Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

The trick was to get inside and still keep your memory, to get inside and still know what there was to do.

Spencer and the others had tried shielding the brain and shielding didn’t work. Maybe there was a way to make it work, but you’d have had to use trial and error methods and that meant too many men coming out with their memories gone before you had the answer. It meant that maybe in just a little while you’d have no men at all.

There must be another way.

When you couldn’t shield a thing, what did you do?

A communications problem, Lang had said. Perhaps Lang was right – the egg was a communications set up. And what did you do to protect communications? When you couldn’t shield a communication, what did you do with it?

There was an answer to that one, of course – you scrambled it.

But there was no solution there, nor any hint of a solution. He sat and listened and there was no sound. No one had stopped by to see him; no one had dropped in to pass the time of day.

They’re sore, he thought. They’re off sulking in a corner. They’re giving me the silent treatment.

To hell with them, he said.

He sat alone and tried to think and there were no thoughts, just a mad merry-go-round of questions revolving in his skull.

Finally there were footsteps on the stair and from their unsteadiness, he knew whose they were.

It was Bat Ears coming up to comfort him and Bat Ears had a skin full.

He waited, listening to the stumbling feet tramping up the stairs, and Bat Ears finally appeared. He stood manfully in the doorway, putting out both hands and bracing them against the jambs on either side of him to keep the place from swaying.

Bat Ears nerved himself and plunged across the space from doorway to chair and grabbed the chair and hung onto it and wrestled himself into it and looked up at Warren with a smirk of triumph.

“Made it,” Bat Ears said.

“You’re drunk,” snapped Warren disgustedly.

“Sure, I’m drunk. It’s lonesome being drunk all by yourself. Here …”

He found his pocket and hauled the bottle out and set it gingerly on the desk.

“There you are,” he said. “Let’s you and me go and hang one on.”

Warren stared at the bottle and listened to the little imp of thought that jigged within his brain.

“No, it wouldn’t work.”

“Cut out the talking and start working on that jug. When you get through with that one, I got another hid out.”

“Bat Ears,” said Warren.

“What do you want?” asked Bat Ears. “I never saw a man that wanted –”

“How much more have you got?”

“How much more what, Ira?”

“Liquor. How much more do you have stashed away?”

“Lots of it. I always bring along a marg … a marg …”

“A margin?”

“That’s right,” said Bat Ears. “That is what I meant. I always figure what I need and then bring along a margin just in case we get marooned or something.”

Warren reached out and took the bottle. He uncorked it and threw the cork away.

“Bat Ears,” he said, “go and get another bottle.”

Bat Ears blinked at him. “Right away, Ira? You mean right away?”

“Immediately,” said Warren. “And on your way, would you stop and tell Spencer that I want to see him soon as possible?”

Bat Ears wobbled to his feet.

He regarded Warren with forthright admiration.

“What you planning on doing, Ira?” he demanded.

“I’m going to get drunk,” said Warren. “I’m going to hang one on that will make history in the survey fleet.”

“You can’t do it, man,” protested Spencer. “You haven’t got a chance.”

Warren put out a hand against the tower and tried to hold himself a little steadier, for the whole planet was gyrating at a fearful pace.

“Bat Ears,” Warren called out.

“Yes, Ira.”

“Shoot the – hic – man who tries to shtop me.”

“I’ll do that, Ira,” Bat Ears assured him.

“But you’re going in there unprotected,” Spencer said anxiously. “Without even a spacesuit.”

“I’m trying out a new appro … appro …”

“Approach?” supplied Bat Ears.

“Thash it,” said Warren. “I thank you, Bat Ears. Thash exactly what I’m doing.”

Lang said, “It’s got a chance. We tried to shield ourselves and it didn’t work. He’s trying a new approach. He’s scrambled up his mind with liquor. I think he might have a chance.”

“The shape he’s in,” said Spencer, “he’ll never get the wires connected.”

Warren wobbled a little. “The hell you shay.”

He stood and blurredly watched them. Where there had been three of each of them before, there now, in certain cases, were only two of them.

“Bat Ears.”

“Yes, Ira.”

“I need another drink. It’s wearing off a little.”

Bat Ears took the bottle from his pocket and handed it across. It was not quite half full. Warren tipped it up and drank, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He did not quit drinking until the last of it was gone. He let the bottle drop and looked at them again. This time there were three of each of them and it was all right.

He turned to face the tower.

“Now,” he said, “if you gen’men will jush –”

Ellis and Clyne hauled on the rope and Warren sailed into the air.

“Hey, there!” he shouted. “Wha’ you trying to do?”

He had forgotten about the pulley rigged on the tripod above the tower.

He dangled in the air, kicking and trying to get his balance, with the blackness of the tower’s mouth looming under him and a funny, shining glow at the bottom of it.

Above him the pulley creaked and he shot down and was inside the tower.

He could see the thing at the bottom now. He hiccoughed politely and told it to move over, he was coming down. It didn’t move an inch. Something tried to take his head off and it didn’t come off.

The earphones said, “Warren, you all right? You all right? Talk to us.”

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, all right. Wha’ matter wish you?”

They let him down and he stood beside the funny thing that pulsated in the pit. He felt something digging at his brain and laughed aloud, a gurgling, drunken laugh.

“Get your handsh out my hair,” he said. “You tickle.”

“Warren,” said the earphones. “The wires. The wires. You remember, we talked about the wires.”

“Sure,” he said. “The wires.”

There were little studs on the pulsating thing and they’d be fine things to attach a wire to.

Wires? What the hell were wires?

“Hooked on your belt,” said the earphones. “The wires are hooked on your belt.”

His hand moved to his belt and he found the wires. He fumbled with them and they slipped out of his fingers and he got down and scrabbled around and grabbed hold of them again. They were all tangled up and he couldn’t make head or tail of them and what was he messing around with wires for, anyhow?

What he wanted was another drink – another little drink.

He sang: “I’m a ramblin’ wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer!”

He said to the egg: “Friend, I’d be mosh pleashed if you’d join me in a drink.”

The earphones said, “Your friend can’t drink until you get those wires hooked up. He can’t hear without the wires hooked up. He can’t tell what you’re saying until you get those wires hooked up.

“You understand, Warren? Hook up the wires. He can’t hear till you do.”

“Now, thash too bad,” said Warren. “Thash an awful thing.”

He did the best he could to get the wires hooked up and he told his new friend just to be patient and hold still, he was doing the best he could. He yelled for Bat Ears to hurry with the bottle and he sang a ditty which was quite obscene. And finally he got the wires hooked up, but the man in the earphones said that wasn’t right, to try it once again. He changed the wires around some more and they still weren’t right, and so he changed them around again, until the man in the earphones said, “That’s fine! We’re getting something now!”