Cemetery World

Chapter 4

As I came down the steps, the woman sitting at the wheel of the pink car spoke to me.

"You are Fletcher Carson, are you not?"

"Yes," I said, completely puzzled, "but how did you know that I was here? There is no way you could have known."

"I've been waiting for you," she said. "I knew you'd be on the funeral ship, but it took so long to get here. My name is Cynthia Lansing and I must talk with you."

"I haven't too much time," I said. "Perhaps a little later."

She was not exactly beautiful, but there was, even at first sight, something engaging and extremely likeable about her. She had a face that fell just short of being heart-shaped, her eyes were quiet and calm, her black hair fell down to her shoulders; she wasn't smiling with the lips, but her entire face was ready to break into a smile.

"You're going out to the shed," she said, "to uncrate Elmer and Bronco. I could drive you out there."

"Is there anything," I asked, "that you don't know about me?"

She did smile then. "I knew that as soon as you got in you'd have to pay a courtesy call on Maxwell Peter Bell. How did you make out?"

"In Maxwell Peter's book I achieved the rating of a heel."

"Then he didn't take you over?"

I shook my head. I didn't quite trust myself to speak.

How the hell, I wondered, could she know all she seemed to know? There was only one place she could have learned any of it at all-on Alden at the university. Those old friends of mine, I told myself, might have hearts of gold, but they were blabbermouths.

"Come on, get in," she said. "We can talk on the way out to the shed. And I want to see this wondrous robot, Elmer.

I got into the car. There was an envelope lying in her lap and she handed it to me.

"For you," she said.

It had my name scrawled across the face of it and there was no mistaking that misshapen scrawl. Thorney, I told myself. What the hell did Thorney have to do with Cynthia Lansing ambushing me as soon as I got to Earth?

She started up the car and headed down the driveway. I ripped the letter open. It was a sheet of official University of Alden stationery and in the upper left-hand corner was neatly printed: William J. Thorndyke, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology.

The letter itself was in the same scrawl as the name upon the envelope. It read:

Dear Fletch:

The bearer of this letter is Miss Cynthia Lansing and I would impress upon you that whatever she may tell you is the truth; I have examined the evidence and I would pledge my reputation that it is authentic. She will be wanting to accompany you on your trip and I would take it as the greatest favor you could do me if you should bear with her and supply her with all co-operation and assistance that is possible. She will be taking a Pilgrim ship to Earth and should be there and waiting for you when you arrive. I have placed some departmental funds at her disposal and you are to make use of them if there is any need. All that I need tell you is-that her presence on the Earth has to do with what we talked about that last time, when you came to see me just before you left.

I sat with the letter in my hand and I could see him as he had been on that last time I had seen him, in the fire-lit littered room that he called his study, with books shelved to the ceiling, with the shabby furniture, the dog curled upon the hearth rug, the cat upon its cushion. He had sat on a hassock and rolled the brandy glass between his palms, and he had said, "Fletch, I am certain I am right, that my theory's right. The Anachronians were not galactic traders, as so many of my colleagues think. They were observers; they were cultural spies. It makes a deal of sense when you look at it. Let us say that a great civilization had the capacity to roam among the stars. Let us say that in some manner they could spot a planet where an intellectual culture was rising or about to rise. So they plant an observer on that planet and keep him there, alert to developments that might be of value. As we know, cultures vary greatly. This can be observed even among the human colonies that were planted from the Earth. Even a few centuries are enough to provide some variations. The variations are much greater, of course, among those planets that still have or at one time had alien cultures-alien as opposed to human. No two groups of intelligences ever go at anything in parallel manner. They may arrive, eventually, at the same result, or at an approximation of the same result, but they go about it differently, and in the process each develops some capability or some concept which the other does not have. Even a great galactic culture would have developed in this fashion, and because it did develop in this fashion there would be many approaches, many concepts, many abilities which it bypassed or missed along the way. It would seem, this being true, that it would have been worth the while of even our great galactic culture to learn about and have at hand for study those cultural developments it had missed, perhaps had never even thought of. Probably not more than one in ten of these missed developments would be applicable to their culture, but that one in ten might be most important. It might give a new dimension, might make them a more well-rounded and more solid culture. Let us say, which is not true, of course, that Earth had been the only culture that dreamed up the wheel. Even the great galactic culture had missed the wheel, had gone on to its greatness on some other principle that left the lack of the wheel unnoticed. Still, would it not seem likely that knowledge of the wheel, even at a much later date, might be of value? The wheel is such a handy thing to have."

I came back to the present. I still clutched the letter in my hand. The car was nearing the shed. The funeral ship stood on its pad, but there was no sign of the vehicles that had been unloading the cargo. The work must all be done.

"Thorney says that you are expecting to go with us," I said to Cynthia Lansing. "I don't know if that'll be possible. We'll be roughing it. Camping out in all kinds of weather."

"I can rough it. I can camp."

I shook my head.

"Look," she protested, "I gambled everything I had on this, to be here when you landed. I scratched up every credit that I had to pay the outrageous fare on a Pilgrim ship…"

"Thorney said something about some funds. A grant."

"I didn't have quite enough for the fare," she said. "I used part of it for that. And I've been waiting for you to arrive, staying at the Pilgrim Inn, which isn't cheap. There is very little left. Really, nothing left…"

"That's too bad," I said. "But you knew it was a gamble. You had no reason to believe…"

"But I did," she said. "You are as broke as I am."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you haven't got the money to get back to Aiden once you have your composition."

"I know that," I said, "but if I have the composition…"

"No money," she said, "and Mother Earth not about to make it easy for you."

"There is that," I said, "but I can't see how taking you along. "

"That is what I have been trying to tell you. This may sound silly to you…"

Her words ran out and she sat there looking at me. Her face no longer looked as if it were about to smile.

"Damn you," she said, "why don't you say something? Why don't you help me just a little? Why don't you ask me what I have?"

"All right. What is it that you have?"

"I know where the treasure is."

"For the love of Christ, what treasure?"

"The Anachron treasure."

"Thorney is convinced," I told her, "that the Anachronians had been on Earth. He wanted me to watch for any possible clues to their being here. It was a fool's errand, of course, as he spelled it out to me. The archaeologists aren't even sure there was such a race. Their planet never has been found. All that had been found are fragments of inscriptions on half a dozen planets, fragmentary inscriptions found among the inscriptions and the shreds of the native culture. Some evidence, although it seems to me shaky evidence, that at one time members of this supposedly mysterious race lived on other planets-perhaps as traders, which is what most archaeologists believe, or as observers, which is what Thorney believes, or for some other reason, neither as traders or observers. He told me all of this, but he never mentioned treasure."

"But there was a treasure," she said. "It was brought from olden Greece to olden America in the Final War. I found an account of it and Professor Thorndyke…"

"Start making some sort of sense," I said. "If Thorney is right, they weren't here for treasure. They were here for data, to observe. "

"For data, sure," she said, "but what about the observer? He would have been a professional, wouldn't he? A historian, perhaps far more than a historian. He would have recognized the cultural value of certain artifacts — the ceremonial hand axe of a prehistoric tribe, a Grecian urn, Egyptian jewelry…"

I crammed the letter into my jacket pocket, jumped out of the car. "We can talk about this later," I said. "Right now I have to turn Elmer loose so we can start setting up the Bronco."

"Am I going with you?"

"We'll see," I said.

How the hell, I wondered, could I keep her from going?

She had Thorney's blessing; she maybe did have something about the Anachronians, perhaps even about a treasure. And I couldn't leave her here, flat broke-for if she wasn't quite broke yet, she would be if she stayed on at the inn and there was no place else for her to stay. God knows, I didn't want her. She would be a nuisance. I was not on a treasure hunt. I had come to Earth to put together a composition. I hoped to capture some of the feel of Earth-Earth minus Cemetery. I couldn't go off chasing treasure or Anachronians. All that I'd ever told Thorney was that I'd keep my eyes open for clues and that didn't mean going out to hunt for them.

I headed for the open door of the shed, with Cynthia trailing at my heels. Inside the shed was dark and I paused for a moment to let my eyes become accustomed to the darkness. Something moved and I made out three men-three workmen from the looks of them.

"I have some boxes here," I said. There were a lot of boxes, the piled cargo off the funeral ship.

"Right over there, Mr. Carson," said one of them. He gestured to one side and I saw them-the big crate enclosing Elmer and the four crates in which we had boxed the Bronco.

"Thanks," I said. "I appreciate your keeping them separate from the rest. I'd asked the captain, but…"

"There's just one little matter," said the man. "Handling and storage."

"I don't get it. Handling and storage?"

"Sure, the charges. My men don't work for free."

"You're the foreman here?"

"Yeah. Reilly is the name."

"How much is this storage?"

Reilly reached into his back pocket and hauled forth a paper. He studied it fixedly, as if making sure he had the figures right.

"Well," he said, "it runs to four hundred and twenty-seven credits, but let us say four hundred."

"You must be wrong," I told him, trying to keep my temper. "All you did was unship the crates and haul them in here and, as for storage, they've been here only an hour or so."

Reilly shook his head, sadly. "I can't help that. Them's the charges. You either pay them or we hold the cargo. Them's the rules."

The other two men had moved up silently, one to either side of him.

"It's all ridiculous," I protested. "This must be a joke."

"Mister," said the foreman, "it isn't any joke." I didn't have four hundred credits, and I wouldn't have paid it if I had, but neither was I going to tackle the foreman and the husky stevedores standing with him.

"I'll look into this," I said, trying to save face, having no idea what I could do next. They had me cold, I knew. Although it wasn't them; it was Maxwell Peter Bell. He was the one who had me cold.

"You do that, mister," said Reilly. "You just go ahead and do it."

I could go storming back to Bell and that was exactly what he wanted. He expected that I would and it would be all right, of course, and all would be forgiven, if I accepted a Cemetery grant and did Cemetery work. But I wasn't going to do that, either.

Cynthia said, behind me, "Fletcher, they're ganging up on us."

I turned my head and there were more men, coming in the door. "Not ganging up on you," said Reilly. "Just making sure that you understand. There can't be no outlander come in here and tell us what to do."

From behind Reilly came a faint, thin, screeching sound and the instant that I heard it, I pegged it for what it was, a nail being forced out of the wood that held it.

Reilly and his henchmen swung around and I let out a yell. "All right, Elmer! Out and at them!"

At my yell the big crate seemed to explode, the planks nailed across its top wrenched and torn away, and out of the crate rose Elmer, all eight feet of him.

He stepped out of the crate, almost fastidiously.

"What's the matter, Fletch?"

"Go easy on them, Elmer," I said. "Don't kill them. Just cripple them a little."

He took a step forward and Reilly and the two men backed away.

"I won't hurt them none," said Elmer. "I'll just brush them off. Who's that you got there with you, Fletch?"

"This is Cynthia," I said. "She'll be going with us."

"Will I?" Cynthia asked.

"Look here, Carson," Reilly roared, "don't you try no rough stuff…"

"Get going," Elmer said. He took a rapid step toward them and swung his arm. They broke and ran, piling out the door.

"No, you don't!" yelled Elmer. He went past us rapidly. They were closing the door and just before it closed, he thrust a hand into the crack, clutched the door, and wrenched it open, then butted it with his shoulder. It crumpled and hung.

"That will hold them," Elmer said. "Now the door won't close. They were about to lock us in, can you imagine that. Now if you'll tell me, Fletch, what is going on."

"Maxwell Peter Bell," I said, "doesn't like us. Let's get going on the Bronco. The quicker we are out of here.."

"I have to get the car," said Cynthia. "I've got all the supplies and my clothes in there."

"Supplies?" I asked.

"Sure. Food and the other stuff we'll need. I don't suppose you brought anything along. That's one reason I'm so broke. I spent the last of my money…"

"You go and get the car," said Elmer. "I'll keep watch. There won't no one lay a hand on you."

"You thought of everything," I said. "You were pretty sure…"

But she was running out the door. There was no sign of Reilly or his men. She got into the car and drove it through the door into the shed.

Elmer went over to the other crates and rapped on the smaller one. "That you, Bronco?" he asked. "You inside of there?"

"It's me," said a muffled voice. "Elmer, is that you? Have we reached the Earth?"

"I didn't know," said Cynthia, "that Bronco was a sentient thing or that he could talk. Professor Thorndyke didn't tell me that."

"He is sentient," said Elmer, "but of low intellect. He is no mental giant."

He said to Bronco, "You come through all right?"

"I am fine," said Bronco.

"We'll have to get a pinch bar to open up those crates," I said.

"There is no need," said Elmer. He balled a fist and smashed it down on one corner of the crate. The wood crumpled and splintered and he reached his fingers into the resultant hole and tore loose a board.

"This is easy," he grunted. "I wasn't sure I could bust out of my crate. There wasn't too much room and little leverage. But when I heard what was going on…"

"Is Fletch here?" asked Bronco.

"Fletch takes care of himself real good," said Elmer. "He is here and he's picked up himself a girl."

He went on ripping boards off the crate.

"Let's get to work," he said.

We got to work, the two of us. Bronco was a complicated thing and not easy to assemble. There were a lot of parts and all of them had to be phased together with little tolerance. But the two of us had worked with Bronco for almost two years and we knew him inside out. At First we'd used a manual, but now there was no need of one. We'd thrown away the manual when it had become so tattered it was of little use, and when Bronco, himself, refined and redesigned and tinkered here and there, had become a contraption that bore but small resemblance to the model of the manual. The two of us, working together, knew every piece by heart. We could have field-stripped Bronco and put him back together in the dark. There was no waste motion and no need of conference or direction. Elmer and I worked together like two machines. Inside of an hour we had Bronco put together.

Assembled, he was a crazy thing to look at. He had eight jointed legs that had an insect look about them. Each of them could be positioned at almost any angle. There were claws he could unsheathe to get a better grip. He could go anywhere, on any kind of ground. He could damn near climb a wall. His barrel-like body, equipped with a saddle, afforded good protection to the delicate instruments that it; contained. It carried a series of rings that allowed the strapping of loads upon his back. He had a retractable tail that was made up of a hundred different sensors and his head I was crowned with another weird sensor assembly.

"I feel good," he said. "Are we leaving now?"

Cynthia had unloaded the supplies from the car.

"Camping stuff," she said. "Concentrated food, blankets, rain gear, stuff like that. Nothing fancy. I didn't have the money to buy fancy stuff."

Elmer began heaving the boxes and crates on Bronco's back, cinching them in place.

"You think you can ride him?" I asked Cynthia.

"Sure I can. But what about yourself?"

"He's riding me," said Elmer.

"No, I'm not," I said.

"Be sensible," said Elmer. "We may have to run for it to get out of here. They may be laying for us."

Cynthia went to the door and looked out. "There's no one in sight," she said.

"How do we get out of here?" asked Elmer. "The quickest way out of the Cemetery."

"You take the road west," she told him. "Past the administration building. Twenty-five miles or so and the Cemetery ends."

Elmer finished packing the supplies on Bronco. He took a final look around. "I guess that's all," he said. "Now, miss, up on Bronco."

He helped her up. "Hang on tight," he cautioned her. "Bronco's not the smoothest thing to ride on."

"I'll hang on," she said. She looked scared.

"Now you," Elmer said to me. I started to protest, but didn't because I knew it would do no good. And, besides, riding Elmer made a lot of sense. If we should have to run for it, he could go ten times faster than I could. Those long metal legs of his could really eat up ground.

He lifted me and put me on his shoulders, straddle of his neck. "You hang onto my head to balance yourself," he said. "I'll hold onto your legs. I'll see you don't fall off."

I nodded, not too happy. It was damned undignified.

We didn't have to run for it. There was no one around except one plodding figure far to the north walking down an aisle between the stones. There must have been people watching us; I could almost feel their eyes. We must have made a strange sight-Cynthia riding that grasshopper of a Bronco, with bales and boxes tied all over him, and myself up there, jiggling and swaying atop the eight-foot Elmer.

We didn't run or even hurry, but we made good time. Bronco and Elmer were good travelers. Even at their normal walking pace, a man would have had to run to keep up with them.

We went clattering and lurching up the road, past the administration building and out into the main part of the Cemetery. The road was empty and the land was peaceful. Occasionally, far off, I would sight a little village, nestled in a cove-a slender finger of a steeple pointing at the sky and a blur of color that was the rooftops of the houses. I imagined those little villages were the homes of workers employed by the Cemetery.

As I rode along, bouncing and swaying to Elmer's swinging strides, I saw that the Cemetery, for all its vaunted beauty, was in reality a dismal, brooding place. There was a sameness to it and an endless order that was monotonous, and over all of it hung a sense of death and great Finality.

I hadn't had time to worry before, but now I began to worry. What worried me the most, strangely enough, was that Cemetery, after a fairly feeble effort, had made no real attempt to stop us. Although, I told myself, if Elmer had not been able to burst out of his crate, Reilly and his men would have stopped me cold. But as it was, it almost seemed that Bell figured he could let us go, knowing that any time he wished he could reach out and grab us. I didn't try to fool myself about Maxwell Peter Bell.

I wondered, too, if any further attempts would be made upon us. Perhaps there didn't have to be; more than likely Bell and Cemetery might be no longer too much concerned with us. We could go wherever we wished and it would make no difference. For no matter where we went or what we did, there was no chance of leaving Earth without Cemetery's help.

I had made a mess of it, I told myself. I had gone in and played smart-aleck to Bell's pompousness and had thrown away any chance I had of any sort of working relationship with Bell or Cemetery. Although, I realized, it might have made no difference no matter what I'd done. I should have realized that on Earth you played along with Cemetery or you did not play at all. The whole damn venture had been doomed from the very start.

It hadn't seemed so long to me, although it may have been quite a while-I had been so sunk in worry I'd lost all track of time-but finally the road climbed up a hill and there came to an end, and the end of the Cemetery as well.

I stared at the valley below us and the hills that climbed in seried ranks above it, sucking in my breath in astonishment at the sight of it. It was a strangely wooded land dressed in flaming color that shone like glowing fires in the sun of afternoon.

"Autumn" Elmer said. "I had forgotten that Earth had autumn. Back there you couldn't tell. All the trees were green."

"Autumn?" I asked.

"A season," Elmer told me. "A certain time of year when all the trees are colored. I had forgotten it "

He twisted his head around so he could look up at me If he could have wept, he would have.

"One forgets so many things," he said.