Morgan tossed the sack up and down in his palm.
«Found one of these things, just like this, turned inside out, where you waited to kill Harris.»
«What are you trying to do?» yelled Fridley. «Pin the blame on someone else?»
Morgan’s face turned grim. «I don’t have to pin it on anyone,» he said. «I know who killed Harris. It was you.»
He hoisted a gun slowly.
«You fixed it up so it looked like I was the one that did it,» Morgan said. «You made an outlaw out of me. Guess nobody would believe me now, even if I had proof I didn’t do it.»
Fridley’s eyes gleamed with fear. «What you getting at, Morgan?»
«Guess I’ll just naturally have to gun you, Hank. Ain’t got a thing to lose. Besides, I’d get a heap of satisfaction out of doing it.»
«Look, Danny,» pleaded Fridley, «you can’t do that. Not in cold blood.»
«Don’t see why not,» declared Morgan, almost cheerfully. «You ain’t in no shape to stop me.»
From the valley below came the swift clatter of hoofs.
«See,» said Morgan, «your friend’s riding out on you. Probably figures you’re a goner already. He’ll be back after a while with help to round me up. In a minute or two I’ll fix you for planting, then move on.»
«I’ll clear you,» yelled Fridley, almost slobbering in terror. «I’ll tell them I killed Harris. I’ll …»
He stopped and stared at Morgan. «Go on,» Morgan ordered.
«Crawford made me do it. Said he’d turn me in for something down in Texas if I didn’t . He knows there’s oil on your spread and when he couldn’t buy it …»
Morgan nodded. «So he figured if he killed Harris and got me hung for the killing, he could get the ranch. But he was afraid I couldn’t be convicted, so he fixed up that necktie party.»
Fridley licked dry lips.
«That’s about right,» he said.
Morgan stood up. «We got riding to do,» he said. «Can you walk down to your hoss or do I have to carry you?»
«I can walk,» said Fridley.
Shadow Show
«Shadow Show» was Clifford D. Simak’s first story for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, appearing in the November 1953 issue of that magazine; for that initial publication, Cliff was paid $425. Readers who came across the story in a subsequent anthology republication, however, were deprived of the opening passage that appears here. The theme of this story is that of guilt arising out of people’s religious beliefs, and I rather think that this might in turn represent a new thought related to Cliff’s earlier great story, «Desertion,» and its concept of changing the human form. But this time it’s a psychological horror story.
Will anyone who reads this story in the future know what it meant to «dress for dinner»?
—dww
Henry Griffith died just after breakfast, seated at his bench, with his notebook at his elbow and his pen still clutched within his fingers.
He died a natural death. The best medical examinations before hiring cannot detect the possibilities of a later embolism, nor can the best of medical care on the job. The embolus, unnoticed in the bloodstream, found its way finally to the heart, and Griffith died.
It was a natural death. But the job on which he died was not a natural job; and the consequences of his death were far from our concept of nature.
Bayard Lodge, chief of Life Team No. 3, sat at his desk and stared across it angrily at Kent Forester, the team’s psychologist.
«The Play must go on,» said Forester. «I can’t be responsible for what might happen if we dropped it even for a night or two. It’s the one thing that holds us all together. It is the unifying glue that keeps us sane and preserves our sense of humor. And it gives us something to think about.»
«I know,» said Lodge, «but with Henry dead…»
«They’ll understand,» Forester promised. «I’ll talk to them. I know they’ll understand.»
«They’ll understand all right,» Lodge agreed. «All of us recognize the necessity of the Play. But there is something else. One of those characters was Henry’s.»
Forester nodded. «I’ve been thinking of that, too.»
«Do you know which one?»
Forester shook his head.
«I thought you might,» said Lodge. «You’ve been beating out your brains to get them figured out, to pair up the characters with us.»
Forester grinned sheepishly.
«I don’t blame you,» said Lodge. «I know why you’re doing it.»
«It would be a help,» admitted Forester. «It could give me a key to every person here. Just consider—when a character went illogical…»
«They’re all illogical,» said Lodge. «That’s the beauty of them.»
«But the illogic runs true to a certain zany pattern,» Forester pointed out.
«You can use that very zaniness and set up a norm.»
«You’ve done that?»
«Not as a graph,» said Forester, «but I have it well in mind. When the illogic deviates it’s not too hard to spot it.»
«It’s been deviating?»
Forester nodded. «Sharply at times. The problem that we have—the way that they are thinking…»
«Call it attitude,» said Lodge.
For a moment the two of them were silent. Then Forester asked: «Do you mind if I ask why you insist on attitude?»
«Because it is an attitude,» Lodge told him. «It’s an attitude conditioned by the life we lead. An attitude traceable to too much thinking, too much searching of the soul. It’s an emotional thing, almost a religious thing. There’s little of the intellectual in it. We’re shut up too tightly. Guarded too closely. The importance of our work is stressed too much. We aren’t normal humans. We’re off balance all the time. How in the world can we be normal humans when we lead no normal life?»
«It’s a terrible responsibility,» said Forester. «They face it each day of their lives.»
«The responsibility is not theirs.»
«Only if you agree that the individual counts for less than the race. Perhaps not even then, for there are definite racial implications in this project, implications that can become terribly personal. Imagine making…»
«I know,» said Lodge impatiently. «I’ve heard it from every one of them. Imagine making a human being not in the image of humanity.»
«And yet it would be human,» Forester said. «That is the point, Bayard. Not that we would be manufacturing life, but that it would be human life in the shape of monsters. You wake up screaming, dreaming of those monsters. A monster itself would not be bad at all, if it were no more than a monster. After centuries of traveling to the stars, we are used to monsters.»
Lodge cut him off. «Let’s get back to the Play.»
«We’ll have to go ahead,» insisted Forester.
«There’ll be one character missing,» Lodge warned him. «You know what that might do. It might throw the entire thing off balance, reduce it to confusion. That would be worse than no Play at all. Why can’t we wait a few days and start over, new again? With a new Play, a new set of characters.»
«We can’t do that,» said Forester, «because each of us has identified himself or herself with a certain character. That character has become a part, an individual part, of each of us. We’re living split lives, Bayard. We’re split personalities. We have to be to live. We have to be because not a single one of us could bear to be himself alone.»
«You’re trying to say that we must continue the Play as an insurance of our sanity.»
«Something like that. Not so grim as you make it sound. Under ordinary circumstances, there’d be no question we could dispense with it. But this is no ordinary circumstance. Every one of us is nursing a guilt complex of horrendous magnitude. The Play is an emotional outlet, a letdown from the tension. It gives us something to talk about. It keeps us from sitting around at night washing out the stains of guilt. It supplies the ridiculous in our lives—it is our daily comic strip, our chuckle or our belly laugh.»