Clifford D. Simak - Leg Forst.pdf

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Title : Leg. Forst.
Author : Clifford D. Simak
Original copyright year: 1958
Genre : science fiction
Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book
Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0,
proofread in MS Word 2000.
Date of e-text : February 14, 2000
Prepared by : Anada Sucka
Anticopyright 2000. All rights reversed.
======================================================================
Leg. Forst.
Clifford D. Simak
When it was time for the postman to have come and gone, old Clyde Packer quit working on his
stamps and went into the bathroom to comb his snow-white hair and beard. It was an everlasting
bother, but there was no way out of it. He'd he sure to meet some of his neighbors going down and
coming back and they were a snoopy lot. He felt sure that they talked about him; not that he
cared, of course. And the Widow Foshay, just across the hall, was the worst one of them all.
Before going out, he opened a drawer in the big desk in the middle of the cluttered living
room, upon the top of which was piled an indescribable array of litter, and found the tiny box
from Unuk al Hay. From the box he took a pinch of leaf and tucked it in his cheek.
He stood for a moment, with the drawer still open, and savored the flavorful satisfaction of
the taste within his mouth - not quite like peppermint, nor like whiskey, either, but with some
taste akin to both and with some other tang that belonged entirely to itself. It was nothing like
another man had ever tasted and he suspected that it might be habit-forming, although PugAlNash
had never informed him that it was.
Perhaps, he told himself, even if Pug should so try to inform him, he could not make it out,
for the Unukian's idea of how Earth's language should be written, and the grammar thereof, was a
wonder to behold and could only be believed by someone who had tried to decipher one of his
flowery little notes.
The box, he saw, was nearly empty, and he hoped that the queer, faithful, almost wistful
little correspondent would not fail him now. But there was, he told himself, no reason to believe
he would; PugAlNash, in a dozen years, had not failed him yet. Regularly another tiny box of leaf
arrived when the last one was quite finished, accompanied by a friendly note - and all franked
with the newest stamps from Unuk.
Never a day too soon, nor a day too late, but exactly on the dot when the last of the leaf was
finished. As if PugAlNash might know, by some form of intelligence quite unknown to Earth, when
his friend on Earth ran out of the leaf.
A solid sort, Clyde Packer told himself. Not humanoid, naturally, but a very solid sort.
And he wondered once again what Pug might actually be like. He always had thought of him as
little, but he had no idea, of course, whether he was small or large or what form his body took.
Unuk was one of those planets where it was impossible for an Earthman to go, and contact and
commerce with the planet had been accomplished, as was the case on so many other worlds, by an
intermediary people.
And he wondered, too, what Pug did with the cigars that he sent him in exchange for the little
boxes of leaf - eat them, smoke them, smell them, roll in them or rub them in his hair? If he had
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hair, of course.
He shook his head and closed the door and went out into the hall, being doubly sure that his
door was locked behind him. He would not put it past his neighbors, especially the Widow Foshay,
to sneak in behind his back.
The hall was empty and he was glad of that. He rang almost stealthily for the elevator, hoping
that his luck would hold.
It didn't.
Down the hall came the neighbor from next door. He was the loud and flashy kind, and without
any encouragement at all, he'd slap one on the back.
"Good morning, Clyde!" he bellowed happily from afar.
"Good morning, Mr. Morton," Packer replied, somewhat icily. Morton had no right to call him
Clyde. No one ever called him Clyde, except sometimes his nephew, Anton Camper, called him Uncle
Clyde, although he mostly called him Unk. And Tony, Packer reminded himself, was a worthless piece
- always involved in some fancy scheme, always talking big, but without much to show for it. And
besides, Tony was crooked - as crooked as a cat.
Like myself, Packer thought, exactly like myself. Not like the most of the rest of them these
days, who measured to no more than just loud-talking boobies.
_In my day_, he told himself with fond remembrance, _I could have skinned them all and they'd
never know it until I twitched their hides slick off_.
"How is the stamp business this morning?" yelled Morton, coming up and clapping Packer soundly
on the back.
"I must remind you, Mr. Morton, that I am not in the stamp business," Packer told him sharply.
"I am interested in stamps and I find it most absorbing and I could highly recommend it -"
"But that is not what I meant," explained Morton, rather taken aback "I didn't mean you dealt
in stamps..."
"As a matter of fact, I do," said Packer, "to a limited extent. But not as a regular thing and
certainly not as a regular business. There are certain other collectors who are aware of my
connections and sometimes seek me out -"
"That's the stuff!" boomed Morton, walloping him on the back again in sheer good fellowship.
"If you have the right connections, you get along okay. That works in any line. Now, take mine,
for instance..."
The elevator arrived and rescued Packer.
In the lobby, he headed for the desk.
"Good morning, Mr. Packer," said the clerk, handing him some letters. "There is a bag for you
and it runs slightly heavy. Do you want me to get someone to help you with it?"
"No, thank you," Packer said. "I am sure that I can manage."
The clerk hoisted the bag atop the counter and Packer seized it and let it fall to the floor.
It was fairly large - it weighed, he judged, thirty pounds or so - and the shipping tag, he saw
with a thrill of anticipation, was almost covered with stamps of such high denominations they
quite took his breath away.
He looked at the tag and saw that his name and address were printed with painful precision, as
if the Earthian alphabet was something entirely incomprehensible to the sender. The return address
was a mere jumble of dots and hooks and dashes that made no sense, but seemed somewhat familiar,
although Packer at the moment was unable to tell exactly what they were. The stamps, he saw, were
Iota Cancri, and he had seen stamps such as them only once before in his entire life. He stood
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there, mentally calculating what their worth might be.
He tucked the letters under his arm and picked up the bag. It was heavier than he had expected
and he wished momentarily that he had allowed the clerk to find someone to carry it for him. But
he had said that he would carry it and he couldn't very well go back and say he'd rather not.
After all, he assured himself, he wasn't quite that old and feeble yet.
He reached the elevator and let the bag down and stood facing the grillwork, waiting for the
cage.
A birdlike voice sounded from behind him and he shivered at it, for he recognized the voice -
it was the Widow Foshay.
"Why, Mr. Packer," said the Widow, gushingly, "how pleasant to find you waiting here."
He turned around. There was nothing else for it; he couldn't just stand there, with his back
to her.
"And so loaded down!" the Widow sympathized. "Here, do let me help you."
She snatched the letters from him.
"There," she said triumphantly, "poor man; I can carry these."
He could willingly have choked her, but he smiled instead. It was a somewhat strained and
rather ghastly smile, but he did the best he could.
"How lucky for me," he told her, "that you came along. I'd never have made it."
The veiled rebuke was lost on her. She kept on bubbling at him.
"I'm going to make beef broth for lunch," she said, "and I always make too much. Could I ask
you in to share it?"
"Impossible," he told her in alarm. "I am very sorry, but this is my busy day. I have all
these, you see." And he motioned at the mail she held and the bag he clutched. He whuffled through
his whiskers at her like an irate walrus, but she took no notice.
"How exciting and romantic it must be," she gushed, "getting all these letters and bags and
packages from all over the galaxy. From such strange places and from so far away. Some day you
must explain to me about stamp collecting."
"Madam," he said a bit stiffly, "I've worked with stamps for more than twenty years and I'm
just barely beginning to gain an understanding of what it is all about. I would not presume to
explain to someone else."
She kept on bubbling.
_Damn it all_, he thought, _is there no way to quiet the blasted woman?_
Prying old biddy, he told himself, once again whuffling his whiskers at her. She'd spend the
next three days running all about and telling everyone in the entire building about her strange
encounter with him and what a strange old coot he was. "Getting all those letters from all those
alien places," she would say, "and bags and packages as well. You can't tell me that stamps are
the only things in which he's interested. There is more to it than that; you can bet your bottom
dollar on it."
At his door she reluctantly gave him back his letters.
"You won't reconsider on that broth?" she asked him, "It's more than just ordinary broth. I
pride myself on it. A special recipe."
"I'm sorry," he said.
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He unlocked his door and started to open it. She remained standing there.
"I'd like to invite you in," he told her, lying like a gentleman, "but I simply can't. The
place is a bit upset."
Upset was somewhat of an understatement.
Safely inside, he threaded his way among piles of albums, boxes, bags and storage cases
scattered everywhere.
He finally reached the desk and dropped the bag beside it. He leafed through the letters and
one was from Dahib and another was from the Lyraen system and the third from Muphrid, while the
remaining one was an advertisement from a concern out on Mars.
He sat down in the massive, upholstered chair behind his desk and surveyed the room.
Someday he'd have to get it straightened out, he told himself. Undoubtedly there was a lot of
junk he could simply throw away and the rest of it should be boxed and labeled so that he could
lay his hands upon it. It might be, as well, a good idea to make out a general inventory sheet so
that he'd have some idea what he had and what it might be worth.
Although, he thought, the value of it was not of so great a moment.
He probably should specialize, he thought. That was what most collectors did. The galaxy was
much too big to try to collect it all. Even back a couple of thousand years ago when all the
collectors had to worry about were the stamps of Earth, the field even then had become so large
and so unwieldy and so scattered that specialization had become the thing.
But what would a man specialize in, if he should decide to restrict his interest? Perhaps just
the stamps from one particular planet or one specific system? Perhaps only stamps from beyond a
certain distance - say, five hundred light-years? Or covers, perhaps? A collection of covers with
postmarks and cancellations showing the varying intricacies of letter communication throughout the
depths of space, from star to star, could be quite interesting.
And that was the trouble with it - it all was so interesting. A man could spend three full
lifetimes at it and still not reach the end of it,
In twenty years, he told himself, a man could amass a lot of material if he applied himself.
And he had applied himself; he had worked hard at it and enjoyed every minute of it, and had
become in certain areas, he thought with pride, somewhat of an expert. On occasion he had written
articles for the philatelic press, and scarcely a week went by that some man well-known in the
field did not drop by for a chat or to seek his aid in a knotty problem.
There was a lot of satisfaction to be found in stamps, he told himself with apologetic
smugness. Yes, sir, a great deal of satisfaction.
But the mere collection of material was only one small part of it - a sort of starting point.
Greater than all the other facets of it were the contacts that one made. For one had to make
contacts - especially out in the farther reaches of the galaxy. Unless one wanted to rely upon the
sorry performance of the rascally dealers, who offered only what was easy to obtain, one must
establish contacts. Contacts with other collectors who might be willing to trade stamps with one;
contacts with lonely men in lonely outposts far out on the rim, where the really exotic material
was most likely to turn up, and who would be willing to watch for it and save it and send it on to
one at a realistic price; with far-out institutions that made up mixtures and job lots in an
attempt to eke out a miserly budget voted by the home communities.
There was a man by the name of Marsh out in the Coonskin system who wanted no more than the
latest music tapes from Earth for the material that he sent along. And the valiant priest at the
missionary station on barren Agustron who wanted old tobacco tins and empty bottles which, for a
most peculiar reason, had high value on that topsy-turvy world. And among the many others,
Earthmen and aliens alike, there was always PugAlNash.
Packer rolled the wad of leaf across his tongue, sucking out the last faded dregs of its
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tantalizing flavor.
If a man could make a deal for a good-sized shipment of the leaf, he thought, he could make a
fortune on it. Packaged in small units, like packs of gum, it would go like hot cakes here on
Earth. He had tried to bring up the subject with Pug, but had done no more than confuse and
perplex the good Unukian who, for some unfathomable reason, could not conceive of any commerce
that went beyond the confines of simple barter to meet the personal needs of the bargaining
individuals.
The doorbell chimed and Packer went to answer it.
It was Tony Camper.
"Hi, Uncle Clyde," said Tony breezily.
Packer held the door open grudgingly.
"Since you are here," he said, "you might as well come in."
Tony stepped in and tilted his hat back on his head. He looked the apartment over with an
appraising eye.
"Some day, Unk," he said, "you should get this place shoveled out. I don't see how you stand
it."
"I manage it quite well," Packer informed him tartly. "Some day I'll get around to
straightening up a bit."
"I should hope you do," said Tony.
"My boy," said Packer, with a trace of pride, "I think that I can say, without fear of
contradiction, that I have one of the finest collections of out-star stamps that anyone can boast.
Some day, when I get them all in albums -"
"You'll never make it, Unk. It'll just keep piling up. It comes in faster than you can sort it
out."
He reached out a foot and nudged the bag beside the desk.
"Like this," he said. "This is a new one, isn't it?"
"It just came in," admitted Packer. "Haven't gotten around as yet to figuring out exactly
where it's from."
"Well, that is fine," said Tony. "Keep on having fun. You'll outlive us all."
"Sure I will," said Packer testily. "What is it that you want?"
"Not a thing, Unk. Just dropped in to say hello and to remind you you're coming up to Hudson's
to spend the weekend with us. Ann insisted that I drop around and nudge you. The kids have been
counting the days -"
"I would have remembered it," lied Packer, who had quite forgotten it.
"I could drop around and pick you up. Three this afternoon?"
"No, Tony, don't bother. I'll catch a stratocab. I couldn't leave that early. I have things to
do."
"I bet you have," said Tony.
He moved toward the door.
"You won't forget," he cautioned.
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