Clifford Simak - I Am Crying All Inside - And Other Stories

“You know what this hormone is,” said West smoothly, trying to make it sound as if he himself might know it.

“No,” said Belden shortly. “Darling didn’t trust us. He was angry at what Nevin was trying to do. And once he made a crack that the man who had it could rule the Solar System. Darling wasn’t kidding, West. He knew more about hormones than all the rest of us put together.”

“Seems to me,” West said drily, “that you would have wanted to keep a man like that here. You certainly could have used him.”

“Nevin again,” Belden told him. “Darling wouldn’t go along with the program that Nevin planned. Even threatened to expose him if he ever had the chance. Nevin wanted to kill him, but Cartwright thought up a joke … he’s jovial, Cartwright is.”

“I’ve noticed that,” said West.

“Cartwright thought up the exile business,” Belden said. “Offered Darling any one thing he wished to take along. One thing, you understand. Just one thing. That’s where the joke came in. Cartwright expected Darling to go through agonies trying to make up his mind. But there wasn’t a moment’s hesitation. Darling took the whisky.”

“He drank himself to death,” said West.

“Darling wasn’t a drinking man,” Belden told him, sharply.

“It was suicide,” said West. “Darling took you fellows down the line, neatly, all the way. He was away ahead of you.”

A soft sound like the brushing of a bird’s wing swung West around.

Rosie was coming through the door, her wings half-raised, exposing the hideousness of the furry, splotched body beneath the furry, death’s-head face.

“No!” screamed Belden. “No! I wasn’t going to do anything. I wasn’t—”

He backed away, arms outthrust to ward off the thing that walked toward him, mouth still working, but no sound coming out.

Rosie brushed West to one side with a flip of a furry wing and then the wings spread wider and shielded Belden from West’s view. The wings clapped shut and from behind them came the muffled scream of the man. Then nothing; silence.

West’s hand dropped to the holster and his gun came sliding out. His thumb slammed down the activator and the gun purred like a well-contented cat.

The ermine of Rosie’s wings turned black and she crumpled to the floor. A sickening odor filled the room.

“Belden!” cried West. He leaped forward, kicked the charred Rosie to one side. Belden lay on the floor and West turned away retching.

For a moment West stood in indecision, then swiftly he knew what he must do.

Showdown. He had hoped that it could be put off a little longer, until he knew a little more, but the incident of Belden and Rosie had settled it. There was nothing else to do.

He strode through the door and down the winding staircase toward the darkened room below.

The painting, he saw, was lighted … lighted as if from within itself. As if the source of light lay within the painting, as if some other sun shone upon the landscape that lay upon the canvas. The picture was lighted, but the rest of the room was dark and the light did not come out of the painting, but stayed there, imprisoned in the canvas.

Something scuttled between West’s feet and scuttered down the stairs. It squeaked and its claws beat a tattoo on the steps.

As West reached the bottom of the stairway a voice came out of the darkness.

“Are you looking for something, Mr. West?”

“Yes, Cartwright,” said West. “I am looking for you.”

“You must not be too concerned with what Rosie did,” Cartwright said. “Don’t let it upset you. Belden had it coming to him for a long time. He was scarcely one of us, really, never one of us. He pretended to go along with us because it was the only way that he could save his life. And life is such a small thing to consider. Don’t you think so, Mr. West?”

West stood silently at the bottom of the stairs. The room was too dark to see anything, but the voice was coming from somewhere near the table’s end, close to the lighted painting.

I may have to kill him, West was thinking, and I must know where he is. For the first shot has to do it, there’ll be no time for a second.

“Rosie had no mind,” the voice said out in the darkness. “That is, no mind to speak of. But she was telepathic. Her brain picked up thoughts and passed them on. And she could obey simple commands. Very simple commands. And killing a man is so simple, Mr. West.”

“Rosie stood here beside me and I knew every word that you and Belden said. I did not blame you, West, for you had no way of knowing what you did. But I did blame Belden and I sent Rosie up to get him.

“There’s only one thing, West, that I hold against you. You should not have killed Rosie. That was a great mistake, West, a very great mistake.”

“It was no mistake,” said West. “I did it on purpose.”

“Take it easy, Mr. West,” said Cartwright. “Don’t do anything that might make me pull the trigger. Because I have a gun on you. Dead center on you, West, and I never miss.”

“I’ll give you odds,” said West, “that I can get you before you can pull the trigger.”

“Now, Mr. West,” said Cartwright, “let’s not get hot-headed about this. Sure, you pulled a fast one on us. You tried to muscle in and you almost sold us, although eventually we would have tripped you up. And I admire your guts. Maybe we can work it out so no one will get killed.”

“Start talking,” West told him.

“It was too bad about Rosie,” said Cartwright, “and I really hold that against you, West, for we could have used Rosie to good advantage. But after all, the work is started on the other planets and we still have Stella. Our students are well grounded. … they can get along without instructions for a little while and maybe by the time we need to get in contact with them again we can find another one to replace our Rosie.”

“Quit wandering around,” said West. “Let’s hear what you have in mind.”

“Well,” said Cartwright, “we’re getting awfully short-handed. Belden’s dead and Darling’s dead and if Robertson isn’t dead by now he will be very shortly. For after he took Stella to Earth, he tried to desert, tried to run away. And that would never do, of course. He might tell folks about us and we can’t let anyone do that. For we are dead, you see. …”

He chuckled, the chuckle rolling through the darkness.

“It was a masterpiece, West, that broadcast. I was the last man alive and I told them what had happened. I told them the spacetime continuum had ruptured and things were coming through. And I gurgled. … I gurgled just before I died.”

“You didn’t really die, of course,” West said, innocently.

“Hell, no. But they think I did. And they still wake up screaming, thinking how I must have died.”

Ham, thought West. Pure, unadulterated ham. A jokester who would maroon a man to die on a lonely moon. A man who held a gun in his fist while he bragged about the things he’d done … about how he had outwitted Earth.

“You see,” said Cartwright, “I had to make them believe that it really happened. I had to make it so horrible that the government would never make it public, so horrible they’d close the planet with an iron-tight ban.”

“You had to be alone,” said West.

“That’s right, West. We had to be alone.”

“Well,” said West. “You’ve almost got it now. There’s only two of you alive.”

“The two of us,” Cartwright said, “and you.”

“You forget, Cartwright,” said West. “You’re going to kill me. You’ve got a gun pointed at me and you’re all set to pull the trigger.”

“Not necessarily,” said Cartwright. “We might make a deal.”