Cemetery World by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page A

factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.
    A stone rattled behind me and I turned to see that it was Elmer, moving through the dusk. I said nothing to him and he did not speak to me, but came and squatted down beside me and there was nothing to be said, nothing that needed to be said. I sat there, remembering all the other times like this—when there had been no need of words between Elmer and myself. We sat as the twilight deepened and from far away came the sound of something hooting and a little later the faint sound of something that was baying. The water went on talking as the darkness deepened.
    “I built a fire,” said Elmer finally. “We’ll need it for cooking, but even if we had no need of it, I still would have built fire. The Earth calls for a fire. The two of them go together. Man came up from savagery with fire. In all of man’s long history he never let the fire go out.”
    “Is it,” I asked, “the way you remember it?”
    He shook his head. “Not the way I remember it, but somehow it is the way that I knew it would be. There weren’t trees like these, or a stream like this. But you see one tree flaming in the autumn sun and you can imagine what it might be like with a forest of such trees. You see a stream run red and choked with filth and you know how it might be if the land were clean.”
    The baying sound came again and walked with chilly feet along my spine.
    “Dogs,” said Elmer, “trailing something. Either dogs or wolves.”
    “You were here,” I said, “in the Final War. It was different then.”
    “Different,” said Elmer. “Most everything was dead or dying. But there were places here and there where the old Earth still remained. Little pockets where the poison and the radiation had not settled in, places that had been struck no more than a glancing blow. Enough to let you know what it had been like at one time. The people were living mostly underground. I worked on the surface, on one of the war machines—perhaps the last such machine that was ever built. Barring the purpose of it, it was a wondrous mechanism and well it might have been, for it was not machine alone. It had the body of a machine, but the brain of it was something else—a melding of machine and man, a robotic brain linked with the brains of men. I don’t know who they were. Someone must have known, but I never did. I have often wondered. It was the only way, you see, that a war could still be fought. No human could go to fight that kind of war. So man’s servants and companions, the machines, carried on the war. I don’t know why they kept on fighting. I have often asked myself. They’d destroyed all there’d ever been to fight for and there was no use of keeping on.”
    He quit talking and rose to his feet. “Let’s go back,” he said. “You must be hungry and so must the young lady. Fletch, I fear I am a bit confused as to why she is along.”
    “Something about a treasure.”
    “What kind of treasure?”
    “I don’t really know. There was no time for her to explain it to me.”
    From where we stood we could see the flare of the fire and we walked toward it.
    Cynthia was on her knees before a bed of coals she had raked off to one side, holding a pot over the coals and stirring with a spoon.
    “I hope it’s decent,” she said. “It’s some kind of stew.”
    “There is no need for you to be doing that,” said Elmer, somewhat miffed. “I am, when called upon, a quite efficient cook.”
    “So am I,” said Cynthia.
    “Tomorrow,” Elmer said, “I’ll get some meat for you. I saw a number of squirrels and a rabbit or two.”
    “We have no hunting equipment,” I said. “We brought along no guns.”
    “We can make a bow,” said Cynthia.
    “No need of guns or bows,” said Elmer. “Stones are good enough. I’ll pick up some pebbles …”
    “No one can hunt with pebbles,” Cynthia said. “You can’t throw straight enough.”
    “I can,” Elmer told her. “I am a