Simak, Cliffard D - Our children's children
must appear unseemly. We'll endeavor not to harm your property."
"Well, I tell you, friend," said Bentley, "I don't own the place. I'm just
holding down the homestead for an absent owner. Will you ask those people not to
go tramping over flower beds? Joe's missus will be awful sore if she comes home
and finds those flowers messed up. She sets store by them."
All the time that they'd been talking, people had been coming through the door
and now they were all over the place and spilling over into the yards next door
and the neighbors were coming out to see what was going on.
The girl smiled brightly at Bentley. "I think you can be easy about the
flowers," she said. "These are good people, well-intentioned folks, and on their
best behavior."
"They count upon your sufferance," said the man. "They are refugees."
Bentley took a good look at them. They didn't look like refugees. In his time,
in many different parts of the world, he had photographed a lot of refugees.
Refugees were grubby people and they usually packed a lot of plunder, but these
people were neat and clean and they carried very little, a small piece of
luggage, perhaps, or a sort of attaché case, like the one the, man who was
speaking with him had tucked underneath one arm.
"They don't look like refugees to me," he said. "Where are they refugeeing
from?"
"From the future," said the man. "We beg utmost indulgence of you. What we are
doing, I assure you, is a matter of life and death."
That shook Bentley up. He went to take a drink of beer and then decided not to
and, reaching down, set the beer can on the lawn. He rose slowly from his chair.
"I tell you, mister," he said, "if this is some sort of publicity stunt I won't
lift a camera. I wouldn't take no shot of no publicity stunt, no matter what it
was."
"Publicity stunt?" asked the man, and there could be no doubt that he was
plainly puzzled. "I am sorry, sir. What you say eludes me."
Bentley took a close look at the door. People still were coming out of it, still
four and five abreast, and there seemed no end to them. The door still hung
there, as he first had seen it, a slightly ragged blob of darkness that quivered
at the edges, blotting out a small section of the lawn, but behind and beyond it
he could see the trees and shrubs and the play set in the back yard of the house
next door.
If it was a publicity stunt, he decided, it was a top-notch job. A lot of PR
jerks must have beat their brains out to dream up one like this. How had they
rigged that ragged hole and where did all the people come from?
"We come," said the man, "from five hundred years into the future. We are
fleeing from the end of the human race. We ask your help and understanding."
Bentley stared at him. "Mister," he asked, "you wouldn't kid me, would you? If I
fell for this, I would lose my job."
"We expected, naturally," said the man, "to encounter disbelief. I realize there
is no way we can prove our origin. We ask you, please, to accept us as what we
say we are."
"I tell you what," said Bentley. "I will go with the gag. I will take some
shots, but if I find it's publicity..."
"You are speaking, I presume, of taking photographs.'-'
"Of course I am," said Bentley. "The camera is my business."
"We didn't come to have photographs taken of us. If you have some compunctions
about this matter, please feel free to follow them. We will not mind at all."
"So you don't want your pictures taken," Bentley said fiercely. "You're like a
lot of other people. You get into a jam and then you scream because someone
snaps a picture of you."
"We have no objections," said the man. "Take as many pictures as you wish."
"You don't mind?" Bentley asked, somewhat confused.
"Not at all."
Bentley swung about, heading for the back door. As he turned, his foot caught
the can of beer and sent it flying, spraying beer out of the hole.
Three cameras lay on the kitchen table, where he had been working with them
before he'd gone out to broil the steak. He grabbed up one of them and was
turning back toward the door when he thought of Molly. Maybe he better let Molly
know about this, he told himself. The guy had said all these people were coming
from the future and if that were true, it would be nice for Molly to be in on it
from the start. Not that he believed a word of it, of course, but it was mighty
funny, no matter what was going on.
He picked up the kitchen phone and dialed. He grumbled at himself. He was
wasting time when he should be taking pictures. Molly might not be home. It was
Side 2