Clifford D. Simak - Strangers in the Universe

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Strangers In The Universe

Short Story Collection

CLIFFORD D SIMAK

v3.0 fixed format, broke paragraphs, garbled text; by peragwinn 2006-01-16

TARGET GENERATION

THERE had been silence—for many generations. Then the silence ended.

The Mutter came at "dawn."

The Folk awoke, crouching in their beds, listening to the Mutter.

For had it not been spoken that one day would come the Mutter? And that the Mutter would be the

beginning of the End?

Jon Hoff awoke, and Mary Hoff, his wife.

They were the only two within their cubicle, for they had no children. They were not yet allowed a

child. Before they could have a child, before there would be room for it, the elderly Joshua must die, and

knowing this they had waited for his death, guilty at their unspoken prayer that he soon must die—willing

him to die so they might have a child.

The Mutter came and ran throughout the Ship. Then the bed in which Jon and Mary crouched spun

upward from the floor and crashed against the wall, pinning them against the humming metal, while all the

other furniture —chest and chairs and table—came crashing from floor to wall, where it came to rest, as

if the wall suddenly had become the floor and the floor the wall.

The Holy Picture dangled from the ceiling, which a moment before had been the other wall, hung

there for a moment, swaying in the air; then it, too, crashed downward.

In that moment the Mutter ended and there was silence once again—but not the olden silence, for

although there was no sound one could reach out and pinpoint, there were many sounds—a feeling, if not

a hearing, of the sounds of surging power, of old machinery stirring back to life, of an old order, long

dormant, taking over once again.

Jon Hoff crawled out part way from beneath the bed, then straightened on his arms, using his back to

lift the bed so his wife could crawl out, too. Free of the bed, they stood on the

wall-that-had-become-a-floor and saw the litter of the furniture, which had not been theirs alone, but had

been used and then passed down to them through many generations.

For there was nothing wasted; there was nothing thrown away. That was the law—or one of many

laws— that you could not waste, that you could not throw away. You used everything there was, down

to the last shred, of its utility. You ate only enough food—no more, no less. You drank only enough

water—no more, no less. You used the same air over and over again—literally the same air. The wastes

of your body went into the converter to be changed into something that you, or someone else, would use

again. Even the dead—you used the dead again. And there had been many dead in the long generations

from the First Beginning. In months to come, some day perhaps not too distant now, Joshua would be

added to the dead, would give over his body to the converter for the benefit of his fellow-folk, would

return, finally and irrevocably, the last of all that he had taken from the community, would pay the last

debt of all his debts—and would give Jon and Mary the right to have a child.

For there must be a child, thought Jon, standing there amidst the wreckage—there must be a child to

whom he could pass on the Letter and the Reading.

There was a law about the Reading, too. You did not read because reading was an evil art that came

from the Beginning and the Folk had, in the Great Awakening, back in the dimness of Far Past, ferreted

out this evil among many other evils and had said it must not be.

So it was an evil thing that he must pass on, an evil«art, and yet there was the charge and

pledge—the charge of his long-dead father had put upon him, the pledge that he had made. And

something else as well: the nagging feeling that the law was wrong.

However, the laws were never wrong. There was a reason for them all. A reason for the way they

lived and for the Ship and how the Ship had come to be and for those who peopled it.

Although, come to think of it, he might not pass the letter on. He might be the one who would open it,

for it said on the outside of the envelope that it was to be opened in emergency. And this, Jon Hoff told

himself, might be emergency—when the silence had been broken by the Mutter and the floor became a

wall and the wall a floor.

Now there were voices from the other cubicles, frightened voices that cried out, and other voices that

shrieked with terror, and the thin, high crying of the children.

"Jon," said Mary Hoff, "that was the Mutter. The End will be coming now."

"We do not know," said Jon. "We shall have to wait and see. We do not know the End."

"They say . . ." said Mary, and Jon thought that was the way it always was.

They say. They say. They say.

It was spoken; it was not read nor written.

And he heard his dead father speaking once again; the memory of how he had spoken long ago came

back.

The brain and the memory will play you false, for the memory will forget a thing and twist it. But the

written word will stay forever as it was written down. It does not forget and does not change its meaning.

You can depend upon the written word.

"They say," said Mary, "that the End will come swiftly when we hear the Mutter. That the stars will

no longer move but will stand still in the blackness, and that is a sure sign the End is near at hand."

And, he wondered, the end of what? The end of us? The end of the Ship? The end of the stars

themselves? Or, perhaps, the end of everything, of the Ship and stars and the great blackness in which

the stars were spinning.

He shuddered to think of the end of the Folk or of the Ship, not so much that the Ship should end or

that the Folk should end, but that the beautiful, efficient, well-balanced order in which they lived should

end. For it was a marvelous thing that every function should be so ordered that there always would be

enough for the Folk to live on, with never any surplus. No surplus of food or water or air, or of the Folk

themselves, for you could not have a child until someone assigned against the coming of that child should

die. There were footsteps running in the corridors outside the cubicles and excited shouting, and suddenly

there was someone pounding on the door.

"Jon! Jon!" the voice shouted. "The stars are standing still!"

"I knew it!" Mary cried. "I told you, Jon. It is as it was spoken."

Pounding on the door!

And the door was where it should have been, where a door logically should be, where you could

walk straight out of it to the corridor instead of climbing the now useless ladder that ran ridiculously to it

from the wall-that-used-to-be-the-floor.

Why didn't I think of that before? he asked himself. Why didn't I see that it was poor planning to

climb to a door that opened in the ceiling?

Maybe, he thought—maybe this is the way it should have been all the time. Maybe the way it had

been before was wrong. As the laws might well be wrong.

"I'm coming, Joe," said Jon.

He strode to the door and opened it, and he saw that what had been the wall of the corridor was

now the floor and that many doors were opening into it directly from the cubicles and that folks were

running up and down the corridor, and he thought: We can take down the ladders now, since we have no

use for them. We can feed them into the converter and that will give us the margin that we never have.

Joe gripped him by the arm. "Come with me," he said.

They went to one of the topsy-turvy observation blisters. The stars were standing still.

Exactly as it had been spoken, the stars were still.

It was a frightening thing, for now you could see that the stars were not simply spinning lights that

seemed to move against the flatness of a dead-black curtain, but that they were hanging in an emptiness

that took the pit out of your stomach and made you gasp and clutch the metal of the ports, fighting to

keep your balance, fighting off the light-headedness that came upon you as you stared into a gulf you

could not understand.

There were no games that "day," there were no hikes, there was no revelry in the amusement lounge.

There were knots of frightened people talking. There was praying in the'c'hapel where hung the

largest of the Holy Pictures, showing the Tree and the Flowers and the River and the House far off, with

a Sky that had clouds in it and a Wind you could not see, but only knew was there. There was a picking

up and a straightening up of the cubicles in preparation for a "night" of sleeping and a rehanging once

again of the Holy Pictures that were the prized possession of each cubicle. There was a taking down of

ladders.

Mary Hoff rescued the Holy Picture from the debris on the floor and Jon stood one of the chairs

against the wall and hung it upon the wall-that-once-had-been-the-floor and wondered how it happened

that each of the Holy Pictures was a little different from all the others. And it was the first time he had

ever wondered that.

The Hoffs' Holy Picture had a Tree in it, too, and there were Sheep beneath the Tree and a Fence

and Brook, and in the corner of the picture there were some tiny Flowers, and, of course, the Grass that

ran up to the Sky.

After he had hung the picture and Mary had gone off to another cubicle to talk in horror-stricken,

old-wife fashion with some of the other women, Jon went down the corridor, strolling as casually as he

could so that no one would notice him, so that no one would mark any hurry in him.

But there was hurry in him—a sudden, terrible hurry that tried to push him on h'ke two hands against

his back.

He tried to look as if he were doing nothing more than genteelly killing tune. It was easy for him, for

that was all he'd done his entire life, all that any of them had ever done. Except the few, the lucky or

unlucky ones, whichever way you might look at it, who had the hereditary jobs—tending the hydroponic

gardens * or the cattle pens or the poultry flocks.

* Hydroponics is the art of growing plants in water with added chemical nutrients instead of soil. The

feasibility of hydroponics has been well demonstrated in many experiments, but so far has not proved in

any case I know of to be economically successful. Chemicals necessary to plant growth are carbon,

oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, and iron. Small

quantities of boron, zinc, manganese, and copper also are required. Molybdenum is necessary in

extremely minute quantities. On board a spaceship, hydroponics would be an ideal way to produce food,

with the added advantage that the plant growth would aid in atmospheric engineering by absorbing

carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. In hydroponics aboard a spaceship there would be no seasons;

crops would be growing all the time. Although some insect pests might exist, to start with, these probably

would be eradicated after a human generation or less, so that the crops would be pest-free. The same

situation would exist so far as plant disease is concerned. Once either pests or disease were eliminated

within a spaceship there would be no further danger, since reinfection from other crop areas could not

occur. Since there would be on board a spaceship nothing equivalent to sunlight, necessary for the

growth of plants, the deficiency would have to be supplied by the use of lamps.—c. s.

But most of them, thought Jon, loitering his way along, had done no more than become expert in the

art of killing time. Like himself and Joe, with their endless chess games and the careful records that they

kept of every move they made, of every move and game. And the hours they spent in analyzing their play

from the records that they made, carefully annotating each decisive move. And why not? he asked

himself—why not record and annotate the games? What else was there to do? What else?

There were no people now in the corridor and it had grown dimmer, for now there were only

occasional light bulbs to drive back the darkness. Years of bulb-snatching to keep the living cubicles

supplied had nearly stripped the Ship.

He came to an observation blister and ducked into it, crouching just inside of it, waiting patiently and

watching back along his trail. He waited for the one who might have followed him and he knew there

would be no one, but there might be someone and he couldn't take the chance.

No one came, and he went on again, coming to the broken-down escalator which went to the central

levels, and here, once again, there was something different. Always before, as he had climbed level after

level, he had steadily lost weight, lost the pull against his feet, had swum rather than walked toward the

center of the Ship. But this time there was no loss of weight, this time there was no swimming. He

trudged broken escalator after broken escalator for all the sixteen decks.

He went in darkness now, for here the bulbs were entirely gone, snatched or burned out over many

years. He felt his way upward, with his hand along the guide rails, feeling the cross-draft of the corridors

that plunged down the great Ship's length.

He came at last to the proper level and felt his way along until he came to the hiding place, a

dispensary room with a pharmaceutical locker against one wall.

He found the proper drawer and pulled it open, and his hand went in and found the three things that

he knew were there—the Letter, the Book, and a bulb.

He ran his hand along the wall until he found the outlet, and when he found it he inserted the bulb and

there was light in the tiny room, light upon the dust that lay across the floor and along the counter tops,

light upon the wash basin and the sink, the empty cabinets with their idly open doors.

He laid the Letter face up beneath the light and read the words that were printed in block letters:

TO BE OPENED ONLY IN EMERGENCY.

He stood there for a long time, considering. There had been the Mutter. The stars were standing still.

Emergency, he thought. This is emergency.

For had it not been spoken that when the Mutter came and the stars stood still the End was near at

hand?

And if the End was near at hand, then it was emergency.

He lifted the Letter in his hand and held it, hesitating. When he opened it, that would be the end of it.

There would be no more handing down—no more of the Letter and the Reading. For this was the

moment toward which the Letter had traveled down through time, from father to son for many

generations.

Slowly he turned the Letter over and ran a thumbnail along the sealed edge, and the dry wax cracked

open and the flap sprang loose.

He reached in and took the message out and spread it flat upon the counter top underneath the lamp.

He read, his lips moving to form whispered words, reading as one must read who had spelled out the

slow meaning of his words from an ancient dictionary:

To the son of my son many times removed:

They will have told you and by this time you may well believe that the ship is a way of life, that it

started in a myth and moves toward a legend and that there is no meaning to be sought within its actuality

and no purpose.

It would be fruitless for me to try to tell you the meaning or the purpose of the ship, for, while these

words are true, by themselves, they will have little weight against the perversion of the truth, which by the

tune you read this may have reached the stature of religion.

But there is purpose in the ship, although even now, as this is written, the purpose has been lost, and

as the ship plunges on its way it will remain not only lost, but buried beneath the weight of human

rationalizing.

In the day that this is read there will be explanations of the ship and the people in it, but there will be

no knowledge in the explanations.

To bring the ship to its destination there must be knowledge. There is a way that knowledge may be

gamed. I, who will be dead, whose body will have gone back into a plant long eaten, a piece of cloth

long worn out, a molecule of oxygen, a pinch of fertilizer, have preserved that knowledge for you. On the

second sheet of this letter are the directions for the acquiring of that knowledge.

I charge you to acquire that knowledge and to use it, that the minds and lives which launched the

ship, and the others who kept it going, and those who even now reside within its walls may not have used

themselves, nor dedicated themselves, in vain, that the dream of Man may not die somewhere far among

the stars.

You will have learned by the tune you read this, even to a greater degree than I know it today, that

nothing must be wasted, nothing must be thrown away, that all resources must be guarded and

husbanded against a future need.

And that the ship not reach its destination, that it not serve its purpose, would be a waste so great as

to stun the imagination. It would be a terrible waste of thousands of lives, the waste of knowledge and of

hope.

You will not know my name, for my name by the time you read this will be gone with the hand that

drives the pen, but my words will still live on and the knowledge in them and the charge.

I sign myself, your ancestor.

And there was a scrawl that Jon could not make out.

He let the Letter drop to the dust-laden counter top and words from the Letter hammered in his

brain.

A ship that started in a myth and moved toward a legend. But that was wrong, the Letter said. There

was a purpose and there was a destination.

A destination? What was that? The Book, he thought —the Book will tell what destination is.

With shaking hands he hauled the Book out of the drawer and opened it to D and followed down the

columns with an unsteady finger: desquamative, dessert, destinate, destination—

Destination (n). The place set for the end of a journey, or to which something is sent; a place or point

aimed at.

The Ship had a destination. The Ship was going somewhere. The day would come when it would

reach the place that it was going. And that would be the End, of course. The Ship was going somewhere.

But how? Did the Ship move?

He shook his head in disbelief. That the Ship moved was unbelievable. It was the stars, not the Ship,

that moved.

There must be, he felt certain, another explanation. He picked up the Letter's second sheet and read

it through, but didn't understand it all, for his brain was tired and befuddled. He put the Letter and the

Book and the bulb back in the drawer. He closed the drawer and fled.

They had not noticed his absence in the lower level and he moved among them, trying to be one of

them again, trying to pick up the old cloak of familiarity and wrap it around his sudden nakedness—but

he was not one of them.

A terrible knowledge had made him not one of them— the knowledge that the Ship had a purpose

and a destination—that it had started somewhere and was going somewhere and that when it got where it

was going that would be the End, not of the Folk, nor of the Ship, but only of the Journey.

He went into the lounge and stood for a moment just inside the doorway. Joe was playing chess with

Pete and a swift anger flared within him at the thought that Joe would play with someone else, for Joe had

not played chess with anyone but him for many, many years. But the anger dropped quickly from him,

and he looked at the chessmen for the first tune, really saw them for the first time, and he saw that they

were idle hunks of carven wood and that they had no part in this new world of the Letter and the

Purpose.

George was sitting by himself playing solitaire and some of the others were playing poker with the

metal counters they called "money," although why they called it money was more than anyone could tell.

It was just a name, they said, as the Ship was the name for the ship and the Stars were what the stars

were called. Louise and Irma were sitting in one corner listening to an old, almost worn-out recording of

a song, and the shrill, pinched voice of the woman who sang screeched across the room:

"My love has gone to the stars, He will be away for long ..."

Jon walked into the room and George looked up from the cards. "We've been looking for you."

"I went for a walk," said Jon. "A long walk. On the center levels. It's all wrong up there. It's up, not

in. You climb all the way."

"The stars have not moved all day," said George.

Joe turned his head and said, "The stars won't move again. This is as it was spoken. This is the

beginning of the End."

"What is the End?" asked Jon.

"I don't know," said Joe and went back to his game.

The End, Jon thought. And none of them know what the End will be, just as they do not know what

a ship is, or what money is, or the stars.

"We are meeting," said George. Jon nodded.

He should have known that they would meet. They'd meet for comfort and security. They'd tell the

Story once again and they'd pray before the Picture. And I? he thought. And I?

He swung from the room and went out into the corridor, thinking that it might have been best if

there'd been no Letter and no Book, for then he'd still be one of them and not a naked stranger standing

by himself—not a man torn with wondering which was right, the Story or the Letter.

He found his cubicle and went into it. Mary was there, stretched out on the bed, with the pillows

piled beneath her head and the dim bulb burning. "There you are," she said.

"I went for a walk," said Jon.

"You missed the meal," said Mary. "Here it is."

He saw it on the table and went there, drawing up a chair. "Thanks," he said.

She yawned. "It was a tiring day," she said. "Everyone was so excited. They are meeting."

There was the protein yeast, the spinach and the peas, a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup,

tasty with mushrooms and herbs. And the water bottle, with the carefully measured liquid.

He bent above the soup bowl, spooning the food into his mouth.

"You aren't excited, dear. Not like the rest."

He lifted his head and looked at her. Suddenly he wondered if he might not tell her, but thrust the

thought swiftly to one side, afraid that in his longing for human understanding he finally would tell her. He

must watch himself, he thought.

For the telling of it would be proclaimed heresy, the denying of the Story, of the Myth and the

Legend. And once she had heard it, she, like the others, would shrink from him and he'd see the loathing

in her eyes.

With himself it was different, for he had lived on the fringe of heresy for almost all his life, ever since

that day his father had talked to him and told him of the Book. For the Book itself was a part of heresy.

"I have been thinking," he said, and she asked, "What is there to think about?"

And what she said was true, of course. There was nothing to think about. It was all explained, all

neat and orderly. The Story told of the Beginning and the beginning of the End. And there was nothing,

absolutely nothing for one to think about.

There had been chaos, and out of the chaos order had been born in the shape of the Ship, and

outside the Ship there was chaos still. It was only within the Ship that there was order and efficiency and

law—or the many laws, the waste not, want not law and all the other laws. There would be an End, but

the End was something that was still a mystery, although there still was hope, for with the Ship had been

born the Holy Pictures and these in themselves were a symbol of that hope, for within the picture were

the symbolism values of other ordered places (bigger ships, perhaps) and all of these symbol values had

come equipped with names, with Tree and Book and Sky and Clouds and other things one could not

see, but knew were there, like the Wind and Sunshine.

The Beginning had been long ago, so many generations back that the stories and the tales and

folklore of the mighty men and women of those long-gone ages pinched out with other shadowy men and

women still misty in the background.

"I was scared at first," said Mary, "but I am scared no longer. This is the way that it was spoken, and

there is nothing we can do except to know it is for the best."

He went on eating, listening to the sound of passing feet, to the sound of voices going past the door.

Now there was no hurry in the feet, no terror in the voices. It hadn't taken long, he thought, for the Folk

to settle down. Their ship had been turned topsy-turvy, but it was still for the best.

And he wondered if they might not be the ones who were right, after all—and the Letter wrong.

He would have liked to step to the door and hail some of those who were passing by so he could

talk with them, but there was no one in the Ship (not even Mary) he could talk to.

Unless it were Joshua.

He sat eating, thinking of Joshua in the hydroponic gardens, pottering around, fussing with his plants.

As a boy, he'd gone there, along with the other boys, Joe and George and Herb and all the rest of

them, Joshua then had been a man of middle age who always had a story and some sage advice and a

smuggled tomato or a radish for a hungry boy. He had, Jon remembered, a soft gentle way of talking,

and his eyes were honest eyes, and there was a gruff but winning friendliness about him.

It had been a long tune, he realized, since he'd seen Joshua. Guilt, perhaps, he told himself.

But Joshua would be one who could understand the guilt. For once before he had understood.

It had been he and Joe, Jon remembered, who had sneaked in and stolen the tomatoes and been

caught and lectured by the gardener. Joe and he had been friends ever since they had been toddlers.

They had always been together. When there was devilment afoot the two of them were sure, somehow,

to be in the middle of it.

Maybe Joe . . . Jon shook his head. Not Joe, he thought. Even if he was his best friend, even if they

had been pals as boys, even if they had stood up for each other when they had been married, even if they

had been chess partners for more than twenty years— even so, Joe was not one he could tell about this

thing.

"You still are thinking, dear," said Mary.

"I'll quit," said Jon. "Tell me about your day."

She told him. What Louise had said; and what Jane had said; and how foolish Molly was. The wild

rumor and the terror and the slow quieting of the terror with the realization that, whatever came, it was

for the best.

"Our Belief," she said, "is a comfort, Jon, at a time like this."

"Yes," said Jon. "A great comfort, indeed."

She got up from the bed. "I'm going down to see Louise," she said. "You'll stay here?" She bent and

kissed him.

"I'll walk around until meeting time," he said.

He finished his meal, drank the water slowly, savoring each drop, then went out.

He headed for the hydroponic gardens. Joshua was there, a little older, his hair a little whiter, his

shuffle more pronounced, but with the same kind crinkle about his eyes, the same slow smile upon his

face.

And his greeting was the joke of old: "You come to steal tomatoes?"

"Not this time," said Jon.

"You and the other one."

"His name is Joe."

"I remember now. Sometimes I forget. I am getting older and sometimes I forget." His smile was

quiet. "I won't take too long, lad. I won't make you and Mary wait."

"That's not so important now," said Jon.

"I was afraid that after what had happened you would not come to see me."

"It is the law," said Jon. "Neither you nor I, nor Mary, had anything to do with it. The law is right. We

cannot change the law."

Joshua put out a hand and laid it on Jon's arm. "Look at the new tomatoes," he said. "They're the

best I've ever grown. Just ready to be picked." He picked one, the ripest and the reddest, and handed it

to Jon.

Jon rubbed the bright red fruit between his hands, feeling the smooth, warm texture of it, feeling the

juice of it flow beneath the skin.

"They taste better right off the vine. Go ahead and eat it."

Jon lifted it to his mouth and set his teeth into it and caught the taste of it, the freshly picked taste, felt

the soft pulp sliding down his throat.

"You were saying something, lad."

Jon shook his head.

"You have not been to see me since it happened," said Joshua. "The guilt of knowing I must die

before you have a child kept you away from me. It's a hard thing, I grant—harder for you than it is for

me. You would not have come except for a matter of importance."

Jon did not answer.

"Tonight," said Joshua, "you remembered you could talk to me. You used to come and talk with me

often, because you remembered the talk you had with me when you were a kid."

"I broke the law," said Jon. "I came to steal tomatoes. Joe and I, and you caught us."

"I broke the law just now," said Joshua. "I gave you a tomato. It was not mine to give. It was not

yours to take. But I broke the law because the law is nothing more than reason and the giving of one

tomato does not harm the reason. There must be reason behind each law or there is no occasion for the

law. If there is no reason, then the law is wrong."

"But to break a law is wrong."

"Listen," said Joshua. "You remember this morning?"

"Of course I do."

"Look at those tracks—the metal tracks, set deep into the metal, running up the wall."

Jon looked and saw them.

"That wall," said Joshua, "was the floor until this morning."

"But the tanks! They . . ."

"Exactly," said Joshua. "That's exactly what I thought. That's the first thing I thought when I was

thrown out of bed. My tanks, I thought. All my beautiful tanks. Hanging up there on the wall. Fastened to

the floor and hanging on the wall. With the water spilling out of them. With the plants dumped out of

them. With the chemicals all wasted. But it didn't happen that way."

He reached out and tapped Jon on the chest.

"It didn't happen that way—not because of a certain law, but because of a certain reason. Look at

the floor beneath your feet."

Jon looked down and the tracks were there, a continuation of the tracks that ran up the wall.

"The tanks are anchored to those tracks," said Joshua. "There are wheels enclosed within those

tracks. When the floor changed to the wall, the tanks ran down the tracks and up the wall that became

the floor and everything was all right. There was a little water spilled and some plants were damaged, but

not many of them."

"It was planned," said Jon. "The Ship . . ."

"There must be reason to justify each law," Joshua told him. "There was reason here and a law as

well. But the law was only a reminder not to violate the reason. If there were only reason you might

forget it, or you might defy it or you might say that it had become outdated. But the law supplies authority

and you follow law where you might not follow reason.

"The law said that the tracks on the wall, the old wall, that is, must be kept clear of obstacles and

must be lubricated. At times we wondered why, for it seemed a useless law. But because it was a law we

followed it quite blindly and so, when the Mutter came, the tracks were clear and oiled and the tanks ran

up them. There was nothing in the way of their doing so, as there might have been if we'd not followed

the law. For by following the law, we also followed the reason and it's the reason and not the law that

counts."

"You're trying to tell me something," Jon said.

"I'm trying to tell you that we must follow each law blindly until we know the reason for it. And when

we know, if we ever know, the reason and the purpose, we must then be able to judge whether the

reason or the purpose is a worthy one. We must have the courage to say that it is bad, if it is bad. For if

the reason is bad, then the law itself is bad, for a law is no more than a rule designed for a certain reason

or to carry out a purpose."

"Purpose?"

"Certainly, lad, the purpose. For there must be some purpose. Nothing so well planned as the Ship

could be without a purpose."

"The Ship itself? You think the Ship has purpose? They say..."

"I know what they say. Everything that happens must be for the best." He wagged his head. "There

must have been a purpose, even for the Ship. Sometime, long ago, that purpose must have been plain

and clear. But we've forgotten it. There must be certain facts and knowledge ..."

"There was knowledge in the books," said Jon. "But they burned the books."

"There were certain untruths in them," said the old man. "Or what appeared to be untruths. But you

cannot judge the truth until you have the facts and I doubt they had the facts. There were other reasons,

other factors.

"I'm a lonely man. I have a job to do, and not many come to visit. I have not had gossip to distract

me although the Ship is full of gossip. I have thought. I have done a lot of thinking. I thought about us and

the Ship. I thought about the laws and the purpose of it all.

"I have wondered what makes a plant grow, why water and chemicals are necessary to its growth. I

have wondered why we must turn on the lamps for just so many hours—what is there in the lamps that

helps a plant to grow? But if you forget to turn them on, the plant will start to die, so I know the lamps

are needed, that the plants need, not water and chemicals alone, but the lamps as well.

"I have wondered why a tomato always grows on a tomato vine and why a cucumber always grows

on a cucumber vine. You never find a tomato on a cucumber vine and there must be a reason.

"Behind even so simple a thing as the growing of tomatoes there must be a mass of reasons, certain

basic facts. And we do not know these facts. We do not have the knowledge.

"I have wondered what it is that makes the lamps light up when you throw the switch.

"I have wondered what our bodies do with food. How does your body use that tomato you've just

eaten? Why must we eat to live? Why must we sleep? How did we learn to talk?"

"I have never thought of all that," said Jon.

"You have never thought at all," said Joshua, "or almost not at all."

"No one does," said Jon.

"That is the trouble with the Ship," the old man told him. "No one ever thinks. They while away their

time. They never dig for reasons. They never even wonder. Whatever happens must be for the best, and

that's enough for them."

"I have just begun to think," said Jon.

"There was something you wanted," said the old man. "Some reason that you came."

"It doesn't matter now," said Jon. "You have answered it."

He went back, through the alleyways between the tanks, smelling the scent of green things growing,

listening to the gurgle of the water running through the pumps. Back up the long corridors, with the stars

shining true and steady now through the ports in the observation blisters.

Reason, Joshua had said. There is reason and a purpose. And that had been what the Letter had

said, too— reason and a purpose. And as well as truths there will be untruths, and one must have certain

knowledge to judge a thing, to say if it is true or not.

He squared his shoulders and went on.

The meeting was well under way when he reached the chapel, and he slid in quietly through the

door and found Mary there. He stood beside her and she slipped her hand in his and smiled. "You are

late," she whispered.

"Sorry," he whispered back, and then they stood there, side by side, holding hands, watching the

flicker of the two great candles that flanked the massive Holy Picture. Jon thought that never before had

he seen it to such good advantage nor seen it quite so well and he knew that it was a great occasion

when they burned the candles for it.

He identified the men who sat below the Picture—Joe, his friend, and Greg and Frank. And he was

proud that Joe, his friend, should be one of the three who sat beneath the Picture, for you must be pious

and a leader to sit beneath the Picture.

They had finished reciting the Beginning and now Joe got up and began to lead them in the Ending.

"We go toward an End. There will be certain signs that shall foretell the coming of the End, but of the

End itself no one may know, for it is unrevealed . . ."

Jon felt Mary's hand tighten upon his and he returned the pressure, and in the press of hand to hand

he felt the comfort of a wife and of Belief and the security of the brotherhood of all the Folk.

It was a comfort, Mary had said while he had eaten the meal she had saved for him. There is comfort

in our Belief, she'd said. And what she had said was true. There was comfort in Belief, comfort in

knowing that it all was planned, that it was for the best, that even in the End it would be for the best.

They needed comfort, he thought. They needed comfort more than anything. They were so alone,

especially so alone since the stars had stopped their spinning and stood still, since you could stand at a

port and look out into the emptiness that lay between the stars. Made more alone by the lack of purpose,

by the lack of knowing, although it was a comfort to know that all was for the best.

"The Mutter will come and the stars will stop their spin and they will stand naked and alone and

bright in the depth of darkness, of the eternal darkness that covers everything except the Folk within the

Ship. . . ."

And that was it, thought Jon. The special dispensation that gave them the comfort. The special

knowing that they, of all the things there were, were sheltered and protected from eternal night. Although,

he wondered, how did the special knowing come about? From what source of knowledge did it spring?

From what revelation? And blamed himself for thinking as he did, for it was not seemly that he should

think such things at meeting in the chapel.

He was like Joshua, he told himself. He questioned everything. He wondered about the things that he

had accepted all his life, that had been accepted without question for all the generations.

He lifted his head and looked at the Holy Picture—at the Tree and the Flowers and the River and the

House far off, with the Sky that had Clouds in it and Wind you could not see but knew was there.

It was a pretty thing—it was beautiful. There were colors in it he had never seen anywhere except in

the Pictures. Was there a place like that? he wondered. Or was it only symbolism, only an idealization of

the finest that was in the Folk, a distillation of the dreams of those shut up within the Ship?

Shut up in the Ship! He gasped that he had thought it. Shut up! Not shut up. Protected, rather.

Protected and sheltered and kept from harm, set apart from all else which lay in the shadow of eternal

night. He bent his head in prayer, a prayer of contriteness and self-accusation. That he should think a

thing like that!

He felt Mary's hand in his and thought of the child that they would have when Joshua was dead. He

thought of the chess games he had played with Joe. He thought of the long nights in the darkness with

Mary at his side.

He thought of his father, and the long-dead words thundered in his brain. And the Letter that spoke

of knowledge and of destination and had a word of purpose.

What am I to do? he asked himself. Which road am I to follow? What is the Meaning and the End?

He counted the doors and found the right one and went in. The place was thick with dust, but the

light bulb still survived. Against the farther wall was the door that was mentioned in the instruction sheet

enclosed within the Letter—the door with the dial built into its center. A vault, the instruction sheet had

said.

He walked across the floor, leaving footprints behind him in the dust, and knelt before the door. With

his shirtsleeve he wiped the dust from the lock and read the numbers there. He laid the sheet upon the

floor and grasped the dial. Turn the indicator first to 6, then to 15, back to 8, then to 22 and finally to 3.

He did it carefully, following the instructions, and at the final turn to 3 he heard the faint chucking sound of

steel tumblers dropping into place.

He grasped the handle of the door and tugged, and the door came open slowly, because it was

heavy. He went inside and thumbed the switch and the lights came on, and everything was exactly as the

instruction sheet had said. There was the bed and the machine beside it and the great steel box standing

in one corner.

The air was foul, but there was no dust, since the vault was not tied in with the air-conditioning

system which through centuries had spread the dust through all the other rooms.

Standing there alone, in the glare of the bulb, with the bed and machine and great steel box before

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StrangersInTheUniverseShortStoryCollectionCLIFFORDDSIMAKv3.0fixedformat,brokeparagraphs,garbledtext;byperagwinn2006-01-16TARGETGENERATIONTHEREhadbeensilence—formanygenerations.Thenthesilenceended.TheMuttercameat"dawn."TheFolkawoke,crouchingintheirbeds,listeningtotheMutter.Forhaditnotbeenspokenthaton...

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Clifford D. Simak - Strangers in the Universe

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