The stories mentioned in this introduction can be found in the following collections:
“Madness from Mars” can be found in Volume One, I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories.
“The Big Front Yard” can be found in Volume Two, The Big Front Yard and Other Stories.
“Leg. Forst.,” “The Autumn Land,” and “The Ghost of a Model T” can be found in Volume Three, The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories.
“Sunspot Purge” can be found in Volume Six, New Folks’ Home and Other Stories.
“The Sitters” can be found in Volume Seven, A Death in the House and Other Stories.
“Auk House” and “Good Night, Mr. James” can be found in Volume Eight, Good Night, Mr. James and Other Stories.
“Carbon Copy” can be found in Volume Nine, Earth for Inspiration and Other Stories.
“The Thing in the Stone” can be found in Volume Twelve, The Thing in the Stone and Other Stories.
“The Marathon Photograph” can be found in Volume Thirteen, Buckets of Diamonds and Other Stories.
“Rule 18” can be found in Volume Fourteen, Smoke Killer and Other Stories.
Dusty Zebra
For all the mentions over the years of critical commentary of Clifford D. Simak’s many writings in so-called “pastoral” settings, those stories are perhaps made all the more effective—in whatever vision they might seek to portray—when compared to those the author put into more usual urban and suburban settings. This story, which was purchased by Horace Gold, less than three weeks after Cliff mailed it in, for $320, was originally published in the September 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It’s about the most basic of human economic activities.
“Good business sense,” as Joe Adams saw it; but his wife said, “What have you been up to?”
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 checks for the monthly bills. But I’d just sat down to write the checks 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 anti-social.
So, the next evening after dinner, I went into the den to write the checks 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-Blocks 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 checks, stamps or no stamps.
I got the pile of bills and the checkbook 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 right 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 checks. 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.