbo.”

She put up a hand and brushed the hair out of her eyes.

“Did anyone,” he asked her, “ever tell you that you are beautiful?”

She made a grimace. “Long ago,” she said. “But not for years. Life had been too hard. But once, I guess, you could have said that I was beautiful.”

She made a fluttery motion with her hands. “Light the fire,” she told him. “Then go and catch some fish. Laying over this way, we’ll need the food.”

Alden woke at the first faint edge of dawn and lay staring out across the inky water that looked, in the first flush of day, like a floor of black enamel that had just been painted and had not dried as yet, with the shine of wetness showing here and there. A great awkward bird launched itself off a dead tree stub and flapped ungracefully down to skim above the water so that little ripples ran in the black enamel.

Stiffly, Alden sat up. His bones ached from the dampness and he was stiff with the chill of night.

A short distance away, Kitty lay curled into a ball, still sleeping. He glanced toward the spot where Eric had been sleeping when he himself had gone to bed, and there was no one there.

Startled, he leaped to his feet.