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Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

Title : Destiny doll

Author : Clifford D. Simak

First published: 1971

Genre : science fiction

Book price : $2.50

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 : June 20, 1999

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

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

Destiny Doll

Clifford D. Simak

ONE

The place was white and there was something aloof and puritanical and uncaring

about the whiteness, as if the city stood so lofty in its thoughts that the

crawling scum of life was as nothing to it.

And yet, I told myself, the trees towered over all. It had been the trees, I

knew, when the ship started coming down toward the landing field, riding on the

homing beam we'd caught far out in space, that had made me think we'd be landing

at a village. Perhaps, I had told myself, a village not unlike that old white

New England village I had seen on Earth, nestled in the valley with the laughing

brook and the flame of autumn maples climbing up the hills. Watching, I had been

thankful, and a bit surprised as well, to find such a place, a quiet and

peaceful place, for surely any creatures that had constructed such a village

would be a quiet and peaceful people, not given to the bizarre concepts and

outlandish mores so often found on an alien planet.

But this was not a village. It was about as far from a village as it was

possible to get. It had been the trees towering over the whiteness of it that

had spelled village in my mind. But who would expect to find trees that would

soar above a city, a city that rose so tall one must tilt his head to see its

topmost towers?

The city rose into the air like a towering mountain range springing up, without

benefit of foothills, from a level plain. It fenced in the landing field with

its massive structure, like an oval of tall bleachers hemming in a playing

field. From space the city had been shining white, but it no longer shone. It

was white, all white, but soft satiny, having something in common with the

subdued gleam of expensive china on a candle-lighted table.

The city was white and the landing field was white and the sky so faint a blue

that it seemed white as well. All white except the trees that topped a city

which surged up to mountain height.

My neck was getting tired from tilting my head to stare up at the city and the

trees and now, when I lowered my head and looked across the field, I saw, for

the first time, there were other ships upon the field. A great many other ships,

I realized with a start-more ships than one would normally expect to find on

even some of the larger and busier fields of the human galaxy. Ships of every

size and shape and all of them were white. That had been the reason, I told

myself, I'd not spotted them before. The whiteness of them served as a

camouflage, blending them in with the whiteness of the field itself.

All white, I thought. The whole damn planet white. And not merely white, but a

special kind of whiteness-all with that same soft-china glow. The city and the

ships and the field itself all were china-white, as if they had been carved by

some industrious sculptor out of one great block of stone to form a single piece

of statuary.

There was no activity. There was nothing stirring. No one was coming out to meet

us. The city stood up dead.

A gust of wind came from somewhere, a single isolated gust, twitching at my

jacket. And I saw there was no dust. There was no dust for the wind to blow, no

scraps of paper for it to roll about. I scuffed at the material which made up

the landing surface and my scuffing made no marks. The material, whatever it

might be, was as free of dust as if it had been swept and scrubbed less than an

Side 1

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

hour before.

Behind me I heard the scrape of boots on the ladder's rungs. It was Sara Foster

coming down the ladder and she was having trouble with that silly ballistics

rifle slung on a strap across one shoulder. It was swinging with the motion of

her climbing and bumping on the ladder, threatening to get caught between the

rungs.

I reached up and helped her down and she swung around as soon as she reached the

ground to stare up at the city. Studying the classic planes of her face and mop

of curling red hair, I wondered again how a woman of such beauty could have

escaped all the softness of face that would have rounded out the beauty. She

reached up a hand and brushed back a lock of hair that kept falling in her eyes.

It had been falling in her eyes since the first moment I had met her.

"I feel like an ant," she said. "It just stands there, looking down at us. Don't

you feel the eyes?"

I shook my head. I had felt no eyes.

"Any minute now," she said, "it will lift a foot and squash us."

"Where are the other two?" I asked.

"Tuck is getting the stuff together and George is listening, with that soft,

silly look pasted on his face. He says that he is home."

"For the love of Christ," I said.

"You don't like George," said Sara.

"That's not it at all," I said. "I can ignore the man. It's this whole deal that

gets me. It makes no sort of sense."

"But he got us here," she said.

"That is right," I said, "and I hope he likes it."

For I didn't like it. Something about the bigness and the whiteness and the

quietness of it. Something about no one coming out to greet us or to question

us. Something about the directional beam that had brought us to this landing

field, then no one being there. And about the trees as well. No trees had the

right to grow as tall and big as those that rose above the city.

A clatter broke out above us. Friar Tuck had started down the ladder and George

Smith, puffing with his bulk, was backing out the port, with Tuck guiding his

waving feet to help him find the rungs.

"He'll slip and break his neck," I said, not caring too much if he did.

"He hangs on real good," said Sara, "and Tuck will help him down."

Fascinated, I watched them coming down the ladder, the friar guiding the blind

man's feet and helping him to find the rungs when he happened to misjudge them.

A blind man, I told myself-a blind man and a footloose, phony friar, and a

female big game hunter off on a wild goose chase, hunting for a man who might

have been no man at all, but just a silly legend. I must have been out of my

mind, I told myself, to take on a job like this.

The two men finally reached the ground and Tuck, taking the blind man's arm,

turned him around so he faced the city.

Sara had been right, I saw, about that silly smile. Smith's face was wreathed in

beatitude and a look like that, planted on his flabby, vacant face, reeked of

obscenity.

Sara touched the blind man's arm with gentle fingers.

"You're sure this is the place, George? You couldn't be mistaken?"

The beatitude changed to an ecstasy that was frightening to see. "There is no

mistake," he babbled, his squeaky voice thickened by emotion. "My friend is

here. I hear him and he makes me see. It's almost as if I could reach out and

touch him."

He made a fumbling motion with a pudgy hand, as if he were reaching out to touch

someone, but there was nothing there to touch. It all was in his mind.

It was insane on the face of it, insane to think that a blind man who heard

voices-no, not voices, just a single voice- could lead us across thousands of

light years, toward and above the galactic center, into territory through which

no man and no human ship had been known to pass, to one specific planet. There

had been, in past history, many people who had heard voices, but until now not

too many people bad paid attention to them.

"There is a city," Sara was saying to the blind man. "A great white city and

trees taller than the city, trees that go up and up for miles. Is that what you

see?"

"No," said George, befuddled by what he had been told, "No, that isn't what I

see. There isn't any city and there aren't any trees." He gulped. "I see," he

said, "I see..." He groped for what he saw and finally gave up. He waved his

hands and his face was creased with the effort to tell us what he saw. "I can't

tell you what I see," he finally whispered. "I can't find the words for it.

Side 2

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

There aren't any words."

"There is something coming," said Friar Tuck, pointing toward the city. "I can't

make it out. Just a shimmer. As if there were something moving."

I looked where the friar was pointing and I caught the shimmer. But that was all

it was. There was nothing one could really see. Out there, at the base of the

city wall, something seemed to be moving, an elusive flow and sparkle.

Sara was looking through her glasses and now she slipped the strap over her

shoulder and handed them to me.

"What do you think, captain?"

I put the glasses to my eyes and moved them slowly until I caught the movement.

At first it was no more than a moving blur, but slowly it grew in size and

separated. Horses? I wondered. It didn't make much sense that there'd be horses

here, but that was what they looked like. White horses running toward us-if

there were horses, of course they would be white! But very funny horses and, it

seemed, with very funny feet, not running the way a normal horse would run, but

with a crazy gait, rocking as they ran.

As they came closer I could make out further detail. They were horses, all

right. Formalized horses-pert upright ears, flaring nostrils, arched necks,

manes that rose as if the wind were blowing through them, but manes that never

moved. Like wild running horses some crummy artist would draw for a calendar,

but keeping the set pose the artist had given them, never changing it. And their

feet? Not feet, I saw. Not any feet at all, but rockers. Two pair of rockers,

front and rear, with the front ones narrower so there'd be no interference as

the horses ran-reaching forward with the rear pair and, as they touched the

ground, rocking forward on them, with the front pair lifted and reaching out to

touch the ground and rock in turn.

Shaken, I lowered the glasses and handed them to Sara.

"This," I said, "is one you won't believe."

She put the glasses up and I watched the horses coming on. There were eight of

them and they all were white and one was so like the other there was no telling

them apart.

Sara took down the glasses.

"Merry-go-round," she said.

"Merry-go-round?"

"Sure. Those mechanical contraptions they have at fairs and carnivals and

amusement parks."

I shook my head, bewildered. "I never went to an amusement park," I told her.

"Not that kind of amusement park. But when I was a kid I had a hobbyhorse."

The eight came rushing in, sliding to a halt. Once they halted, they stood

rocking gently back and forth.

The foremost of them spoke to us, employing that universal space argot that man

had found already in existence when he'd gone into space more than twenty

centuries before, a language composed of terms and phrases and words from a

hundred different tongues, forged into a bastard lingo by which many diverse

creatures could converse with one another.

"We be hobbies," said the horse. "My name is Dobbin and we have come to take you

in."

No part of him moved. He simply stood there, rocking gently, with his ears still

perked, his carven nostrils flaring, with the nonexistent breeze blowing at his

mane. I got the impression, somehow, that the words he spoke came out of his

ears.

"I think they're cute," Sara cried, delighted. And that was typical; she would

think that they were cute.

Dobbin paid her no attention. "We urge upon you haste," he said. "There is a

mount for each of you and four to take the luggage. We have but a small amount

of time."

I didn't like the way that it was going; I didn't like a thing about it. I'm

afraid I snapped at him.

"We don't like being hurried," I told him. "If you have no time, we can spend

the night on the ship and come in tomorrow morning."

"No! No!" the hobby protested frantically. "That is impossible. There exists

great danger with the setting of the sun. You must be undercover by the time the

sun is set."

"Why don't we do the way he says," suggested Tuck, pulling his robe tight around

himself. "I don't like it out here. If there is no time now, we could come back

and pick up the luggage later."

Said Dobbin, "We'll take the luggage now. There'll be no time in the morning."

"It seems to me," I said to Dobbin, "you're greatly pressed for time. If that's

Side 3

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

the case, why don't you simply turn around and go back where you came from. We

can take care of ourselves."

"Captain Ross," said Sara Foster, firmly, "I'm not going to walk all that way if

there's a chance to ride. I think you're being foolish."

"That may well be," I said, angrily, "but I don't like snotty robots ordering me

around."

"We be hobbies," Dobbin said. "We not be any robots."

"You be human hobbies?"

"I do not know your meaning."

"Human beings made you. Creatures very much like us."

"I do not know," said Dobbin.

"The hell you don't," I said. I turned to Smith. "George," I said.

The blind man turned his puffy face toward me. The look of ecstasy still was

pasted on it.

"What is it, captain?"

"In your talk back and forth with this friend of yours, did you ever mention

hobbies?"

"Hobbies? Oh, you mean stamp collecting and..."

"No, I don't," I said. "I mean hobbyhorses. Did you ever mention hobbyhorses?"

"Until this moment," said the blind man, "I never heard of them."

"But you had toys when you were 'a child."

The blind man sighed. "Not the kind you are thinking of. I was born blind. I

have never seen. The kind of toys other children had were not..."

"Captain," Sara said, angrily, "you are ridiculous. Why all this suspicion?"

"I'll tell you that," I said, just as angrily, "and it's an easy answer..."

"I know," she said. "I know. Suspicion, time and time again, has saved that neck

of yours."

"Gracious lady," Dobbin said, "please believe there is great danger once the sun

has set. I plead with you, I implore you, I urge you to come with us and most

speedily at that."

"Tuck," said Sara, "get up that ladder and start getting down the stuff!" She

swung belligerently toward me. "Have you objections, captain?"

"Miss Foster," I told her, "it's your ship and it's your money. You're paying

for the show."

"You're laughing at me," she stormed. "You've laughed all the way. You never

really believed in anything I told you. You don't believe at all-not in

anything."

"I got you here," I told her, grimly, "and I'll get you back. That's the deal we

made. All I ask is that you try not to make the job any harder than it has to

be."

And immediately that I said it, I was sorry that I had. We were on an alien

planet and very far from home and we should stick together and not start off

with bickering. More than likely, I admitted to myself, she had been quite

right; I might have been ridiculous. But right away, I amended that. Ridiculous

on the surface, maybe, but not in principle. When you hit an alien planet, you

are on your own and you have to keep your senses and your hunches sharp. I'd

been on a lot of alien planets and had always managed and so, of course, had

Sara, but she'd always hit them with a good-sized expeditionary force and I'd

been on my own.

Tuck, at the first word from her, had gone swarming up the ladder, with his robe

tucked up underneath his belt so he wouldn't trip, and now was handing down the

duffle bags and the other plunder to Sara, who was halfway up the ladder, taking

the stuff from him and dropping it as gently as she could at the ladder's base.

There was one thing you had to say about the gal-she never shirked the work. She

was al. ways in there, doing 'her fair share and perhaps a good deal more.

"All right," I said to Dobbin, "run your packhorses over here. How do you handle

this?"

"I regret," said Dobbin, "that we haven't any arms. But with the situation as it

is, you'll be forced to do the packing. Just heap the luggage on top the

hobbies' backs and when the load is completed, metal cinches will extrude from

the belly and strap the load securely."

"Ingenious," I said.

Dobbin made a little forward dip upon his rockers, in the semblance of hewing.

"Always," he said, "we attempt to serve."

Four of the horses came rocking up and I began loading them. When Tuck got

through with handing down the gear, Sara came and helped me. Tuck closed the

port and by the time he had climbed down the ladder, we were all set to go.

The sun was touching the city skyline and hunks were being nibbled out of it by

Side 4

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

the topmost towers. It was slightly more yellow than the sun of Earth-perhaps a

K-type star. The ship would know, of course; the ship would have it all. The

ship did all the work that a man was supposed to do. It gobbled up the data and

pulled it all apart and put it back together. It knew about this planet and

about the planet's star, it knew about the atmosphere and the chemistry and all

the rest of it and it would have been more than willing to give it out to anyone

who asked. But I hadn't asked. I had meant to go back and get the data sheet,

but I hadn't counted on getting a reverse bum's rush by a pack of hobbyhorses.

Although, I told myself, it probably made, no difference, I could come back in

the morning. But I couldn't bring myself to like the fact that I'd not latched

onto that data sheet.

"Dobbin," I asked, "what is all this danger business? What are we supposed to be

afraid of?"

"I cannot inform you," Dobbin said, "since I, myself, fail to understand, but I

can assure you..."

"0K, let it go," I told him.

Tuck was puffing and panting, trying to boost Smith onto one of the hobbies,

Sara already was on one of them, sitting straight and prim, the perfect picture

of a gal on the threshold of a very great adventure, and that, of course, was

all it was to her-another great adventure. Sitting there, proud, astride her

mount, with that ridiculous ancient rifle slung across her shoulder, nattily

attired in an adventure-going costume.

I glanced quickly about the bowl that was the landing field, rimmed in by the

city, and there was nothing stirring. Shadows ran out from the city's western

wall as the sun went inching down behind the buildings and some of those western

buildings had turned from white to black, but there were no lights.

Where was everyone? Where were the city's residents and all those visitors who'd

come down on the spaceships standing like ghostly tombstones on the field? And

why were the ships all white?

"Honored sir," Dobbin said to me, "if you please, would you get into my saddle.

Our time is running short."

A chill was in the air and I don't mind admitting that I felt a twinge of

fright. I don't know why. Perhaps just the place itself, perhaps the feeling of

being trapped on the landing field rimmed in by the city, perhaps the fact that

there seemed no living thing in sight except the hobbies-if you could call them

living and I suppose you could.

I reached up and lifted the strap of my laser gun off my shoulder and, grasping

it in hand, swung into Dobbin's saddle.

"You need no weapon here," Dobbin said, disapprovingly. I didn't answer him. It

was my own damn business.

Dobbin wheeled and we started out across the field, heading toward the city. It

was a crazy kind of ride-smooth enough, no jerking, but going up and down as

much, it seemed, as one was moving forward. It wasn't rocking; it was like

skating on a sine wave.

The city seemed not to grow much larger, nor to gain in detail. We bad been much

farther from it, I realized, than it bad appeared; the landing field was larger,

too, than it had appeared. Behind me, Tuck let out a yell.

"Captain!"

I twisted in the saddle.

"The ship!" yelled Tuck. "The ship! They're doing something to it."

And they were, indeed-whoever they might be.

A long-necked mechanism stood beside the ship. It looked like a bug with a squat

and massive body and a long and slender neck with a tiny head atop it. From the

mouth of it sprayed out a mist directed at the ship. Where it struck the ship,

the ship was turning white, just like those other tombstone ships that stood

upon the, field.

I let out an angry yelp, reaching for a rein and yanking hard. But I might as

well have yanked upon a rock. Dobbin kept straight on.

"Turn around," I yelled. "Go back!"

"There is no turning back, most honored sir," said Dobbin, conversationally, not

even panting with his running. "There is no time. We must reach the safety of

the city."

"There is time, by God," I yelled, jerking up the gun and aiming it at the

ground in front of us, between Dobbin's ears.

"Shut your eyes," I yelled to the others, and pulled the trigger one notch back.

Even through my eyelids, I sensed the flaring of the laser-light as it bounced

back from the ground. Under me Dobbin reared and spun, almost swapping end for

end, and when I opened my eyes we were heading back toward the ship.

Side 5

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

"You'll be the death of us, crazy being," Dobbin moaned. "All of us will die."

I looked behind me and the hobbies all were following. Dobbin, it appeared, was

leader and where he went they were content to follow. But farther back there was

no sign of where the laser bolt had struck. Even at first notch capacity it

should have made a mark; there should have been a smoking crater back there

where it struck.

Sara was riding with one arm up across her eyes.

"You all right?" I asked.

"You crazy fool!" she cried.

"I yelled for you to close your eyes," I said. "There was bound to be

reflection."

"You yelled, then fired," she said. "You didn't give us time."

She took her arm down and her eyes blinked at me and, hell, she was all right.

Just something else to bitch about; she never missed a chance.

Ahead of us the bug that had been spraying the ship was scurrying off across the

field. It must have had wheels or treads underneath it, for it was spinning

along at a headlong clip, its long neck stretched out in front of it in its

eagerness to get away from there.

"Please, sir," Dobbin pleaded, "we are simply wasting time. There is nothing

that can be done."

"One more word out of you," I said, "and this time right between the ears."

We reached the ship and Dobbin skidded to a halt, but I didn't wait for him to

stop. I hit the ground and was running toward the ship while he still was

moving. Although what I intended to do I had no idea.

I reached the ship and I could see that it was covered with some stuff that

looked like frosty glass and when I say covered, I mean covered-every inch of

it. There was no metal showing. It looked unfunctional, like a model ship.

Reduced in size, it could have passed for those little model ships sold in

decorator shops to stick up on the mantle.

I put out my hand and touched it and it was slick and hard. There was no look of

metal and there was no feel of metal, either. I rapped it with my gun stock and

it rang like a bell, setting up a resonance that went bouncing across the field

and came back as an echo from the city walls.

"What is it, captain?" Sara asked, her voice somewhat shaky. This was her ship,

and there was no one who could mess around with it.

"A coating of something hard," I said. "As if it had been sealed."

"You mean we can't get into it?"

"I don't know. Maybe if we had a sledge hammer to crack it, we could peel it

off."

She made a sudden motion and the rifle was off her back and the butt against her

shoulder. I'll say this for her: crazy as that gun might be, she could handle

it.

The sound of the shot was loud and flat and the hobbies reared in terror. But

above the sound of the report itself was another sound, a wicked howling that

almost screamed, the noise of a ricocheting bullet tumbling end for end, and

pitched lower than the shrill howling of the slug was the booming resonance of

the milk-white ship. But there was no indication of where the bullet might have

struck. The whiteness of the ship still was smooth-uncracked, unblemished,

unmarked. Two thousand foot-pounds of metal had slammed against it and had not

made a dent.

I lifted the laser gun and Dobbin said to me, "There be no use, you foolish

folk. There is nothing you can do."

I whirled on him angrily. "I thought I told you...' I yelled. "One more word out

of you and right between the eyes."

"Violence," Dobbin told me, perkily, "will get you nowhere. But staying here,

once the sun has set, spells very rapid death."

"But the ship!" I shouted.

"The ship is sealed," said Dobbin, "like all the others. Better sealed with you

outside of it than with you still inside."

And although I would not have admitted it, I knew that he was right in saying

there was nothing we could do. For I recalled that the field had been unmarked

by the laser beam and undoubtedly all this whiteness was the same-the field, the

ships, the city, all coated, more than likely, with some substance so tightly

bonded in its atomic structure that it was indestructible.

"I sorrow greatly for you," said Dobbin, with no sorrow in his voice. "I know

the shock of you. But once on this planet, no one ever leaves. Although there is

no need of also dying, I plead with you compassionately to get into the saddle

and let us head for safety."

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Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

I looked up at Sara and she nodded quietly. She had figured it, I knew, about

the way I had, although in my case most unwillingly. There was no use in staying

out here. The ship was sealed, whatever that might mean or for whatever purpose,

and when morning came we could come back to see what we could do. From the

moment we had met him, Dobbin had been insistent about the danger. There might

be danger or there might be none-there was no way, certainly, that we could

determine if there were or weren't. The only sensible thing, at the moment, was

to go along with him.

I swung swiftly to the saddle and even before I found seat, Dobbin had whirled

about, running even as he led.

"We have lost most valued time," he told me. "We will try with valiance to make

it up. We yet may reach the city."

A good part of the landing field lay in shadow now and only the sky was bright.

A faint, smokelike dusk was filtering through the city.

Once on this planet, Dobbin had said, no one ever leaves. But these were his

words alone, and nothing else. Perhaps there was a real intent to keep us here,

which would explain the sealing of the ship, but there would be ways, I told

myself, that could be tried to get off the planet when the time to go should

come. There were always ways.

The city was looming up as we drew closer, and now the buildings began to assume

their separate shapes. Up till now they had been a simple mass that had the

appearance of a solid cliff thrusting up from the flatness of the field. They

had seemed tall from out in the center of the field; now they reared into the

sky so far that, this close, it was impossible to follow with the eye up to

their tops.

The city still stayed dead. There were no lights in any of the windows-if,

indeed, the buildings did have windows. There was no sign of movement at the

city's base. There were no outlying buildings; the field ran up to the base of

the buildings and the buildings then jutted straight into the sky.

The hobbies thundered cityward, their rockers pounding out a ringing clangor as

they humped along like a herd of horses galloping wildly before a scudding storm

front. Once you got the hang of riding them, it wasn't bad at all. You just went

sort of loose and let your body follow that undulating sine wave.

The city walls loomed directly in front of us, great slabs of masonry that went

up and up, and now I saw that there were streets, or at least what I took for

streets, narrow slits of empty blackness that looked like fractures in a

monstrous cliff.

The hobbies plunged into one of the slits of emptiness and darkness closed upon

us. There was no light here; except when the sun stood straight overhead, there

never would be light. The walls seemed to rise all about us, the slit that was a

street narrowing down to a vanishing point so that the walls seemed on every

hand.

Ahead of us one building stood a little farther back, widening the street, and

from the level of the street a wide ramp ran up to massive doors. The hobbies

turned and flung themselves at the ramp and went humping up it and through one

of the gaping doors.

We burst into a room where there was a little light and the light, I saw, came

from great rectangular blocks set into the wall that faced us.

The hobbies rocked swiftly toward one of the blocks and came to a halt before

it. To one side I saw a gnome, or what appeared to be a gnome, a small,

humpbacked, faintly humanoid creature that spun a dial set into the wall beside

the slab of glowing stone.

"Captain, look!" cried Sara.

There was no need for her to cry out to me-and I had seen it almost as soon as

she had. Upon the glowing stone appeared a scene-a faint and shadowed scene, as

if it might be a place at the bottom of a clear and crystal sea, its colors

subdued by the depth of water, its outlines shifting with the little wind

ripples that ran on the water's surface.

A raw and bleeding landscape, with red lands stretching to a mauve, storm-torn

horizon, broken by crimson buttes, and in the foreground a clump of savage

yellow flowers. But even as I tried to grasp all this, to relate it to the kind

of world it might have been, it changed, and in its place was a jungle world,

drowned in the green and purple of overwhelming vegetation, spotted by the

flecks of screaming color that I knew were tropic flowers, and back of it all a

sense of lurking bestiality that made my hide crawl even as I looked at it.

Then it, too, was gone-a glimpse and it was gone-and in its place was a yellow

desert lighted by a moon and by a flare of stars that turned the sky to silver,

with the lips of the marching sand dunes catching and fracturing the moon and

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Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

starlight so that the dunes appeared to be foaming waves of water charging in

upon the land.

The desert did not fade as the other places had. It came in a rush upon us and

exploded in my face.

Beneath me I felt the violent plunging of a bucking Dobbin and made a frantic

grab at the cantle of the saddle which seemed to have no cantle and then felt

myself pitched forward and turning in the air.

I struck on one shoulder and skidded in the sand and finally came to rest, the

breath knocked out of me. I struggled up, cursing-or trying to curse and

failing, because I had no breath to curse with-and once on my feet, saw that we

were alone in that land we had seen upon the glowing block.

Sara sprawled to one side of me and not far off Tuck was struggling to his feet,

hampered by the cassock that had become entangled about his legs, and a little

beyond Tuck, George was crawling on his hands and knees, whimpering like a pup

that had been booted out of doors into a friendless. frigid night.

All about us lay the desert, desiccated, without a shred of vegetation, flooded

by the great white moon and the thousand glowing stars, all shining like lamps

in a cloudless sky.

"He's gone!" George was whimpering as he crawled about. "I can't hear him

anymore. I have lost my friend."

And that was not all that was lost. The city was lost and the planet on which

the city stood. We were in another place. This was one trip, I told myself, that

I never should have made. I had known it all along. I'd not believed in it, even

from the start. And to make a go of it, you had to believe in everything you

did. You had to have a reason for everything you did.

Although, I recalled, I had really no choice.

I had been committed from the moment I had seen that beauty of a spaceship

standing on the field of Earth.

TWO

I had come sneaking back to Earth. Not back really, for I never had been there

to start with. But Earth was where my money was and Earth was sanctuary and out

in space I was fair game to anyone who found me. Not that what I had done had

been actually so bad, nor was I to blame entirely, but there were a lot of

people who had lost their shirts on it and, they were out to get me and

eventually would get me if I failed to reach Earth's sanctuary.

The ship that I was driving was a poor excuse-a fugitive from a junkyard (and

that was exactly what it was), patched up and stuck together with binder twine

and bailing wire, but I didn't need it long. All I wanted of it was to get me to

Earth. Once I stepped out of it, it could fall into a heap for all it mattered

to me. Once I got to Earth, I'd be staying there.

I knew that Earth Patrol would be on watch for me-not that Earth cared; so far

as Earth was concerned, the more the merrier. Rather a patrol to keep

undesirable characters like myself from fleeing back to Earth.

So I came into the solar system with the Sun between myself and Earth and I

hoped that my slide rule hadn't slipped a notch and that I had it figured right.

I piled on all the normal-space speed I could nurse out of the heap and the

Sun's gravity helped considerably and when I passed the Sun that ship was

traveling like a hell-singed bat. There was an anxious hour when it seemed I

might have sliced it just a bit too close. But the radiation screens held and I

lost only half my speed and there was Earth ahead.

With all engines turned off and every circuit cut, I coasted on past Venus, no

more than five million miles off to my left, and headed in for Earth.

The patrol didn't spot me and it was sheer luck, of course, but there wasn't

much to spot. I had no energy output and all the electronics were doused and all

they could have picked up was a mass of metal and fairly small, at that. And I

came in, too, with the Sun behind me, and the solar radiations, no matter how

good the equipment you may have, help louse up reception.

It was insane to try it, of course, and there were a dozen very nasty ways in

which I could have failed, but on many a planet-hunting venture I had taken

chances that were no less insane. The thing was that I made it.

There is just one spaceport on Earth. They don't need any more. The traffic

isn't heavy. There are few people left on Earth; they all are out in space. The

ones who are left are the hopeless sentimentalists who think there is status

attached to living on the planet where the human race arose. They, and the ones

like myself, are the only residents. The sentimentalists, I had heard, were a

fairly snooty crowd of self-styled aristocrats, but that didn't bother me. I

Side 8

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

wasn't planning on having too much to do with them. Occasionally excursion ships

dropped in with a load of pilgrims, back to visit the cradle of the race, and a

few freighters bringing in assorted cargo, but that was all there was.

I brought in the ship and set it down and walked away from it, carrying my two

bags, the only possessions I had been able to get away with before the vultures

had come flocking in. The ship didn't fall into a heap; it just stood there, its

slab-sided self, the sorriest-looking vessel you ever clapped your eyes on.

Just two berths away from it stood this beauty of a ship. It gleamed with smart

efficiency, slim and sleek, a space yacht that seemed straining toward the sky,

impatient at its leash.

There was no way of knowing, of course, just by looking at it, what it had

inside, but there is something about a ship that one simply cannot miss. Just

looking at this one, there was no doubt that no money had been spared to make it

the best that could be built. Standing there and looking at it, I found my hands

itching to get hold of it.

I suppose they itched the worse because I knew I'd never go into space again. I

was all washed up. I'd spend the rest of my life on Earth the best way that I

could. If I ever left it, I'd be gobbled up.

I walked off the field and went through customs-if you could call it customs.

They just went through the motions. They had nothing against me or anyone; they

weren't sore at me, or anyone. That, it seemed to me, was the nicest thing one

could say of Earth.

I went to an inn nearby and once I'd settled in, went down to the bar.

I was on my third or fourth when a robot flunky came into the bar and zeroed in

on me.

"You are Captain Ross?"

I wondered, with a flare of panic, just what trouble I was in for. There wasn't

a soul on Earth who knew me or knew that I was coming. The only contacts I had

made had been with the customs people and the room clerk at the inn.

"I have a note for you," said the robot, handing it to me. The envelope was

sealed and it had no marks upon it.

I opened it and took out the card. It read:

Captain Michael Ross,

Hilton Inn

If Captain Ross will be my dinner guest tonight, I would be much obliged. My car

will be waiting at the entrance of the inn at eight o'clock. And, captain, may I

be among the first to welcome you to Earth.

Sara Foster

I sat there staring at it and the bottle robot came sliding down the bar. He

picked up the empty glass. "Another one?" be asked.

"Another one," I said.

Just who was Sara Foster, and how had she known, an hour after my arrival, that

I was on Earth?

I could ask around, of course, but there seemed no one to ask, and for some

reason I could not figure out why I felt disinclined to do so.

It could be a trap. There were people, I well knew, who hated me enough to have

a try at smuggling me off the Earth. They would know by now, of course, that I

had obtained a ship, but few who would believe that such a ship would carry me

to Earth. And there could be none of them who could even guess I'd already

reached the Earth.

I sat there, drinking, trying to get it straight in mind, and I finally decided

I would take a chance.

Sara Foster lived in a huge house set atop a hill, surrounded by acres of

wilderness that in turn surrounded more acres of landscaped lawns and walks, and

in the center of all of this sat the huge house, built of sun-warmed bricks,

with a wide portico that ran the length of the house, and with many chimneys

thrusting from its roof.

I had expected to be met at the door by a robot, but Sara Foster was there,

herself, to greet me. She was wearing a green dinner dress that swept the floor

and served to set off, in violent contrast, the flame of her tumbled hair, with

the one errant lock forever hanging in her eyes.

"Captain Ross," she said, giving me her hand, "how nice of you to come. And on

such short notice, too. I'm afraid it was impetuous of me, but I did so want to

see you."

The hall in which we stood was high and cool, paneled with white-painted wood

and the floor of wood so polished that it shone, with a massive chandelier of

Side 9

Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny Doll

crystal hanging from the ceiling. The place breached wealth and a certain spirit

of Earth-rooted gentility and it all was very pleasant.

"The others are in the library," she said. "Let us go and join them."

She linked her arm through mine and led me down the hail until we came to a door

that led into a room that was a far cry from the hall which I had entered. It

might have been a library-there were some shelves with books-but it looked more

like a trophy room. Mounted heads hung from every wall, a glass-enclosed gun

rack ran across one end, and the floor was covered with fur rugs, some with the

heads attached, the bared fangs forever snarling.

Two men were sitting in chairs next to the mammoth fireplace and as we entered

one of them got up. He was tall and cadaverous, his face long and lean and dark,

not so much darkened, I thought as I looked at him, by the outdoors and the sun

as by the thoughts within his skull. He wore a dark brown cassock loosely belted

at the waist by a string of beads, and his feet, I saw, were encased in sturdy

sandals.

"Captain Ross," said Sara Foster, "May I present Friar Tuck."

He held out a bony hand. "My legal name," he said "is Hubert Jackson, but I

prefer Friar Tuck. In the course of my wanderings, captain, I have heard many

things of you."

I looked hard at him. "You have done much wandering?" For I had seen his like

before and had liked none of what I saw.

He bent his bony head. "Far enough," be said, "and always in the search of

truth?'

"Truth," I said, "at times is very hard to come by." "And captain," Sara said,

quickly, "this is George Smith." The second man by this time had fumbled to his

feet and was holding out a flabby hand in my direction. He was a tubby little

man with a grubby look about him and his eyes were a milky white.

"As you can see by now," said Smith, "I am quite blind. You'll excuse me for not

rising when you first came in the room."

It was embarrassing. There was no occasion for the man to so thrust his

blindness on us.

I shook his hand and it was as flabby as it looked, as nearly limp as a living

hand can be. Immediately he fumbled his way back into the chair again.

"Perhaps this chair," Sara said to me. "There'll be drinks immediately. I know

what the others want, but..."

"If you have some Scotch," I said.

I sat down in the chair she had indicated and she took another and there were

the four of us, huddled in a group before that looming fireplace and surrounded

by the heads of creatures from a dozen different planets.

She saw me looking at them. "I forgot," she said. "You'll excuse me, please. You

had never heard of me-until you got my note, I mean."

"I am sorry, madam."

"I'm a ballistics hunter," she said, with more pride, it seemed to me, than such

a statement called for.

She could not have missed the fact that I did not understand. "I use only a

ballistics rifle," she explained. "One that uses a bullet propelled by an

explosive charge. It is," she said, "the only sporting way to hunt. It requires

a considerable amount of skill in weapon handling and occasionally some nerve.

It you miss a vital spot the thing that you are hunting has a chance at you."

"I see," I said. "A sporting proposition. Except that you have the first crack

at it."

"That is not always true," she said.

A robot brought the drinks and we settled down as comfortably as we could,

fortified behind our glasses.

"I have a feeling, captain," Sara said, "that you do not approve."

"I have no opinion at all," I told her. "I have no information on which opinion

could be based."

"But you have killed wild creatures."

"A few," I said, "but there was no such thing involved as sporting instinct.

For food, occasionally. At times to save my life."

I took a good long drink. "I took no chance," I told her. "I used a laser gun. I

just kept burning them as long as it seemed necessary."

"Then you're no sportsman, captain."

"No," I said, "I am-let us say I was-a planet hunter. It seems I'm now retired."

And I wondered, sitting there, what it was all about. She hadn't invited me, I

was sure, just for my company. I didn't fit in this room, nor in this house, any

better than the other two who sat there with me. Whatever was going on, they

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Simak, Cliffard D - Destiny DollTitle : Destiny dollAuthor : Clifford D. SimakFirst published: 1971Genre : science fictionBook price : $2.50Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this bookSource : scanned and OCR-read from a paper...

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