Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

“You make it sound so horrible,” protested Angela.

“I suppose I do, but that’s the way it is. We could have become great traders and skinned all and sundry until they got wise to us. We could have turned our talent for the untruth into many different channels and maybe even avoided getting our heads bashed in. But instead we drifted into the one safe course. Our lying became an easy virtue. Now we can lie to our hearts’ content and they lap it up. No one, nowhere, except right here on Earth, ever even tried to spin a yarn for simple entertainment, or to point a moral or for any other reason. They never attempted it because it would have been a lie, and we are the only liars in the universe of stars.”

Blake brought the beer for Angela and the pig knuckles for Hart. Hart paid him out of hand.

“I’ve still got a quarter left,” he said. “Have you any pie?”

“Apple.”

“Here,” said Hart, “I’ll pay you in advance.”

“First,” went on Jasper, “it was told by mouth. Then it was writ by hand and now it’s fabricated by machine. But surely that’s not the end of it. There must be something else. There must be another way, a better way. There must be another step.”

“I would settle for anything,” said Hart. “Any way at all. I’d even write by hand if I thought I could go on selling.”

“You can’t!” Angela told him, sharply. “Why, it’s positively indecent to even joke about it. You can say it as a joke just among the three of us, but if I ever hear you –”

Hart waved his hand. “Let it go. I’m sorry that I said it.”

“Of course,” said Jasper, “it’s a great testimonial to the cleverness of Man, to the adaptability and resourcefulness of the human race. It is a somewhat ludicrous application of big business methods to what had always been considered a personal profession. But it works. Some day, I have no doubt, we may see the writing business run on production lines, with fiction factories running double shifts.”

“No,” Angela said. “No, you’re wrong there, Jasper. Even with the mechanization, it’s still the loneliest business on Earth.”

“It is,” agreed Jasper. “But I don’t regret the loneliness part. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”

“It’s a lousy way to make a living,” said Angela, with a strange half-bitterness in her voice. “What are we contributing?”

“You are making people happy – if you can call some of our readers people. You are supplying entertainment.”

“And the noble ideas?”

“There are even a few of those.”

“It’s more than that,” said Hart. “More than entertainment, more than great ideas. It’s the most innocent and the deadliest propaganda in all of human history. The old writers, before the first space flight, glorified far wandering and galactic conquest and I think that they were justified. But they missed the most important development completely. They couldn’t possibly foresee the way we would do it – with books, not battleships. We’re softening up the galaxy with a constant stream of human thought. Our words are reaching farther than our spaceships ever could.”

“That’s the point I want to make,” Jasper said, triumphantly. “You hit the point exactly. But if we are to tell the galaxy a story it must be a human story. If we sell them a bill of goods it must be a human bill of goods. And how can we keep it human if we relegate its telling to machines?”

“But they’re human machines,” objected Angela.

“A machine can’t be purely human. Basically a machine is universal. It could be Caphian as well as human, or Aldebaran or Draconian or any other race. And that’s not all. We let the machine set the norm. The one virtue of mechanics is that it sets a pattern. And a pattern is deadly in literary matters. It never changes. It keeps on using the same old limp plots in many different guises.

“Maybe at the moment it makes no difference to the races who are reading us, for as yet they have not developed anything approaching a critical faculty. But it should make some difference to us. It should make some difference in the light of a certain pride of workmanship we are supposed to have. And that is the trouble with machines. They are destroying the pride in us. Once writing was an art. But it is an art no longer. It’s machine-produced, like a factory chair. A good chair, certainly. Good enough to sit on, but not a thing of beauty or of craftsmanship or –”

The door crashed open and feet pounded on the floor.

Just inside the door stood Green Shirt and behind him, grinning fiendishly, his band of Caphians.

Green Shirt advanced upon them happily, with his arms flung wide in greeting. He stopped beside Hart’s chair and clapped a massive hand upon his shoulder.

“You recall me, don’t you?” he asked in slow and careful English.

“Sure,” Hart said, gulping. “Sure, I remember you. This is Miss Maret and over there is Mr. Hansen.”

Green Shirt said, with precise bookishness, “So happy, I assure you.”

“Have a seat,” said Jasper.

“Glad to,” said Green Shirt, hauling out a chair. His necklaces jingled musically as he sat down.

One of the other Caphians said something to him in a rapid-fire alien tongue. Green Shirt answered curtly and waved toward the door. The others marched outside.

“He is worried,” Green Shirt said. “We will slow – how do you say it – we will slow the ship. They cannot leave without us. But I tell him not to worry. The captain will be glad we slow the ship when he see what we bring back.”

He leaned forward and tapped Hart upon the knee. “I look for you,” he said. “I look high and wide.”

“Who is this joker?” Jasper asked.

“Joker?” asked Green Shirt, frowning.

“A term of great respect,” Hart hastily assured him.

“So,” said Green Shirt. “You all write the stories?”

“Yes. All three of us.”

“But you write them best.”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly. You see –”

“You write the wild and woolly stories? The bang-bangs?”

“Yeah. I guess I’m guilty.”

Green Shirt looked apologetic. “Had I known, we would not from the tavern have thrown you out. It was just big fun. We did not know you write the stories. When we find out who you are we try to catch you. But you run and hide.”

“Just what is going on here, anyhow?” Angela demanded.

Green Shirt whooped for Blake.

“Set them up,” he shouted. “These are my friends. Set up the best you have.”

“The best I have,” Blake said icily, “is Irish whiskey and that costs a buck a shot.”

“I got the cash,” said Green Shirt. “You get this name I cannot say, and you will get your cash.”

He said to Hart, “I have a surprise for you, my friend. We love the writers of the bang-bangs. We read them always . We get much stimulation.”

Jasper guffawed.

Green Shirt swung about in amazement, his bushy brows contracting.

“He’s just happy,” Hart explained, quickly. “He likes Irish whiskey.”

“Fine,” said Green Shirt, beaming. “You drink all you wish. I will give the cash. It is – how do you say – on me.”

Blake brought the drinks and Green Shirt paid him.

“Bring the container,” he said.

“The container?”

“He means the bottle.”

“That’ll be twenty dollars,” said Blake.

“So,” said Green Shirt, paying him.

They drank the whiskey and Green Shirt said to Hart, “My surprise is that you come with us.”

“You mean in the ship?”

“We have never had a real live writer on our planet. You will have a good time. You will stay and write for us.”