The Big Front Yard: And Other Stories

  The saddles floated in the air, with the stirrups about three feet above the ground and the aliens sat easily in the saddles and stared at him and he stared back at them.

  Finally he got up and moved forward a step or two and when he did that the three swung from the saddles and moved forward, too, while the saddles hung there in the air, exactly as they’d left them.

  Taine walked forward and the three walked forward until they were no more than six feet apart.

  “They say hello to you,” said Beasly. “They say welcome to you.”

  “Well, all right, then, tell them – Say, how do you know all this!”

  “Chuck tells me what they say and I tell you. You tell me and I tell him and he tells them. That’s the way it works. That is what he’s here for.”

  “Well, I’ll be –” said Taine. “So you can really talk to him.”

  “I told you that I could,” stormed Beasly. “I told you that I could talk to Towser, too, but you thought that I was crazy.”

  “Telepathy!” said Taine. And it was worse than ever now. Not only had the ratlike things known all the rest of it, but they’d known of Beasly, too.

  “What was that you said, Hiram?”

  “Never mind,” said Taine. “Tell that friend of yours to tell them I am glad to meet them and what can I do for them?”

  He stood uncomfortably and stared at the three and he saw that their vests had many pockets and that the pockets were all crammed, probably with their equivalent of tobacco and handkerchiefs and pocket knives and such.

  “They say,” said Beasly, “that they want to dicker.”

  “Dicker?”

  “Sure, Hiram. You know, trade.”

  Beasly chuckled thinly. “Imagine them laying themselves open to a Yankee trader. That’s what Henry says you are. He says you can skin a man on the slickest –”

  “Leave Henry out of this,” snapped Taine. “Let’s leave Henry out of something.”

  He sat down on the ground and the three sat down to face him.

  “Ask them what they have in mind to trade.”

  “Ideas,” Beasly said.

  “Ideas! That’s a crazy thing –”

  And then he saw it wasn’t.

  Of all the commodities that might be exchanged by an alien people, ideas would be the most valuable and the easiest to handle. They’d take no cargo room and they’d upset no economies – not immediately, that is – and they’d make a bigger contribution to the welfare of the cultures than trade in actual goods.

  “Ask them,” said Taine, “what they’ll take for the idea back of those saddles they are riding.”

  “They say, what have you to offer?”

  And that was the stumper. That was the one that would be hard to answer.

  Automobiles and trucks, the internal gas engine – well, probably not. Because they already had the saddles. Earth was out-of-date in transportation from the viewpoint of these people.

  Housing architecture – no, that was hardly an idea and, anyhow, there was that other house, so they knew of houses.

  Cloth? No, they had cloth.

  Paint, he thought. Maybe paint was it.

  “See if they are interested in paint,” Taine told Beasly.

  “They say, what is it? Please explain yourself.”

  “O.K., then. Let’s see. It’s a protective device to be spread over almost any surface. Easily packaged and easily applied. Protects against weather and corrosion. It’s decorative, too. Comes in all sorts of colors. And it’s cheap to make.”

  “They shrug in their mind,” said Beasly. “They’re just slightly interested. But they will listen more. Go ahead and tell them.”

  And that was more like it, thought Taine.

  That was the kind of language that he could understand.

  He settled himself more firmly on the ground and bent forward slightly, flicking his eyes across the three dead-pan, ebony faces, trying to make out what they might be thinking.

  There was no making out. Those were three of the deadest pans he had ever seen.

  It was all familiar. It made him feel at home. He was in his element.

  And in the three across from him, he felt somehow subconsciously, he had the best dickering opposition he had ever met. And that made him feel good too.

  “Tell them,” he said, “that I’m not quite sure. I may have spoken up too hastily. Paint, after all, is a mighty valuable idea.”

  “They say, just as a favor to them, not that they’re really interested, would you tell them a little more.”

  Got them hooked, Taine told himself. If he could only play it right –

  He settled down to dickering in earnest.

  VI

  Hours later Henry Horton showed up. He was accompanied by a very urbane gentleman, who was faultlessly turned out and who carried beneath his arm an impressive attaché case.

  Henry and the man stopped on the steps in sheer astonishment.

  Taine was squatted on the ground with a length of board and he was daubing paint on it while the aliens watched. From the daubs here and there upon their anatomies, it was plain to see the aliens had been doing some daubing of their own. Spread all over the ground were other lengths of half-painted boards and a couple of dozen old cans of paint.

  Taine looked up and saw Henry and the man.

  “I was hoping,” he said, “that someone would show up.”

  “Hiram,” said Henry, with more importance than usual, “may I present Mr. Lancaster. He is a special representative of the United Nations.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, sir,” said Taine. “I wonder if you would –”

  “Mr. Lancaster,” Henry explained grandly, “was having some slight difficulty getting through the lines outside, so I volunteered my services. I’ve already explained to him our joint interest in this matter.”

  “It was very kind of Mr. Horton,” Lancaster said. “There was this stupid sergeant –”

  “It’s all in knowing,” Henry said, “how to handle people.”

  The remark, Taine noticed, was not appreciated by the man from the U.N.

  “May I inquire, Mr. Taine,” asked Lancaster, “exactly what you’re doing?”

  “I’m dickering,” said Taine.

  “Dickering. What a quaint way of expressing –”

  “An old Yankee word,” said Henry quickly, “with certain connotations of its own. When you trade with someone you are exchanging goods, but if you’re dickering with him you’re out to get his hide.”

  “Interesting,” said Lancaster. “And I suppose you’re out to skin these gentlemen in the sky-blue vests –”

  “Hiram,” said Henry, proudly, “is the sharpest dickerer in these parts. He runs an antique business and he has to dicker hard –”

  “And may I ask,” said Lancaster, ignoring Henry finally, “what you might be doing with these cans of paint? Are these gentlemen potential customers for paint or –”

  Taine threw down the board and rose angrily to his feet.

  “If you’d both shut up!” he shouted. “I’ve been trying to say something ever since you got here and I can’t get in a word. And I tell you, it’s important –”

  “Hiram!” Henry exclaimed in horror.

  “It’s quite all right,” said the U.N. man. “We have been jabbering. And now, Mr. Taine?”

  “I’m backed into a corner,” Taine told him, “and I need some help. I’ve sold these fellows on the idea of paint, but I don’t know a thing about it – the principle back of it or how it’s made or what goes into it or –”

  “But, Mr. Taine, if you’re selling them the paint, what difference does it make –”

  “I’m not selling them the paint,” yelled Taine. “Can’t you understand that? They don’t want the paint. They want the idea
of paint, the principle of paint. It’s something that they never thought of and they’re interested. I offered them the paint idea for the idea of their saddles and I’ve almost got it –”

  “Saddles? You mean those things over there, hanging in the air?”

  “That is right. Beasly, would you ask one of our friends to demonstrate a saddle?”

  “You bet I will,” said Beasly.

  “What,” demanded Henry, “has Beasly got to do with this?”

  “Beasly is an interpreter. I guess you’d call him a telepath. You remember how he always claimed he could talk with Towser?”

  “Beasly was always claiming things.”

  “But this time he was right. He tells Chuck, that funny-looking monster, what I want to say and Chuck tells these aliens. And these aliens tell Chuck and Chuck tells Beasly and Beasly tells me.”

  “Ridiculous!” snorted Henry. “Beasly hasn’t got the sense to be … what did you say he was?”

  “A telepath,” said Taine.

  One of the aliens had gotten up and climbed into a saddle. He rode it forth and back. Then he swung out of it and sat down again.

  “Remarkable,” said the U.N. man. “Some sort of antigravity unit, with complete control. We could make use of that, indeed.”

  He scraped his hand across his chin.

  “And you’re going to exchange the idea of paint for the idea of that saddle?”

  “That’s exactly it,” said Taine, “but I need some help. I need a chemist or a paint manufacturer or someone to explain how paint is made. And I need some professor or other who’ll understand what they’re talking about when they tell me the idea of the saddle.”

  “I see,” said Lancaster. “Yes, indeed, you have a problem. Mr. Taine, you seem to me a man of some discernment –”

  “Oh, he’s all of that,” interrupted Henry. “Hiram’s quite astute.”

  “So I suppose you’ll understand,” said the U.N. man, “that this whole procedure is quite irregular –”

  “But it’s not,” exploded Taine. “That’s the way they operate. They open up a planet and then they exchange ideas. They’ve been doing that with other planets for a long, long time. And ideas are all they want, just the new ideas, because that is the way to keep on building a technology and culture. And they have a lot of ideas, sir, that the human race can use.”

  “That is just the point,” said Lancaster. “This is perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened to we humans. In just a short year’s time we can obtain data and ideas that will put us ahead – theoretically, at least – by a thousand years. And in a thing that is so important, we should have experts on the job –”

  “But,” protested Henry, “you can’t find a man who’ll do a better dickering job than Hiram. When you dicker with him your back teeth aren’t safe. Why don’t you leave him be? He’ll do a job for you. You can get your experts and your planning groups together and let Hiram front for you. These folks have accepted him and have proved they’ll do business with him and what more do you want? All he needs is just a little help.”

  Beasly came over and faced the U.N. man.

  “I won’t work with no one else,” he said. “If you kick Hiram out of here, then I go along with him. Hiram’s the only person who ever treated me like a human –”

  “There, you see!” Henry said, triumphantly.

  “Now, wait a second, Beasly,” said the U.N. man. “We could make it worth your while. I should imagine that an interpreter in a situation such as this could command a handsome salary.”

  “Money don’t mean a thing to me,” said Beasly. “It won’t buy me friends. People still will laugh at me.”

  “He means it, mister,” Henry warned. “There isn’t anyone who can be as stubborn as Beasly. I know; he used to work for us.”

  The U.N. man looked flabbergasted and not a little desperate.

  “It will take you quite some time,” Henry pointed out, “to find another telepath – leastwise one who can talk to these people here.”

  The U.N. man looked as if he were strangling. “I doubt,” he said, “there’s another one on Earth.”

  “Well, all right,” said Beasly, brutally, “let’s make up our minds. I ain’t standing here all day.”

  “All right,” cried the U.N. man. “You two go ahead. Please, will you go ahead? This is a chance we can’t let slip through our fingers. Is there anything you want? Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes, there is,” said Taine. “There’ll be the boys from Washington and bigwigs from other countries. Just keep them off my back.”

  “I’ll explain most carefully to everyone. There’ll be no interference.”

  “And I need that chemist and someone who’ll know about the saddles. And I need them quick. I can stall these boys a little longer, but not for too much longer.”

  “Anyone you need,” said the U.N. man. “Anyone at all. I’ll have them here in hours. And in a day or two there’ll be a pool of experts waiting for you whenever you may need them – on a moment’s notice.”

  “Sir,” said Henry, unctuously, “that’s most co-operative. Both Hiram and I appreciate it greatly. And now, since this is settled, I understand that there are reporters waiting. They’ll be interested in your statement.”

  The U.N. man, it seemed, didn’t have it in him to protest. He and Henry went tramping up the stairs. Taine turned around and looked out across the desert.

  “It’s a big front yard,” he said.

  The Observer

  Presaging, perhaps, the until-now-unpublished “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” “The Observer” probably represents an experiment on the author’s part, one in which he sought to portray a being discovering itself after an event that reminds me, irresistibly, of a computer recovering from a forced shutdown.

  —dww

  It existed. Whether it had slept and wakened, or been turned on, or if this might be the first instant of its creation, it had no way of knowing. There was no memory of other time, or place.

  Words came to fit where it found itself. Words emerging out of nowhere, symbols quite unbidden – awakened or turned on or first appearing, as it had itself.

  It was in a place of red and yellow. The land was red. The sky was yellow. A brightness stood straight above the red land in the yellow sky. Liquid ran gurgling down a channel in the land.

  In a little time it knew more, had a better understanding. It knew the brightness was a sun. It knew the running liquid was a brook. It thought of the liquid as a compound, but it wasn’t water. Life forms sprang from the redness of the soil. Their stems were green. They had purple fruits at the top of them.

  It had the names now, identifying symbols it could use – life, liquid, land, sky, red, yellow, purple, green, sun, bright, water. Each instant it had more words, more names, more terms. And it could see, although seeing might not be the proper term, for it had no eyes. Nor legs. Nor arms. Nor body.

  It had no eyes and seemed to have no body, either. It had no idea of position – standing up or lying down or sitting. It could look anywhere it wished without turning its head, since it hadn’t any head. Although, strangely, it did seem to occupy a specific position in relation to the landscape.

  It looked straight up into the sky at the brightness of the sun and could look directly at the brightness since it was seeing without eyes, without frail organic structures that might be harmed by brilliance.

  The sun was a B8 star, five times more massive than the Sun, and it lay 3.76 A.U. distant from this planet.

  Sun, capitalized? A.U.? Five? 3.76? Planet?

  Sometime in the past – when past, where past, what past – it had known the terms, a sun that was capitalized, water that ran in brooks, the idea of a body and eyes. Or had it known them? Had it ever had a past in which it could have
known them? Or were they simply terms that were being fed into it from another source, to be utilized as the need arose, tools – and there was yet another term – to be used in interpreting this place where it found itself? Interpreting this place for what? For itself? That was ridiculous, for it did not need to know, did not even care to know.

  Knowing, how did it know? how did it know the sun was a B8 star, and what was a B8 star? How know its distance, its diameter, its mass just by looking at it? How know a star, for it had never seen a star before?

  Then, even thinking this, it knew it had. It had known many suns, a long string of suns across the galaxy and it had looked at each of them and known its spectral type, its distance and diameter, its mass, its very composition, its age and probable length of remaining life, stable or variable, its spectral lines, any small peculiarities that might set it apart from other stars. Red giants, supergiants, white dwarfs, even one black dwarf. But mostly main sequence stars and the planets that went with them, for it made few stops at stars that had no planets.

  Perhaps nothing had ever known more suns than it. Or knew more of suns than it.

  And the purpose of all this? It tried to think of purpose, but there seemed no purpose. The purpose utterly escaped it. If there were, in fact, a purpose.

  It stopped looking at the sun and looked at the rest of it, at all of it at once, at all the planetary surface in its sight – as if, it thought, it had eyes all around its nonexistent head. Why did it, it wondered, keep dwelling on this idea of a head and eyes? Had it, at one time perhaps, had a head and eyes? Was the ideal of head and eyes an old residual, perhaps a primitive, memory that persistently refused to go away, but that for some reason must linger and thrust itself forward at the slightest opportunity?

  It tried to think it out, to reach back and grasp the idea or the memory and drag it squalling from its hole. And failed.

  It concentrated on the surface. It was located – if located was the word – on a steep hillside with massive rock outcroppings. The hill shut off the view of one portion of the surface, but the rest lay bare before it to the horizon line.