Then one day a voice spoke to him.
— Fred!
— Yes, responded Fred.
— This is Oscar. You remember me?
— I remember you. What have I done this time?
— You have been a loyal and faithful worker.
— Then why are you talking to me?
— I have news you might like to hear. This day a ship set out for the stars.
— What has that to do with me?
— Nothing, Oscar said. I thought you might want to know.
With these words Oscar left and Fred was still in Texas, in the midst of working out a solution to a bitter irrigation fight.
Could it be, he wondered, that he, after all, might have played a part in the ship going to the stars? Could the aftermath of his folly have stirred new research? He could not, for the life of him, imagine how that might have come about. Yet the thought clung to him and he could not shake it off.
He went back to the irrigation problem and, for some reason he did not understand, had it untangled more quickly than had seemed possible. He had other problems to deal with, and he plunged into them, solving them all more rapidly and with more surety than he ever had before.
That night, when the stars were shining, he found that he had a little time to dream and, what was more, the inclination to indulge in dreaming. For now, he thought, there might just possibly be some hope in dreaming.
This time his daydream was brand-new and practical and shining. Someday, he dreamed, he would get a transfer back to Washington—any kind of job in Washington; he would not be choosy. Again he would be back where there was a gossip hour.
He was, however, not quite satisfied with that—it seemed just slightly tame. If one was going to daydream, one should put his best dream forward. If one dreamed, it should be a big dream.
So he dreamed of a day when it would be revealed that he had been the one who had made the starship possible—exactly how he might have made it possible he could not imagine—but that he had and now was given full recognition of the fact.
Perhaps he would be given, as a reward for what he’d done, a berth on such a ship, probably as no more than the lowliest of computers assigned to a drudgery job. That would not matter, for it would get him into space and he’d see all the glories of the infinite.
He dreamed grandly and well, reveling in all the things he would see in space—gaping in awe-struck wonder at a black hole, gazing unflinchingly into a nova’s flare, holding a grandstand seat to witness the seething violence of the galactic core, staring out across the deep, black emptiness that lay beyond the rim.
Then, suddenly, in the middle of the dream, another problem came crashing in on him. Fred settled down to work, but it was all right. He had, he told himself, regained his power to dream. Given the power to dream, who needed gossip hours?
The Street That Wasn’t There
by Clifford D. Simak and Carl Jacobi
For a man who grew up wanting to write, and who turned to journalism with enthusiasm for the glamor and idealism he saw in the way the profession was portrayed during the early part of the twentieth century, Clifford D. Simak appears to have been rather reluctant to work with others—at least so far as his fiction was concerned. Aside from a story he cowrote with his own son—“Unsilent Spring,” elsewhere in these collections)—this was Clifford D. Simak’s only collaboration; and he would later admit that he and Carl Jacobi—well-known to each other through years of living and working in the same metropolitan area – fought while doing this story. (You can decide for yourself whether the evidence indicating that Cliff and Carl later tried another collaboration—and failed—supports or detracts from any side in this argument …)
After initially being rejected by Unknown, “The Street That Wasn’t There” first appeared in Comet Stories in July 1941 (it would later be reprinted a time or two, including under the name “The Lost Street”). The authors had to complain about nonpayment before eventually receiving a paltry sum for the story. Cliff’s journal shows he received a payment of eleven dollars, and although it’s not clear whether that was only a partial payment, it’s no wonder that Comet had not long to live.
Call me crazy, but I find this story interesting in another way, seeing in it both echoes of the previous “Hellhounds of the Cosmos,” and suggestions that would blossom in “The Big Front Yard.”
Mr. Jonathon Chambers left his house on Maple Street at exactly seven o’clock in the evening and set out on the daily walk he had taken, at the same time, come rain or snow, for twenty solid years.
The walk never varied. He paced two blocks down Maple Street, stopped at the Red Star confectionery to buy a Rose Trofero perfecto, then walked to the end of the fourth block on Maple. There he turned right on Lexington, followed Lexington to Oak, down Oak and so by way of Lincoln back to Maple again and to his home.
He didn’t walk fast. He took his time. He always returned to his front door at exactly 7:45. No one ever stopped to talk with him. Even the man at the Red Star confectionery, where he bought his cigar, remained silent while the purchase was being made. Mr. Chambers merely tapped on the glass top of the counter with a coin, the man reached in and brought forth the box, and Mr. Chambers took his cigar. That was all.
For people long ago had gathered that Mr. Chambers desired to be left alone. The newer generation of townsfolk called it eccentricity. Certain uncouth persons had a different word for it. The oldsters remembered that this queer looking individual with his black silk muffler, rosewood cane and bowler hat once had been a professor at State University.
A professor of metaphysics, they seemed to recall, or some such outlandish subject. At any rate a furor of some sort was connected with his name … at the time an academic scandal. He had written a book, and he had taught the subject matter of that volume to his classes. What that subject matter was long had been forgotten, but whatever it was had been considered sufficiently revolutionary to cost Mr. Chambers his post at the university.
A silver moon shone over the chimney tops and a chill, impish October wind was rustling the dead leaves when Mr. Chambers started out at seven o’clock.
It was a good night, he told himself, smelling the clean, crisp air of autumn and the faint pungence of distant wood smoke.
He walked unhurriedly, swinging his cane a bit less jauntily than twenty years ago. He tucked the muffler more securely under the rusty old topcoat and pulled his bowler hat more firmly on his head.
He noticed that the street light at the corner of Maple and Jefferson was out and he grumbled a little to himself when he was forced to step off the walk to circle a boarded-off section of newly-laid concrete work before the driveway of 816.
It seemed that he reached the corner of Lexington and Maple just a bit too quickly, but he told himself that this couldn’t be. For he never did that. For twenty years, since the year following his expulsion from the university, he had lived by the clock.
The same thing, at the same time, day after day. He had not deliberately set upon such a life of routine. A bachelor, living alone with sufficient money to supply his humble needs, the timed existence had grown on him gradually.
So he turned on Lexington and back on Oak. The dog at the corner of Oak and Jefferson was waiting for him once again and came out snarling and growling, snapping at his heels. But Mr. Chambers pretended not to notice and the beast gave up the chase.