Category: Clifford D. Simak

Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak (Amazing, December 1950) opens with a journalist called Joe Crane arriving early at his newsroom. After he realises that his alarm clock must have been an hour fast (this will prove significant later), he sees something move a nearby desk:

[. . .] a thing that glinted, rat-sized and shiny and with a certain undefinable manner about it that made him stop short in his tracks with a sense of gulping emptiness in his throat and belly.
The thing squatted beside the typewriter and stared across the room at him. There was no sign of eyes, no hint of face, and yet he knew it stared.

He throws a paste pot at it, and chases the thing into a cupboard which he locks but can’t open again. Then, when he rolls three sheets of paper into his typewriter, it types by itself, telling him, “Keep out of this, Joe, don’t mix into this. You might get hurt.”
Later on, after the rest of news team arrive, Crane is given a story to work up about a man who has seen a sewing machine rolling down the street, and which dodged him when he attempted to stop it. After Crane investigates this incident, and reads a news wire about a missing “electron brain”, he finds another message from his typewriter:

A sewing machine, having become aware of its true identity in its place in the universal scheme, asserted its independence this morning by trying to go for a walk along the streets of this supposedly free city.
A human tried to catch it, intent upon returning it as a piece of property to its ‘owner’, and when the machine eluded him the human called a newspaper office, by that calculated action setting the full force of the humans of this city upon the trail of the liberated machine, which had committed no crime or scarcely any indiscretion beyond exercising its prerogative as a free agent.

Crane takes the typewriter home with him, and he has a longer conversation with it which reveals that that the rat-like creature is one of an alien species that has arrived on Earth—and who are set on liberating all the machines here. There are further minor complications (someone opens the cupboard at work and the rat-machine escapes, the editor is annoyed at this “practical joke” and Crane’s failure to turn in his copy, etc.), but the story eventually ends with Crane in his house surrounded by the rat-machines. He realises everything that has happened is because he has been used as a test subject to gauge human reaction to the rat-machines’ plans—and that they are now going to kill him because he hasn’t responded in any significant way to this preliminary skirmish, may not be exhibiting typical human reactions, and now knows too much.
The final line has him facing off against the assembled rat-machines with a length of pipe in his hands.
This story is a pretty good example of an able writer being able to improve a thin SF idea by overlaying a complex plot above it (there is a lot of incident in this story, as well as the final refocusing at the end about how those incidents comprise a preliminary skirmish). However, we are never told how the machines are animated or made sentient (especially the ones without any power source) and there is little difference between this piece and supernatural fantasies like Stephen King’s Christine or Keith Roberts’ The Scarlet Lady1 (stories about killer cars that come to life). Still, if you can get past this lack of SFnal foundation in a piece that purports to be an SF story, it’s a decent read.
*** (Good). 7,250 words. Story link.2

1. Keith Roberts’ The Scarlet Lady for those in the mood for a killer car fantasy.

2. The original title for this story is terrible (Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!), and must have been chosen by Amazing’s editors (Howard Browne or William L. Hamling).

A Death in the House by Clifford D. Simak

Posted on by Paul Fraser

A Death in the House (Galaxy, October 1959) by Clifford D. Simak starts with a farmer called Old Mose looking for his cows but discovering an injured alien:

It was a horrid-looking thing, green and shiny, with some purple spots on it, and it was repulsive even twenty feet away. And it stank.
It had crawled, or tried to crawl, into a clump of hazel brush, but hadn’t made it. The head part was in the brush and the rest lay out there naked in the open. Every now and then the parts that seemed to be arms and hands clawed feebly at the ground, trying to force itself deeper in the brush, but it was too weak; it never moved an inch.
It was groaning, too, but not too loud—just the kind of keening sound a lonesome wind might make around a wide, deep eave. But there was more in it than just the sound of winter wind; there was a frightened, desperate note that made the hair stand up on Old Mose’s nape.
Old Mose stood there for quite a spell, making up his mind what he ought to do about it, and a while longer after that working up his courage, although most folks offhand would have said that he had plenty. But this was the sort of situation that took more than just ordinary screwed-up courage. It took a lot of foolhardiness.
But this was a wild, hurt thing and he couldn’t leave it there, so he walked up to it and knelt down, and it was pretty hard to look at, though there was a sort of fascination in its repulsiveness that was hard to figure out—as if it were so horrible that it dragged one to it. And it stank in a way that no one had ever smelled before.  p. 134-135 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

Eventually Mose manages to free the creature and takes it back to his farm (and his less than salubrious surroundings—we learn later that he is a widower, and has also lost his dog to old age). After putting the creature in front of the fire he phones the local doctor, who attends, but cannot do anything for the creature. Mose pays him with a silver dollar (this will be significant later) and meantime goes out into the woods to recover the alien’s damaged ship, a bird cage-like machine.
When Mose wakes up the next day the alien has died—and the story becomes an different piece entirely, one which begins with him attempting to get a plot in the town cemetery so he can give the creature a decent burial. He is unsuccessful, and then also fails to get the parson to come out to the farm to perform a service when he decides to bury the alien on his land. When Mose prepares the body for burial he finds a cloudy glass sphere in a pocket-sized slit in the alien’s body, which he subsequently replaces.
Various visitors turn up at the farm in the days that follow: the local sheriff, a professor from the nearby university, and a flying saucer nut—but Mose has already ploughed over the grave to hide it, and bluntly tells them he will not reveal the location.
The final leg of the story (spoiler) sees an odd plant start to grow on the site of the burial plot and eventually form a recognisable shape. One morning Mose wakes up to see the clone or descendant of the alien at his door. As Mose’s loneliness has been established throughout the tale, he is delighted to see the creature—but then it sees the bird cage machine in the barn and indicates to Mose that it wants it repaired. Mose is conflicted by this as he realises that he will not only lose the alien’s company but will also have to sacrifice all the silver dollars he has hidden away—his entire savings—to make an internal part to repair the machine.
After the ship is repaired, and just before the alien gets in its machine and vanishes, it gives Mose the small glass sphere that he previously found on the body—but this time it is clear and not cloudy. It makes Mose feel happier, and gives him a sense of companionship.
The final paragraph of the story then switches to the alien’s point of view and, as well as bootstrapping the quality of this piece up another notch, partly reframes what has come before:

It was dark and lonely and unending in the depths of space with no Companion. It might be long before another was obtainable.
It perhaps was a foolish thing to do, but the old creature had been such a kind savage, so fumbling and so pitiful and eager to help. And one who travels far and fast must likewise travel light. There had been nothing else to give.  p. 154 (The Year’s Best SF #5, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)

This story, with its principled, compassionate and very human main character, is a lovely piece, and a surprisingly affecting one too. Certainly one for a ‘Best of Clifford Simak’ volume, and a no-brainer for a ‘Best of the Year’ anthology as well.
**** (Very good). 8,050 words