Clifford D. Simak - Galactic Chest

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Title : Galactic Chest

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1956

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0,

proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : February 13, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

Galactic Chest

Clifford D. Simak

I had just finished writing the daily Community Chest story, and each day I wrote that story I was sore

about it; there were plenty of punks in the office who could have ground out that kind of copy. Even the

copy boys could have written it and no one would have known the difference; no one ever read it -

except maybe some of the drive chairmen, and I'm not even sure about them reading it.

I had protested to Barnacle Bill about my handling the Community Chest for another year. I had

protested loud. I had said: "Now, you know, Barnacle, I been writing that thing for three or four years. I

write it with my eyes shut. You ought to get some new blood into it. Give one of the cubs a chance; they

can breathe some life into it. Me, I'm all written out on it."

But it didn't do a bit of good. The Barnacle had me down on the assignment book for the Community

Chest, and he never changed a thing once he put it in the book.

I wish I knew the real reason for that name of his. I've heard a lot of stories about how it was hung on

him, but I don't think there's any truth in them. I think he got it simply from the way he can hang on to a

bar.

I had just finished writing the Community Chest story and was sitting there, killing time and hating

myself, when along came Jo Ann. Jo Ann was the sob sister on the paper; she got some lousy yarns to

write, and that's a somber fact I guess it was because I am of a sympathetic nature, and took pity on her,

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and let her cry upon my shoulder that we got to know each other so well. By now, of course, we figure

we're in love; off and on we talk about getting married, as soon as I snag that foreign correspondent job

I've been angling for.

"Hi, kid," I said.

And she says, "Do you know, Mark, what the Barnacle has me down for today?"

"He's finally ferreted out a one-armed paperhanger," I guessed, "and he wants you to do a feature..."

"Its worse than that," she moans. "It's an old lady who is celebrating her one hundredth birthday."

"Maybe," I said, "she will give you a piece of her birthday cake."

"I don't see how even you can joke about a thing like this," Jo Ann told me. "It's positively ghastly."

Just then the Barnacle let out a bellow for me, so I picked up the Community Chest story and went

over to the city desk.

Barnacle Bill is up to his elbows in copy; the phone is ringing and he's ignoring it, and for this early in

the morning he has worked himself into more than a customary lather. "You remember old Mrs.

Clayborne?"

"Sure, she's dead. I wrote the obit on her ten days or so ago."

"Well, I want you to go over to the house and snoop around a bit."

"What for?" I asked. "She hasn't come back, has she?"

"No, but there's some funny business over there. I got a tip that someone might have hurried her a

little."

"This time," I told him, "you've outdone yourself. You've been watching too many television thrillers."

"I got it on good authority," he said and turned back to his work.

So I went and got my hat and told myself it was no skin off my nose how I spent the day; I'd get paid

just the same!

But I was getting a little fed up with some of the wild-goose chases to which the Barnacle was

assigning not only me, but the rest of the staff as well. Sometimes they paid off; usually, they didn't.

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And when they didn't, Barnacle had the nasty habit of making it appear that the man he had sent out, not

he himself, had dreamed up the chase. His "good authority" probably was no more than some casual

chatter of someone next to him at the latest bar he'd honored with his cash.

Old Mrs. Clayborne had been one of the last of the faded gentility which at one time had graced

Douglas Avenue. The family had petered out, and she was the last of them; she had died in a big and

lonely house with only a few servants, and a nurse in attendance on her, and no kin close enough to wait

out her final hours in person.

It was unlikely, I told myself, that anyone could have profited by giving her an overdose of drugs, or

otherwise hurrying her death. And even if it was true, there'd be little chance that it could be proved; and

that was the kind of story you didn't run unless you had it down in black and white.

I went to the house on Douglas Avenue. It was a quiet and lovely place, standing in its fenced-in yard

among the autumn-colored trees.

There was an old gardener raking leaves, and he didn't notice me when I went up the walk. He was an

old man, pottering away and more than likely mumbling to himself, and I found out later that he was a

little deaf.

I went up the steps, rang the bell and stood waiting, feeling cold at heart and wondering what I'd say

once I got inside. I couldn't say what I had in mind; somehow or other I'd have to go about it by devious

indirection.

A maid came to the door.

"Good morning, ma'am," I said, "I am from the _Tribune_. May I come in and talk?"

She didn't even answer; she looked at me for a moment and then slammed the door. I told myself I

might have known that was the way it would be.

I turned around, went down the steps, and cut across the grounds to where the gardener was working.

He didn't notice me until I was almost upon him; when he did see me, his face sort of lit up. He dropped

the rake, and sat down on the wheelbarrow. I suppose I was as good an excuse as any for him to take a

breather.

"Hello," I said to him, "Nice day," he said to me. "Indeed it is."

"You'll have to speak up louder," he told me; "I can't hear a thing you say."

"Too bad about Mrs. Clayborne," I told him.

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"Yes, yes," he said. "You live around here? I don't recall your face."

I nodded; it wasn't much of a lie, just twenty miles or so.

"She was a nice old lady. Worked for her almost fifty years. It's a blessing she is gone."

"I suppose it is."

"She was dying hard," he said.

He sat nodding in the autumn sun and you could almost hear his mind go traveling back across those

fifty years. I am certain that, momentarily, he'd forgotten I was there.

"Nurse tells a funny story," he said finally, speaking to himself more than he spoke to me. "It might be

just imagining; nurse was tired, you know."

"I heard about it," I encouraged him.

"Nurse left her just a minute and she swears there was something in the room when she came back

again. Says it went out the window, just as she came in. Too dark to see it good, she says. I told her she

was imagining. Funny things happen, though; things we don't know about."

"That was her room," I said, pointing at the house. "I remember, years ago..."

He chuckled at having caught me in the wrong. "You're mistaken, sonny. It was the corner one; that

one over there."

He rose from the barrow slowly and took up the rake again.

"It was good to talk with you," I said. "These are pretty flowers you have. Mind if I walk around and

have a look at them?"

"Might as well. Frost will get them in a week or so."

So I walked around the grounds, hating myself for what I had to do, and looking at the flowers,

working my way closer to the corner of the house he had pointed out to me.

There was a bed of petunias underneath the window and they were sorry-looking things. I squatted

down and pretended I was admiring them, although all the time I was looking for some evidence that

someone might have jumped out the window.

I didn't expect to find it, but I did.

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There, in a little piece of soft earth where the petunias had petered out, was a footprint-well, not a

footprint, either, maybe, but anyhow a print. It looked something like a duck track-except that the duck

that made it would have had to be as big as a good-sized dog.

I squatted on the walk, staring at it and I could feel spiders on my spine. Finally I got up and walked

away, forcing myself to saunter when my body screamed to run.

Outside the gate I _did_ run.

I got to a phone as fast as I could, at a corner drugstore, and sat in the booth a while to get my

breathing back to normal before I put in a call to the city desk.

The Barnacle bellowed at me. "What you got?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe nothing. Who was Mrs. Clayborne's doctor?"

He told me. I asked him if he knew who her nurse had been, and he asked how the hell should he

know, so I hung up.

I went to see the doctor and he threw me out.

I spent the rest of the day tracking down the nurse; when I finally found her she threw me out too. So

there was a full day's work gone entirely down the drain.

It was late in the afternoon when I got back to the office. Barnacle Bill pounced on me at once. "What

did you get?"

"Nothing," I told him. There was no use telling him about that track underneath the window. By that

time, I was beginning to doubt I'd ever seen it, it seemed so unbelievable.

"How big do ducks get?" I asked him. He growled at me and went back to his work.

I looked at the next day's page in the assignment book. He had me down for the Community Chest,

and: _See Dr. Thomas at Univ.-magnetism._

"What's this?" I asked. "This magnetism business?"

"Guy's been working on it for years," said the Barnacle. "I got it on good authority he's set to pop with

something."

There was that "good authority" again. And just about as hazy as the most of his hot tips.

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And anyhow, I don't like to interview scientists. More often than not, they're a crochety set and are apt

to look down their noses at newspapermen. Ten to one the newspaperman is earning more than they are -

and in his own way, more than likely, doing just as good a job and with less fumbling.

I saw that Jo Ann was getting ready to go home, so I walked over to her and asked her how it went.

"I got a funny feeling in my gizzard, Mark," she told me. "Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about it."

So we went down to the corner bar and took a booth way in the back.

Joe came over and he was grumbling about business, which was unusual for him. "If it weren't for you

folks over at the paper," be said, "I'd close up and go home. That must be what all my customers are

doing; they sure ain't coming here. Can you think of anything more disgusting than going straight home

from your job?"

We told him that we couldn't, and to show that he appreciated our attitude he wiped off the table - a

thing he almost never did.

He brought the drinks and Jo Ann told me about the old lady and her hundredth birthday. "It was

horrible. There she sat in her rocking chair in that bare living room, rocking back and forth, gently,

delicately, the way old ladies rock. And she was glad to see me, and she smiled so nice and she

introduced me all around."

"Well, that was fine," I said. "Were there a lot of people there?"

"Not a soul."

I choked on _my_ drink. "But you said she introduced..."

"She did. To empty chairs."

"Good Lord!"

"They all were dead," she said.

"Now, let's get this straight..."

"She said, 'Miss Evans, I want you to meet my old friend, Mrs. Smith. She lives just down the street. I

recall the day she moved into the neighborhood, back in '33. Those were hard times, I tell you.'

Chattering on, you know, like most old ladies do. And me, standing there and staring at an empty chair,

wondering what to do. And, Mark, I don't know if I did right or not, but I said, 'Hello, Mrs. Smith. I am

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glad to know you.' And do you know what happened then?"

"No," I said. "How could I?"

"The 'old lady said, just as casually as could be - just conversationally, as if it were the most natural

thing in all the world-'You know, Miss Evans, Mrs. Smith died three years ago. Don't you think it's nice

she dropped in to see me?'"

"She was pulling your leg," I said. "Some of these old ones sometimes get pretty sly."

"I don't think she was. She introduced me all around; there were six or seven of them, and all of them

were dead."

"She was happy, thinking they were there. What difference does it make?"

"It was horrible," said Jo Ann.

So we had another drink to chase away the horror.

Joe was still down in the mouth. "Did you ever see the like of it? You could shoot off a cannon in this

joint and not touch a single soul. By this time, usually, they'd be lined up against the bar, and it'd be a

dull evening if someone hadn't taken a poke at someone else - although you understand I run a decent

place."

"Sure you do," I said. "Sit down and have a drink with us."

"It ain't right that I should," said Joe. "A bartender should never take a drink when he's conducting

business. But I feel so low that if you don't mind, I'll take you up on it."

He went back to the bar and got a bottle and a glass and we had quite a few.

The corner, he said, had always been a good spot - steady business all the time, with a rush at noon

and a good crowd in the evening. But business had started dropping off six weeks before, and now was

down to nothing.

"It's the same all over town," he said, "some places worse than others. This place is one of the worst; I

just don't know what's gotten into people."

We said we didn't, either. I fished out some money and left it for the drinks, and we made our escape.

Outside I asked Jo Ann to have dinner with me, but she said it was the night her bridge club met, so I

drove her home and went on to my place.

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I take a lot of ribbing at the office for living so far out of town, but I like it. I got the cottage cheap,

and it's better than living in a couple of cooped-up rooms in a third-rate resident hotel-which would be

the best I could afford if I stayed in town.

After I'd fixed up a steak and some fried potatoes for supper, I went down to the dock and rowed out

into the lake a ways. I sat there for a while, watching the lighted windows winking all around the shore

and listening to the sounds you never hear in daytime - the muskrat swimming and the soft chuckling of

the ducks and the occasional slap of a jumping fish.

It was a bit chilly and after a little while I rowed back in again, thinking there was a lot to do before

winter came. The boat should be caulked and painted; the cottage itself could take a coat of paint, if I

could get around to it. There were a couple of storm windows that needed glass replaced, and by rights I

should putty all of them. The chimney needed some bricks to replace the ones that had blown off in a

windstorm earlier in the year, and the door should have new weatherstripping.

I sat around and read a while and then I went to bed. Just before I went to sleep I thought some about

the two old ladies - one of them happy and the other dead.

The next morning I got the Community Chest story out of the way, first thing; then I got an

encyclopedia from the library and did some reading on magnetism.

I figured that I should know something about it, before I saw this whiz-bang at the university.

But I needn't have worried so much; this Dr. Thomas turned out to be a regular Joe. We sat around

and had quite a talk. He told me about magnetism, and when he found out I lived at the lake be talked

about fishing; then we found we knew some of the same people, and it was all right.

Except he didn't have a story.

"There may be one in another year or so," he told me. "When there is, I'll let you in on it."

I'd heard that one before, of course, so I tried to pin him down.

"Its a promise," he said; "you get it first, ahead of anyone?'

I let it go at that. You couldn't ask the man to sign a contract on it.

I was watching for a chance to get away, but I could see he still had more to say. So I stayed on; it's

refreshing to find someone who wants to talk to you.

"I think there'll be a story," be said, looking worried, as if he were afraid there mightn't be. "I've

worked on it for years. Magnetism is still one of the phenomena we don't know too much about. Once

we knew nothing about electricity, and even now we do not entirely understand it; but we found out

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