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

directory. It had been placed there, as the food was placed upon the table, as the books had been stacked upon the shelves, as the clothing that would fit him had been hung within the closet. By some agency that was unobtrusive, if not invisible.
    Placement by remote control, he wondered. Could it be that somewhere this house was duplicated and that in that house certain agencies that were quite visible—and in their term of reference logical and ordinary—might place the food and hang the clothes and that at the moment of the action the same things happened in this house?
    And if that were the case, not only space was mastered, but time as well. For they—whoever they might be—could not have known about the books that should be placed upon the shelves until the occupant of this house had appeared upon the scene. They could not have known that it would be Frederick Gray, that it would be a man who had made the law his business, who would blunder on this house. They had set a trap—a trap?—and there would have been no way for them to know what quarry they might catch.
    It had taken time to print, by whatever process, the books upon the shelves. There would have been a searching for the proper books, and the translating and the editing. Was it possible, he wondered, that time could be so regulated that the finding and the translating and the editing, the printing and the placement, could have been compressed into no more than twenty-four hours as measured on the Earth? Could time be stretched out and, perhaps, foreshortened to accommodate the plans of those engineers who had built this house?
    He flipped open the cover of the file and the printing on the first page struck him in the face.
    SUMMARY & TRANSCRIPT
Valmatan vs. Mer El
Referral for Review Under Universal Law
    Panel for Review:
Vanz Kamis, Rasalgethi VI
Eta Nonskic, Thuban XXVIII
Frederick Gray, Helios III
    Frozen, he stared at it.
    His hands began to tremble and he laid it down, carefully on the table top, as if it might be something that would shatter if he dropped it.
    Under universal law, he thought. Three students of the law, three experts (?), from three different solar systems!
    And the facts at issue, and the law, more than likely, from yet another system.
    Certain little services, the voice on the phone had told him.
    Certain little services. To pass judgment under laws and jurisprudence he had never heard of!
    And those others, he wondered—had they heard of them?
    Swiftly he bent and leafed through the phone book. He found Kamis, Vanz. Deliberately, he dialed the number.
    A pleasant voice said: “Vanz Kamis is not present at the moment. Is there any message?”
    And it was not right, thought Gray. He should not have phoned. There was no point in it.
    “Hello,” said the pleasant voice. “Are you there?”
    “Yes, I am here,” said Gray.
    “Vanz Kamis is not home. Is there any message?”
    “No,” said Gray. “No, thanks. There isn’t any message.”
    He should not have called, he thought. The act of phoning had been an act of weakness. This was a time when a man must rely upon himself. And he had to give an answer. It was not something that could be brushed off, it was not a thing that anyone could run from.
    He got his cap and jacket from the closet in the hall and let himself outside.
    A golden moon had risen, the lower half of it bearing on its face the dark silhouette of the jagged pines, growing on the ridge across the river. From somewhere in the forest an owl was muttering and down in the river a fish splashed as it jumped.
    Here a man could think, Gray told himself. He stood and drew the freshness of the air deep into his lungs. Here on the earth that was his own. Better than in a house that was, at least by implication, the extension of many other worlds.
    He went down the path to the landing where he had beached the canoe. The canoe was there and there was water in it from the storm of the night before. He tipped it on its edge