New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

that was the only way a human had to identify the star.
    The language would have to be translated, too. The creatures he had talked with on the phone could not have spoken English, and yet it had been English when it had reached his ear. And his replies, he knew, must have reached that other party in some language other than the tongue that he had used.
    He stood aghast at the very thought of it, wondering how he could abide such an explanation. And yet there was no choice. It was the only explanation that would fit the situation.
    Somewhere a bell rang sharply and he turned from the shelves of books.
    He waited for it to ring again, but it did not ring.
    He walked into the living room and saw that dinner had been set upon the table and was waiting for him.
    So that was what it had been, he thought. A bell to summon him to dinner.
    After dinner, he went back to the living room to sit before the fire and fight the whole thing out. He assembled the facts and evidence in his old lawyer’s mind and gave full consideration to all possibilities.
    He touched the edge of wonder and shoved it to one side, he erased it carefully—for in his consideration of this house there was no room for wonder and no place for magic.
    Was it no more than illusion? That was the first question one must ask. Was this really happening, or was he just imagining that it was happening? Was he, perhaps, in all reality, sitting underneath a tree or squatting on the river bank, mumbling at nothing, scratching symbols in the dirt with his fingernails, and living the fantasy of this house, this fire, this room?
    It was hard to believe that this might be the case. For there were too many details. Imagination formed a hazy framework and let it go at that.
    There were here too many details and there was no haziness and he could move and think of his own volition; he still was the master of himself.
    And if it were not imagination, if he could rule out insanity, then this house and all that happened must be, indeed, the truth. And if it were the truth, then here was a house built or shaped or somehow put into being by some outside agency that was as yet unsuspected in the mind of humankind.
    But, he asked himself, why would they want to do it? What could be the motive?
    With a view, perhaps, of studying him as a representative specimen of the creature, Man? Or with the idea that somehow they could make some use of him?
    The thought struck him—was he the only man? Might there be others like him? Men who kept very silent about what was happening, for fear that human interference might spoil this good thing that they had?
    He rose slowly from the chair and went out in the hall. He picked up the phone directory and bought it back with him. He threw another log upon the fire and sat down in the chair, with the phone book in his lap.
    First himself, he thought; he would see if he was listed.
    He had no trouble finding it: Gray, Frederick, Helios III–SU 6-2649.
    He flipped the pages and started from the front, running his finger slowly down the column.
    The book was thin, but it took him quite a while, going carefully so that he would not miss another man from Earth. But there was no other listed; not from Earth, not from the solar system. He was the only one.
    Loneliness, he wondered. Or should it be just a touch of pride. To be the only one in the entire solar system.
    He took the directory back to the table in the hall and lying in the place where he had gotten it was another one.
    He stared at it and wondered if there were two of them, if there had been two of them all along and he had never noticed.
    He bent to look the closer at it and when he did he saw that it was not another directory, but a file of some sort, with his name printed across the top of it.
    He laid the directory down and took up the file. It was a bulky and a heavy thing, with great sheaves of papers enclosed between the covers.
    It had not been there, he was certain, when he’d gotten the