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

machine. I do not rely on muscles or a human eye, which, marvellous as it may be …”
    “Where’s Bronco?” I asked.
    Elmer motioned with his thumb. “He’s in a trance,” he said.
    I moved around the fire so I could get a better look at him. What Elmer had said was right. Bronco was standing to one side with all his sensor apparatus out, soaking up the place.
    “The best compositor there ever was,” said Elmer, proudly. “He took to it like a shot. He’s a sensitive.”
    Cynthia picked up a couple of bowls and dished up the stew. She handed one of them to me.
    “Watch out; it’s hot,” she said.
    I sat down beside her and cautiously began to eat. The stew was not too bad, but it was hot. I had to blow upon each spoonful of it to cool it off before I put it in my mouth.
    The baying came again, and it was close now, just a hill or two away.
    “Those are dogs,” said Elmer. “They are chasing something. Maybe there are people here.”
    “Maybe just a wild pack,” I said.
    Cynthia shook her head. “No. I asked around a bit when I was staying at the inn. There are people out here in the wilds—or what Cemetery calls the wilds. No one seems to know too much about them, or at least wouldn’t talk too much about them. As if they were beneath any human notice. The normal Cemetery-Pilgrim reaction, what you would expect. You got a taste of that reaction, Fletcher, when you went in to see Maxwell Peter Bell. You never told me how it all turned out.”
    “He tried to take me over. I turned him down, not too diplomatically. I know I should have been more polite, but he put my back up.”
    “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said. “Cemetery is not accustomed to refusal—even to polite refusal.”
    “Why did you bother with him at all?” asked Elmer.
    “It’s expected,” I said. “The captain briefed me on it. A courtesy call. As if he were a king or prime minister or potentate or something. I couldn’t have ducked it very well.”
    “What I don’t understand,” Elmer said to Cynthia, “is how you fit into it. Not that you aren’t welcome.” Cynthia looked at me. “Didn’t Fletcher tell you?”
    “He said something about treasure …”
    “I suppose,” she said, “I’d better tell it all. Because you have a right to know. And I wouldn’t want you to think I was a simple adventuress. There is something rather shoddy about an adventuress. Do you want to listen?”
    “We might as well,” said Elmer.
    She was silent for a moment and you could sense her sort of settling down, getting a good grip on herself, as if she faced a difficult task and was determined that she would do it well.
    “I am an Alden native,” she began. “My ancestors were among the first to settle there. The family history—perhaps a better way to say it is the family legend, for it’s not documented—runs back to their first arrival. But you won’t find the Lansing name listed among the First Families—the First Families, capitalized. The First Families are those that prospered. My family didn’t prosper. Bad management, pure laziness, lack of ambition, bad luck—I don’t know what it was, but they stayed poor as church mice. There is a little place, way back in the outland country, that is called Lansing Corners, but that’s all there is, that is the only mark my family made on Alden or on Alden history. They were farmers, small tradesmen, labourers; they had no political aspirations; no genius blossomed in them. They were content to do a good day’s work and at the end of it to sit on the doorstep of their cottage and drink their beer, chatting with their neighbours, or alone, watching the fabulous Alden sunsets. They were simple people. Some of them, I guess a lot of them, went off-planet with the years, seeking fortunes that I imagine they never found. If they had, the Alden Lansings would have heard of it and the family legends make no mention of it. I imagine those who were left stayed on