GLEANERS

  Clifford D. Simak

  He went sneaking past the door.

  The lettering on the door said: Executive Vice President, Projects.

  And down in the lower left comer, Hallock Spencer, in very modest type.

  That was him. He was Hallock Spencer.

  But he wasn’t going in that door. He had trouble enough already without going in. There’d be people waiting there for him. No one in particular—but people. And each of them with problems.

  He ducked around the corner and went a step or two down the corridor until he came to another door that said Private on it.

  It was unlocked. He went in.

  A dowdy scarecrow in a faded, dusty toga sat tipped back in a chair, with his sandaled feet resting on Hallock Spencer’s desk top. He wore a mouse-gray woolen cap upon his hairless skull and his ears stuck out like wings. A short sword, hanging from the belt that snugged in the toga, stood canted with its point resting on the carpet. There was dirt beneath his rather longish toenails and he hadn’t shaved for days. He was a total slob.

  “Hello, E.J.,” said Spencer.

  The man in the toga didn’t take his feet off the desk. He didn’t move at all. He just sat there.

  “Sneaking in again,” he said.

  Spencer put down his briefcase and hung up his hat.

  “The reception room’s a trap,” he said.

  He sat down in the chair behind the desk and picked up the project schedule and had a look at it.

  “What’s the trouble, E J.?” he asked. “You back already?” “Haven’t started yet. Not for another couple hours.”

  “It says here,” said Spencer, flicking the schedule with a finger, “that you’re a Roman trader.”

  “That’s what I am,” said EJ. “At least, Costumes says so. I hope to God they’re right.”

  “But the sword—”

  “Pardner,” said E.J., “back in Roman Britain, out on a Roman road, with a pack train loaded down with goods, a man has got to carry steel.”

  He reached down and hoisted the sword into his lap. He regarded it with disfavor. “But I don’t mind telling you it’s no great shakes of a weapon.”

  “I suppose you’d feel safer with a tommy gun.”

  E.J. nodded glumly. “Yes. I would.”

  “Lacking that,” said Spencer, “we do the best we can. You’ll pack the finest steel in the second century. If that is any comfort.”

  E.J. just sat there with the sword across his lap. He was making up his mind to say something—it was written on his face. He was a silly-looking soul, with all those wiry whiskers and his ears way out to either side of him and the long black hairs that grew out of the lobes.

  “Hal,” said E.J., finally making up his mind, “I want out of this.”

  Spencer stiffened in his chair. “You can’t do that!” he yelled. “Time is your very life. You’ve been in it for a lot of years!”

  “I don’t mean out of Time. I mean out of Family Tree. I am sick of it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Spencer protested. “Family Tree’s not tough. You’ve been on a lot of worse ones. Family Tree’s a snap. All you have to do is go back and talk to people or maybe check some records. You don’t have to snitch a thing.”

  “It’s not the work,” said E.J. “Sure, the work is easy. I don’t mind the work. It’s after I get back.”

  “You mean the Wrightson-Graves.”

  “That is what I mean. After every trip, she has me up to that fancy place of hers and I have to tell her all about her venerable ancestors …”

  Spencer said, “It’s a valuable account. We have to service it.”

  “I can’t stand much more of it,” EJ. insisted, stubbornly.

  Spencer nodded. He knew just what E.J. meant. He felt much the same.

  Alma Wrightson-Graves was a formidable old dowager with a pouter-pigeon build and the erroneous conviction that she still retained much of her girlish charm. She was loaded down with cash, and also with jewels that were too costly and gaudy to be good taste. For years she’d shrieked down and bought off everyone around her until she firmly believed there was nothing in the world she couldn’t have—if she was willing to pay enough for it.

  And she was paying plenty for this family tree of hers. Spencer had often asked himself just why she wanted it. Back to the Conquest, sure—that made at least some sense. But not back to the caves. Not that Past, Inc., couldn’t trace it that far for her if her cash continued to hold out. He thought, with a perverted satisfaction, that she couldn’t have been happy with the last report or two, for the family had sunk back to abject peasantry.

  He said as much to EJ. “What does she want?” he asked. “What does she expect?”

  “I have a hunch,” E.J. told him, “that she has some hopes we’ll find a connection back to Rome. God help us if we do. Then it could go on forever.”

  Spencer grunted.

  “Don’t be too sure,” warned E.J. “Roman officers being what they were I wouldn’t bet against it.”

  “If that should happen,” Spencer told him, “I’ll take you off the project. Assign someone else to carry out the Roman research. I’ll tell the Wrightson-Graves you’re not so hot on Rome—have a mental block or a psychic allergy or something that rejects indoctrination.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said E.J., without much enthusiasm.

  One by one, he took his dirty feet off the shiny desk and rose out of the chair.

  “E.J.?”

  “Yes, Hal.”

  “Just wondering. Have you ever hit a place where you felt that you should stay? Have you ever wondered if maybe you should stay?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Once or twice, perhaps. But I never did. You’re thinking about Garson.”

  “Garson for one. And all the others.”

  “Maybe something happened to him. You get into tight spots. It’s a simple matter to make a big mistake. Or the operator might have missed.”

  “Our operators never miss,” snapped Spencer.

  “Garson was a good man,” said E.J., a little sadly.

  “Garson! It’s not only Garson. It’s all the …” Spencer stopped abruptly, for he’d run into it again. After all these years, he still kept running into it. No matter how he tried, it was something to which he could not reconcile himself—the disparity in time.

  He saw that E.J. was staring at him, with just the slightest crinkle that was not quite a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “You can’t let it eat you,” said E.J. “You’re not responsible. We take our chances. If it wasn’t worth our while …”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Spencer.

  “Sure,” said E.J., “you lose one of us every now and then. But it’s no worse than any other business.”

  “Not one every now and then,” said Spencer. “There have been three of them in the last ten days.”

  “Well, now,” said E.J., “I lose track of them. There was Garson just the other day. And Taylor—how long ago was that?”

  “Four days ago,” said Spencer.

  “Four days,” said E.J., astonished. “Is that all it was?” Spencer snapped, “For you it was three months or more. And do you remember Price? For you that was a year ago, but just ten days for me.”

  E.J. put up a dirty paw and scrubbed at the bristle on his chin.

  “How time does fly!”

  “Look,” said Spencer, miserably, “this whole set-up is bad enough. Please don’t make jokes about it.”

  “Garside been giving you a hard time, maybe? Losing too many of the men?”

  “Hell, no,” said Spencer, bitterly. “You can always get more men. It’s the machines that bother him. He keeps reminding me they cost a quarter million.”

  E.J. made a rude sound with his lips.

  “Get out of here!” yelled Spencer. “And see that you come home!”

  EJ. grinned and left. He gave the toga a girlish flirt as he went out the door.

  II

  Spencer told himself E.J. was wrong. For whatever anyone might say, he, Hallock Spencer, was responsible. He ran the stinking show. He made up the schedules. He assigned the travelers and he sent them out. When there were mistakes or hitches, he was the one who answered. To himself, if no one else.

  He got up and paced the floor, hands locked behind his back.

  Three men in the last ten days. And what had happened to them?

  Possibly there was something to what Garside said, as well —Christopher Anson Garside, chief co-ordinator and a nasty man to handle, with his clipped, gray mustache and his clipped, gray voice and his clipped, gray business thinking.

  For it was not men alone who did not come back. It was likewise the training and experience you had invested in those men. They lasted, Spencer told himself, a short time at the best without managing to get themselves killed off somewhere in the past, or deciding to squat down and settle in some other era they liked better than the present.

  And the machines were something that could not be dismissed. Every time a man failed to return it meant another carrier lost. And the carriers did cost a quarter million— which wasn’t something you could utterly forget.

  Spencer went back to his desk and had another look at the schedule for the day. There was E.J., bound for Roman Britain on the Family Tree project; Nickerson going back to the early Italian Renaissance to check up once again on the missing treasure in the Vatican; Hennessy off on his search once more for the lost documents in fifteenth century Spain; Williams going out, he hoped, finally to snatch the mislaid Picasso, and a half dozen more. Not a massive schedule. But enough to spell out a fairly busy day.

  He checked the men not on the projects list. A couple of them were on vacation. One was in Rehabilitation. Indoctrination had the rest of them.

  He sat there, then, for the thousandth time, wondering what it would be like, really, to travel into time.

  He’d heard hints of it from some of the travelers, but no more than hints, for they did not talk about it. Perhaps they did among themselves, when there were no outsiders present. Perhaps not even then. As if it were something that no man could quite describe. As if it were an experience that no man should discuss.

  A haunting sense of unreality, the feeling that one was out of place, a hint of not quite belonging, of somehow standing, tip-toe, on the far edge of eternity.

  It wore off after a time, of course, but apparently one was never entirely free of it. For the past, in some mysterious working of a principle yet unknown, was a world of wild enchantment.

  Well, he had had his chance and flunked it.

  But some day, he told himself, he could go into time. Not as a regular traveler, but as a vacationist—if he could snatch the necessary time to get ready for the trip. The trip, itself, of course, was no consideration so far as time might be concerned. It was Indoctrination and the briefing that was time-consuming.

  He picked up the schedule again for another look. All of those who were going back this day were good men. There was no need to worry about any one of them.

  He laid the schedule to one side and buzzed Miss Crane.

  Miss Crane was a letter-perfect secretary, though she wasn’t much to look at. She was a leathery old maid. She had her own way of doing things, and she could act very disapproving.

  No choice of his, Spencer had inherited her fifteen years before. She had been with Past, Inc., before there was even a projects office. And, despite her lack of looks, her snippy attitude and her generally pessimistic view of life, she was indispensable.

  She knew the projects job as well as he did. At times she let him know it. But she never forgot, never mislaid, never erred; she ran an efficient office, always got her work done and it always was on time.

  Spencer, dreaming at times of a lusher young replacement, knew that he was no more than dreaming. He couldn’t do his job without Miss Crane in the outer office.

  “You sneaked in again,” she accused him as soon as she’d closed the door.

  “I suppose there’s someone waiting.”

  “There’s a Dr. Aldous Ravenholt,” she said. “He’s from Foundation for Humanity.”

  Spencer flinched. There was no one worse to start a morning with than some pompous functionary from Humanity. They almost always figured that you owed them something. They thought the whole world owed them something.

  “And there’s a Mr. Stewart Cabell. He’s an applicant sent up by Personnel. Mr. Spencer, don’t you think ..

  “No, I don’t,” Spencer snapped at her. “I know Personnel is sore. But I’ve been taking everyone they’ve been shoveling up here and see what happens. Three men gone in the last ten days. From now on, I’m taking a close look at everyone myself.”

  She sniffed. It was a very nasty sniff.

  “That all?” asked Spencer, figuring that he couldn’t be that lucky—just two of them.

  “Also there’s a Mr. Boone Hudson. He’s an elderly man who looks rather ill and he seems impatient. Perhaps you should see him first.”

  Spencer might have, but not after she said that.

  “I’ll see Ravenholt,” he said. “Any idea what he wants?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, send him in,” said Spencer. “He’ll probably want to chisel a slice of Time off me.”

  Chiselers, he thought. I didn’t know there were so many chiselers!

  Aldous Ravenholt was a pompous man, well satisfied and smug. You could have buttered bread with the crease in his trousers. His handshake was professional and he had an automatic smile. He sat down in the chair that Spencer offered him with a self-assurance that was highly irritating.

  “I came to talk with you,” he said precisely, “about the pending proposal to investigate religious origins.”

  Spencer winced mentally. It was a tender subject.

  “Dr. Ravenholt,” he said, “that is a matter I have given a great deal of attention. Not myself alone, but my entire department.”

  “That is what I’ve heard,” Ravenholt said drily. “That is why I’m here. I understand you have tentatively decided not to go ahead with it.”

  “Not tentatively,” said Spencer. “Our decision has been made. I’m curious how you heard it.”

  Ravenholt waved an airy hand, implying there was very little he did not know about. “I presume the matter still is open to discussion.”

  Spencer shook his head.

  Ravenholt said, icily, “I fail to see how you could summarily cut off an investigation so valid and so vital to all humanity.”

  “Not summarily, Dr. Ravenholt. We spent a lot of time on it. We made opinion samplings. We had an extensive check by Psych. We considered all the factors.”

  “And your findings, Mr. Spencer?”

  “First of all,” said Spencer, just a little nettled, “it would . be too time-consuming. As you know, our license specifies that we donate ten per cent of our operating time to public interest projects. This we are most meticulous in doing, although I don’t mind telling you there’s nothing that gives us greater headaches.”

  “But that ten percent…”

  “If we took up this project you are urging, doctor, we’d use up all our public interest time for several years ait least. That would mean no other programs at all.”

  “But surely you’ll concede that no other proposal could be in a greater public interest.”

  “That’s not our findings,” Spencer told him. “We took opinion samplings in every area on Earth, in all possible cross-sections. We came up with—sacrilege.”

  “You’re joking, Mr. Spencer!”

  “Not at all,” said Spencer. “Our opinion-taking showed quite conclusively that any attempt to investigate world-wide religious origins would be viewed by the general public in a sacrilegious light. You and I, perhaps, could look upon it as research. We could resolve all our questioning by saying we sought no more nor less than truth. But the people of the world—the simple, common people of every sect and faith in the entire world—do not want the truth. They are satisfied with things just as they are. They’re afraid we would upset a lot of the old, comfortable traditions. They call it sacrilege and it’s partly that, of course, but it’s likewise an instinctive defense reaction against upsetting their thinking. They have a faith to cling to. It has served them through the years and they don’t want anyone to fool around with it.”

  “I simply can’t believe it,” said Ravenholt, aghast at such blind provincialism.

  “I have the figures. I can show you.”

  Dr. Ravenholt waved his hand condescendingly and gracefully.

  “If you say you have them, I am sure you have.”

  He wasn’t taking any chances of being proven wrong.

  “Another thing,” said Spencer, “is objectivity. How do you select the men to send back to observe the facts?”

  “I am sure that we could get them. There are many men of the cloth, of every creed and faith, who would be amply qualified…”

  “Those are just the ones we would never think of sending,” said Spencer. “We need objectivity. Ideally, the kind of man we need is one who has no interest in religion, who has no formal training in it, one who is neither for it nor against it —and yet, we couldn’t use that sort of man even if we found him. For to understand what is going on, he’d have to have a rather thorough briefing on what he was to look for. Once you trained him, he’d be bound to lose his objectivity. There is something about religion that forces one to take positions on it.” —

  “Now,” said Ravenholt, “you are talking about the ideal investigative situation, not our own.”

  “Well, all right, then,” conceded Spencer. “Let’s say we decide to do a slightly sloppy job. Who do we send then? Could any Christian, I ask you, no matter how poor a Christian he might be, safely be sent back to the days that Jesus spent on Earth? How could one be sure that even mediocre Christians would do no more than observe the facts? I tell you, Dr. Ravenholt, we could not take the chance. What would happen, do you think, if we suddenly should have thirteen instead of twelve disciples? What if someone should try to rescue Jesus from the Cross? Worse yet, what if He actually were rescued? Where would Christianity be then? Would there be Christianity? Without the Crucifixion, would it ever have survived?”