Clifford D. Simak - Shadow World

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SHADOW WORLD

Clifford D. Simak

Anyone who has kept up with the latest developments in the study of the

origins of Life on earth is aware of the controversy between those who say

that life was an incredible accident that could never happen again, and those

who say that, considering the almost-infinite variety of chances for matter to

combine and evolve, it seems inevitable that life of some sort --probably

including intelligent varieties -- would appear on many of the millions of

planets with suitable environmental conditions that (probably) exist in the

galaxy.

I opt for the latter "those." With Clifford Simak -- and a very sizable number

of "respectable" scientists, too -- I believe that life is not a unique,

earthbound experiment, but rather that it is semi-universal, and that it can

take semi-endless forms. In following that belief, Simak has described a

possible type of humanoid on the verdant planet of a distant star, and has

shown it performing in a thoroughly believable, immensely advanced, and

slightly silly civilization -- which we never even see! Read on, no questions,

please, and find out how he does it.

I rolled out early to put in an hour or so of work on my sector model before

Greasy got breakfast slopped together. When I came out of my tent, Benny, my

Shadow, was waiting for me. Some of the other Shadows also were standing

around, waiting for their humans, and the whole thing, if one stopped to think

of it, was absolutely crazy. Except that no one ever stopped to think of it;

we were used to it by now. Greasy had the cookshack stove fired up and smoke

was curling from the chimney. I could hear him singing lustily amid the

clatter of his pans. This was noisy time. During the entire morning, he was

noisy and obnoxious, but toward the middle of the afternoon, he turned mousy

quiet. That was when he began to take a really dangerous chance and hit the

peeper.

There were laws which made it very rough on anyone who had a peeper. Mack

Baldwin, the project superintendent, would have raised merry hell if he had

known that Greasy had one. But I was the only one who knew it. I had found out

by accident and not even Greasy knew I knew and I had kept my mouth shut.

I said hello to Benny, but he didn't answer me. He never answered me; he had

no mouth to answer with. I don't suppose he even heard me, for he had no ears.

Those Shadows were a screwy lot. They had no mouths and they had no ears and

they hadn't any noses.

But they did have an eye, placed in the middle of the face, about where the

nose would have been if they'd had noses. And that eye made up for the lack of

ears and mouth and nose.

It was about three inches in diameter and strictly speaking, it wasn't built

exactly like an eye; it had no iris or no pupil, but was a pool of light and

shadow that kept shifting all around so it never looked the same. Sometimes it

looked like a bowl of goop that was slightly on the spoiled side, and at other

times it was hard and shining like a camera lens, and there were other times

when it looked sad and lonely, like a mournful hound dog's eyes.

They were a weird lot for sure, those Shadows. They looked mostly like a rag

doll before any one had gotten around to painting in the features. They were

humanoid and they were strong and active and I had suspected from the very

first that they weren't stupid. There was some division of opinion on that

latter point and a lot of the boys still thought of them as howling savages.

Except they didn't howl-they had no mouths to howl with. No mouths to howl or

eat with, no nose to smell or breathe with, and no ears to hear with.

Just on bare statistics, one would have put them down as plain impossible, but

they got along all right. They got along just fine.

They wore no clothes. On the point of modesty, there was no need of any. They

were as bare of sexual characteristics as they were of facial features. They

were just a gang of rag dolls with massive eyes in the middle of their faces.

But they did wear what might have been a decoration or a simple piece of

jewelry or a badge of Shadowhood. They wore a narrow belt, from which was hung

a bag or sack in which they carried a collection of trinkets that jingled when

they walked. No one had ever seen what was in those sacks. Cross straps from

the belt ran over the shoulders, making the whole business into a simple

harness, and at the juncture of the straps upon their chest was mounted a huge

jewel. Intricately carved, the jewel sparkled like a diamond, and it might

have been a diamond, but no one knew if it was or not. No one ever got close

enough to see. Make a motion toward that jewel and the Shadow disappeared.

That's right. Disappeared.

I said hello to Benny and he naturally didn't answer and I walked around the

table and began working on the model. Benny stood close behind me and watched

me as I worked. He seemed to have a lot of interest in that model. He had a

lot of interest in everything I did. He went everywhere I went. He was, after

all, my Shadow.

There was a poem that started out: / have a little shadow ... I had thought

about it often, but couldn't recall who the poet was or how the rest of it

went. It was an old, old poem and I remembered I had read it when I was a kid.

I could close my eyes and see the picture that went with the words, the

brightly colored picture of a kid in his pajamas, going up a stairs with a

candle in his hand and the shadow of him on the wall beyond the stairs.

I took some satisfaction in Benny's interest in the sector model, although I

was aware his interest probably didn't mean a thing. He might have been just

as interested if I'd been counting beans.

I was proud of that model and I spent more time on it than I had any right to.

I had my name, Robert Emmett Drake, spelled out in full on the plaster base

and the whole thing was a bit more ambitious than I originally had intended.

I had let my enthusiasm run away with me and that was not too hard to

understand. It wasn't every day that a conservationist got a chance to

engineer from scratch an absolutely virgin Earth-type planet. The layout was

only one small sector of the initial project, but it included almost all the

factors involved in the entire tract and I had put in the works -- the dams

and roads, the power sites and the mill sites, the timber management and the

water-conservation features and all the rest of it.

I had just settled down to work when a commotion broke out down at the

cookshack. I could hear Greasy cussing and the sound of thudding whacks. The

door of the shack burst open and a Shadow came bounding out with Greasy just a

leap behind him. Greasy had a frying pan and he was using it effectively, with

a nifty backhand technique that was beautiful to see. He was laying it on the

Shadow with every leap he took and he was yelling maledictions that were

enough to curl one's hair.

The Shadow legged it across the camp with Greasy close behind. Watching them,

I thought how it was a funny thing that a Shadow would up and disappear if you

made a motion toward its jewel, but would stay and take the kind of treatment

Greasy was handing out with that frying pan.

When they came abreast of my model table, Greasy gave up the chase. He was not

in the best of condition.

He stood beside the table and put both fists belligerently on his hips, so

that the frying pan, which he still clutched, stood out at a right angle from

his body.

"I won't allow that stinker in the shack," he told me, wheezing and gasping.

"It's bad enough to have him hanging around outside and looking in the

windows. It's bad enough falling over him every time I turn around. I will not

have him snooping in the kitchen; he's got his fingers into everything he

sees. If I was Mack, I'd put the lug on all of them. I'd run them so fast, so

far, that it would take them-"

"Mack's got other things to worry about," I told him rather sharply. "The

project is way behind schedule, with all the breakdowns we've been having."

"Sabotage," Greasy corrected me. "That's what it is. You can bet your bottom

dollar on that. It's them Shadows, I tell you, sabotaging the machines. If it

was left to me, I'd run them clear out of the country."

"It's their country," I protested. "They were here before we came."

"It's a big planet," Greasy said. "There are other parts of it they could live

in."

"But they have got a right here. This planet is their home."

"They ain't got no homes," said Greasy.

He turned around abruptly and walked back toward the shack. His Shadow, which

had been standing off to one side all the time, hurried to catch up with him.

It didn't look as if it had minded the pounding he had given it. But you could

never tell what a Shadow was thinking. Their thoughts don't show on them.

What Greasy had said about their not having any homes was a bit unfair. What

he meant, of course, was that they had no village, that they were just a sort

of carefree bunch of gypsies, but to me the planet was their home and they had

a right to go any place they wanted on it and use any part of it they wished.

It should make no difference that they settled down on no particular spot,

that they had no villages and possibly no shelters or that they raised no

crops.

Come to think of it, there was no reason why they should raise crops, for they

had no mouths to eat with, and if they didn't eat, how could they keep on

living and if ...

You see how it went. That was the reason it didn't pay to think too much about

the Shadows. Once you started trying to get them figured out, you got all

tangled up.

I sneaked a quick look sidewise to see how Benny might be taking this business

of Greasy beating up his pal, but Benny was just the same as ever. He was all

rag doll.

Men began to drift out of the tents and the Shadows galloped over to rejoin

their humans, and everywhere a man might go, his Shadow tagged behind him.

The project center lay there on its hilltop, and from where I stood beside my

sector table, I could see it laid out like a blueprint come to life.

Over there, the beginning of the excavation for the administration building,

and there the gleaming stakes for the shopping center, and beyond the shopping

center, the ragged, first-turned furrows that in time would become a street

flanked by neat rows of houses.

It didn't look much like a brave beginning on a brand-new world, but in a

little while it would. It would even now, if we'd not run into so much hard

luck. And whether that hard luck could be traced to the Shadows or to

something else, it was a thing that must be faced and somehow straightened

out.

For this was important. Here was a world on which Man would not repeat the

ancient, sad mistakes that he had made on Earth. On this, one of the few

Earth-like planets found so far, Man would not waste the valuable resources

which he had let go down the drain on the old home planet. He'd make planned

use of the water and the soil, of the timber and the minerals, and he'd be

careful to put back as much as he took out. This planet would not be robbed

and gutted as Earth had been. It would be used intelligently and operated like

a well-run business.

I felt good, just standing there, looking out across the valley and the plains

toward the distant mountains, thinking what a fine home this would be for

mankind.

The camp was becoming lively now. Out in front of the tents, the men were

washing up for breakfast and there was a lot of friendly shouting and a fair

amount of horseplay. I heard considerable cussing down in the equipment pool

and I knew exactly what was going on. The machines, or at least a part of

them, had gone daffy again and half the morning would be wasted getting them

repaired. It certainly was a funny deal, I thought, how those machines got out

of kilter every blessed night.

After a while, Greasy rang the breakfast bell and everyone dropped everything

and made a dash for it and their Shadows hustled along behind them.

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Clifford D. Simak - Shadow World

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