«I have had a brother for a long, long time,» said Lambert. «That’s the way I want it. After all this time, I would not want to lose you.»
He glanced at the breakfront and saw that the trinkets Phil had brought on his other trips still stood solidly in place.
Thinking back, he could remember, as if it were only yesterday, watching from the barn door as Phil went trudging down the road through the grey veil of the drizzle.
«Why don’t you sit down and tell me,» he said, «about the incident out in the Coonskin system. I knew about it at the time, of course, but I never caught quite all of it.»
Senior Citizen
Originally published in the October 1975 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, this story was one of several Simak stories that led some critics to suggest that the author seemed to be obsessed with old age. Even if true, so what? Cliff was in his early seventies when he wrote this story, and retirement from the job he had loved all his life was looming on the horizon.
I do wonder, at times, why he chose the name Anson Lee for the old man in this story—it was a name he used several times in other stories, but I know of nothing in Cliff’s history to explain why it seemed to stick in his mind—but I don’t think about it too often, because this story, with its images of the way that dignity can die before the body does, makes me very uncomfortable.
—dww
The music wakened him, and a soft, sweet, feminine voice said, «Good morning, Mr. Lee. If you should not, for the moment, remember, you are Anson Lee. You are a lucky senior citizen in your retirement home in space.»
He sat up blindly and swung his feet out of bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed his eyes with closed fists, ran a hand through his thinning hair. It would be nice if he could fall back on the bed again and get another hour of sleep.
«We have so much to do today, Mr. Lee,» said the sweet voice, but it seemed to him that behind the sweetness he could detect the hidden steel of authority. Women, he thought—bitches, all of them.
«There is a nice change of clothes for you,» the voice said. «Hurry up and dress. Then we’ll have breakfast.»
I’ll have breakfast, he thought. Not we, but I. You won’t have any breakfast, for you aren’t even here.
He reached out his hand for the clothes. «I don’t like new clothes,» he complained. «I like old clothes. I like to break them in and get them comfortable. Why do I have to have new clothes every day? I know what you do with my old clothes. You throw them in the converter every night when I take them off to go to bed.»
«But these are nice,» said the voice. «They are nice and clean. The pants are blue, the shirt is green. You like blue and green.»
«I like old clothes,» he said.
«You cannot have old clothes,» the voice said. «New clothing is so much better for you. And the clothing fits. It always fits. We have your measurements.»
He put on the shirt. He stood up and put on the pants. There was no use in arguing, he knew. They always had their way. He never won. Just once he’d like to win. Just once he’d like to have old clothes. They were comfortable and soft, once you wore them for a while. He remembered his old fishing clothes. He’d had them for years and had treasured them. But now he had no fishing clothes. There was no place to fish.
«Now,» said the voice, «we’ll have breakfast. Scrambled eggs and toast. You like scrambled eggs.»
«I won’t eat any breakfast,» he said. «I don’t want any breakfast. I might be eating Nancy.»
«What foolishness is this?» asked the voice, not so sweet, a little sharper now. «You remember Nancy’s gone. She went away and left us.»
«Nancy died,» he said. «You put her in the converter. You put everything into the converter. We have only so much matter, and we must use it over and over again. I know the theory. I was a chemist. I know exactly how it works. Matter to energy, energy to matter. We are a closed ecology and …»
«But Nancy. It was so long ago.»
«It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. There’s Nancy in the clothes. There’ll be Nancy in the eggs.»
«I think we’d better,» said the voice, which was no longer sweet.
A hand reached out behind him and grasped him around the waist. «Let’s have a look at you, old-timer,» said a voice in his ear, this time an authoritative voice, a man’s voice.
He felt himself being urged into a cubicle. He was grasped by things other than hands. Tentacles wormed their way inside his clothes, fastened on his flesh. He could not move. A cold liquid sprayed forcefully against his arm.
Then everything let loose of him.
«You’re fine,» said the hard, firm medic voice. «You are in finer shape than you were yesterday.»
Yes, fine, he told himself. So fine that when he woke they thought it necessary to tell him who he was. So fine they had to shoot some dope into his arm to keep him from fantasizing.
«Come now,» said the voice, grown sweet again. «Come and eat your breakfast.»
He hesitated for a moment, trying to force himself to think. It seemed there was some reason he should not be eating breakfast, but he had forgotten. If there had ever been a reason.
«Come along, now,» said the voice, wheedling.
He shuffled toward the table and sat down, staring at the cup of coffee, the plate of scrambled eggs.
«Now pick up your fork and eat,» said the urgent voice. «It’s the breakfast you like best. You have always told me you like scrambled eggs the best. Hurry up and eat. There’s a lot to do today.»
She was bullying him again, he told himself, patronizing him, treating him in the same manner she would use with a sulking child. But there was nothing he could do about it. He might resent it, but he could not act upon the resentment. He could never reach her. She was not really there. There was no one really there. They tried to make him think there was, but he knew he was alone. Even if he could not act upon the resentment, he tried to cherish it, but it slipped away. It was something, he knew, that was done in the diagnostic cubicle. Maybe it was the stuff they shot into his arm. Stuff to make him feel good, to block off resentment, to wipe the self-nagging from his mind.
Although it didn’t really matter. Nothing really mattered. He drank his urine, he ate his feces, and it didn’t really matter. And there was something else that he ate as well, but he could not remember. He had known once, but he had forgotten.
He finished the plate of eggs and drank the cup of coffee, and the voice said, «What will we do now? What would you like to do today. I can read to you or we can play some music or we can play cards or chess. Would you like to paint? You used to like to paint. You were very good at it.»
«No, God damn it,» he said. «I would not like to paint.»
«Tell me why you don’t want to paint. You must have a reason. When you do so well, you must have a reason.»
Bullying him again, he thought, using schoolboy psychology upon him—and, worst of all, lying to him. For he could not paint. He did not do well at it. The daubs he turned out were not painting. But there was no use to go into that, he told himself; she would keep on insisting he did well at painting, operating on the conviction that the self-concept of the old must at all times be supported and improved upon.
«There’s nothing to paint,» he said.
«There are many things to paint.»
«There are no trees, no flowers, no sky or clouds, no people. There once were trees and flowers, but now I’m not sure there are. I can’t remember any more what a tree or flower looks like. A man can carry memory only for so long. There once were flowers and trees on Earth.»