Kindergarten
«Kindergarten» was originally published in the July 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The date is close enough to the end of World War II that I am led to wonder whether this story represents—in a different way than the City stories—a reaction to the horror and pessimism the war engendered in many for the future of the human race.
In a number of stories written after this one, Cliff seemed to be saying that perhaps the race needs help—help from outside—to make it.
—dww
He went walking in the morning before the Sun was up, down past the old, dilapidated barn that was falling in upon itself, across the stream and up the slope of pasture ankle-deep with grass and summer flowers, when the world was wet with dew and the chill edge of night still lingered in the air.
He went walking in the morning because he knew he might not have too many mornings left; any day, the pain might close down for good and he was ready for it—he’d been ready for it for a long time now.
He was in no hurry. He took each walk as if it were his last and he did not want to miss a single thing on any of the walks—the turned-up faces of the pasture roses with the tears of dew running down their cheeks or the matins of the birds in the thickets that ran along the ditches.
He found the machine alongside the path that ran through a thicket at the head of a ravine. At first glance, he was irritated by it, for it was not only unfamiliar, but an incongruous thing as well, and he had no room in heart or mind for anything but the commonplace. It had been the commonplace, the expected, the basic reality of Earth and the life one lived on it which he had sought in coming to this abandoned farm seeking out a place where he might stand on ground of his own choosing to meet the final day.
He stopped in the path and stood there, looking at this strange machine, feeling the roses and the dew and the early morning bird song slip away from him, leaving him alone with this thing beside the path which looked for all the world like some fugitive from a home appliance shop. But as he looked at it, he began to see the little differences and he knew that here was nothing he’d ever seen before or heard of—that it most certainly was not a wandering automatic washer or a delinquent dehumidifier.
For one thing, it shone—not with surface metallic luster or the gleam of sprayed-on porcelain, but with a shine that was all the way through whatever it was made of. If you looked at it just right, you got the impression that you were seeing into it, though not clearly enough to be able to make out the shape of any of its innards. It was rectangular, at a rough guess three feet by four by two, and it was without knobs for one to turn or switches to snap on or dials to set—which suggested that it was not something one was meant to operate.
He walked over to it and bent down and ran his hand along its top, without thinking why he should reach out and touch it, knowing when it was too late that probably he should have left it alone. But it seemed to be all right to touch it, for nothing happened—not right away, at least. The metal, or whatever it was made of, was smooth to the hand and beneath the sleekness of its surface he seemed to sense a terrible hardness and a frightening strength.
He took his hand away and straightened up, stepped back.
The machine clicked, just once, and he had the distinct impression that it clicked not because it had to click to operate, not because it was turning itself on, but to attract attention, to let him know that it was an operating machine and that it had a function and was ready to perform it. And he got the impression that for whatever purpose it might operate, it would do so with high efficiency and a minimum of noise.
Then it laid an egg.
Why he thought of it in just that way, he never was able to explain, even later when he had thought about it.
But, anyhow, it laid an egg, and the egg was a piece of jade, green with milky whiteness running through it, and exquisitely carved with what appeared to be outré symbolism.
He stood there in the path, looking at the jade, for a moment forgetting in his excitement how it had materialized, caught up by the beauty of the jade itself and the superb workmanship that had wrought it into shape. It was, he told himself, the finest piece that he had ever seen and he knew exactly how its texture would feel beneath his fingers and just how expertly, upon close examination, he would find the carving had been done.
He bent and picked it up and held it lovingly between his hands, comparing it with the pieces he had known and handled for years in the museum. But now, even with the jade between his hands, the museum was a misty place, far back along the corridors of time, although it had been less than three months since he had walked away from it.
«Thank you,» he said to the machine and an instant later thought what a silly thing to do, talking to a machine as if it were a person.
The machine just sat there. It did not click again and it did not move.
So finally he left, walking back to the old farmhouse on the slope above the barn.
In the kitchen, he placed the jade in the center of the table, where he could see it while he worked. He kindled a fire in the stove and fed in split sticks of wood, not too large, to make quick heat. He put the kettle on to warm and got dishes from the pantry and set his place. He fried bacon and drained it on paper toweling and cracked the last of the eggs into the skillet.
He ate, staring at the jade that stood in front of him, admiring once again its texture, trying to puzzle out the symbolism of its carving and finally wondering what it might be worth. Plenty, he thought—although, of all considerations, that was the least important.
The carving puzzled him. It was in no tradition that he had ever seen or of which he had ever read. What it was meant to represent, he could not imagine. And yet it had a beauty and a force, a certain character, that tagged it as no haphazard doodling, but as the product of a highly developed culture.
He did not hear the young woman come up the steps and walk across the porch, but first knew that she was there when she rapped upon the door frame. He looked up from the jade and saw her standing in the open kitchen doorway and at first sight of her he found himself, ridiculously, thinking of her in the same terms he had been thinking of the jade.
The jade was cool and green and she was crisp and white, but her eyes, he thought, had the soft look of this wondrous piece of jade about them, except that they were blue.
«Hello, Mr. Chaye,» she said.
«Good morning,» he replied.
She was Mary Mallet, Johnny’s sister.
«Johnny wanted to go fishing,» Mary told him. «He and the little Smith boy. So I brought the milk and eggs.»
«I am pleased you did,» said Peter, «although you should not have bothered. I could have walked over later. It would have done me good.»
He immediately regretted that last sentence, for it was something he was thinking too much lately—that such and such an act or the refraining from an act would do him good when, as a matter of plain fact, there was nothing that would help him at all. The doctors had made at least that much clear to him.
He took the eggs and milk and asked her in and went to place the milk in the cooler, for he had no electricity for a refrigerator.
«Have you had breakfast?» he asked.
Mary said she had.
«It’s just as well,» he said wryly. «My cooking’s pretty bad. I’m just camping out, you know.»
And regretted that one, too.
Chaye, he told himself, quit being so damn maudlin.
«What a pretty thing!» exclaimed Mary. «Wherever did you get it?»