Clifford D. Simak - The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories.pdf - Clifford D.Simak - chomaroma

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The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories

Clifford D. Simak

This first world edition published in 1986 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of 4 Brook Street,

London W1Y 1AA

Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission ot'Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

his agent, Kirby McCauley.

author.

permission of the author. First published in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact.

Typeset by The Word Factory, Rossendale, Lanes, England

ISBN 0 7278 1221 1

Contents

Introduction

The Birch Clump Cylinder

The Whistling Well

The Marathon Photograph

The Grotto of the Dancing Deer

Introduction

In 1981, when in the United States on a research trip, I took a week-end out to go to Minneapolis where

Clifford D Simak had agreed to meet me. I had begun to write a book about his fiction, his work being

amongst my most favourite science fiction. Novels such as City, and Way Station had enthralled me in

my teens and made 'Simak' a name to be watched for both in the magazines and amongst publishers'

lists. A similar knowledge of his work may have brought you to pick up this book.

Meeting CDS was the high point of my 1981 trip. CDS was all that I had thought he might be from his

books and stories. Thereafter, and regrettably for only a couple or so days, I explored the north-west

corner of Grant County, Wisconsin, that triangular area bounded to the north and west by the Mississippi

and the Wisconsin rivers, as the Wisconsin flows for its last few miles just north of the bluff country in

which so much of CDS's fiction is set, and where he was born in August 1904. Seeing that country made

me understand yet more of that gentle and good strength which comes through in his work. CDS is one

who has managed to fuse science fiction with basic and ordinary human values in a way which few

attempt, let alone succeed in carrying off. His childhood in Millville Township, Grant County, and his

growing up among its country folk, imbibing their strengths and values, is a major part of the flavour of

his work.

The best writers of all genres have an individuality which readily identifies their work. Plot, setting,

character and subject, language and pace, all interact in a way which hall-marks their work. Clifford D

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Simak is one such. Over the years and by many high quality tales he has carved out a ledge (rather than

a niche) within the pantheon of science fiction writers. Despite science fiction writing being only a part-

time occupation until he retired from the newspaper world in 1976, his is a body of work of which many

a full-time practitioner would be proud.

The art of the teller of tales runs back into the mists of time. Fundamentally, it is the art of

entertainment. It may have begun as an ability given to some to take the attention of a grateful audience

off the fears of the night and the privations of the morrow. Those huddling together for warmth and

protection would have welcomed being carried elsewhere and into other emotions by the inventions of

one of their number. Certainly the sense of wonder is present in the most ancient tales that have come

down to us, and the best science fiction lies within that noble lineage.

No doubt some will disagree but, whatever the history of the matter, we need good stories. Some are

fun, pure and simple. Others produce a frisson of fear. Yet others may be sombre and solemnising. On

occasion, like the best of fairy stories, a tale may gently educate, but that is not its immediate aim. The

curse of modern literature is the tract for the times, the self-indulgent puddle of diatribe poorly disguised

as a story. Yet the really good story will have something in it which will linger in the mind, perhaps for

years, and you will be glad that you read the story and stashed it away in that rag-bag of mental furniture

everyone possesses. Such stories nourish the mind, and the emotions.

The sixty-thousand or so words of the stories here collected show what I mean. They are fine examples

of the craft of the story-teller. An aspiring author can learn much from them. Take The Birch Clump

Cylinder and see in its spare economy how to well-carpenter a tale. Every sentence contributes by data

or by atmosphere to the impact. Each bit of information counts. In musical terms it is a short quartet,

stating, developing and concluding its theme with clean lines. It contains an excellent time-paradox,

which is one of the most difficult types of SF story to bring off nowadays. It has a new idea, that of the

time engine. It also has that delicate treatment of its characters which we expect in a Simak tale, as

Charley Spencer, who begins the story somewhat discouraged and battered by life, realises at the end

that perhaps he will go to the stars.

The Institute sited at Cramden Hall in The Birch Clump Cylinder is the Coon Creek Institute, and that is

another give-away to those who know much of CDS's work. Coon Creek and its variants appear in many

Simak tales. It is one of the many locations in his work whose origin can be traced to an actual

geographic spot. Coon Valley lies some way north of the Wisconsin, and Highway 14/61 runs west

down it from Viroqua and Westby through the town of Coon Valley to La Crosse Southeast. It is a

glorious valley, with spreading side-valleys, and for his purposes CDS has transposed it into Grant

County, Wisconsin. Other places in his stories require no such moving. Wyalusing, Millville, W'oodman

and the like all appear in CDS's stories, and can be compared with their sources. Amongst the present

collection I would draw particular attention to two, The Whistling Well, and The Marathon Photograph.

The Whistling Well feels authentic, despite the mystery of its content. That authenticity comes from its

being firmly rooted in reality. We read of Thomas Parker's search for the farm of his forebears, sited

somewhere on

Parker's Ridge in bluff country, above a river. He is directed to it from the town of Patch Grove, and is

told that it runs on from Military Ridge. There is a Patch Grove in Grant County. It lies close to

Highway 18, some six miles south of the Bridgeport Bridge which crosses the Wisconsin south of

Prairie du Chien. I have been there. To the north of Patch Grove and Highway 18 lies Military Ridge,

which leads on to Sentinel Ridge, and just to the north of a white dusty farm road on Sentinel Ridge

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there is a well, which today clatters in the wind, as it has done for years. That well was drilled by CDS's

grandfather, Ned Wiseman, who fought in the Civil War, married Ellen Parker and won that farm from

the wild. You will see these and other connections in the story itself. 'Thomas Parker' has close family

connections with his author. The setting, like the return of others to a farm in other CDS's stories, is that

of the scenes of CDS's childhood and youth. The irises, the cottonwood trees, the lilacs, the old timbered

beams and the abandoned hearthstones, the rosemary, the apple trees, and the scrawny rose-bushes the

tender accuracy is that of love. The same holds good for The Marathon Photograph. Life in that bluff

country is the mount for this jewel. Neville wants to photograph some pink lady's slippers, and that leads

to everything. Those who know CDS's stories will remember that Enoch Wallace knew where that rare-

ish plant grew on the land round his Way Station, the novel of twenty years before this story was

written. Platteville limestone, laid down over the cylinder in this story, is characteristic of the north-west

corner of Grant County, Platteville being a major town of the county, and a seat of the University of

Wisconsin. The real Kickapoo River, which is also mentioned, enters the Wisconsin from the north,

across the river from the little town of Woodman, and in this story we are told of the Lodge by reference

to the work of the local historian of Woodman County. We are again reading of a story set in 'Simak

country'. Many blind valleys in that region could shelter such a place as the Lodge, and the description

of the countryside and the special touches, the lightning bugs and the squirrels, are those which only

someone possessed of a deep knowledge and love of a place would incorporate.

But The Marathon Photograph is a more complex tale than its setting, and is one which repays several

readings and returns to it. If The Birch Clump Cylinder is a quartet, this is a compressed symphony,

which takes up many themes which CDS has treated elsewhere. There are many speculations gathered in

it. There is the future of a blasted Earth, and those capable of travelling to the stars who are nonetheless

scavenging amid their past. There is knowledge to be found, the knowledge of some vanished race from

far across the galaxy, which has broadcast its knowledge as a last service before its extinction. What

benefit will such alien knowledge be to our twisted posterity? There is the engimatic Stefan, said to be

pyschopathic by his co-aevals. But who is the psychopath amongst them? Who is advanced- and what is

advancement? There is the question of the time-chart and its powers. There is the question of the various

photographs, Charlemagne, Marathon and . . ? And at the end of the story there is that pang about

religion. It is a pang found in The Whistling Well, with its questions as to the religion of the dinosaurs,

and it is found in several Simak novels which also speculate upon religion, faith and response. Why Call

Them Back From Heaven?, A Choice of Gods, Project Pope, and Special Deliverance contain other

musings on this theme, but none deliver quite the same bleakness as The Marathon Photograph does.

Did Andrew Thornton successfully use the time saddle? And if so, what did he find? Read this one: put

it aside for a week or so; then re-read it. Like much of the best music, it gives up its meaning gradually,

and inexhaustibly.

The origin of the remaining story, The Grotto of the Dancing Deer, is different. It lies in CDS's non-

fiction book Prehistoric Man: The Story of Man's Rise to Civilisation (1971), which itself sprang from

his involvement for many years as the editor of a science series for the Minneapolis Tribune. One of the

chapters is called The World's First Paintings. The cave paintings at Lascaux and other sites in the

Pyrenees fascinated CDS, and he turned them over and over in his mind. The result is this story about

the hidden grotto of paintings, and the way in which their discovery is arranged by someone who knows

about them.

In The Grotto of the Dancing Deer, CDS displays all his qualities. There is mystery, and the ability to

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conjure up location. There is an intellectual puzzle. There is the deft evocation of character, and there is

that profound sense that the old traditional values are best, and that they are worth preserving. Boyd

could astonish the scientific community were he to reveal what he knows by the end of the story. But he

will not. He has been trusted and will not prove himself unworthy of that trust. And in return his friend

gives him another secret, but one which he can act on. Is there any wonder that this story won the Hugo,

Nebula and Locus awards for 1980? If we persist with the musical comparisons, to me this story is kin to

Barber's Adagio for Strings.

One last extraordinary fact, or, depending on how you count, two. All these stories have to do with time,

and time stories are the most difficult of all science fiction to bring off. High standards have been set in

the past, and there have been suggestions that it was no longer possible to write publishable time stories

(as opposed to stories where time is simply a barrier to be gone through, the rest of the story taking place

other-when). These four show that the opinion was wrong; but they also make it more difficult for future

authors. It is extraordinary to find that this has been achieved by one of the Deans of science fiction

producing these four stories in the fifth decade of his writing career. As you will see from the copyright

credits, the earliest is a decade old. The Grotto of the Dancing Deer is the most recent, and was produced

in CDS's seventy-fifth year, since when he has produced two excellent novels, with a third imminent.

Extraordinary!

Aberdeen, Scotland F Lyall

May, 1985

The Birch Clump Cylinder

As Bronson drove the car up the curving road that led to the front of Cramden Hall, I became aware that

there had been some change, although it took a moment to figure what it was.

'The pagoda's gone,' I said.

'Blew down one night several years ago,' said Bronson. 'High wind came up. Flimsy thing, it was.'

Nothing else had changed, it seemed. Coon Creek didn't change. It stayed stodgy and a bit ramshackle

and tried its humble best to seem of no account.

'Just as well it's gone,' said Bronson.'It never seemed to fit. Just a little flighty for my taste.'

The car wheeled up and stopped in front of the pillared portico.

'You go on in,' said Bronson. 'Old Prather's waiting for you. I'll put away the car and bring in your bags.'

'Thanks for meeting me,' I said. 'It's been a long time, Bronson.'

'Fifteen years,' said Bronson. 'Maybe nearer twenty. None of us gets any younger. You never have been

back.'

'No,' I said, T haven't.'

The car pulled away, and as it moved out of my line of vision I saw I had been wrong. For the pagoda

wasn't gone; the pagoda was still there. It squatted in the evening light exactly as I remembered it,

standing in the park-like area inside the driveway curve, with a pine at one corner of it and a sprawling

yew along the side.

'Charles,' a voice said behind rne. 'Charles, it's good to see you.'

I turned and saw it was Old Prather, fumbling down the steps towards me.

I went rapidly up to meet him, and we stood there for a moment, looking at one another in the fading

light. He hadn't changed too much - a little older, perhaps, a bit more frazzled at the edges, but the same

erect, stiff posture that barely escaped being military. The imagined scent of chalk dust still clung to

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him; he was as imperious as ever, but, I thought, looking at him, perhaps a shade more kindly mellowed

with the years.

'The place looks the same as ever,' I said. 'Too bad the pagoda'

'The pesky thing blew down,' he said. 'Gave us no end of trouble cleaning up the mess.'

We went trudging up the steps together. 'It was kind of you to come,' he said. 'As you may have

gathered, we have a spot of trouble. On the phone, you understand, I couldn't be specific.'

'I jumped at the chance to come,' I said. 'Not doing anything, of course. Not since I was booted out of

Time Research.'

'But that was two years ago. And you weren't booted.'

'It is three years,' I said, 'and I most emphatically was booted.'

'Dinner, I think, is ready,' he said, 'and we had best get to it. Old Emil'

'Emil is still here?' I asked.

Old Prather chuckled thinly. 'We carry on,' he said. 'Bronson and myself and Emil. Young men coming

up, but they are not quite ready. We all get crotchety and at times a little prickly. Emil, especially. He is

crustier than ever and is apt to scold you if you're late for meals or don't eat quite enough. He takes it as

a slur on his cooking.'

We reached the door and went into the foyer.

'And now,' I said, 'suppose you spell out this pagoda mummery.'

'You saw it, then?' he said.

'Of course I saw it. After Bronson had told me it had blown down. And it was still there when you said it

had blown down. If this is some elaborate gag, just because I worked on Time Research'

'It is no trick,' he said. 'It's part of the reason you are here. We'll talk about it later, but now we must go

in to dinner or Emil will be outraged. Did I mention, by the way, that a couple of your classmates will be

dining with us? Leonard Asbury. You remember him, of course.'

'Dr Prather,' I said, T have spent all these years trying not to remember him. He was a little twerp. And

what other assorted alumni have you hauled in on this pagoda business?'

He said, without any shame at all, 'Only one other. Mary Holland.'

'She was the one who broke your heart. She went into music.'

'Charles,' he said, 'you mistake my function and the purpose of this institute if you think she broke my

heart. The world could ill have afforded to lose the kind of music she has written.'

'So,' I said, 'a famous mathematician, a talented composer, a down-at-the-heels time researcher. When it

comes to picking a team, you really go all out.'

His eyes took on a merry twinkle. 'Come on in to dinner,' he said, 'or Emil will wear out his tongue on

us.'

The dinner had been a good one, simple and hearty -vichyssoise, a salad, prime ribs and a baked potato,

with wine that was not bad at all.

Old Prather had done a lot of inconsequential and rather pompous talking. The man was a good host;

you have to give him that. The rest of us said little - the kind of tentative, exploratory talk that old

acquaintances, too long separated, are likely to engage in.

I studied the two of them, and I knew that they were studying me as well. I could imagine both were

wondering why Old Prather had invited me, for which I could not blame them.

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