Clifford D. Simak - Why Call Them Back from Heaven

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WHY CALL THEM BACK FROM HEAVEN?
Copyright ©, 1967, by Clifford D. Simak
An Ace Book, by arrangement with Doubleday & Co., lac.
All Rights Reserved
Scanned with FineReader 6 Professional from a crumbling paperback copy
Covers restored with PaintShop Pro
DimJim
Printed in U.S.A.
The jury chortled happily. The type bars blurred with frantic speed as they
set down the Verdict, snaking smoothly across the roll of paper.
Then the Verdict ended and the judge nodded to the clerk, who stepped up to
the Jury and tore off the Verdict. He held it ritually in two hands and turned
toward the judge.
"The defendant," said the judge, "will rise and face the Jury."
Franklin Chapman rose shakily to his feet and Ann Harrison rose as well and
stood beside him. She reached out a hand and laid it on his arm. Through the
fabric of his shirt she felt the quiver of his flesh.
I should have done a better job, she told herself. Although, in all fact, she
knew, she had worked harder on this case than she had on many others. Her
heart had gone out to this man beside her, so pitiful and trapped. Perhaps,
she thought, a woman had no right to defend a man in a court like this. In the
ancient days, when the Jury had been human, it might have been all right. But
not in a court where a computer was the Jury and the only point at issue was
the meaning of the law.
"The clerk," said the judge, "now will read the Verdict."
She glanced at the prosecutor, sitting at his table, his face as stern and
pontifical as it had been throughout the trial. An instrument, she
thought—just an instrument, as the Jury was an instrument of justice.
The room was quiet and somber, with the sun of late afternoon shining through
the windows. The newsmen sat in the front row seats, watching for the
slightest flicker of emotion, for the tiny gesture of significance, for the
slightest crumb upon which to build a story. The cameras were there as well,
their staring lenses set to record this moment when eternity and nothingness
quavered in the balance.
Although, Ann knew, there could be little doubt. There had been so little upon
which to build a case. The Verdict would be death.
The clerk began to read:
"In the case of the State versus Franklin Chapman, the finding is that the
said Chapman, the defendant in this action, did, through criminal negligence
and gross lack of responsibility, so delay the recovery of the corpse of one
Amanda Hackett as to make impossible the preservation of her body, resulting
in conclusive death to her total detriment.
"The contention of the defendant that he, personally, was not responsible for
the operating efficiency and the mechanical condition of the vehicle employed
in the attempt to retrieve the body of the said Amanda Hackett, is impertinent
to this action. His total responsibility encompassed the retrieval of the body
by all and every means and to this over-all responsibility no limitations are
attached. There may be others who will be called upon to answer to this matter
of irresponsibility, but the measure of their innocence or guilt can have no
bearing upon the issue now before the court.
"The defendant is judged guilty upon each and every count. In lack of
extenuating circumstances, no recommendation for mercy can be made."
Chapman sank slowly down into his chair and sat there, straight and stiff, his
great mechanic's hands clasped tightly together on the table, his face a
frozen slab.
All along, Ann Harrison told herself, he had known how it would be. That was
why he was taking it so well. He had not been fooled a minute by her lawyer
talk or by her assurances. She had tried to hold him together and she need not
have bothered, for all along . he'd known how it was and he'd made his bargain
with himself and now he was keeping it.
"Would defense counsel," asked the judge, "care to make a motion?"
Said Ann, "If Your Honor pleases."
He is a good man, Ann told herself. He's trying to be kind, but he can't be
kind. The law won't let him be. He'll listen to my motion and he will deny it
and then pronounce the sentence and that will be the end of it. For there was
nothing more that anyone could do. In the light of evidence, no appeal was
possible.
She glanced at the waiting newsmen, at the scanning television eyes, and felt
a little tremor of panic running in her veins. Was it wise, she asked herself,
this move that she had planned? Futile, certainly; she knew that it was
futile. But aside from its futility, how about the wisdom of it?
And in that instant of her hesitation, she knew that she had to do it, that it
lay within the meaning of her duty and she could not fail that duty.
"Your Honor," she said, "I move that the Verdict be set aside on the grounds
of prejudice."
The prosecutor bounded to his feet.
His Honor waved him back into his chair.
"Miss Harrison," said the judge, "I am not certain that I catch your meaning.
Upon what grounds do you mention prejudice?"
She walked around the table so that she might better face the judge.
"On the grounds," she said, "that the key evidence
concerned mechanical failure of the vehicle the defendant used in his official
duties."
The judge nodded gravely. "I agree with you. But how can the character of the
evidence involve prejudice?"
"Your Honor," said Ann Harrison, "the Jury also is mechanical."
The prosecutor was on his feet again.
"Your Honor!" he brayed. "Your Honor!"
The judge banged his gavel.
"I can take care of this," he told the prosecutor, sternly.
The newsmen were astir, making notes, whispering among themselves. The
television lenses seemed to shine more brightly.
The prosecutor sat down. The buzz subsided. The room took on a deadly quiet.
"Miss Harrison," asked the judge, "you challenge the objectivity of the Jury?"
"Yes, Your Honor. Where machines may be involved. I do not claim it is a
conscious prejudice, but I do claim that unconscious prejudice . . ."
"Ridiculous!" said the prosecutor, loudly.
The judge shook his gavel at him.
"You be quiet," he said.
"But I do claim," said Ann, "that a subconscious prejudice could be involved.
And I further contend that in any mechanical contrivance there is one lacking
quality essential to all justice—the sense of mercy and of human worth. There
is law, I'll grant you, a superhuman, total knowledge of the law, but. . ."
"Miss Harrison," said the judge, "you're lecturing the court."
"I beg Your Honor's pardon."
"You are finished, then?"
"I believe I am, Your Honor."
"All right, then. I'll deny this motion. Have you any others?"
"No, Your Honor."
She went around the table, but did not sit down.
"In that case," said the judge, "there is no need to delay the sentence. Nor
have I any latitude. The law in cases such as this is expressly specific. The
defendant will stand."
Slowly Chapman got to his feet.
"Franklin Chapman," said the judge, "it is the determination of this court
that you, by your conviction of these charges and in the absence of any
recommendation for mercy, shall forfeit the preservation of your body at the
time of death. Your civil rights, however, are in no other way impaired."
He banged his gavel.
"This case is closed," he said.
2
During the night someone had scrawled a slogan on the wall of a dirty red
brick building that stood across the street. The heavy yellow chalk marks
read:
WHY CALL THEM BACK FBOM HEAVEN?
Daniel Frost wheeled his tiny two-place car into its space in one of the
parking lots outside Forever Center and got out, standing for a moment to
stare at the sign.
There had been a lot of them recently, chalked here and everywhere, and he
wondered, a little idly, what was going on that would bring about such a rash
of them. Undoubtedly Marcus Appleton could tell him if he asked about it, but
Appleton, as security chief of Forever Center, was a busy man and in the last
few weeks Frost had seen him, to speak to, only once or twice. But if there
were anything unusual going on, he was sure that Marcus would be on top of it.
There wasn't much, he comforted himself, that Marcus didn't know about.
The parking lot attendant walked up and touched his cap by way of greeting.
"Good morning, Mr. Frost. Looks like heavy traffic."
And indeed it did. The traffic lanes were filled, bumper to bumper, with tiny
cars almost identical with the one that Frost had parked. Their plastic bubble
domes glinted in the morning sun and from where he stood he could catch the
faint electric whining of the many motors.
"The traffic's always heavy," he declared. "And that reminds me. You better
take a look at my right-hand buffer. Another car came too close for comfort."
"Might have been the other fellow's buffer," the attendant said, "but it won't
hurt to check on it. And what about the padding, Mr. Frost? It can freeze up,
you know."
"I think it's all right," said Frost.
"I'll check it anyhow. Won't take any time. No sense in taking chances."
"I suppose you're right," said Frost. "And thank you, Tom."
"We have to work together," the attendant told him. "Watch out for one
another. That slogan means a lot to me. I suppose someone in your department
wrote it."
"That is right," said Frost. "Some time ago. It is one of our better efforts.
A participation motto."
He reached inside the car and took the briefcase off the seat, tucked it
underneath his arm. The package of lunch that he carried in it made an untidy
bulge.
He stepped onto the elevated safety walk and headed along it toward one of the
several plazas built all around the towering structure of Forever Center. And
now, as he always did, and for no particular reason that he could figure out,
he threw back his head and stared up at the mile-high wall of the mighty
building. There were times, on stormy mornings, when the view was cut off by
the clouds that swirled about its top, but on a clear morning such as this the
great slab of masonry went up and up until its topmost stories were lost in
the blue haze of the sky. A man grew dizzy
looking at it and the mind reeled at the thought of what the hand of man had
raised.
He stumbled and only caught himself in the nick of time. He'd have to stop
this crazy staring upward at the building, he told himself, or, at least, wait
to do it until he reached the plaza. The safety walk was only two feet high,
but a man could take a nasty tumble if he didn't watch himself. It was not
impossible that he might break his neck. He wondered, for the hundredth time,
why someone didn't think to protect the walks with railings.
He reached the plaza and let himself down off the safety walk into the
jam-packed crowd that struggled toward the building. He hugged the briefcase
tight against him and tried, with one hand, to protect the bulge that was his
sack of lunch. Although, he knew, there was little chance of protecting it.
Almost every day it was crushed by the pack of bodies that filled the plaza
and the lobby of the building.
Perhaps, he thought, he should go without the usual milk today. He could get a
cup of water when he ate his lunch and it would do as well. He licked his
lips, which suddenly were dry. Maybe, he told himself, there was some other
way he might save the extra money. For he did like that daily glass of milk
and looked forward to it with a great deal of pleasure.
There was no question about it, however. He'd have to find a way to make up
for the cost of energizing the buffer on the car. It was an expense he had not
counted on and it upset his budget. And if Tom should find that some of the
padding would have to be replaced, that would mean more money down the drain.
He groaned a bit, internally, as he thought about it. Although, he realized, a
man could not take any sort of chances—not with all the drivers on the road.
No chances—no chances of any kind that would threaten human life. No more
daredeviltry, no more mountain climbing, no more air travel, except for the
almost foolproof helicopter used in rescue work, no more
auto racing, no more of the savage contact sports. Transportation made as safe
as it could be made, elevators equipped with fantastic safety features,
stairways safeguarded with non-skid treads and the steps themselves of
resilient material . . . everything that could be done being done to rule out
accident and protect human life. Even the very air, he thought, protected from
pollution—fumes from factories filtered and recycled to extract all irritants,
cars no longer burning fossil fuels but operating on almost everlasting
batteries that drove electric motors.
A man had to live, this first life, as long as he was able. It was the only
opportunity that he had to lay away a competence for his second life. And when
every effort of the society in which he lived was bent toward the end of the
prolongation of his life, it would never do to let a piece of carelessness or
an exaggerated sense of economy (such as flinching at the cost of a piece of
padding or the re-energizing of a buffer) rob him of the years he needed to
tuck away the capital he would need in the life to come.
He remembered, as he inched along, that this was conference morning and that
he'd have to waste an hour or more listening to B.J. sound off about a lot of
things that everyone must know. And when B.J. was through, the heads of the
various departments and project groups would bring up problems which they
could solve without any help, but bringing them up as an excuse to demonstrate
how busy and devoted and how smart they were. It was a waste of time, Frost
told himself, but there was no way to get out of it. Every week for several
years, ever since he had become head of the public relations department, he
had trooped in with the rest of them and sat down at the conference table,
fidgeting when he thought of the work piled on his desk.
Marcus Appleton, he thought, was the only one of them who had any guts. Marcus
refused to attend the conferences and he got away with it. Although, perhaps,
he was the only one who could. Security was a
somewhat different proposition than the other departments. If security was to
be effective, it had to have a somewhat freer hand than was granted any of the
other people of Forever Center.
There had been times, he recalled, when he had been tempted to lay some of his
problems on the table for consideration at the meetings. But he never had and
now was glad he hadn't. For any of the contributions and suggestions made
would have been entirely worthless. Although that would not have prevented
people from other departments claiming credit, later, for any effective work
that he had been able to turn out.
The thing to do, he told himself, as he had many times before, was to do his
work, keep his mouth shut and lay away every penny that he could lay his hands
upon.
Thinking about his work, he wondered who had thought up the slogan chalked on
the red brick wall. It was the first time he had seen it and it was the most
effective one so far and he could use the man who had dreamed it up. But it
would be a waste of time, he knew, to try to find the man and offer him the
job. The slogan undoubtedly was Holies work and all the Holies were a
stiff-necked bunch.
Although what they hoped to gain by their opposition to Forever Center was
more than he could figure. For Forever Center was not aimed against religion,
nor against one's faith. It was no more than a purely scientific approach to a
biological program of far-reaching consequence.
He struggled up the stairs to the entrance, sliding and inching his way along,
and came into the lobby. Bearing to the right, he slid along, foot by foot, to
reach the hobby stand that was flanked on one side by the tobacco counter and
on the other by the drug concession.
The space in front of the drug counter was packed. People stopping on their
way to work to pick up their dream pills—hallucinatory drugs—that would give
them
a few pleasant hours come evening. Frost had never used them, never intended
to—for they were, he thought, a foolish waste of money, and he had never felt
that he really needed them.
Although, he supposed, there were those who felt they needed them—something to
make up for what they felt they might be missing, the excitement and adventure
of those former days when man walked hand in hand with a death that was an
utter ending. They thought, perhaps, that the present life was a drab affair,
that it had no color in it, and that the purpose they must hold to was a
grinding and remorseless purpose. There would be such people, certainly—the
ones who would forget at times the breath-taking glory of this purpose in
their first life, losing momentary sight of the fact that this life they lived
was no more than a few years of preparation for all eternity.
He worked his way through the crowd and reached the hobby stand, which was
doing little business.
Charley, the owner of the stand, was behind the counter, and as he saw Frost
approaching, reached down into the case and brought out a stock card on which
a group of stamps were ranged.
"Good morning, Mr. Frost," he said. "I have something here for you. I saved it
special for you."
"Swiss again, I see," said Frost.
"Excellent stamps," said Charley. "I'm glad to see you buying them. A hundred
years from now you'll be glad you did. Good solid issues put out by a country
in the blue chips bracket."
Frost glanced down at the lower right-hand corner of the card. A figure, 1.30,
was written there in pencil.
"The price today," said Charley, "is a dollar, eighty-five."
3
The wind had blown down the cross again, sometime in the night.
The trouble, thought Ogden Russell, sitting up and rubbing his eyes to rid
them of the seeping pus that had hardened while he slept, was that sand was a
poor
thing in which to set a cross. Perhaps, if he could find them, several sizable
boulders placed around its base might serve to hold it upright against the
river breeze.
He'd have to do something about it, for it was not mete nor proper that the
cross, poor thing that it might be, should topple with every passing gust. It
was not, he told himself, consistent with his piety and purpose.
He wondered, sitting there upon the sand, with the morning laughter of the
river in his ears, if he had been as wise as he had thought in picking out
this tiny island as his place of solitude. It had solitude, all right, but it
had little else. The one thing that it lacked, quite noticeably, was comfort.
Although comfort, he reminded himself quite sternly, had been a quality that
he had not sought. There had been comfort back where he had come from, in that
world he'd turned his back upon, and he could have kept it by simply staying
there. But he had forsaken comfort, and many other things as well, in this
greater search for something which he could sense and feel but which, as yet,
he had not come to grips with.
Although I've tried, he thought. My God, how I have tried!
He arose and stretched, carefully and gingerly, for he had, it seemed, an ache
in eveiy bone and a soreness in each muscle. It's this sleeping out, he
thought, that does it, exposed to the wind and to the river damp, without so
much as a ragged blanket to drape his huddled self. With almost nothing to
cover him, in fact, for the only thing he wore was an ancient pair of
trousers, chopped above the knees.
Having stretched, he wondered if he should set up the cross before his morning
prayer, or if the prayer might be as acceptable without a standing cross.
After all, he told himself, there would be a cross, a reclining cross, and
surely the validity lay in the symbol of the cross itself and not its
attitude.
Standing there, he wrestled with his conscience and tried to look into his
soul and into the immutable mystery of that area which stretched beyond his
soul, and which still remained illusive of any understanding. And there was
still no insight and there was no answer, as there had never been an answer.
It was worse this morning than it had ever been. For all that he could think
of was the peeling sunburn of his body, the abrasions on his knees from
kneeling in the sand, the knot of hunger in his belly, and the wondering about
whether there might be a catfish on one of the lines he'd set out the night
before.
If there were no answer yet, he told himself, after months of waiting, of
seeking for that answer, perhaps it was because there was no answer and this
had been a senseless course upon which he'd set himself. He might be pounding
at the door of an empty room; might be calling upon a thing which did not
exist and never had existed, or calling upon it by a name it did not
recognize.
Although, he thought, the name would be of no consequence. The name was simply
form, no more than a framework within which a man might operate. Really, he
reminded himself, the thing he hunted was a simple thing—an understanding and
a faith, the depth of faith and the strength of understanding that men of old
had held. There must, he argued, be some basis for the belief that it existed
somewhere and that it could be found.
Mankind, as a whole, could not be completely wrong. Religious faith, of any
sort, must be something more than a mere device of man's own making to fill
the aching void that lay in mankind's heart. Even the old Neanderthalers had
laid their dead so that when they rose to second life they would face the
rising sun, and had sprinkled in the grave the handsful of red ocher symbolic
of that second life, and had left with the dead those weapons and adornments
they would need in the life to come.
And he had to know! He must force himself to know! And he would know, when he
had schooled himself to reach deep into the hidden nature of existence.
Somewhere in that mystic pool he would find the truth.
There must be more to life, he thought, than continued existence on this
earth, no matter for how long. There must be another eternity somewhere beyond
the reawakened and renewed and immortal flesh.
Today, this very day, he'd rededicate himself. He'd spend a longer time upon
his knees and he'd seek the deeper and he'd shut out all else but the search
he had embarked upon—and this might be the day. Somewhere in the future lay
the hour and minute of his understanding and his faith, and there was no
telling when that hour might strike. It might, indeed, be close.
For this he'd need all his strength and he'd have his breakfast first, even
before the morning prayer, and thus reinforced, he'd enter once again with a
renewed vigor upon his seeking after truth.
He went along the sandspit to the willows where he had tied his lines and he
pulled them in. They came in easily and there was nothing on them.
The hard ball of hunger squeezed the tighter as he stared at the empty hooks.
So it would be river clams again. He gagged at the thought of them.
4
BJ. rapped sharply on the table with a pencil to signal the beginning of the
meeting. He looked benevolently around at the people there.
"I am glad to see you with us, Marcus," said BJ. "You don't often make it. I
understand you have a little problem."
Marcus Appleton glowered back at B.J.'s benevolence. "Yes, B.J.," he said,
"there is a little problem, but not entirely mine."
BJ. swung his gaze on Frost. "How's the new thrift campaign coming, Dan?"
Frost said, "We are working on it." "We're counting on you," B J. told him.
"It has to have some punch in it. I hear a lot of investment cash is going
into stamps and coins. ..."
"The trouble is," said Frost, "that stamps and coins are a good long-range
investment."
Peter Lane, treasurer, stirred uncomfortably in his chair. "The quicker you
can come up with something," he said, "the better it will be. Subscriptions to
our stock have been falling off quite noticeably." He looked around the table.
"Stamps and coins!" he said, as if they were dirty words.
"We could put a stop to it," said Marcus Appleton. "All we need to do is drop
a word or two. No more com-memoratives, no more semi-postals, no more fancy
air mail issues."
"You forget one tiling," Frost reminded him. "It's not only stamps and coins.
It's porcelain, as well, and paintings and a lot of other tilings. Almost
anything that will fit into a time vault that is not too large. You can't put
a stop to everything that is being bought."
B.J. said, tartly, "We can't stop anything. There's already too much talk
about how we own the world."
Carson Lewis, vice-president in charge of facilities, said, "I think it's talk
of that kind which keeps the Holies active. Not, of course, that they're
causing too much trouble, but they are a nuisance."
"There was a new sign across the street," said Lane. "A rather good one, I
must say . . ."
"It's not there any more," Appleton said, between his teeth.
"No, I imagine not," said Lane. "But simply running around behind these people
with a bucket and a brush and scrubbing off their signs is not the entire
answer."
"I don't think," said Lewis, "there is any entire answer. The ideal thing, of
course, would be to root out the entire Holies operation. But I doubt that's
possible. Marcus, I think, will agree with me that all we can do is hold it
down a little."
"It seems to me," said Lane, "that we could do more than we are doing. In the
last few weeks I've seen more slogans chalked on walls than I've ever seen
before. The Holies must have quite a corps of sign painters working
surreptiously. And it's not only here. It is everywhere. All up and down the
coast. And in Chicago and in the West Coast complex. In Europe and in Africa .
. ."
"Some day," said Appleton, "there'll be an end to it. I can promise that.
There are just a few ringleaders. A hundred or so, perhaps. Once we have them
pegged, we can put an end to it."
"But quietly, Marcus," BJ. cautioned. "I insist it must be quietly."
Appleton showed his teeth. "Very quiet," he said.
"It's not just the slogans," said Lewis. "There are the rumors, too."
"Rumors can't hurt us," B.J. said.
"Most of them can't, of course," said Lewis. "They're just something that give
people something to talk about, to pass away the time. But there are some that
have a
basis of truth. And by that I mean that they are based on situations which do
exist in Forever Center. They start with a truth and twist it in an ugly way
and I think that some of those may hurt us. Rumors of any sort hurt our image.
Some of them hurt us quite a lot. But the thing that worries me is how do
these Holies learn of the situations upon which they base the rumors? I would
suspect that they may have developed many pipelines into this very building
and into the other branches of Forever Center and that is something that we
should try to put a stop to."
"We can't be sure," Lane protested, "that all the rumors are started by the
Holies. I think we are inclined to attribute too much to them. They're just a
gang of crackpots . .."
"Not entirely crackpots," said Marcus Appleton. "We could clean out the
crackpots. This bunch is a group of smart operators. The worst thing we can do
is to underestimate them. My office is working on it all the time. We have a
lot of information. I have a feeling that we may be closing in. . . ."
"I would agree with you," Lewis told him. "About their being an effective and
well-organized opposition. I have often felt they might have some tie-up with
the Loafers. Things get too hot, those who have the heat on them can simply
disappear into the wilderness and hide out with the Loafers. . . ."
Appleton shook his head. "The Loafers are nothing more or less than they
appear to be. You're letting your imagination run away with you, Carson. The
Loafers are the unemployables, the chronic no-goods, the misfits. Comprising,
what is it, Peter, something like one per cent..."
"Less than a half of one per cent," said Lane. "All right,
then, less than one half of one per cent of the population. They've declared
themselves free of us, in effect. They roam the wilderness in bands. They
scrape out a living somehow . . ."
"Gentlemen," said B.J. quietly, "I am afraid we're
getting rather far afield into a subject we've discussed many times before,
with no particular results. I would imagine we can leave the Holies to the
close attention of Security."
Marcus nodded. "Thank you, B.J.," he said.
"Which brings us," said B.J., "to the problem that I mentioned."
Chauncey Hilton, section chief of the Timesearch project, spoke softly, "One
of our research people has disappeared. Her name is Mona Campbell. I had a
feeling that she was onto something."
"But if she was on the track of something," Lane exploded, "why should she . .
."
"Peter, please," said B.J. "Let's discuss this as calmly as we can."
He looked about the table. "I am sony, gentlemen, that we did not let you know
immediately. I suppose it wasn't something that we should have kept quiet
about. But it was something that we didn't want noised around too much and
Marcus thought. . ."
"Marcus has been looking for her, then?" asked Lane.
Appleton nodded. "Six days. There's been no trace of her."
"Mavbe," Lewis said, "she just went off somewhere to be alone and think a
problem through."
"We thought of that," said Hilton. "But if that had been the case, she would
have spoken to me. A most conscientious person. And her notes are gone."
"If she'd gone off to work," insisted Lewis, "she'd have taken them along."
"Not all of them," said Hilton. "Just the current working notes. Not the
entire file. Really, no one is supposed to take anything out of the project.
Our security, however, is not as tight as it perhaps should be."
Lane said to Appleton, "You've checked the monitors?"
Appleton nodded curtly. "Of course, we did. That's routine, for all the good
it does us. The monitoring system is not set up to deal with identity. Each
computer picks up a person when they show up in its quadrant,
but it is simply concerned with the signal which establishes the fact there is
a living person there. If one of the signals clicks off, then it knows someone
has died and a rescue crew is dispatched at once. But these signals keep
shifting all the time as people move about. They shift off one quadrant and
are picked up by another."
"But it could indicate a person traveling." "Certainly. But a lot of people
travel. And Mona Campbell may have done no traveling. She may have just
holed up."
"Or been kidnaped," Lewis said.
"I don't think so," Hilton told him. "You forget the notes are gone."
"You think, then," said Frost, "that she defected. Deliberately quit the
project." "She ran away," said Hilton.
Howard Barnes, head of Spacesearch, asked, "You really think she made some
sort of breakthrough?"
"I think so," Hilton said. "She told me, rather guardedly, she was following a
new line of calculation. I remember that distinctly. She said a new line of
calculation rather than a new line of research. I thought it rather strange,
but she had an intense look about her and . . ." "She said calculation?" Lane
asked. "Yes. I found out later that she was working with the Hamal math. You
remember it, Howard?"
Barnes nodded. "One of our ships brought it back— oh, say, twenty years ago.
Found it on a planet that at one time had been occupied by an intelligent
race. Probably a planet that we could use, but it would have to be terraformed
and the terraforming on this particular planet would be a nasty job that might
take a thousand years or more on an all-out effort."
"This math?" asked Lewis. "Anything we could use?"
"Mathematicians tried to figure it out," said Barnes.
"Nothing came of it. It was recognizable as math, all
right, but it was so far from our concept of math that no
one could manage to get his teeth into it. The team that
visited the planet found a lot of other artifacts, but the rest of them didn't
seem to mean too much. Interesting, of course, to an anthropologist or to a
culturist, but with no immediate practical value. The math, however, was
something else again. It was in a—well, I suppose you could call it a book and
the book seemed to be intact. It's not often you find any intact, spelled out
body of knowledge on an abandoned planet. There was quite a bit of excitement
when it was brought home."
"And no one had cracked it," said Lane, "except possibly this Mona Campbell."
"I'm almost sure she did," said Hilton. "She is a rather exceptional person
and . .."
"You don't require periodic reports of work in progress?" asked Lane.
"Oh, yes, certainly. But we don't look over people's shoulders. You know what
that can do."
"Yes," said Barnes. "They have to have some freedom. They have to be allowed
to feel that a certain line of research belongs, personally, to them during
its development."
B.J. said, "All of you, of course, realize how important this could be. With
all respect to Howard, the Space-search program is a long-range project. It's
something to look forward to three or four hundred years from now. But the
time program we need as soon as we can get it. A breakthrough in the time
program would assure us of the living space we will need, perhaps, in another
century. Maybe before that. Once we begin revivals, well face a not too
distant day when we'll need more space than this present earth affords. And
the day we begin revivals may not be too distant. The Immortality boys are
coming along quite nicely if I understand what Anson tells me rightly."
"That is right, B.J.," said Anson Graves. "We feel we are getting close. I'd
say ten years at most."
"In ten years," said B.J., "we'll have immortality . . ."
"A lot could go wrong," warned Graves.
"We'll trust there won't," B.J. said. "In ten years we'll
have immortality. The matter converters have solved the problem of materials
and food. The housing program is up to schedule. All that we can look forward
to as any massive problem is the matter of space. To get that space and get it
quickly, we need time travel. Time is critical."
"Perhaps," suggested Lane, "we're looking for the impossible. Time may be
something that can't be cracked. There may be nothing there."
"I can't agree with you," said Hilton. "I think Miss Campbell cracked it."
"And ran away," said Lane.
"It all boils down to one thing," said B.J. "Mona Campbell must be found."
He looked hard at Marcus Appleton. "You understand," he said. "Mona Campbell
must be found!"
"I agree," said Appleton. "I would like to request, however, all the
assistance that anyone can give me. In time, of course, we'll find her, but we
might find her sooner if..."
"I don't quite understand," said Lane. "The matter of security is something
that rests entirely in your hands." "As a working proposition," said
Appleton, "as an everyday affair, that is entirely true. But the treasury
department also has its agents . . ."
"But for a different sort of work," exploded Lane. "Not for routine . . ."
"I agree with you," said Appleton, "although it is conceivable that they could
be of help. There is one other department that I am thinking of."
He switched about in his chair and looked straight at Frost.
"Dan," he said, "you've developed a rather fine extracurricular intelligence
that might be a lot of help. You have all sorts of tipsters and undercover
boys and . . ." "What is this?" B.J. demanded.
"Oh, I forgot," said Appleton. "You may not know about it. It's entirely a
departmental affair. Dan has done a fine job in organizing this group of
people
and it's most effective. He finances it, I understand, out of something called
publication research that doesn't necessarily come up for review. Which is
true, of course, of a number of other activities and projects."
Why, you bastard, Frost said to himself. You dirty, lousy bastard!
"Dan," B.J. yelped, "is this the truth?"
"Yes," said Frost. "Yes, of course it is."
"But why?" demanded B.J. "Why should you have . . ."
"B.J.," said Frost, "if you are really interested I can cite you chapter and
verse on why it's done and why it's necessary. Do you have any idea how many
books, how many magazine articles, would have been published in the past year,
or the past ten years-all of them purporting to expose Forever Center—if
something hadn't been done to head them off?"
"No," yelled B.J. "And I'm not interested. We can survive those kind of
attacks. We've survived them all before."
"We've survived them," said Frost, "because only a few slipped through. The
worst of them were stopped. Not only by myself, but by the men who preceded
me. There are some I've stopped that would have hurt us badly."
"B.J.," said Lane, "I think Dan has something on his side. I think that. . ."
"Well, I don't," B.J. stormed. "We shouldn't try to stop anything, manage
anything, censor anything. We are being accused of trying to run the world. It
is being said . . ."
"B.J.," Frost said, angrily, "there is no use in our pretending that Forever
Center doesn't run the earth. There are nations still, and governments, but we
own the earth. We have soaked up all the investment capital and we own all the
big enterprises and utilities and . . ."
"I could give you argument on that," roared B.J.
"Of course you could. It's not our capital. It's only money that we hold in
trust. But we manage all that
money and we decide how to invest it and no one can question us."
"I submit," said Lane, uneasily, "that we've wandered off the track."
"I hadn't meant," said Appleton, "to stir up a hornet's nest."
"I think you did," Frost told him levelly. "I don't know what the pitch is,
Marcus, but you never did a thing in all your life that you didn't plan to
do."
"Marcus, I believe, asked cooperation," said Lane, trying to calm the
situation. "For my part, I'm willing to cooperate."
"For my part, I am not," said Frost. "I won't cooperate with a man who walked
in here deliberately and tried to put me on the spot for doing a job that was
摘要：

WHYCALLTHEMBACKFROMHEAVEN?Copyright©,1967,byCliffordD.SimakAnAceBook,byarrangementwithDoubleday&Co.,lac.AllRightsReservedScannedwithFineReader6ProfessionalfromacrumblingpaperbackcopyCoversrestoredwithPaintShopProDimJimPrintedinU.S.A.Thejurychortledhappily.Thetypebarsblurredwithfranticspeedastheysetd...

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