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

“All right,” said Maxwell. “All right. Keep your shirt on. But the boys won’t like it. They won’t like getting shot at to do something you change your mind about.”

Carter straightened from the radio.

“Let me assure you, Mr. Adams,” he said, “that this is all a big mistake.”

“It is,” Adams declared solemnly. “A very great mistake, mayor. The biggest one you ever made.”

For a moment the two of them stood there, looking across the room at one another.

“Tomorrow,” said Adams, “I shall file a petition with the courts asking dissolution of the city charter. As owner of the greatest portion of the land included in the corporate limits, both from the standpoint of area and valuation, I understand I have a perfect legal right to do that.”

The mayor gulped, finally brought out some words.

“Upon what grounds?” he asked.

“Upon the grounds,” said Adams, “that there is no further need of it. I do not believe I shall have too hard a time to prove my case.”

“But … but … that means …”

“Yeah,” said Gramp, “you know what it means. It means you are out right on your ear.”

“A park,” said Gramp, waving his arm over the wilderness that once had been the residential section of the city. “A park so that people can remember how their old folks lived.”

The three of them stood on Tower Hill, with the rusty old water tower looming above them, its sturdy steel legs planted in a sea of waist-high grass.

“Not a park, exactly,” explained Henry Adams. “A memorial, rather. A memorial to an era of communal life that will be forgotten in another hundred years. A preservation of a number of peculiar types of construction that arose to suit certain conditions and each man’s particular tastes. No slavery to any architectural concepts, but an effort made to achieve better living. In another hundred years men will walk through those houses down there with the same feeling of respect and awe they have when they go into a museum today. It will be to them something out of what amounts to a primeval age, a stepping stone on the way to the better, fuller life. Artists will spend their lives transferring those old houses to their canvases. Writers of historical novels will come here for the breath of authenticity.”

“But you said you meant to restore all the houses, make the lawns and gardens exactly like they were before,” said Webster. “That will take a fortune. And after that, another fortune to keep them in shape.”

“I have too much money,” said Adams. “Entirely too much money. Remember, my grandfather and father got into atomics on the ground floor.”

“Best crap player I ever knew, your granddaddy was,” said Gramp. “Used to take me for a cleaning every pay day.”

“In the old days,” said Adams, “when a man had too much money, there were other things he could do with it. Organized charities, for example. Or medical research or something like that. But there are no organized charities today. Not enough business to keep them going. And since the World Committee has hit its stride, there is ample money for all the research, medical or otherwise, anyone might wish to do.

“I didn’t plan this thing when I came back to see my grandfather’s old house. Just wanted to see it, that was all. He’d told me so much about it. How he planted the tree in the front lawn. And the rose garden he had out back.

“And then I saw it. And it was a mocking ghost. It was something that had been left behind. Something that had meant a lot to someone and had been left behind. Standing there in front of that house with Gramp that day, it came to me that I could do nothing better than preserve for posterity a cross section of the life their ancestors lived.”

A thin blue thread of smoke rose above the trees far below.

Webster pointed to it. “What about them?”

“The Squatters stay,” said Adams, “if they want to. There will be plenty of work for them to do. And there’ll always be a house or two that they can have to live in.

“There’s just one thing that bothers me. I can’t be here all the time myself. I’ll need someone to manage the project. It’ll be a lifelong job.”

He looked at Webster.

“Go ahead, Johnny,” said Gramp.

Webster shook his head. “Betty’s got her heart set on that place out in the country.”

“You wouldn’t have to stay here,” said Adams. “You could fly in every day.”

From the foot of the hill came a hail.

“It’s Ole,” yelled Gramp.

He waved his cane. “Hi, Ole. Come on up.”

They watched Ole striding up the hill, waiting for him, silently.

“Wanted to talk to you, Johnny,” said Ole. “Got an idea. Waked me out of a sound sleep last night.”

“Go ahead,” said Webster.

Ole glanced at Adams. “He’s all right,” said Webster. “He’s Henry Adams. Maybe you remember his grandfather, old F. J.”

“I remember him,” said Ole. “Nuts about atomic power, he was. How did he make out?”

“He made out rather well,” said Adams.

“Glad to hear that,” Ole said. “Guess I was wrong. Said he never would amount to nothing. Daydreamed all the time.”

“How about that idea?” Webster asked.

“You heard about dude ranches, ain’t you?” Ole asked.

Webster nodded.

“Place,” said Ole, “where people used to go and pretend they were cowboys. Pleased them because they really didn’t know all the hard work there was in ranching and figured it was romantic-like to ride horses and –”

“Look,” asked Webster, “you aren’t figuring on turning your farm into a dude ranch, are you?”

“Nope,” said Ole. “Not a dude ranch. Dude farm, maybe. Folks don’t know too much about farms any more, since there ain’t hardly no farms. And they’ll read about the frost being on the pumpkin and how pretty a –”

Webster stared at Ole. “They’d go for it, Ole,” he declared. “They’d kill one another in the rush to spend their vacation on a real, honest-to-God, old-time farm.”

Out of a clump of bushes down the hillside burst a shining thing that chattered and gurgled and screeched, blades flashing, a cranelike arm waving.

“What the –” asked Adams.

“It’s that dadburned lawn mower!” yelped Gramp.

This story, sold to Amazing Stories in 1950 under the title “Mirage,” ended up being published as “Seven Came Back,” although Cliff reverted to the original title in subsequent publications. (For some reason, I have always liked it as “Seven Came Back”—I used the name once in another book, in tribute—but in deference to the author I include the story here with its intended title.) “Mirage” displays Cliff’s fascination with dying civilizations (he mentions, at one point, the “scholarly investigation of the symbolic water jugs” of Mars, and it might bear noting that a Martian water jug played a pivotal part of one of his earlier stories, “Shadow of Life”)—as well as his belief in the brotherhood of the living.

A planet has to be really, really old, before even its animals are able to talk. …

They came out of the Martian night, six pitiful little creatures looking for a seventh.

They stopped at the edge of the campfire’s lighted circle and stood there, staring at the three Earthmen with their owlish eyes.

The Earthmen froze at whatever they were doing.

“Quiet,” said Wampus Smith, talking out of the corner of his bearded lips. “They’ll come in if we don’t make a move.”

From far away came a faint, low moaning, floating in across the wilderness of sand and jagged pinnacles of rock and the great stone buttes.