Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 01 - Dusty Zebra

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Dusty Zebra

If you're human, you can't keep a thing around the house.

You're always losing things and never finding them and you go charging

through the place, yelling, cross-examining, blaming.

That's the way it is in all families.

Just one warning---don't try to figure out where all those things have

gone or who might have taken them. If you have any notion of investigating,

forget it. You'll be happier! I'll tell you how it was with me.

I'd bought the sheet of stamps on my way home from the office so I could

mail out the cheques for the monthly bills. But

I'd just sat down to write the cheques when Marge and Lewis

Shaw dropped over. I don't care much for Lewis and he barely tolerates me.

But Marge and Helen are good friends, and they got to talking, and the Shaws

stayed all evening.

Lewis told me about the work he was doing at his research laboratory out

at the edge of town. I tried to switch him off to something else, but he kept

right on. I suppose he's so interested in his work that he figures everyone

else must be. But I don't know a thing about electronics and I can't tell a

microgauge from a microscope.

It was a fairly dismal evening and the worst of it was that I couldn't say

so. Helen would have jumped all over me for being antisocial.

So, the next evening after dinner, I went into the den to write the

cheques and, of course, the stamps were gone.

I had left the sheet on top of the desk and now the desk was bare except

for one of the Bildo-Bloeks that young Bill had outgrown several years before,

but which still turn up every now and then in the most unlikely places.

I looked around the room. Just in case they might have blown off the desk,

I got down on my hands and knees and searched under everything. There was no

sign of the stamps.

I went into the living room, where Helen was curled up in a chair,

watching television.

"I haven't seen them, Joe," she said. "They must be where you left them."

It was exactly the kind of answer I should have expected.

"Bill might know," I said.

"He's scarcely been in the house all day. When he does show up, you've got

to speak to him." "What's the matter now?"

"It's this trading business. He traded off that new belt we got him for a

pair of spurs."

"I can't see anything wrong in that. When I was a kid .... "

"It's not just the belt," she said. "He's traded everything.

And the worst of it is that he always seems to get the best of it."

"The kid's smart."

"If you take that attitude, Joe .... "

"It's not my attitude," I said. "It's the attitude of the whole business

world. When Bill grows up .... "

"When he grows up, he'll be in prison. Why, the way he trades, you'd swear

he was training to be a con man !" "All right, I'll talk to him."

I went back into the den because the atmosphere wasn't exactly as friendly

as it might have been and, anyhow, I had to

send out those cheques, stamps or no stamps.

I got the pile of bills and the cheque-book and the fountain pen out of

the drawer. I reached out and picked up the Bildo-Block to put it to one side,

so I'd have a good, clear space to work on. But the moment I picked it up, I

knew that this thing was no Bildo-Block.

It was the fight size and weight and was black and felt like plastic,

except that it was slicker than any plastic I had ever felt.

It felt as if it had oil on it, only it didn't.

I set it down in front of me and pulled the desk lamp closer.

But there wasn't much to see. It still looked like one of the

Bildo-Blocks.

Turning it around, I tried to make out what it was. On the second turn, I

saw the faint oblong depression along one side of it--a very shallow

depression, almost like a scratch.

I looked at it a little closer and could see that the depression was

machined and that within it was a faint red line. I could have sworn the red

line flickered just a little. I held it there, ' studying it, and could detect

no further flicker. Either the red had faded or I had been seeing things to

start with, for after a few seconds I couldn't be sure there was any line at

all.

I figured it must have been something Bill had picked up or traded for.

The kid is more than half pack-rat, but there's nothing wrong with that, nor

with the trading, either, for all that Helen says. It's just the first signs

of good business sense.

I put the block over to one side of the desk and went on with the cheques.

The next day, during lunch hour, I bought some more stamps so I could mail

them. And off and on, all day, I wondered what could have happened to that

sheet of stamps.

I didn't think at all about the block that had the oily feel.

Possibly I would have forgotten it entirely, except that when I got home,

the fountain pen was missing.

I went into the den to get the pen and there the pen was, lying on top of

the desk where I'd left it the night before. Not that I remembered leaving it

there. But when I saw it there, I remembered having forgotten to put it back

into the drawer.

I picked it up. It wasn't any pen. It felt like a cylinder of cork, but

much too heavy to be any kind of cork. Except that it was heavier and smaller,

it felt something--somehow~like a fly rod.

Thinking of how a fly rod felt, I gave my hand a twitch, the way you do to

cast a line, and suddenly it seemed to be, in fact, a fly rod. It apparently

had been telescoped and now it came untelescoped and lengthened out into what

might have been a rod. But the funny thing about it was that it went out only

about four feet and then disappeared into thin air.

Instinctively, I brought it up and back to free the tip from wherever it

might be. I felt the slack take up against a sudden weight and I knew I had

something on the other end of it. Just like a fish feels, only it wasn't

fighting.

Then, as quickly as it happened, it unhappened. I felt the tension snap

off and the weight at the other end was gone and the rod had telescoped again

and I held in my hand the thing that looked like a fountain pen.

I laid it down carefully on the desk, being very certain to make no more

casting motions, and it wasn't until then that I saw my hand was shaking.

I sat down, goggling at the thing that looked like the missing fountain

pen and the other thing that looked like a Bildo-Block.

And it was then, while I was looking at the two of them, that I saw, out

of the corner of my eye, the little white dot in the centre of the desk.

It was on the exact spot where the bogus pen had lain and more than

likely, I imagined, the exact spot where I'd found the Bildo-Block the night

before. It was about a quarter of an inch in diameter and it looked like

ivory.

I put out my thumb and rubbed it vigorously, but the dot would not rub

off. I closed my eyes so the dot would have a chance to go away, and then

opened them again, real quick, to surprise it ff it hadn't. It still was

there.

I bent over the desk to examine it. I could see it was inlaid in the wood,

and an excellent job of inlaying, too. I couldn't find even the faintest line

of division between the wood and the dot.

It hadn't been there before; I was sure of that. If it had been, I would

have noticed it. What's more, Helen would have noticed it, for she's hell on

dirt and forever after things with a dusting cloth. And to cinch the fact that

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Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 01 - Dusty Zebra

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