Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak Read Free Book Online Page B

name.”
    “It is strange,” said Sandra, “how differently we were translated to this place—I through listening to music, you through the agency of these things you call slot machines.”
    “I was done in,” said Mary, “by, of all things, a blueprint. A fellow engineer brought it to me, claiming there was something in it that he did not understand. He insisted I have a look at it, and he pointed with his finger to where he wanted me to look. It was nothing I had ever seen before and as I struggled to make some sense of it, I was caught up in the configuration that was represented on it and the next I knew I was standing in a forest. I am struck by the coincidence that both Edward and myself were trapped by another human—in his case a student, in my case another engineer. This would argue that whoever, or whatever, did this to us has agents on our worlds.”
    “For a time I thought,” Lansing said to Mary, “that you and I might be from the same world, the same culture. Our societies seemed very much the same. But I was looking at you when I said a certain word and I could tell that you were puzzled by it. It seemed you didn’t know what communistic meant.”
    “I know the word,” she said. “I was surprised by the context in which you used it. You seemed to make it a proper noun, as if a communistic society might exist.”
    “On my world it does.”
    “There was, I am sure,” said the Parson, “no human provocation for what happened to me. I saw the Glory. I had been seeking it for years. I had felt at times that I was close upon it, but each time it eluded me. And then, standing in a turnip field, I saw it, brighter and more glorious than I had thought it would be. I held up my hands to worship it, and as I did it became larger and brighter and I fell into it.”
    “It seems to me the evidence is clear,” said the Brigadier, “that each of us is from a different world—different, but human worlds. It would seem, as well, that no further evidence is needed. The testimony of the four of you is quite sufficient. You will pardon me, I hope, if I do not join with you in telling by what strange circumstance I happen to be here.”
    “I, for one, would take it rather badly,” said the Parson. “The rest of us have spoken fully—”
    “It’s all right,” said Lansing, interrupting. “If the General does not want to bare his soul, it’s quite all right with me.”
    “But in a band of brothers…”
    “We’re not brothers, Parson. There are two women here. Even in the sense you mean it, I wonder if we’re brothers.”
    “If we are,” said the robot, Jurgens, “we must prove it on the road ahead.”
    “If we take that road,” the Parson said. “I, for one, am taking it,” said the Brigadier. “I would die of boredom, cooped up in this inn. This miserable innkeeper of ours spoke of a city up ahead. Certainly a city of any sort would offer better accommodation and entertainment, and perhaps even more instruction, than this pig sty of a place.”
    “He also mentioned a cube,” said Sandra. “I wonder what it could be. Never before have I heard anything described simply as a cube.”
     

 
    T HEY WERE LATE IN getting started. Breakfast had been unaccountably delayed and there had been much haggling over the purchase of items they would need upon the road—food, clothing, hiking shoes, sleeping bags, belt knives, hatchets, matches, cooking gear, a long list of equipment. The Brigadier had insisted on a gun and had become quite worked up when informed by the innkeeper that no weapons were for sale.
    “That’s ridiculous!” stormed the Brigadier. “Who ever heard of an expedition starting out without an adequate defense?”
    Mine Host attempted to reassure him. “There’s no danger along the way. There is no need to fear.”
    “How would you know that?” demanded the Brigadier. “When we questioned you on other matters you were singularly bereft of knowledge. Knowing nothing else,