Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

From that feeble, vulnerable creature, how had he evolved?

Could it be death, he wondered, and was aghast at death, which was a new concept. Death, an ending, and there was no end, never would be one; a thing that was an intellect trapped within a force field could exist forever. But somewhere along the way, somewhere in the course of evolution, or of engineering, could death have played a part? Must a man come to death before he came to this?

He sat upon the crater’s rim and knew the surface of the planet all about him – the red of land, the yellow of the sky, the green and purple of the flowers, the gurgle of the liquid running in its courses, the red and blue of suns and the shadows that they cast, the running thing that threw up spurts of sand, the limestone and the fossils.

And something else as well and with the sensing of that something else a fear and panic he had never known before. Had never had the need to know, for he had been protected and immune, untouchable, secure, perhaps even in the center of a sun. There had been nothing that could get at him, no way he could be reached.

But that was true no longer, for now he could be reached. Something had torn from him an ancient memory and had shown it to him. Here, on this planet, there was a factor that could get at him, that could reach into him and tear from him something even he had not suspected.

He screamed a question and phantom echoes ran across the land, bouncing back to mock him. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Fainter and fainter and the only answers were the echoes.

It could afford not to answer him, he knew. It need not answer him. It could sit smug and silent while he screamed the question, waiting until it wished to strip other memories from him, memories for its own strange use, or to further mock him.

He was safe no longer. He was vulnerable. Naked to this thing that used a mirror to convince him of his own vulnerability.

He screamed again and this time the scream was directed to those others of his kind who had sent him out.

Take me back! I am naked! Save me!

Silence.

I have worked for you – I have dug out the data for you – I have done my job – You owe me something now!

Silence.

Please!

Silence.

Silence – and something more than silence. Not only silence, but an absence, a not being there, a vacuum.

The realization came thudding hard into his understanding. He had been abandoned, all ties with him had been cut – in the depth of unguessed space, he had been set adrift. They had washed their hands of him and he was not only naked, but alone.

They knew what had happened. They knew everything that ever happened to him, they monitored him continuously and would know everything he knew. And they had sensed the danger, perhaps even before he, himself, had sensed it. Had recognized the danger, not only to himself, but to themselves as well. If something could get to him, it could trace back the linkage and get to them as well. So the linkage had been cut and would not be restored. They weren’t taking any chances. It had been something that had been emphasized time and time again. You must remain not only unrecognized, but entirely unsuspected. You must do nothing that will make you known. You must never point a finger at us.

Cold, callous, indifferent. And frightened. More frightened, perhaps, than he was. For now they knew there was something in the galaxy that could become aware of the disembodied observer they had been sending out. They could never send another, if indeed they had another, for the old fear would be there. And perhaps an even greater fear – based upon the overriding suspicion that the linkage had been cut not quite soon enough, that this factor which had spotted their observer had already traced it back to them.

Fear for their bodies and their profits …

Not for their bodies, a voice said inside him. Not their biologic bodies. There are no longer any of your kind who have biologic bodies …

Then what? he asked.

An extension of their bodies, carrying on the purpose those with bodies gave them in a time when the bodies still existed. Carried on mindlessly ever since, but without a purpose, only with a memory of a purpose …

Who are you? he asked. How do you know all this? What will you do with me?

In a very different way, it said, I am one like you. You can be like me. You have your freedom now.

I have nothing, he said.

You have yourself, it said. Is that not enough?

But is self enough? he asked.

And did not need an answer.

For self was the basis of all life, all sentience. The institutions, the cultures, the economics were no more than structures for the enhancement of the self. Self now was all he had and self belonged to him. It was all he needed.

Thank you, sir, said he, the last human in the universe.

Cliff Simak wrote this story under the name “Gunsmoke Goes to Press,” but it was published, in the September 1944 issue of New Western Magazine, under a new title … and these days it’s likely that many readers will miss the play on words in the new title. If you’ve read a few Westerns, you probably know that “hot lead” is a euphemism for a gunfight – but the protagonist of this story is a frontier newspaper editor in the days when newspaper publishing often required melting down and recasting the lead alloy used to set type on the printing press. (As it turned out, “Gunsmoke Goes to Press” was retained as a chapter heading in the newly titled story.)

Clifford D. Simak seems to have had some following in Western literature of the era – in this case, his story was the topmost of the two listed on the front cover of the magazine, and it appeared as the first story in the magazine. Cliff’s journal shows that he was paid $120 for it during a period when the cover price of the magazine was fifteen cents. Several characters in the story bear the names of towns in the area of Wisconsin where Cliff grew up, and the protagonist bears as a last name the name of Cliff’s younger brother, Carson.

Morgan Carson, editor of the Trail City Tribune, knew trouble when he saw it – and it was walking across the street straight toward his door.

Dropping in alone, either Jackson Quinn, the town’s lone lawyer, or Roger Delavan, the banker, would have been just visitors stopping by to pass the time of day. But when they came together, there was something in the wind.

Jake the printer clumped in from the back room, stick of type clutched in his fist, bottle joggling in hip pocket with every step he took, wrath upon his ink-smeared face.

“Ain’t you got that damned editorial writ yet?” he demanded. “Holy hoppin’ horntoads, does a feller have to wait all day?”

Carson tucked the pencil behind his ear. “We’re getting visitors,” he said.

Jake shifted the cud of tobacco to the left side of his face and squinted beneath bushy eyebrows at the street outside.

“Slickest pair of customers I ever clapped an eye on,” he declared. “I’d sure keep my peepers peeled, with them jaspers coming at me.”

“Delavan’s not so bad,” said Carson.

“Just pick pennies off a dead man’s eyes, that’s all,” said Jake.

He spat with uncanny accuracy at the mouse-hole in the corner.

“Trouble with you,” he declared, “is you’re sweet on that dotter of hisn. Because she’s all right, you think her old man is too. Nobody that goes around with Quinn is all right. They’re just a couple of cutthroats, in with that snake Fennimore clear up to their hips.”

Quinn and Delavan were stepping to the boardwalk outside the Tribune office. Jake turned and shuffled toward the back.