World That Couldn't Be-Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak (0:00)

PART ONE of THE WORLD THAT COULDN'T BE by CLIFFORD D. SIMAK This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite PART ONE of THE WORLD THAT COULDN'T BE by CLIFFORD D. SIMAK Like every farmer on every planet, Duncan had to hunt down anything that damaged his crops, even though he was aware this was the world that couldn't be.

CHAPTER ONE The tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows the Vua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical. It had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the west side of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off into the bush, and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickled down into the great pug marks deep sunk into the finely cultivated loam. Somewhere, a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in one of the thorn-choked ravines a choir of chatterers was clicking through a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of a day. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the ground, and the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leaves of the hula trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with a million flashing mirrors. Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandana from his pocket and mopped his face. No, mister, pleaded Zekara, the native foreman of the farm. You cannot do it, mister. You do not hunt the sitha. The hell I don't, said Duncan. But he spoke in English and not the native tongue. He stared out across the bush. A flat expanse of sun-cured grass interspersed with thickets of hula scrub and thorn and occasional groves of trees criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with infrequent water holes. It would be murderous out there, he told himself. But it shouldn't take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its pre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on. Dangerous, Zekara pointed out. No one hunts the sitha. I do, Duncan said, speaking now in the native language. I hunt anything that damages my crop. A few nights more of this and there would be nothing left. Jamming the bandana back into his pocket, he tilted his hand lower across his eyes against the sun.

It might be a long chase, mister. It is the scun season now, if you were caught out there. Now listen, Duncan told it sharply. Before I came, you'd feast one day, then starve for days on end. But now you eat each day, and you like the doctoring. Before when you got sick, you died. Now you get sick, I doctor you, and you live. You like staying in one place instead of wandering all around. Mr. we like all this, said Zakara. But we do not hunt the sitha. If we do not hunt the sitha, we lose all this, Duncan pointed out. If I don't make a crop, I'm licked. I'll have to go away. Then what happens to you? We will grow the corn ourselves. That's a laugh, said Duncan. And you know it is. If I didn't kick your backsides all day long, you wouldn't do a lick of work. If I leave, you go back to the bush. Now let's go and get that sitha. But it's such a little one, mister. It is such a young one. It is scarcely worth the trouble. It would be a shame to kill it. Probably just slightly smaller than a horse, thought Duncan, watching the native closely. It's scared, he told himself. It's scared dry and spitless. Besides, it must have been most hungry. Surely mister even a sitha has the right to eat. Not from my crop, said Duncan savagely. You know why we grow the voodoo, don't you? You know it is great medicine. The berries that it grows cures those who are sick inside their heads. My people need that medicine, need it very badly. And what is more, out there? He swept his arm toward the sky. Out there, they pay very much for it. But, mister— I tell you this, said Duncan gently. You either dig me up a bush-runner to do the tracking for me, or you can all get out. The kid and caboodle of you. I can get other tribes to work the farm. No, mister! Zekara screamed in desperation. You have your choice, Duncan told it coldly. He plodded back across the field toward the house. Not much of a house as yet, not a great deal better than a native shack. But someday it would be, he told himself. Let him sell a crop or two, and he'd build a house that would really be a house. It would have a bar, and a swimming pool, and a garden filled with flowers. And, at last, after years of wandering, he'd have a home and broad acres, and everyone, not just one lousy tribe, would call him Mr. Gavin Duncan, planter, he said to himself, and liked the sound of it. Planter on the planet Layard, but not if the Scytha came back night after night and ate the Vua plants. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Zakara was racing for the native village.