Simak, Clifford D - Auk House

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Title : Auk House

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1977

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox

TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : January 3, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Auk House

Clifford D. Simak

David Latimer was lost when he found the house. He had set out for

Wyalusing, a town he had only heard of but had never visited, and

apparently had taken the wrong road. He had passed through two small

villages, Excelsior and Navarre, and if the roadside signs were right, in

another few miles he would be coming into Montfort. He hoped that someone

in Montfort could set him right again.

The road was a county highway, crooked and narrow and bearing little

traffic. It twisted through the rugged headlands that ran down to the

coast, flanked by birch and evergreens and rarely out of reach of the muted

thunder of surf pounding on giant boulders that lay tumbled on the shore.

The car was climbing a long, steep hill when he first saw the house,

between the coast and road. It was a sprawling pile of brick and stone,

flaunting massive twin chimneys at either end of it, sited in front of a

grove of ancient birch and set so high upon the land that it seemed to

float against the sky. He slowed the car, pulled over to the roadside, and

stopped to have a better look at it.

A semicircular brick-paved driveway curved up to the entrance of the house.

A few huge oak trees grew on the well-kept lawn, and in their shade stood

graceful stone benches that had the look of never being used.

There was, it seemed to Latimer, a pleasantly haunted look to the place - a

sense of privacy, of olden dignity, a withdrawal from the world. On the

front lawn, marring it, desecrating it, stood a large planted sign:

FOR RENT OR SALE

See Campbell's Realty - Half Mile Down the Road

And an arrow pointing to show which way down the road.

Latimer made no move to continue down the road. He sat quietly in the car,

looking at the house. The sea, he thought, was just beyond; from a

second-story window at the back, one could probably see it.

It had been word of a similar retreat that had sent him seeking out

Wyalusing - a place where he could spend a quiet few months at painting. A

more modest place, perhaps, than this, although the description he had been

given of it had been rather sketchy.

Too expensive, he thought, looking at the house; most likely more than he

could afford, although with the last couple of sales he had made, he was

momentarily flush. However, it might not be as expensive as he thought, he

told himself, a place like this would have small attraction for most

people. Too big, but for himself that would make no difference; he could

camp out in a couple of rooms for the few months he would be there.

Strange, he reflected, the built-in attraction the house had for him, the

instinctive, spontaneous attraction, the instant knowing that this was the

sort of place he had had in mind. Not knowing until now that it was the

sort of place he had in mind. Old, he told himself

He put the car in gear and moved slowly out into the road, glancing back

over his shoulder at the house. A half mile down the road, at the edge of

what probably was Montfort, although there was no sign to say it was, on

the right-hand side, a lopsided, sagging sign on an old, lopsided shack,

announced Campbell's Realty. Hardly intending to do it, his mind not made

up as yet, he pulled the car off the road and parked in front of the shack.

Inside, a middle-aged man dressed in slacks and turtleneck sat with his

feet propped on a littered desk.

'I dropped in,' said Latimer, 'to inquire about the house down the road.

The one with the brick drive.'

'Oh, that one,' said the man. 'Well, I tell you, stranger, I can't show it

to you now. I'm waiting for someone who wants to look at the Ferguson

place. Tell you what, though. I could give you the key.'

'Could you give me some idea of what the rent would be?'

'Why don't you look at it first. See what you think of it. Get the feel of

it. See if you'd fit into it. If you like it, we can talk. Hard place to

move. Doesn't fit the needs of many people. Too big, for one thing, too

old. I could get you a deal on it.'

The man took his feet off the desk, plopped them on the floor. Rummaging in

a desk drawer, he came up with a key with a tag attached to it and threw it

on the desk top.

'Have a look at it and then come back,' he said. 'This Ferguson business

shouldn't take more than an hour or two.'

'Thank you,' said Latimer, picking up the key.

He parked the car in front of the house and went up the steps. The key

worked easily in the lock and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. He

came into a hall that ran from front to back, with a staircase ascending to

the second floor and doors opening on either side into ground-floor rooms.

The hall was dim and cool, a place of graciousness.

When he moved along the hall, the floorboards did not creak beneath his

feet as in a house this old he would have thought they might. There was no

shut-up odor, no smell of damp or mildew, no sign of bats or mice.

The door to his right was open, as were all the doors that ran along the

hall. He glanced into the room - a large room, with light from the

westering sun flooding through the windows that stood on either side of a

marble fireplace. Across the hall was a smaller room, with a fireplace in

one corner. A library or a study, he thought. The larger room, undoubtedly,

had been thought of, when the house was built, as a drawing room. Beyond

the larger room, on the right-hand side, he found what might have been a

kitchen with a large brick fireplace that had a utilitarian look to it,

used, perhaps, in the olden days for cooking, and across from it a much

larger room, with another marble fireplace, windows on either side of it

and oblong mirrors set into the wall, an ornate chandelier hanging from the

ceiling. This, he knew, had to be the dining room, the proper setting for

leisurely formal dinners.

He shook his head at what he saw. It was much too grand for him, much

larger, much more elegant than he had thought. If someone wanted to live as

a place like this should be lived in, it would cost a fortune in furniture

alone. He had told himself that during a summer's residence he could camp

out in a couple of rooms, but to camp out in a place like this would be

sacrilege; the house deserved a better occupant than that.

Yet, it still held its attraction. There was about it a sense of openness,

of airiness, of ease. Here a man would not be cramped; he'd have room to

move about. It conveyed a feeling of well-being. It was, in essence, not a

living place, but a place for living.

The man had said that it had been hard to move, that to most people it had

slight appeal - too large, too old - and that he could make an attractive

deal on it. But, with a sinking feeling, Latimer knew that what the man had

said was true. Despite its attractiveness, it was far too large. It would

take too much furniture even for a summer of camping out. And yet, despite

all this, the pull - almost a physical pull - toward it still hung on.

He went out the back door of the hall, emerging on a wide veranda that ran

the full length of the house. Below him lay the slope of ancient birch,

running down a smooth green lawn to the seashore studded by tumbled

boulders that flung up white clouds of spume as the racing waves broke

against them. Flocks of mewling birds hung above the surging surf like

white phantoms, and beyond this, the gray-blue stretch of ocean ran to the

far horizon.

This was the place, he knew, that he had hunted for - a place of freedom

that would free his brush from the conventions that any painter, at times,

felt crowding in upon him. Here lay that remoteness from all other things,

a barrier set up against a crowding world. Not objects to paint, but a

place in which to put upon his canvases that desperate crying for

expression he felt within himself.

He walked down across the long stretch of lawn, among the age-striped

birch, and came upon the shore. He found a boulder and sat upon it, feeling

the wild exhilaration of wind and water, sky and loneliness.

The sun had set and quiet shadows crept across the land. It was time to go,

he told himself, but he kept on sitting, fascinated by the delicate

deepening of the dusk, the subtle color changes that came upon the water.

When he finally roused himself and started walking up the lawn, the great

birch trees had assumed a ghostliness that glimmered in the twilight. He

did not go back into the house, but walked around it to come out on the

front.

He reached the brick driveway and started walking, remembering that he'd

have to go back into the house to lock the back door off the hall.

It was not until he had almost reached the front entrance that he realized

his car was gone. Confused, he stopped dead in his tracks. He had parked it

there - he was sure he had. Was it possible he had parked it off the road

and walked up the drive, now forgetting that he had?

He turned and started down the driveway, his shoes clicking on the bricks.

No, dammit, he told himself, I did drive up the driveway - I remember doing

it. He looked back and there wasn't any car, either in front of the house

or along the curve of driveway. He broke into a run, racing down the

driveway toward the road. Some kids had come along and pushed it to the

road - that must be the answer. A juvenile prank, the pranksters hiding

somewhere, tittering to themselves as they watched him run to find it.

Although that was wrong, he thought - he had left it set on 'Park' and

locked. Unless they broke a window, there was no way they could have pushed

it.

The brick driveway came to an end and there wasn't any road. The lawn and

driveway came down to where they ended, and at that point a forest rose up

to block the way. A wild and tangled forest that was very dark and dense,

great trees standing up where the road had been. To his nostrils came the

damp scent of forest mold, and somewhere in the darkness of the trees, an

owl began to hoot.

He swung around, to face back toward the house, and saw the lighted

windows. It couldn't be, he told himself quite reasonably. There was no one

in the house, no one to turn on the lights. In all likelihood, the

electricity was shut off.

But the lighted windows persisted. There could he no question there were

lights. Behind him, he could hear the strange rustlings of the trees and

now there were two owls, answering one another.

Reluctantly, unbelievingly, he started up the driveway. There must be some

sort of explanation. Perhaps, once he had the explanation, it would all

seem quite simple. He might have gotten turned around somehow, as he had

somehow gotten turned around earlier in the day, taking the wrong road. He

might have suffered a lapse of memory, for some unknown and frightening

reason have experienced a blackout. This might not be the house he had gone

to look at, although, he insisted to himself, it certainly looked the same.

He came up the brick driveway and mounted the steps that ran up to the

door, and while he was still on the steps, the door came open and a man in

livery stepped aside to let him in.

'You are a little late, sir,' said the man. 'We had expected you some time

ago. The others waited for you, but just now went in to dinner, thinking

you had been unavoidably detained. Your place is waiting for you.'

Latimer hesitated.

'It is quite all right, sir,' said the man. 'Except on special occasions,

we do not dress for dinner. You're all right as you are.'

The hall was lit by short candles set in sconces on the wall. Paintings

also hung there, and small sofas and a few chairs were lined along the

wall. From the dining room came the sound of conversation.

The butler closed the door and started down the hall. 'If you would follow

me, sir.'

It was all insane, of course. It could not be happening. It was something

he imagined. He was standing out there, on the bricks of the driveway, with

the forest and the hooting owls behind him, imagining that he was here, in

this dimly lighted hallway with the talk and laughter coming from the

dining room.

'Sir,' said the butler, 'if you please.'

'But, I don't understand. This place, an hour ago...'

'The others are all waiting for you. They have been looking forward to you.

You must not keep them waiting.'

'All right, then,' said Latimer. 'I shall not keep them waiting.'

At the entrance to the dining room, the butler stood aside so that he could

enter.

The others were seated at a long, elegantly appointed table. The chandelier

blazed with burning tapers. Uniformed serving maids stood against one wail.

A sideboard gleamed with china and cut glass. There were bouquets of

flowers upon the table.

A man dressed in a green sports shirt and a corduroy jacket rose from the

table and motioned to him.

'Latimer, over here,' he said. 'You are Latimer, are you not?'

'Yes, I'm Latimer.'

'Your place is over here, between Enid and myself. We'll not bother with

introductions now. We can do that later on.'

Scarcely feeling his feet making contact with the floor, moving in a mental

haze, Latimer went down the table. The man who stood had remained standing,

thrusting out a beefy hand. Latimer took it and the other's handshake was

warm and solid.

'I'm Underwood,' he said. 'Here, sit down. Don't stand on formality. We've

just started on the soup. If yours is cold, we can have another brought to

you.'

'I thank you,' said Latirner. 'I'm sure it's all right.'

On the other side of him, Enid said, 'We waited for you. We knew that you

were coming, but you took so long.'

'Some,' said Underwood, 'take longer than others. It's just the way it

goes.'

'But I don't understand,' said Latimer. 'I don't know what's going on.'

'You will,' said Underwood. 'There's really nothing to it.'

'Eat your soup,' Enid urged. 'It is really good. We get such splendid

chowder here.'

She was small and dark of hair and eyes, a strange intensity in her.

Latimer lifted the spoon and dipped it in the soup. Enid was right; it was

a splendid chowder.

The man across the table said, 'I'm Charlie. We'll talk later on. We'll

answer any questions.'

The woman sitting beside Charlie said, 'You see, we don't understand it,

either. But it's all right. I'm Alice.'

The maids were removing some of the soup bowls and bringing on the salads.

On the sideboard the china and cut glass sparkled in the candlelight. The

flowers on the table were peonies. There were, with himself, eight people

seated at the table.

'You see,' said Latimer, 'I only came to look at the house.'

'That's the way,' said Underwood, 'that it happened to the rest of us. Not

just recently. Years apart. Although I don't know how many years. Jonathon,

down there at the table's end, that old fellow with a beard, was the first

of us. The others straggled in.'

'The house,' said Enid, 'is a trap, very neatly baited. We are mice caught

in a trap.'

From across the table, Alice said, 'She makes it sound SO dreadful. It's

not that way at all. We are taken care of meticulously. There is a staff

that cooks our food and serves it, that makes our beds, that keeps all

clean and neat...'

'But who would want to trap us?'

'That,' said Underwood, 'is the question we all try to solve - except for

one or two of us, who have become resigned. But, although there are several

theories, there is no solution. I sometimes ask myself what difference it

makes. Would we feel any better if we knew our trappers?'

A trap neatly baited, Latimer thought, and indeed it had been. There had

been that instantaneous, instinctive attraction that the house had held for

him - even only driving past it, the attraction had reached out for him.

The salad was excellent, and so were the steak and baked potato. The rice

pudding was the best Latimer had ever eaten. In spite of himself, he found

that he was enjoying the meal, the bright and witty chatter that flowed all

around the table.

In the drawing room, once dinner was done, they sat in front of a fire in

the great marble fireplace.

'Even in the summer,' said Enid, 'when night come on, it gets chilly here.

I'm glad it does, because I love a fire. We have a fire almost every

night.'

'We?' said Latimer. 'You speak as if you were a tribe.'

'A band,' she said. 'A gang, perhaps. Fellow conspirators, although there's

no conspiracy. We get along together. That's one thing that is so nice

about it. We get along so well.'

The man with the beard came over to Latimer. 'My name is Jonathon,' he

said. 'We were too far apart at dinner to become acquainted.'

'I am told,' said Latimer, 'that you are the one who has been here the

longest.'

'I am now,' said Jonathon. 'Up until a couple of years ago, it was Peter.

Old Pete, we used to call him.'

'Used to?'

'He died,' said Enid. 'That's how come there was room for you. There is

only so much room in this house, you see.'

'You mean it took two years to find someone to replace him.'

'I have a feeling,' said Jonathon, 'that we belong to a select company. I

would think that you might have to possess rather rigid qualifications

before you were considered.'

'That's what puzzles me,' said Latimer. 'There must be some common factor

in the group. The kind of work we're in, perhaps.'

'I am sure of it,' said Jonathon. 'You are a painter, are you not?'

Latimer nodded. 'Enid is a poet,' said Jonathon, 'and a very good one. I

aspire to philosophy, although I'm not too good at it. Dorothy is a

novelist and Alice a musician - a pianist. Not only does she play, but she

can compose as well. You haven't met Dorothy or Jane as yet.'

'No. I think I know who they are, but I haven't met them.'

'You will,' said Enid, 'before the evening's over. Our group is so small we

get to know one another well.'

'Could I get a drink for you?' asked Jonathon.

'I would appreciate it. Could it be Scotch, by any chance?'

'It could be,' said Jonathon, 'anything you want. Ice or water?'

'Ice, if you would. But I feel I am imposing.'

'No one imposes here,' said Jonathon. 'We take care of one another.'

'And if you don't mind,' said Enid, 'one for me as well. You know what I

want.'

As Jonathon walked away to get the drinks, Latimer said to Enid, 'I must

say that you've all been kind to me. You took me in, a stranger...'

'Oh, not a stranger really. You'll never be a stranger. Don't you

understand? You are one of us. There was an empty place and you've filled

it. And you'll be here forever. You'll never go away.'

'You mean that no one ever leaves?'

'We try. All of us have tried. More than once for some of us. But we've

never made it. Where is there to go?'

'Surely there must be someplace else. Some way to get back.'

'You don't understand,' she said. 'There is no place but here. All the rest

is wilderness. You could get lost if you weren't careful. There have been

times when we've had to go out and hunt down the lost ones.'

Underwood came across the room and sat down on the sofa on the other side

of Enid.

'How are you two getting on?' he said.

'Very well,' said Enid. 'I was just telling David there's no way to get

away from here.'

'That is fine,' said Underwood, 'but it will make no difference. There'll

come a day he'll try.'

'I suppose he will,' said Enid, 'but if he understands beforehand, it will

be easier.'

'The thing that rankles me,' said Latimer, 'is why. You said at the dinner

table everyone tries for a solution, but no one ever finds one.'

'Not exactly that,' said Underwood. 'I said there are some theories. But

the point is that there is no way for us to know which one of them is

right. We may have already guessed the reason for it all, but the chances

are we'll never know. Enid has the most romantic notion. She thinks we are

being held by some super-race from some far point in the galaxy who want to

study us. We are specimens, you understand. They cage us in what amounts to

a laboratory, but do not intrude upon us. They want to observe us under

natural conditions and see what makes us tick. And under these conditions,

she thinks we should act as civilized as we can manage.'

'I don't know if I really think that,' said Enid, 'but it's a nice idea.

It's no crazier than some of the other explanations. Some of us have

theorized that we are being given a chance to do the best work we can.

Someone is taking all economic pressure off us, placing us in a pleasant

environment, and giving us all the time we need to develop whatever talents

we may have. We're being subsidized.'

'But what good would that do?' asked Latimer. 'I gather we are out of touch

with the world we knew. No matter what we did, who is there to know?'

'Not necessarily,' said Underwood. 'Things disappear. One of Alice's

compositions and one of Dorothy's novels and a few of Enid's poems.'

'You think someone is reaching in and taking them? Being quite selective?'

'It's just a thought,' said Underwood. 'Some of the things we create do

disappear. We hunt for them and we never find them.'

Jonathon came back with the drinks. 'We'll have to settle down now,' he

said, 'and quiet all this chatter. Alice is about to play. Chopin, I

believe she said.'

It was late when Latimer was shown to his room by Underwood, up on the

third floor. 'We shifted around a bit to give this one to you,' said

Underwood. 'It's the only one that has a skylight. You haven't got a

straight ceiling - it's broken by the roofline - but I think you'll find it

comfortable.'

'You knew that I was coming, then, apparently some time before I arrived.'

'Oh, yes, several days ago. Rumors from the staff - the staff seems to know

everything. But not until late yesterday did we definitely know when you

would arrive.'

After Underwood said good night, Latimer stood for a time in the center of

the room. There was a skylight, as Underwood had said, positioned to supply

a north light.

Standing underneath it was an easel, and stacked against the wall were

blank canvases. There would be paint and brushes, he knew, and everything

else that he might need. Whoever or whatever had sucked him into this place

would do everything up brown; nothing would be overlooked.

It was unthinkable, he told himself, that it could have happened. Standing

now, in the center of the room, he still could not believe it. He tried to

work out the sequence of events that had led him to this house, the steps

by which he had been lured into the trap, if trap it was - and on the face

of the evidence, it had to be a trap. There had been the realtor in Boston

who had told him of the house in Wyalusing. 'It's the kind of place you are

looking for,' he had said. 'No near neighbors, isolated. The little village

a couple of miles down the road. If you need a woman to come in a couple of

times a week to keep the place in order, just ask in the village. There's

bound to be someone you could hire. The place is surrounded by old fields

that haven't been farmed in years and are going back to brush and thickets.

The coast is only half a mile distant. If you like to do some shooting,

come fall there'll be quail and grouse. Fishing, too, if you want to do

it.'

'I might drive up and have a look at it,' he had told the agent, who had

then proceeded to give him the wrong directions, putting him on the road

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Title:AukHouseAuthor:CliffordD.SimakOriginalcopyrightyear:1977Genre:sciencefictionComments:tomyknowledge,thisistheonlyavailablee-textofthisbookSource:scannedandOCR-readfromapaperbackeditionwithXeroxTextBridgePro9.0,proofreadinMSWord2000.Dateofe-text:January3,2000Preparedby:AnadaSucka----------------...

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Simak, Clifford D - Auk House

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