«I don’t know,» said Craig. «I never thought of that.»
«We’re kept,» said the man. «Someone is keeping us. Me, I won’t be kept.»
He pulled in the tackle and twirled the pole to wrap the line around it.
«Sun is getting down a bit,» he said. «I got to go and hoe.»
«It was good talking to you,» said Craig, getting up.
«Nice path over that way,» said the man, pointing. «Good walking. Lots of flowers and it’s shaded, so it’ll be nice and cool. If you go far enough, you’ll reach an art gallery.» He looked at Craig. «You’re interested in art?»
«Yes,» said Craig. «But I didn’t know there was a gallery anywhere around.»
«Well, there is,» said the man. «Good paintings. Some wood statuary that is better than average. A few pieces of good jade. Go there myself when I have the time.»
«Well, thanks,» said Craig.
«Funny looking building,» the man said. «Group of buildings, really. Architect who designed them was crazier than a coot, but don’t let it prejudice you. The stuff is really good.»
«There’s plenty of time,» said Craig. «I’ll drop in and have a look. Thanks for telling me.»
The man got up and dusted off his trousers seat.
«If you’re late in getting back,» he said, «drop in and spend the night. My shack is just across the way. Plenty of grub and there is room for two to sleep.»
«Thank you,» said Craig. «I may do it.»
He had no intention of accepting the offer.
The man held out his hand. «My name is Sherman,» he said. «Glad you came along.»
They shook hands.
Sherman went to hoe his garden and Craig walked down the path.
The buildings seemed to be quite close and yet it was hard to make out their lines. It was because of some crazy architectural principle, Craig decided.
Sherman had said the architect was crazier than a coot. One time when he looked at them, they looked one way; when he looked again they were different somehow. They were never twice the same.
They were pink until he decided that they weren’t pink at all, but were really blue; there were other times when they seemed neither pink nor blue, but a sort of green, although it wasn’t really green.
They were beautiful, of course, but it was a disturbing beauty—a brand new sort of beauty. Something, Craig decided, that Sherman’s misplaced genius had thought up, although it did seem funny that a place like this could exist without his ever hearing about it. Still, such a thing was understandable when he remembered that everyone was so self-consciously wrapped up in his work that he never paid attention to what anyone else was doing.
There was one way, of course, to find out what it was all about and that was to go and see.
The buildings, he estimated, were no more than a good five minutes’ walk across a landscaped meadow that was a thing of beauty in itself.
He started out and walked for fifteen minutes and he did not get there. It seemed, however, that he was viewing the buildings from a slightly different angle, although that was hard to tell, because they refused to stay in place but seemed to be continually shifting and distorting their lines.
It was, of course, no more than an optical illusion.
He started out again.
After another fifteen minutes he was still no closer, although he could have sworn that he had kept his course headed straight toward the buildings.
It was then that he began to feel the panic.
He stood quite still and considered the situation as sanely as he could and decided there was nothing for it but to try again and this time pay strict attention to what he was doing.
He started out, moving slowly, almost counting his steps as he walked, concentrating fiercely upon keeping each step headed in the right direction.
It was then he discovered he was slipping. It appeared that he was going straight ahead but, as a matter of fact, he was slipping sidewise as he walked. It was just as if there were something smooth and slippery in front of him that translated his forward movement into a sidewise movement without his knowing it. Like a fence, a fence that he couldn’t see or sense.
He stopped and the panic that had been gnawing at him broke into cold and terrible fear.
Something flickered in front of him. For a moment it seemed that he saw an eye, one single staring eye, looking straight at him. He stood rigid and the sense of being looked at grew and now it seemed that there were strange shadows on the grass beyond the fence that was invisible. As if someone, or something, that he couldn’t see was standing there and looking at him, watching with amusement his efforts to walk through the fence.
He lifted a hand and thrust it out in front of him and there was no fence, but his hand and arm slipped sidewise and did not go forward more than a foot or so.
He felt the kindness, then, the kindness and the pity and the vast superiority.
And he turned and fled.
He hammered on the door and Sherman opened it.
Craig stumbled in and fell into a chair. He looked up at the man he had talked with that afternoon.
«You knew,» he said. «You knew and you sent me to find out.»
Sherman nodded. «You wouldn’t have believed me if I told you.»
«What are they?» asked Craig, his words tumbling wildly. «What are they doing there?»
«I don’t know what they are,» said Sherman.
He walked to the stove and took a lid off a kettle and looked at what was cooking. Whatever it was, it had a hungry smell. Then he walked to the table and took the chimney off an antique oil lamp, struck a match and lit it.
«I go it simple,» he said. «No electricity. No nothing. I hope that you don’t mind. Rabbit stew for supper.»
He looked at Craig across the smoking lamp and in the flickering light it seemed that his head floated in the air, for the glow of the lamp blotted out his body.
«But what are they?» demanded Craig. «What kind of fence is that? What are they fenced in for?»
«Son,» said Sherman, «they aren’t the ones who are fenced in.»
«They aren’t …»
«It’s us,» said Sherman. «Can’t you see it? We are the ones who are fenced in.»
«You said this afternoon,» said Craig, «that we were kept. You mean they’re keeping us?»
Sherman nodded. «That’s the way I have it figured. They’re keeping us, watching over us, taking care of us. There’s nothing that we want that we can’t have for the simple asking. They’re taking real good care of us.»
«But why?»
«I don’t know,» said Sherman. «A zoo, maybe. A reservation, maybe. A place to preserve the last of a species. They don’t mean us any harm.»
«I know they don’t,» said Craig. «I felt them. That’s what frightened me.»
He sat in the silence of the shack and smelled the cooking rabbit and watched the flicker of the lamp.
«What can we do about it?» he asked.
«That’s the thing,» said Sherman, «that we have to figure out. Maybe we don’t want to do anything at all.»
Sherman went to the stove and stirred the rabbit stew.
«You are not the first,» he said, «and you will not be the last. There were others before you and there will be others like you who’ll come along this way, walking off their troubles.»
He put the lid back on the kettle.
«We’re watching them,» he said, «the best we can. Trying to find out. They can’t keep us fooled and caged forever.»
Craig sat in his chair, remembering the kindness and the pity and the vast superiority.
Rule 18
After John W. Campbell, Jr.’s appointment, in September 1937, as the new editor of Astounding Science Fiction, Clifford D. Simak—who had published almost no science fiction during the preceding five years—found reason to hope that the field would finally be willing to accept stories of higher quality, stories that earned more for their authors, and stories that portrayed «ordinary people» (rather than scientists and rocket jockeys).