Clifford D. Simak - The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories

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The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories

Clifford D. Simak

This first world edition published in 1986 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of 4 Brook Street,

London W1Y 1AA

Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission ot'Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

his agent, Kirby McCauley.

author.

permission of the author. First published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact.

Typeset by The Word Factory, Rossendale, Lanes, England

ISBN 0 7278 1221 1

Contents

Introduction

The Birch Clump Cylinder

The Whistling Well

The Marathon Photograph

The Grotto of the Dancing Deer

Introduction

In 1981, when in the United States on a research trip, I took a week-end out to go to Minneapolis where

Clifford D Simak had agreed to meet me. I had begun to write a book about his fiction, his work being

amongst my most favourite science fiction. Novels such as City, and Way Station had enthralled me in

my teens and made 'Simak' a name to be watched for both in the magazines and amongst publishers'

lists. A similar knowledge of his work may have brought you to pick up this book.

Meeting CDS was the high point of my 1981 trip. CDS was all that I had thought he might be from his

books and stories. Thereafter, and regrettably for only a couple or so days, I explored the north-west

corner of Grant County, Wisconsin, that triangular area bounded to the north and west by the Mississippi

and the Wisconsin rivers, as the Wisconsin flows for its last few miles just north of the bluff country in

which so much of CDS's fiction is set, and where he was born in August 1904. Seeing that country made

me understand yet more of that gentle and good strength which comes through in his work. CDS is one

who has managed to fuse science fiction with basic and ordinary human values in a way which few

attempt, let alone succeed in carrying off. His childhood in Millville Township, Grant County, and his

growing up among its country folk, imbibing their strengths and values, is a major part of the flavour of

his work.

The best writers of all genres have an individuality which readily identifies their work. Plot, setting,

character and subject, language and pace, all interact in a way which hall-marks their work. Clifford D

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Simak is one such. Over the years and by many high quality tales he has carved out a ledge (rather than

a niche) within the pantheon of science fiction writers. Despite science fiction writing being only a part-

time occupation until he retired from the newspaper world in 1976, his is a body of work of which many

a full-time practitioner would be proud.

The art of the teller of tales runs back into the mists of time. Fundamentally, it is the art of

entertainment. It may have begun as an ability given to some to take the attention of a grateful audience

off the fears of the night and the privations of the morrow. Those huddling together for warmth and

protection would have welcomed being carried elsewhere and into other emotions by the inventions of

one of their number. Certainly the sense of wonder is present in the most ancient tales that have come

down to us, and the best science fiction lies within that noble lineage.

No doubt some will disagree but, whatever the history of the matter, we need good stories. Some are

fun, pure and simple. Others produce a frisson of fear. Yet others may be sombre and solemnising. On

occasion, like the best of fairy stories, a tale may gently educate, but that is not its immediate aim. The

curse of modern literature is the tract for the times, the self-indulgent puddle of diatribe poorly disguised

as a story. Yet the really good story will have something in it which will linger in the mind, perhaps for

years, and you will be glad that you read the story and stashed it away in that rag-bag of mental furniture

everyone possesses. Such stories nourish the mind, and the emotions.

The sixty-thousand or so words of the stories here collected show what I mean. They are fine examples

of the craft of the story-teller. An aspiring author can learn much from them. Take The Birch Clump

Cylinder and see in its spare economy how to well-carpenter a tale. Every sentence contributes by data

or by atmosphere to the impact. Each bit of information counts. In musical terms it is a short quartet,

stating, developing and concluding its theme with clean lines. It contains an excellent time-paradox,

which is one of the most difficult types of SF story to bring off nowadays. It has a new idea, that of the

time engine. It also has that delicate treatment of its characters which we expect in a Simak tale, as

Charley Spencer, who begins the story somewhat discouraged and battered by life, realises at the end

that perhaps he will go to the stars.

The Institute sited at Cramden Hall in The Birch Clump Cylinder is the Coon Creek Institute, and that is

another give-away to those who know much of CDS's work. Coon Creek and its variants appear in many

Simak tales. It is one of the many locations in his work whose origin can be traced to an actual

geographic spot. Coon Valley lies some way north of the Wisconsin, and Highway 14/61 runs west

down it from Viroqua and Westby through the town of Coon Valley to La Crosse Southeast. It is a

glorious valley, with spreading side-valleys, and for his purposes CDS has transposed it into Grant

County, Wisconsin. Other places in his stories require no such moving. Wyalusing, Millville, W'oodman

and the like all appear in CDS's stories, and can be compared with their sources. Amongst the present

collection I would draw particular attention to two, The Whistling Well, and The Marathon Photograph.

The Whistling Well feels authentic, despite the mystery of its content. That authenticity comes from its

being firmly rooted in reality. We read of Thomas Parker's search for the farm of his forebears, sited

somewhere on

Parker's Ridge in bluff country, above a river. He is directed to it from the town of Patch Grove, and is

told that it runs on from Military Ridge. There is a Patch Grove in Grant County. It lies close to

Highway 18, some six miles south of the Bridgeport Bridge which crosses the Wisconsin south of

Prairie du Chien. I have been there. To the north of Patch Grove and Highway 18 lies Military Ridge,

which leads on to Sentinel Ridge, and just to the north of a white dusty farm road on Sentinel Ridge

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there is a well, which today clatters in the wind, as it has done for years. That well was drilled by CDS's

grandfather, Ned Wiseman, who fought in the Civil War, married Ellen Parker and won that farm from

the wild. You will see these and other connections in the story itself. 'Thomas Parker' has close family

connections with his author. The setting, like the return of others to a farm in other CDS's stories, is that

of the scenes of CDS's childhood and youth. The irises, the cottonwood trees, the lilacs, the old timbered

beams and the abandoned hearthstones, the rosemary, the apple trees, and the scrawny rose-bushes the

tender accuracy is that of love. The same holds good for The Marathon Photograph. Life in that bluff

country is the mount for this jewel. Neville wants to photograph some pink lady's slippers, and that leads

to everything. Those who know CDS's stories will remember that Enoch Wallace knew where that rare-

ish plant grew on the land round his Way Station, the novel of twenty years before this story was

written. Platteville limestone, laid down over the cylinder in this story, is characteristic of the north-west

corner of Grant County, Platteville being a major town of the county, and a seat of the University of

Wisconsin. The real Kickapoo River, which is also mentioned, enters the Wisconsin from the north,

across the river from the little town of Woodman, and in this story we are told of the Lodge by reference

to the work of the local historian of Woodman County. We are again reading of a story set in 'Simak

country'. Many blind valleys in that region could shelter such a place as the Lodge, and the description

of the countryside and the special touches, the lightning bugs and the squirrels, are those which only

someone possessed of a deep knowledge and love of a place would incorporate.

But The Marathon Photograph is a more complex tale than its setting, and is one which repays several

readings and returns to it. If The Birch Clump Cylinder is a quartet, this is a compressed symphony,

which takes up many themes which CDS has treated elsewhere. There are many speculations gathered in

it. There is the future of a blasted Earth, and those capable of travelling to the stars who are nonetheless

scavenging amid their past. There is knowledge to be found, the knowledge of some vanished race from

far across the galaxy, which has broadcast its knowledge as a last service before its extinction. What

benefit will such alien knowledge be to our twisted posterity? There is the engimatic Stefan, said to be

pyschopathic by his co-aevals. But who is the psychopath amongst them? Who is advanced- and what is

advancement? There is the question of the time-chart and its powers. There is the question of the various

photographs, Charlemagne, Marathon and . . ? And at the end of the story there is that pang about

religion. It is a pang found in The Whistling Well, with its questions as to the religion of the dinosaurs,

and it is found in several Simak novels which also speculate upon religion, faith and response. Why Call

Them Back From Heaven?, A Choice of Gods, Project Pope, and Special Deliverance contain other

musings on this theme, but none deliver quite the same bleakness as The Marathon Photograph does.

Did Andrew Thornton successfully use the time saddle? And if so, what did he find? Read this one: put

it aside for a week or so; then re-read it. Like much of the best music, it gives up its meaning gradually,

and inexhaustibly.

The origin of the remaining story, The Grotto of the Dancing Deer, is different. It lies in CDS's non-

fiction book Prehistoric Man: The Story of Man's Rise to Civilisation (1971), which itself sprang from

his involvement for many years as the editor of a science series for the Minneapolis Tribune. One of the

chapters is called The World's First Paintings. The cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites in the

Pyrenees fascinated CDS, and he turned them over and over in his mind. The result is this story about

the hidden grotto of paintings, and the way in which their discovery is arranged by someone who knows

about them.

In The Grotto of the Dancing Deer, CDS displays all his qualities. There is mystery, and the ability to

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conjure up location. There is an intellectual puzzle. There is the deft evocation of character, and there is

that profound sense that the old traditional values are best, and that they are worth preserving. Boyd

could astonish the scientific community were he to reveal what he knows by the end of the story. But he

will not. He has been trusted and will not prove himself unworthy of that trust. And in return his friend

gives him another secret, but one which he can act on. Is there any wonder that this story won the Hugo,

Nebula and Locus awards for 1980? If we persist with the musical comparisons, to me this story is kin to

Barber's Adagio for Strings.

One last extraordinary fact, or, depending on how you count, two. All these stories have to do with time,

and time stories are the most difficult of all science fiction to bring off. High standards have been set in

the past, and there have been suggestions that it was no longer possible to write publishable time stories

(as opposed to stories where time is simply a barrier to be gone through, the rest of the story taking place

other-when). These four show that the opinion was wrong; but they also make it more difficult for future

authors. It is extraordinary to find that this has been achieved by one of the Deans of science fiction

producing these four stories in the fifth decade of his writing career. As you will see from the copyright

credits, the earliest is a decade old. The Grotto of the Dancing Deer is the most recent, and was produced

in CDS's seventy-fifth year, since when he has produced two excellent novels, with a third imminent.

Extraordinary!

Aberdeen, Scotland F Lyall

May, 1985

The Birch Clump Cylinder

As Bronson drove the car up the curving road that led to the front of Cramden Hall, I became aware that

there had been some change, although it took a moment to figure what it was.

'The pagoda's gone,' I said.

'Blew down one night several years ago,' said Bronson. 'High wind came up. Flimsy thing, it was.'

Nothing else had changed, it seemed. Coon Creek didn't change. It stayed stodgy and a bit ramshackle

and tried its humble best to seem of no account.

'Just as well it's gone,' said Bronson.'It never seemed to fit. Just a little flighty for my taste.'

The car wheeled up and stopped in front of the pillared portico.

'You go on in,' said Bronson. 'Old Prather's waiting for you. I'll put away the car and bring in your bags.'

'Thanks for meeting me,' I said. 'It's been a long time, Bronson.'

'Fifteen years,' said Bronson. 'Maybe nearer twenty. None of us gets any younger. You never have been

back.'

'No,' I said, T haven't.'

The car pulled away, and as it moved out of my line of vision I saw I had been wrong. For the pagoda

wasn't gone; the pagoda was still there. It squatted in the evening light exactly as I remembered it,

standing in the park-like area inside the driveway curve, with a pine at one corner of it and a sprawling

yew along the side.

'Charles,' a voice said behind rne. 'Charles, it's good to see you.'

I turned and saw it was Old Prather, fumbling down the steps towards me.

I went rapidly up to meet him, and we stood there for a moment, looking at one another in the fading

light. He hadn't changed too much - a little older, perhaps, a bit more frazzled at the edges, but the same

erect, stiff posture that barely escaped being military. The imagined scent of chalk dust still clung to

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him; he was as imperious as ever, but, I thought, looking at him, perhaps a shade more kindly mellowed

with the years.

'The place looks the same as ever,' I said. 'Too bad the pagoda'

'The pesky thing blew down,' he said. 'Gave us no end of trouble cleaning up the mess.'

We went trudging up the steps together. 'It was kind of you to come,' he said. 'As you may have

gathered, we have a spot of trouble. On the phone, you understand, I couldn't be specific.'

'I jumped at the chance to come,' I said. 'Not doing anything, of course. Not since I was booted out of

Time Research.'

'But that was two years ago. And you weren't booted.'

'It is three years,' I said, 'and I most emphatically was booted.'

'Dinner, I think, is ready,' he said, 'and we had best get to it. Old Emil'

'Emil is still here?' I asked.

Old Prather chuckled thinly. 'We carry on,' he said. 'Bronson and myself and Emil. Young men coming

up, but they are not quite ready. We all get crotchety and at times a little prickly. Emil, especially. He is

crustier than ever and is apt to scold you if you're late for meals or don't eat quite enough. He takes it as

a slur on his cooking.'

We reached the door and went into the foyer.

'And now,' I said, 'suppose you spell out this pagoda mummery.'

'You saw it, then?' he said.

'Of course I saw it. After Bronson had told me it had blown down. And it was still there when you said it

had blown down. If this is some elaborate gag, just because I worked on Time Research'

'It is no trick,' he said. 'It's part of the reason you are here. We'll talk about it later, but now we must go

in to dinner or Emil will be outraged. Did I mention, by the way, that a couple of your classmates will be

dining with us? Leonard Asbury. You remember him, of course.'

'Dr Prather,' I said, T have spent all these years trying not to remember him. He was a little twerp. And

what other assorted alumni have you hauled in on this pagoda business?'

He said, without any shame at all, 'Only one other. Mary Holland.'

'She was the one who broke your heart. She went into music.'

'Charles,' he said, 'you mistake my function and the purpose of this institute if you think she broke my

heart. The world could ill have afforded to lose the kind of music she has written.'

'So,' I said, 'a famous mathematician, a talented composer, a down-at-the-heels time researcher. When it

comes to picking a team, you really go all out.'

His eyes took on a merry twinkle. 'Come on in to dinner,' he said, 'or Emil will wear out his tongue on

us.'

The dinner had been a good one, simple and hearty -vichyssoise, a salad, prime ribs and a baked potato,

with wine that was not bad at all.

Old Prather had done a lot of inconsequential and rather pompous talking. The man was a good host;

you have to give him that. The rest of us said little - the kind of tentative, exploratory talk that old

acquaintances, too long separated, are likely to engage in.

I studied the two of them, and I knew that they were studying me as well. I could imagine both were

wondering why Old Prather had invited me, for which I could not blame them.

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Leonard Asbury, I decided, was still a little twerp. His thin black hair was slicked down against his

skull. His face had a hard and foxy look. When he spoke, his thin lips scarcely moved. I didn't like the

bastard a bit more than I ever did.

Mary was something else again. She had been a pretty girl, and we had had some dates nothing serious,

just dates. But now her beauty had settled into a sort of matronly composure, and I had the feeling there

was a lot of emptiness behind that contented face.

It was damned unsettling the two of them. I was uneasy and wished I had not come.

'And now,' said Old Prather, 'let us get down to business. For I suppose you must guess that there is

some business. A rather urgent matter.'

He wiped his lips with his napkin, then bunched it on the table.

T think,' he said, 'that Charles may have some inkling of it. He saw something when he came in that you

others missed.'

Both Leonard and Mary looked at me. I didn't say a word. This was Old Prather's show; let him carry on.

'It seems quite likely,' he said, 'that we have a time machine.'

For a moment not one of us said anything, then Leonard leaned forward and asked, 'You mean someone

here has invented'

T am sorry,' said Old Prather. 'I do not mean that at all. A time machine has fallen into a clump of birch

just above the little pond back of the machine shops.'

'Fallen?'

'Well, maybe not fallen. Appeared, perhaps, is a better word. Limpy, the gardener, found it. He is a

simple lad. I guess none of you remember him. He came to us just a few years ago.'

'You mean to say itjust showed up?' asked Mary.

'Yes, it just showed up. You can see it lying there, although not too clearly, for often it seems a little

hazy. Objects at times appear around it, then disappear again -shunted in and out of time, we think.

There have been some rather strange mirages around campus. The pagoda, for example.'

He said to me, 'The contraption seems to have a penchant for the pagoda.'

Leonard said, with barely concealed nastiness, 'Charles is our expert here. He is the time researcher.'

I didn't answer him, and for a long time nothing was said at all. The silence became a little awkward.

Old Prather tried to cover up the awkwardness. 'You must know, of course,' he said, 'that each of you is

here tonight for a special reason. Here is a situation that we must come to grips with and each of you, I'm

sure, will make a contribution.

'But Dr Prather,' Mary said, 'I know less than nothing about the subject. I've never thought of time except

in an abstract sense. I'm not even in the sciences. My whole life has been music. I've been concerned

with little else.'

'That is exactly my point,' said Old Prather, 'the reason that you're here. We need an unsullied, an

unprejudiced mind a virgin mind, if you don't resent the phrase to look at this phenomenon. We need

the kind of thinking that can be employed by someone like yourself, who has never thought of time

except, as you have said, in an abstract sense. Both Leonard and Charles have certain preconceptions on

the subject.'

T am gratified, of course,' said Mary, 'for the opportunity to be here, and quite naturally I am intrigued

by what you call the "phenomenon". But actually, as you must realise, I have so provincial an attitude

toward time that I doubt I can be any help at all.'

Sitting there and listening to her, I found myself in agreement with what she said. For once, Old Prather

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had managed to outsmart himself. His reason for bringing Mary in as a member of his team seemed utter

nonsense to me.

'And I must tell you, as well,' said Leonard, 'that I have done no real work on time. Naturally, in

mathematics - that is, in some areas of mathematics -time must be taken as a factor, and I am, of course,

quite familiar with this. But I have never been primarily concerned with time, and I think you should

know'

Old Prather raised a hand to stop him. 'Not so fast,' he said. 'It seems to me that all of you are hurrying to

disqualify yourselves.' He turned to me. 'So you are left,' he said. 'You've said exactly nothing.'

'Perhaps,' I said, 'because I have nothing to say.'

'The fact remains,' he insisted, 'that you were with Time Research. I'm burning with curiosity about the

project. At least you can tell us something of what it's all about. I'm particularly interested in how you

came to disassociate yourself

T didn't disassociate myself. I was fired. I was booted out the door. You know the background of the

project. The premise, and it is a solid premise, is that if we're ever to venture beyond the solar system - if

we hope to reach the stars - we have to know a little more about the space-time concept than we know

now.'

'I heard some rumor,' said Leonard, 'of a terrific row. My information said'

T don't know how terrific,' I said, 'but, as far as I was concerned, it was sort of final. You see, I thought

in terms of divorcing time from space, splitting the two into separate entities. And, goddam it, when you

think of it, they are two separate factors. But science has talked so long of the space-time continuum that

it has become an article of faith. There seems to be a prevalent idea that if you separate the two of them

you tear the universe apart - that they are somehow welded together to make up the universe. But if

you're going to work with time, you have to work with time alone, not with time and something else.

Either you work with time or you work with nothing.'

'It all sounds highly philosophical to me,' said Old Prather.

'Here at Coon Creek,' I told him, 'you and several others taught us the philosophical approach. I

remember what you used to tell us. Think hard and straight, you said, and to hell with all the curves.'

He coughed a highly artificial cough. T rather doubt,' he said, T phrased it quite that way.'

'Of course you didn't. Mine was an oversimplified translation. Your words were very much more genteel

and greatly convoluted. And it's not as philosophical as it seems; it's just common sense some of that

hard, straight thinking you always urged upon us. If you are to work with anything, you must first know

what you are working with, or at least have some theory as to what it is. Your theory can be wrong, of

course.'

'And that,' said Leonard, 'was the reason you were canned.'

'That was the reason I was canned. An unrealistic approach, they said. No one would go along with it.'

While I had been talking, Old Prather had risen from the table and walked across the room to an ancient

sideboard. He took a book from one of the drawers and walked back to the table. He handed the book to

Leonard, then sat down again.

Leonard opened the book and started riffling through the pages. Suddenly he stopped riffling and stared

intently at a page.

He looked up, puzzled. 'Where did you get this?' he asked.

'You remember I told you certain objects were appearing around the time machine,' said Old Prather.

'Appearing and then disappearing'

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'What kind of objects?' Mary asked.

'Different things. Mostly commonplace things. I recall there was a baseball bat. A battered bicycle

wheel. Boxes, bottles, all kinds of junk. Close around the contraption. We let them go. We were afraid to

come too close to it. One could get tangled up with the time effect. No one knows what it might do.'

'But someone,' said Leonard, 'managed to snag this book.'

'Limpy,' said Old Prather. 'He's a little short of sense. But, for some reason, he is intrigued by books. Not

that he can do much reading in them. Especially in that one.'

'I should think not,' said Leonard. He saw that I was looking intently at him. 'All right, Charles,' he said,

Til tell you. It is mathematics. Apparently a new kind of mathematics. I'll have to study it.'

'From the future?' I asked.

'From about two centuries in the future,' said Old Prather, 'if you can believe the imprint date.'

'There is no reason, is there, to disbelieve it?'

'Not at all,' said Old Prather, happily.

'One thing,' I said, 'that you haven't mentioned. The dimensions of this machine of yours. What

characteristics does it have?'

Tf you're thinking of a container that was designed to carry a human passenger, it's not that at all. This

one's not nearly big enough. It's cylindrical, three feet long or less. It's made of some sort of metal - a

metal cylinder.

Grillwork of some sort at each end, but no sign of any operational machinery. It doesn't look like what

one would think of as a time machine, but it does seem to have the effects of one. All the objects

appearing and disappearing. And the mirages. We call them mirages for lack of a better term. The

pagoda, for example, the pagoda that really did blow down, flicking on and off. People walking about,

strangers who appear momentarily, then are gone. Occasional structures, like the ghosts of structures,

not quite in the present, but not in the future, either. And they have to be from the future, for there's

never been anything like them here. A boat on the pond. So far as I know, the pond has never had a boat.

Too small for a boat. As you recall, just a little puddle.'

'You've taken precautions against someone stumbling into its field?'

'We've put a fence around it. Ordinarily, someone is watching to warn off stray visitors. But, as you

know, we seldom have stray visitors. We'll all go out and have a look tomorrow, first thing after

breakfast.'

'Why not now?' asked Leonard.

'No reason,' said Old Prather, 'but we wouldn't be able to see much. We have no lights out there.

However, if you wish'

Leonard made a gesture of agreement. 'Tomorrow's soon enough,' he said.

'Another thing you may have been wondering about,' said Old Prather, 'is how it got there. As I told you,

the gardener found it. I said at first it fell, then corrected myself and said it had arrived. The correction

was not quite an honest one. There is some evidence it fell - some broken branches in the birch clump

that might have been broken when the thing plunged through the trees.'

'You say "fell,"' said Mary. 'Fell from where?'

'We are not sure, but we do have a hypothesis. Some- thing happened west of here a few nights ago. A

plane was reported down. Out in the hills. A wild and tangled country, as you may remember. Several

people saw it falling. Searchers were sent out, but now the story is that there never was a plane. The

news reports indicate it might have been a meteorite, mistaken for a plane. It is fairly clear that someone

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stepped in and quickly hushed it up. I made a few discreet inquiries of friends in Washington, and the

word seems to be that a spaceship fell. Not one of our ships. All of ours can be accounted for. The

supposition is that it may have been an alien ship.'

'And you think the time machine fell off the alien ship,' said Leonard. 'It was breaking up and'

'But why would an alien ship carry a time machine?' asked Mary.

'Not a time machine,' I said. 'A time engine. A drive that uses time as a source of energy.'

Unable to sleep, I let myself out to go for a walk. The moon had just risen above the eastern hills,

shedding a sickly light that barely dispersed the dark.

I hadn't been able to sleep. I had closed my eyes and tried, but then had been compelled to open them

and stare up at the ceiling that was really not a ceiling, but just a square of darkness.

A time engine, I told myself. Time used as energy. Christ, then, I had been right! If it turned out that the

thing in the clump of birch out there above the lake actually was an engine, then I had been right and all

the others had been wrong. And, more than that, if time could be used as an energy, the universe lay

open - not just the nearby stars, not just the galaxy, but the entire universe, everything that was. For if

time could be manipulated - and to use it as a source of energy would mean that it would have to be

capable of manipulation - then the distances of space would no longer count at all, would never need to

be considered, and man could go anywhere he wished.

I looked up at the stars and I wanted to shout at them: Now your remoteness can no longer count with

us. Your remoteness or the even more incredible remoteness of your sister stars that are so far that no

matter how fiercely the fires may burn within them, we can catch no glimpse of them. Not even the

dimmer stars, nor even the stars unseeable, are beyond our reach.

I wanted to yell at them, but of course I did not yell at them. You do not yell at stars. A star is too

impersonal a thing to think of yelling at.

I walked down the driveway and followed a sidewalk that angled up to the hill toward the observatory,

and looking off to my left, I thought: Just over that little rise of ground in the clump of birch that stands

above the pond. Trying to envision the cylinder that lay in the clump of birch, I wondered for the

thousandth time if it might really be what I thought it was.

As I went around a curve in the winding walk, a man rose silently from a bench where he had been

sitting. I stopped, somewhat startled by his sudden appearance; I had thought that at this time of night I

would have been alone.

'Charley Spencer,' said the man. 'Can it be Charley Spencer?'

'It could be,' I said. His face was in the shadow, and I could not make it out.

T must apologise,' he said, 'for intruding on your walk. I thought I was alone. You may not remember

me. I am Kirby Winthrop.'

I went back through my memory, and a name came out of it. 'But I do remember you,' I said. 'You were

a year or two behind me. I have often wondered what became of you.' Which was a lie, of course; I'd

never thought of him.

'I stayed on,' he said. 'There's something about the place that gets into the blood. Doing some teaching.

Mostly research. Old Prather pulled you in on the time machine?'

'Myself and some others,' I told him. 'What do you know about it?'

'Nothing, really. It's outside my field. I'm in cybernetics. That's why I'm out here. I often come out on the

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hill, when it's quiet, and think.'

'When it comes to cybernetics,' I told him, T rank as fairly stupid.'

'It's a wide field,' he said. 'I'm working on intelligence.'

'Indeed,' I said.

'Machine intelligence,' he said.

'Can machines be intelligent?' I asked.

He said, T rather think they can.'

'You're making progress, then?'

T have a theory I am working on,' he said.

'Well, that is fine,' I said. 'I wish you all success.'

I sensed in him a hunger to talk, now that he had found someone new he could tell about his work; but I

was not about to stand around with him out there in the night.

T think I'll turn back,' I said. 'It's getting chilly and maybe now I can get some sleep.'

I turned to go, and he said to me, T'd like to ask you something, Charley. How many people have you

ever told you got your education at Coon Creek?'

The question startled me, and I turned back to face him.

'That's a funny question, Kirby.'

'Maybe so,' he said, 'but how many have you?'

'As few as possible,' I said. I hesitated for a moment, waiting for him to speak, and when he didn't, I

said, 'It was good to see you, Kirby,' and I headed back toward the hall.

But he called after me, and I swung around again.

'There is something else,' he said. 'What do you know of the history of Coon Creek?'

'Not a thing,' I said. T'm not even curious.'

T was,' he said, 'and I did some checking. Do you know there has never been a cent of public money in

this place? And in all its history, it has never had a research grant. So far as I can find, it has never

applied for one.'

'There is an endowment of some sort,' I said. 'Someone by the name of Cramden, way back in the

eighties. Cramden Hall is named for him.'

'That is right,' said Winthrop, 'but there never was a Cramden. Someone put up the money in his name,

but there never was a Cramden. No one by the name of Cramden.'

'Who was it, then?'

T don't know,' he said.

'Well,' I said, T don't suppose it makes a great deal of difference now. Coon Creek is here and that is all

that counts.'

I started off down the walk again, and this time he let me go.

Good to see you, I had told him, but it had not been good. I scarcely remembered the man - a name out

of the past, a name without a face. And I still did not have the face, for his back had been toward the

moon and I had not seen his face.

And all that silly talk about did I often mention Coon Creek and who had endowed the college. What

had the man been getting at and why should he be so concerned? In any case, I told myself, it did not

matter to me. I wasn't going to be here long enough for it to matter to me.

I went back to the driveway. When I got to the foot of the stairs that led to Cramden Hall, I turned

around and looked back down the curving drive toward the manicured landscape that lay within the

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