Auk House Clifford D Simak.

David Latimer was lost when he found the house. He had set out for Wyalusing, a town he had only heard of but had never visited, and apparently had taken the wrong road. He had passed through two small villages, Excelsior and Navarre, and if the roadside signs were right, in another few miles he would be coming into Montfort. He hoped that someone in Montfort could set him right again.

The road was a county highway, crooked and narrow and bearing little traffic. It twisted through the rugged headlands that ran down to the coast, flanked by birch and evergreens and rarely out of reach of the muted thunder of surf pounding on giant boulders that lay tumbled on the shore.

The car was climbing a long, steep hill when he first saw the house, between the coast and road. It was a sprawling pile of brick and stone, flaunting massive twin chimneys at either end of it, sited in front of a grove of ancient birch and set so high upon the land that it seemed to float against the sky. He slowed the car, pulled over to the roadside, and stopped to have a better look at it.

A semicircular brick-paved driveway curved up to the entrance of the house.

A few huge oak trees grew on the well-kept lawn, and in their shade stood graceful stone benches that had the look of never being used.

There was, it seemed to Latimer, a pleasantly haunted look to the place - a sense of privacy, of olden dignity, a withdrawal from the world. On the front lawn, marring it, desecrating it, stood a large planted sign:

FOR RENT OR SALE. See Campbell's Realty - Half Mile Down the Road And an arrow pointing to show which way down the road.

Latimer made no move to continue down the road. He sat quietly in the car, looking at the house. The sea, he thought, was just beyond; from a second-story window at the back, one could probably see it.

It had been word of a similar retreat that had sent him seeking out Wyalusing - a place where he could spend a quiet few months at painting. A more modest place, perhaps, than this, although the description he had been given of it had been rather sketchy.

Too expensive, he thought, looking at the house; most likely more than he could afford, although with the last couple of sales he had made, he was momentarily flush. However, it might not be as expensive as he thought, he told himself, a place like this would have small attraction for most people. Too big, but for himself that would make no difference; he could camp out in a couple of rooms for the few months he would be there.

Strange, he reflected, the built-in attraction the house had for him, the instinctive, spontaneous attraction, the instant knowing that this was the sort of place he had had in mind. Not knowing until now that it was the sort of place he had in mind. Old, he told himself He put the car in gear and moved slowly out into the road, glancing back over his shoulder at the house. A half mile down the road, at the edge of what probably was Montfort, although there was no sign to say it was, on the right-hand side, a lopsided, sagging sign on an old, lopsided shack, announced Campbell's Realty. Hardly intending to do it, his mind not made up as yet, he pulled the car off the road and parked in front of the shack.

Inside, a middle-aged man dressed in slacks and turtleneck sat with his feet propped on a littered desk.

'I dropped in,' said Latimer, 'to inquire about the house down the road.

The one with the brick drive.’

'Oh, that one,' said the man. 'Well, I tell you, stranger, I can't show it to you now. I'm waiting for someone who wants to look at the Ferguson place. Tell you what, though. I could give you the key.’

'Could you give me some idea of what the rent would be?’

'Why don't you look at it first. See what you think of it. Get the feel of it. See if you'd fit into it. If you like it, we can talk. Hard place to move. Doesn't fit the needs of many people. Too big, for one thing, too old. I could get you a deal on it.’

The man took his feet off the desk, plopped them on the floor. Rummaging in a desk drawer, he came up with a key with a tag attached to it and threw it on the desk top.

'Have a look at it and then come back,' he said. 'This Ferguson business shouldn't take more than an hour or two.’

'Thank you,' said Latimer, picking up the key.

He parked the car in front of the house and went up the steps. The key worked easily in the lock and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. He came into a hall that ran from front to back, with a staircase ascending to the second floor and doors opening on either side into ground-floor rooms.

The hall was dim and cool, a place of graciousness.

When he moved along the hall, the floorboards did not creak beneath his feet as in a house this old he would have thought they might. There was no shut-up odor, no smell of damp or mildew, no sign of bats or mice.

The door to his right was open, as were all the doors that ran along the hall. He glanced into the room - a large room, with light from the westering sun flooding through the windows that stood on either side of a marble fireplace. Across the hall was a smaller room, with a fireplace in one corner. A library or a study, he thought. The larger room, undoubtedly, had been thought of, when the house was built, as a drawing room. Beyond the larger room, on the right-hand side, he found what might have been a kitchen with a large brick fireplace that had a utilitarian look to it, used, perhaps, in the olden days for cooking, and across from it a much larger room, with another marble fireplace, windows on either side of it and oblong mirrors set into the wall, an ornate chandelier hanging from the ceiling. This, he knew, had to be the dining room, the proper setting for leisurely formal dinners.

He shook his head at what he saw. It was much too grand for him, much larger, much more elegant than he had thought. If someone wanted to live as a place like this should be lived in, it would cost a fortune in furniture alone. He had told himself that during a summer's residence he could camp out in a couple of rooms, but to camp out in a place like this would be sacrilege; the house deserved a better occupant than that.

Yet, it still held its attraction. There was about it a sense of openness, of airiness, of ease. Here a man would not be cramped; he'd have room to move about. It conveyed a feeling of well-being. It was, in essence, not a living place, but a place for living.

The man had said that it had been hard to move, that to most people it had slight appeal - too large, too old - and that he could make an attractive deal on it. But, with a sinking feeling, Latimer knew that what the man had said was true. Despite its attractiveness, it was far too large. It would take too much furniture even for a summer of camping out. And yet, despite all this, the pull - almost a physical pull - toward it still hung on.

He went out the back door of the hall, emerging on a wide veranda that ran the full length of the house. Below him lay the slope of ancient birch, running down a smooth green lawn to the seashore studded by tumbled boulders that flung up white clouds of spume as the racing waves broke against them. Flocks of mewling birds hung above the surging surf like white phantoms, and beyond this, the gray-blue stretch of ocean ran to the far horizon.

This was the place, he knew, that he had hunted for - a place of freedom that would free his brush from the conventions that any painter, at times, felt crowding in upon him. Here lay that remoteness from all other things, a barrier set up against a crowding world. Not objects to paint, but a place in which to put upon his canvases that desperate crying for expression he felt within himself.

He walked down across the long stretch of lawn, among the age-striped birch, and came upon the shore. He found a boulder and sat upon it, feeling the wild exhilaration of wind and water, sky and loneliness.

The sun had set and quiet shadows crept across the land. It was time to go, he told himself, but he kept on sitting, fascinated by the delicate deepening of the dusk, the subtle color changes that came upon the water.

When he finally roused himself and started walking up the lawn, the great birch trees had assumed a ghostliness that glimmered in the twilight. He did not go back into the house, but walked around it to come out on the front.

He reached the brick driveway and started walking, remembering that he'd have to go back into the house to lock the back door off the hall.

It was not until he had almost reached the front entrance that he realized his car was gone. Confused, he stopped dead in his tracks. He had parked it there - he was sure he had. Was it possible he had parked it off the road and walked up the drive, now forgetting that he had?

He turned and started down the driveway, his shoes clicking on the bricks.

No, dammit, he told himself, I did drive up the driveway - I remember doing it. He looked back and there wasn't any car, either in front of the house or along the curve of driveway. He broke into a run, racing down the driveway toward the road. Some kids had come along and pushed it to the road - that must be the answer. A juvenile prank, the pranksters hiding somewhere, tittering to themselves as they watched him run to find it.

Although that was wrong, he thought - he had left it set on 'Park' and locked. Unless they broke a window, there was no way they could have pushed it.

The brick driveway came to an end and there wasn't any road. The lawn and driveway came down to where they ended, and at that point a forest rose up to block the way. A wild and tangled forest that was very dark and dense, great trees standing up where the road had been. To his nostrils came the damp scent of forest mold, and somewhere in the darkness of the trees, an owl began to hoot.

He swung around, to face back toward the house, and saw the lighted windows. It couldn't be, he told himself quite reasonably. There was no one in the house, no one to turn on the lights. In all likelihood, the electricity was shut off.

But the lighted windows persisted. There could be no question there were lights. Behind him, he could hear the strange rustlings of the trees and now there were two owls, answering one another.

Reluctantly, unbelievingly, he started up the driveway. There must be some sort of explanation. Perhaps, once he had the explanation, it would all seem quite simple. He might have gotten turned around somehow, as he had somehow gotten turned around earlier in the day, taking the wrong road. He might have suffered a lapse of memory, for some unknown and frightening reason have experienced a blackout. This might not be the house he had gone to look at, although, he insisted to himself, it certainly looked the same.

He came up the brick driveway and mounted the steps that ran up to the door, and while he was still on the steps, the door came open and a man in livery stepped aside to let him in.

'You are a little late, sir,' said the man. 'We had expected you some time ago. The others waited for you, but just now went in to dinner, thinking you had been unavoidably detained. Your place is waiting for you.’

Latimer hesitated.

'It is quite all right, sir,' said the man. 'Except on special occasions, we do not dress for dinner. You're all right as you are.’

The hall was lit by short candles set in sconces on the wall. Paintings also hung there, and small sofas and a few chairs were lined along the wall. From the dining room came the sound of conversation.

The butler closed the door and started down the hall. 'If you would follow me, sir.’

It was all insane, of course. It could not be happening. It was something he imagined. He was standing out there, on the bricks of the driveway, with the forest and the hooting owls behind him, imagining that he was here, in this dimly lighted hallway with the talk and laughter coming from the dining room.

'Sir,' said the butler, 'if you please.’

'But, I don't understand. This place, an hour ago...’

'The others are all waiting for you. They have been looking forward to you.

You must not keep them waiting.’

'All right, then,' said Latimer. 'I shall not keep them waiting.’

At the entrance to the dining room, the butler stood aside so that he could enter.

The others were seated at a long, elegantly appointed table. The chandelier blazed with burning tapers. Uniformed serving maids stood against one wail.

A sideboard gleamed with china and cut glass. There were bouquets of flowers upon the table.

A man dressed in a green sports shirt and a corduroy jacket rose from the table and motioned to him.

'Latimer, over here,' he said. 'You are Latimer, are you not?’

'Yes, I'm Latimer.’

'Your place is over here, between Enid and myself. We'll not bother with introductions now. We can do that later on.’

Scarcely feeling his feet making contact with the floor, moving in a mental haze, Latimer went down the table. The man who stood had remained standing, thrusting out a beefy hand. Latimer took it and the other's handshake was warm and solid.

'I'm Underwood,' he said. 'Here, sit down. Don't stand on formality. We've just started on the soup. If yours is cold, we can have another brought to you.’

'I thank you,' said Latirner. 'I'm sure it's all right.’

On the other side of him, Enid said, 'We waited for you. We knew that you were coming, but you took so long.’

'Some,' said Underwood, 'take longer than others. It's just the way it goes.’

'But I don't understand,' said Latimer. 'I don't know what's going on.’

'You will,' said Underwood. 'There's really nothing to it.’

'Eat your soup,' Enid urged. 'It is really good. We get such splendid chowder here.’

She was small and dark of hair and eyes, a strange intensity in her.

Latimer lifted the spoon and dipped it in the soup. Enid was right; it was a splendid chowder.

The man across the table said, 'I'm Charlie. We'll talk later on. We'll answer any questions.’

The woman sitting beside Charlie said, 'You see, we don't understand it, either. But it's all right. I'm Alice.’

The maids were removing some of the soup bowls and bringing on the salads.

On the sideboard the china and cut glass sparkled in the candlelight. The flowers on the table were peonies. There were, with himself, eight people seated at the table.

'You see,' said Latimer, 'I only came to look at the house.’

'That's the way,' said Underwood, 'that it happened to the rest of us. Not just recently. Years apart. Although I don't know how many years. Jonathon, down there at the table's end, that old fellow with a beard, was the first of us. The others straggled in.’

'The house,' said Enid, 'is a trap, very neatly baited. We are mice caught in a trap.’

From across the table, Alice said, 'She makes it sound SO dreadful. It's not that way at all. We are taken care of meticulously. There is a staff that cooks our food and serves it, that makes our beds, that keeps all clean and neat...’

'But who would want to trap us?’

'That,' said Underwood, 'is the question we all try to solve - except for one or two of us, who have become resigned. But, although there are several theories, there is no solution. I sometimes ask myself what difference it makes. Would we feel any better if we knew our trappers?’

A trap neatly baited, Latimer thought, and indeed it had been. There had been that instantaneous, instinctive attraction that the house had held for him - even only driving past it, the attraction had reached out for him.

The salad was excellent, and so were the steak and baked potato. The rice pudding was the best Latimer had ever eaten. In spite of himself, he found that he was enjoying the meal, the bright and witty chatter that flowed all around the table.

In the drawing room, once dinner was done, they sat in front of a fire in the great marble fireplace.

'Even in the summer,' said Enid, 'when night come on, it gets chilly here.

I'm glad it does, because I love a fire. We have a fire almost every night.’

'We?' said Latimer. 'You speak as if you were a tribe.’

'A band,' she said. 'A gang, perhaps. Fellow conspirators, although there's no conspiracy. We get along together. That's one thing that is so nice about it. We get along so well.’

The man with the beard came over to Latimer. 'My name is Jonathon,' he said. 'We were too far apart at dinner to become acquainted.’

'I am told,' said Latimer, 'that you are the one who has been here the longest.’

'I am now,' said Jonathon. 'Up until a couple of years ago, it was Peter.

Old Pete, we used to call him.’

'Used to?’

'He died,' said Enid. 'That's how come there was room for you. There is only so much room in this house, you see.’

'You mean it took two years to find someone to replace him.’

'I have a feeling,' said Jonathon, 'that we belong to a select company. I would think that you might have to possess rather rigid qualifications before you were considered.’

'That's what puzzles me,' said Latimer. 'There must be some common factor in the group. The kind of work we're in, perhaps.’

'I am sure of it,' said Jonathon. 'You are a painter, are you not?’

Latimer nodded. 'Enid is a poet,' said Jonathon, 'and a very good one. I aspire to philosophy, although I'm not too good at it. Dorothy is a novelist and Alice a musician - a pianist. Not only does she play, but she can compose as well. You haven't met Dorothy or Jane as yet.’

'No. I think I know who they are, but I haven't met them.’

'You will,' said Enid, 'before the evening's over. Our group is so small we get to know one another well.’

'Could I get a drink for you?' asked Jonathon.

'I would appreciate it. Could it be Scotch, by any chance?’

'It could be,' said Jonathon, 'anything you want. Ice or water?’

'Ice, if you would. But I feel I am imposing.’

'No one imposes here,' said Jonathon. 'We take care of one another.’

'And if you don't mind,' said Enid, 'one for me as well. You know what I want.’

As Jonathon walked away to get the drinks, Latimer said to Enid, 'I must say that you've all been kind to me. You took me in, a stranger...’

'Oh, not a stranger really. You'll never be a stranger. Don't you understand? You are one of us. There was an empty place and you've filled it. And you'll be here forever. You'll never go away.’

'You mean that no one ever leaves?’

'We try. All of us have tried. More than once for some of us. But we've never made it. Where is there to go?’

'Surely there must be someplace else. Some way to get back.’

'You don't understand,' she said. 'There is no place but here. All the rest is wilderness. You could get lost if you weren't careful. There have been times when we've had to go out and hunt down the lost ones.’

Underwood came across the room and sat down on the sofa on the other side of Enid.

'How are you two getting on?' he said.

'Very well,' said Enid. 'I was just telling David there's no way to get away from here.’

'That is fine,' said Underwood, 'but it will make no difference. There'll come a day he'll try.’

'I suppose he will,' said Enid, 'but if he understands beforehand, it will be easier.’

'The thing that rankles me,' said Latimer, 'is why. You said at the dinner table everyone tries for a solution, but no one ever finds one.’

'Not exactly that,' said Underwood. 'I said there are some theories. But the point is that there is no way for us to know which one of them is right. We may have already guessed the reason for it all, but the chances are we'll never know. Enid has the most romantic notion. She thinks we are being held by some super-race from some far point in the galaxy who want to study us. We are specimens, you understand. They cage us in what amounts to a laboratory, but do not intrude upon us. They want to observe us under natural conditions and see what makes us tick. And under these conditions, she thinks we should act as civilized as we can manage.’

'I don't know if I really think that,' said Enid, 'but it's a nice idea.

It's no crazier than some of the other explanations. Some of us have theorized that we are being given a chance to do the best work we can.

Someone is taking all economic pressure off us, placing us in a pleasant environment, and giving us all the time we need to develop whatever talents we may have. We're being subsidized.’

'But what good would that do?' asked Latimer. 'I gather we are out of touch with the world we knew. No matter what we did, who is there to know?’

'Not necessarily,' said Underwood. 'Things disappear. One of Alice's compositions and one of Dorothy's novels and a few of Enid's poems.’

'You think someone is reaching in and taking them? Being quite selective?’

'It's just a thought,' said Underwood. 'Some of the things we create do disappear. We hunt for them and we never find them.’

Jonathon came back with the drinks. 'We'll have to settle down now,' he said, 'and quiet all this chatter. Alice is about to play. Chopin, I believe she said.’

It was late when Latimer was shown to his room by Underwood, up on the third floor. 'We shifted around a bit to give this one to you,' said Underwood. 'It's the only one that has a skylight. You haven't got a straight ceiling - it's broken by the roofline - but I think you'll find it comfortable.’

'You knew that I was coming, then, apparently some time before I arrived.’

'Oh, yes, several days ago. Rumors from the staff - the staff seems to know everything. But not until late yesterday did we definitely know when you would arrive.’

After Underwood said good night, Latimer stood for a time in the center of the room. There was a skylight, as Underwood had said, positioned to supply a north light.

Standing underneath it was an easel, and stacked against the wall were blank canvases. There would be paint and brushes, he knew, and everything else that he might need. Whoever or whatever had sucked him into this place would do everything up brown; nothing would be overlooked.

It was unthinkable, he told himself, that it could have happened. Standing now, in the center of the room, he still could not believe it. He tried to work out the sequence of events that had led him to this house, the steps by which he had been lured into the trap, if trap it was - and on the face of the evidence, it had to be a trap. There had been the realtor in Boston who had told him of the house in Wyalusing. 'It's the kind of place you are looking for,' he had said. 'No near neighbors, isolated. The little village a couple of miles down the road. If you need a woman to come in a couple of times a week to keep the place in order, just ask in the village. There's bound to be someone you could hire. The place is surrounded by old fields that haven't been farmed in years and are going back to brush and thickets.

The coast is only half a mile distant. If you like to do some shooting, come fall there'll be quail and grouse. Fishing, too, if you want to do it.’

'I might drive up and have a look at it,' he had told the agent, who had then proceeded to give him the wrong directions, putting him on the road that would take him past this place. Or had he? Had he, perhaps, been his own muddleheadedness that had put him on the wrong road? Thinking about it, Latimer could not be absolutely certain. The agent had given him directions, but had they been the wrong directions? In the present situation, he knew that he had the tendency to view all prior circumstances with suspicion. Yet, certainly, there had been some psychological pressure brought, some misdirection employed to bring him to this house. It could not have been simple happenstance that had brought him here, to a house that trapped practitioners of the arts. A poet, a musician, a novelist, and a philosopher - although, come to think of it, a philosopher did not seem to exactly fit the pattern. Maybe the pattern was more apparent, he told himself, than it actually was. He still did not know the professions of Underwood, Charlie, and Jane. Maybe, once he did know, the pattern would be broken.

A bed stood in one corner of the room, a bedside table and a lamp beside it. In another corner three comfortable chairs were grouped, and along a short section of the wall stood shelves that were filled with books. On the wall beside the shelves hung a painting. It was only after staring at it for several minutes that he recognized it. It was one of his own, done several years ago.

He moved across the carpeted floor to confront the painting. It was one of those to which he had taken a special liking - one that, in fact, he had been somewhat reluctant to let go, would not have sold it if he had not stood so much in need of money.

The subject sat on the back stoop of a tumbledown house. Beside him, where he had dropped it, was a newspaper folded to the 'Help Wanted' ads. From the breast pocket of his painfully clean, but worn, work shirt an envelope stuck out, the gray envelope in which welfare checks were issued. The man's work-scarred hands, lay listlessly in his lap, the forearms resting on the thighs, which were clad in ragged denims. He had not shaved for several days and the graying whiskers lent a deathly gray cast to his face. His hair, in need of barbering, was a tangled rat's nest, and his eyes, deep-set beneath heavy, scraggly brows, held a sense of helplessness. A scrawny cat sat at one corner of the house, a broken bicycle leaned against the basement wall. The man was looking out over a backyard filled with various kinds of litter, and beyond it the open countryside, a dingy gray and brown, seared by drought and lack of care, while on the horizon was the hint of industrial chimneys, gaunt and stark, with faint wisps of smoke trailing from them.

The painting was framed in heavy gilt - not the best choice, he thought, for such a piece. The bronze title tag was there, but he did not bend to look at it. He knew what it would say:

UNEMPLOYED David Lloyd Latimer How long ago? he wondered. Five years, or was it six? A man by the name of Johnny Brown, he remembered, had been the model. Johnny was a good man and he had used him several times. Later on, when he had tried to find him, he had been unable to locate him. He had not been seen for months in his old haunts along the waterfront and no one seemed to know where he had gone.

Five years ago, six years ago - sold to put bread into his belly, although that was silly, for when did he ever paint other than for bread? And here it was. He tried to recall the purchaser, but was unable to.

There was a closet, and when he opened it, he found a row of brand-new clothes, boots and shoes lined up on the floor, hats ranged neatly on the shelf. And all of them would fit - he was sure they would. The setters and the baiters of this trap would have seen to that. In the highboy next to the bed would be underwear, shirts, sock, sweaters - the kind that he would buy.

'We are taken care of,' Enid had told him, sitting on the sofa with him before the flaring fire. There could be, he told himself, no doubt of that.

No harm was intended them. They, in fact, were coddled.

And the question: Why? Why a few hand-picked people selected from many millions?

He walked to a window and stood looking out of it. The room was in the back of the house so that he looked down across the grove of ghostly birch. The moon had risen and hung like a milk-glass globe above the dark blur of the ocean. High as he stood, he could see the whiteness of the spray breaking on the boulders.

He had to have time to think, he told himself, time to sort it out, to get straight in his mind all the things that had happened in the last few hours. There was no sense in going to bed; tense as he was, he'd never get to sleep. He could not think in this room, nor, perhaps, in the house. He had to go some place that was uncluttered. Perhaps if he went outside and walked for an hour or so, if no more than up and down the driveway, he could get himself straightened out.

The blaze in the fireplace in the drawing room was little more than a glimmer in the coals when he went past the door.

A voice called to him: 'David, is that you?’

He spun around and went back to the door. A dark figure was huddled on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

'Jonathon?' Latimer asked.

'Yes, it is. Why don't you keep me company. I'm an old night owl and, in consequence, spend many lonely hours. There's coffee on the table if you want it.’

Latimer walked to the sofa and sat down. Cups and a carafe of coffee were on the table. He poured himself a cup.

'You want a refill?' he asked Jonathon.

'If you please.' The older man held out his cup and Latimer filled it. 'I drink a sinful amount of this stuff.' said Jonathon. 'There's liquor in the cabinet. A dash of brandy in the coffee, perhaps.’

'That sounds fine,' said Latimer. He crossed the room and found the brandy, brought it back, pouring a dollop into both cups.

They settled down and looked at one another. A nearly burned log in the fireplace collapsed into a mound of coals. In the flare of its collapse, Latimer saw the face of the other man - beard beginning to turn gray, an angular yet refined face, eyebrows that were sharp exclamation points.

'You're a confused young man,' said Jonathon.

'Extremely so,' Latimer confessed. 'I keep asking all the time why and who.’

Jonathon nodded. 'Most of us still do, I suppose. It's worst when you first come here, but you never quit. You keep on asking questions. You're frustrated and depressed when there are no answers. As time goes on, you come more and more to accept the situation and do less fretting about it.

After all, life is pleasant here. All our needs are supplied, nothing is expected of us. We do much as we please. You, no doubt, have heard of Enid's theory that we are under observation by an alien race that has penned us here in order to study us.’

'Enid told me,' said Latimer, 'that she did not necessarily believe the theory, but regarded it as a nice idea, a neat and dramatic explanation of what is going on.’

'It is that, of course,' said Jonathon, 'but it doesn't stand up. How would aliens be able to employ the staff that takes such good care of us?’

'The staff worries me,' said Latimer. 'Are its members trapped here along with us?’

'No, they're not trapped,' said Jonathon. 'I'm certain they are employed, perhaps at very handsome salaries. The staff changes from time to time, one member leaving to be replaced by someone else. How this is accomplished we do not know. We've kept a sharp watch in the hope that we might learn and thus obtain a clue as to how we could get out of here, but it all comes to nothing. We try on occasions, not too obviously, to talk with the staff - but beyond normal civility, they will not talk with us. I have a sneaking suspicion, too, that there are some of us, perhaps including myself, who no longer try too hard. Once one has been here long enough to make peace with himself, the ease of our life grows upon us. It would be something we would be reluctant to part with. I can't imagine, personally, what I would do if I were turned out of here, back into the world that I have virtually forgotten. That is the vicious part of it - that our captivity is so attractive, we are inclined to fall in love with it.’

'But certainly in some cases there were people left behind - wives, husbands, children, friends. In my own case, no wife and only a few friends.’

'Strangely enough,' said Jonathon, 'where such ties existed, they were not too strong.’

'You mean only people without strong ties were picked?’

'No, I doubt that would have been the case. Perhaps among the kind of people who are here, there is no tendency to develop such strong ties.’

'Tell me what kind of people. You told me you are a philosopher and I know some of the others. What about Underwood?’

'A playwright. And a rather successful one before he came here.’

'Charlie? Jane?’

'Charlie is a cartoonist, Jane an essayist.’

'Essayist?’

'Yes, high social consciousness. She wrote rather telling articles for some of the so-called little magazines, even a few for more prestigious publications. Charlie was big in the Middle West. Worked for a small daily, hut his cartoons were widely reprinted. He was building a reputation and probably would have been moving on to more important fields.’

'Then we're not all from around here. Not all from New England.’

No. Some of us, of course. Myself and you. The others are from other parts of the country.’

'All of us from what can be roughly called the arts. And from a wide area.

How in the world would they - whoever they may be - have managed to lure all these people to this house? Because I gather we had to come ourselves, that none of us was seized and brought here.’

'I think you are right. I can't imagine how it was managed. Psychological management of some sort, I would assume, but I have no idea how it might be done.’

'You say you are a philosopher. Does that mean you taught philosophy?’

'I did at one time. But it was not a satisfactory job. Teaching those old dead philosophies to a group of youngsters who paid but slight attention was no bargain, I can tell you. Although, I shouldn't blame them, I suppose. Philosophy today is largely dead. It's primitive, outdated, the most of it. What we need is a new philosophy that will enable us to cope with the present world.’

'And you are writing such a philosophy?’

'Writing at it. I find that as time goes on, I get less and less done. I haven't the drive any longer. This life of ease, I suppose. Something's gone out of me. The anger, maybe. Maybe the loss of contact with the world I knew. No longer exposed to that world's conditions, 1 have lost the feel for it. I don't feel the need of protest, I've lost my sense of outrage, and the need for a new philosophy has become remote.’

'This business about the staff. You say that from time to time it changes.’

'It may be fairly simple to explain. I told you that we watch, but we can't have a watcher posted all the time. The staff, on the other hand, can keep track of us. Old staff members leave, others come in when we are somewhere else.’

'And supplies. They have to bring in supplies. That would not be as simple.’

Jonathon chuckled. 'You've really got your teeth in this.’

'I'm interested, dammit. There are questions about how the operation works and I want to know. How about the basement? Tunnels, maybe. Could they bring in staff and supplies through tunnels in the basement? I know that sounds cloak-and-dagger, but...’

'I suppose they could. If they did, we'd never know. The basement is used to store supplies and we're not welcome there. One of the staff, a burly brute who is a deaf-mute, or pretends to be, has charge of the basement. He lives down there, eats and sleeps down there, takes care of supplies.’

'It could be possible, then?’

'Yes,' said Jonathon. 'It could be possible.’

The fire had died down; only a few coals still blinked in the ash. In the silence that came upon them, Latimer heard the wind in the trees outside.

'One thing you don't know,' said Jonathon. 'You will find great auks down on the beach.’

'Great auks? That's impossible. They've been ...’

'Yes, I know. Extinct for more than a hundred years. Also whales. Sometimes you can sight a dozen a day. Occasionally a polar bear.’

'Then that must mean...”

Jonathon nodded. 'We are somewhere in prehistoric North America. I would guess several thousand years into the past. We hear and, occasionally, see moose. There are a number of deer, once in a while woodland caribou. The bird life, especially the wildfowl, are here in incredible numbers. Good shooting if you ever have the urge. We have guns and ammunition.’

Dawn was beginning to break when Latimer went back to his room. He was bone-tired and now he could sleep. But before going to bed he stood for a time in front of the window overlooking the birch grove and the shore. A thin log had moved off the water and everything had a faery, unrealistic cast.

Prehistoric North America, the philosopher had said, and if that was the case, there was little possibility of escape back to the world he knew.

Unless one had the secret - or the technology - one did not move in time.

Who, he wondered, could have cracked the technique of time transferral? And who, having cracked it, would use it for the ridiculous purpose of caging people in it?

There had been a man at MIT, he recalled, who had spent twenty years or more in an attempt to define time and gain some understanding of it. But that had been some years ago and he had dropped out of sight, or at least out of the news. From time to time there had been news stories (written for the most part with tongue firmly in cheek) about the study. Although, Latimer told himself, it need not have been the MIT man; there might have been other people engaged in similar studies who had escaped, quite happily, the attention of the press.

Thinking of it, he felt an excitement rising in him at the prospect of being in primitive North America, of being able to see the land as it had existed before white explorers had come - before the Norsemen or the Cabots or Cartier or any the others. Although there must be Indians about - it was funny that Jonathon had not mentioned Indians.

Without realizing that he had been doing so, he found that he had been staring at a certain birch clump. Two of the birch trees grew opposite off another, slightly behind but on opposite sides of a large boulder that he estimated at standing five feet high or so. And beyond the boulder, positioned slightly down the slope, but between the other two birch trees, was a third. It was not an unusual situation, he knew; birch trees often grew in clumps of three. There must have been some feature of the clump that had riveted his attention on it, but if that had been the case, he no longer was aware of it and it was not apparent now. Nevertheless, he remained staring at it, puzzled at what he had seen, if he had seen anything at all.

As he watched, a bird flew down from somewhere to light on the boulder. A songbird, but too far away for identification. Idly he watched the bird until it flew off the rock and disappeared.

Without bothering to undress, simply kicking off his shoes, he crossed the room to the bed and fell upon it, asleep almost before he came to rest upon it.

It was almost noon before he woke. He washed his face and combed his hair, not bothering to shave, and went stumbling down the stairs, still groggy from the befuddlement of having slept so soundly. No one else was in the house, but in the dining room a place was set and covered dishes remained upon the sideboard. He chose kidneys and scrambled eggs, poured a cup of coffee, and went back to the table. The smell of food triggered hunger, and after gobbling the plate of food, he went back for seconds and another cup of coffee.

When he went out through the rear door, there was no one in sight. The slope of birch stretched toward the coast. Off to his left, he heard two reports that sounded like shotguns. Perhaps someone out shooting duck or quail. Jonathon had said there was good hunting here.

He had to wend his way carefully through a confused tangle of boulders to reach the shore, with pebbles grating underneath his feet. A hundred yards away the inrolling breakers shattered themselves upon randomly scattered rocks, and even where he stood he felt the thin mist of spray upon his face.

Among the pebbles he saw a faint gleam and bent to see what it was. Closer to it, he saw that it was an agate - tennis-ball size, its fractured edge, wet with spray, giving off a waxy, translucent glint. He picked it up and polished it, rubbing off the clinging bits of sand, remembering how as a boy he had hunted agates in abandoned gravel pits. Just beyond the one he had picked up lay another one, and a bit to one side of it, a third.

Crouched, he hunched forward and picked up both of them. One was bigger than the first, the second slightly smaller. Crouched there, he looked at them, admiring the texture of them, feeling once again, after many years, the thrill he had felt as a boy at finding agates. When he had left home to go to college, he remembered there had been a bag full of them still cached away in one corner of the garage. He wondered what might have become of them.

A few yards down the beach, something waddled out from behind a cluster of boulders, heading for the water. A bird, it stood some thirty inches tall and had a fleeting resemblance to a penguin. The upper plumage was black, white below, a large white spot encircled its eye. Its small wings shifted as it waddled. The bill was sharp and heavy, a vicious striking weapon.

He was looking at, he knew, a great auk, a bird that up in his world had been extinct but which, a few centuries before, had been common from Cape Cod to far north in Canada. Cartier's seamen, ravenous for fresh meat as a relief from sea rations, had clubbed hundreds to death, eating some of them at once, putting what remained down in kegs with salt.

Behind the first great auk came another and then two more. Paying no attention to him, they waddled down across the pebbles to the water, into which they dived, swimming away.

Latimer remained in his crouch, staring at the birds in fascination.

Jonathon had said he would find them on the beach, but knowing he would find them and actually seeing them, were two different things. Now he was convinced, as he had not been before, of exactly where he was.

Off to his left, the guns banged occasionally, but otherwise there were no signs of the others in the house. Far out across the water, a string of ducks went scuddling close above the waves. The pebbled beach held a sense of peace - the kind of peace, he thought, that men might have known long years ago when the earth was still largely empty of humankind, when there was still room for such peace to settle in and stay.

Squatting there upon the beach, he remembered the clump of birch and now, suddenly and without thinking of it, he knew what had attracted his attention to it - an aberration of perspective that his painter's eye had caught. Knitting his brow, he tried to remember exactly what it was that had made the perspective wrong, but whatever it had been quite escaped him now.

He glimpsed another agate and went to pick it up, and a little farther down the beach he found yet another one. This, he told himself, was an unworked, unpicked rock-hunters paradise. He put the agates in his pocket and continued down the beach. Spotting other agates, he did not pick them up.

Later, at some other time, if need be, he could find hours of amusement hunting them.

When he climbed the beach and started up the slope, he saw that Jonathon was sitting in a chair on the veranda that ran across the hack of the house. He climbed up to where he sat and settled down in another chair.

'Did you see an auk?' asked Jonathon.

'I saw four of them,' said Latimer.

'There are times,' said Jonathon, 'that the beach is crowded with them.

Other times, you won't see one for days. Underwood and Charlie are off hunting woodcock. I suppose you heard them shooting. If they get back in time, we'll have woodcock for dinner. Have you ever eaten woodcock?’

'Only once. Some years ago. A friend and I went up to Nova Scotia to catch the early flight.’

'I guess that is right. Nova Scotia and a few other places now. Here I imagine you can find hunting of them wherever you can find alder swamps.’

'Where was everyone?' asked Latimer. 'When I got out of the sack and had something to eat, there was no one around.’

'The girls went out blackberrying,' said Jonathon. 'They do that often.

Gives them something to do. It's getting a little late for blackberries, but there are some around. They got back in time to have blackberry pie tonight. He smacked his lips. 'Woodcock and blackberry pie. I hope you are hungry.’

'Don't you ever think of anything but eating?’

'Lots of other things,' said Jonathon. 'Thing is, here you grab onto anything you can think about. It keeps you occupied. And I might ask you, are you feeling easier than you were last night? Got all the immediate questions answered?’

'One thing still bothers me,' said Latimer. 'I left my car parked outside the house. Someone is going to find it parked there and will wonder what has happened.’

'I think that's something you don't need to worry over,' said Jonathon.

'Whoever is engineering this business would have seen to it. I don't know, mind you, but I would guess that before morning your car was out of there and will be found, abandoned, some other place, perhaps a hundred miles away. The people we are dealing with would automatically take care of such small details. It wouldn't do to have too many incidents clustered about this house or in any other place. Your car will be found and you'll be missing and a hunt will be made for you. When you aren't found, you'll become just another one of the dozens of people who turn up missing every year.’

'Which leaves me to wonder,' said Latimer, 'how many of these missing people wind up in places such as this. It is probably this is not the only place where some of them are being trapped.’

'There is no way to know,' said Jonathon. 'People drop out for very many reasons.’

They sat silent for a time, looking out across the sweep of lawn. A squirrel went scampering down the slope. Far off, birds were calling. The distant surf was a hollow booming.

Finally, Latimer spoke. 'Last night, you told me we needed a new philosophy, that the old ones were no longer valid.’

'That I did,' said Jonathon. 'We are faced today with a managed society. We live by restrictive rules, we have been reduced to numbers - our Social Security numbers, our Internal Revenue Service numbers, the numbers on our credit cards, on our checking and savings accounts, on any number of other things. We are being dehumanized and, in most cases, willingly, because this numbers game may seem to make life easier, but most often because no one wants to bother to make a fuss about it. We have come to believe that a man who makes a fuss is antisocial. We are a flock of senseless chickens, fluttering and scurrying, cackling and squawking, but being shooed along in the way that others want us to go. The advertising agencies tell us what to buy, the public relations people tell us what to think, and even knowing this, we do not resent it. We sometimes damn the government when we work up the courage to damn anyone at all. But I am certain it is not the government we should be damning, but, rather, the world's business managers. We have seen the rise of multinational complexes that owe no loyalty to any government, that think and plan in global terms, that view the human populations as a joint labor corps - consumer group, some of which also may have investment potential. This is a threat, as I see it, against human free will and human dignity, and we need a philosophical approach that will enable us to deal with it.

'And if you should write this philosophy,' said Latimer, 'it would pose a potential threat against the managers.’

'Not at first,' said Jonathon. 'Perhaps never. But it might have some influence over the years. It might start a trend of thinking. To break the grip the managers now hold would require something like a social revolution...’

'These men, these managers you are talking about - they would be cautious men, would they not, farseeing men? They would take no chances. They'd have too much at stake to take any chances at all.’

'You aren't saying...’

'Yes, I think I am. It is, at least, a thought.’

Jonathon said, 'I have thought of it myself but rejected it because I couldn't trust myself. It follows my bias too closely. And it doesn't make sense. If there were people they wanted to get out of the way, there'd be other ways to do it.’

'Not as safely,' said Latimer. 'Here there is no way we could be found.

Dead, we would be found...’

'I wasn't thinking of killing.’

'Oh, well,' said Latimer, 'it was only a thought. Another guess.’

'There's one theory no one has told you, or I don't think they have. An experiment in sociology. Putting various groups of people together in unusual situations and measuring their reactions. Isolating them so there is no present-world influence to modify the impact of the situation.’

Latimer shook his head. 'It sounds like a lot of trouble and expense. More than the experiment would be worth.’

'I think so, too,' said Jonathon.

He rose from his chair. 'I wonder if you'd excuse me. I have the habit of stretching out for an hour or so before dinner. Sometimes I doze, other times I sleep, often I just lie there. But it is relaxing.’

'Go ahead,' said Latimer. 'We'll have plenty of time later to talk.’

For half an hour or more after Jonathon had left, he remained sitting in the chair, staring down across the lawn, but scarcely seeing it.

That idea about the managers being responsible for the situation, he told himself, made a ragged sort of sense. Managers, he thought with a smile - how easy it is to pick up someone else's lingo.

For one thing, the idea, if it worked, would be foolproof. Pick up the people you wanted out of the way and pop them into time, and after you popped them into time still keep track of them to be sure there were no slipups. And, at the same time, do them no real injustice, harm them as little as possible, keep a light load on your conscience, still be civilized.

There were two flaws, he told himself. The staff changed from time to time.

That meant they must be rotated from here back to present time and they could be a threat. Some way would have had to be worked out to be sure they never talked, and given human nature, that would be a problem. The second flaw lay in the people who were here. The philosopher, if he had remained in present time, could have been a threat. But the rest of them? What threat could a poet pose? A cartoonist, maybe, perhaps a novelist, but a musician-composer -what threat could lie in music?

On the surface of it, however, it was not as insane as it sounded if you happened not to be on the receiving end of it. The world could have been spared a lot of grief in the last few hundred years if such a plan had been operative, spotting potential troublemakers well ahead of the time they became a threat and isolating them. The hard part of such a plan - from where he sat, an apparently impossible part of it - would lie in accurately spotting the potential troublemakers before they began making trouble.

Although that, he supposed, might be possible. Given the state of the art in psychology, it might be possible.

With a start, he realized that during all this time, without consciously being aware of it, he had been staring at the birch clump. And now he remembered another thing. Just before he had stumbled off to bed, he had seen a bird light on the boulder, sit there for a time, then lift itself into the air and disappear - not fly away, but disappear. He must have known this when he saw it, but been so fogged by need of sleep that the significance of it had not made an impression. Thinking back on it, he felt sure he was not mistaken. The bird had disappeared.

He reared out of the chair and strode down the slope until he stood opposite the boulder with the two trees flanking it and the other growing close behind it. He took one of the agates out of his pocket and tossed it carefully over the boulder, aimed so that it would strike the tree behind the rock. It did not strike the tree; he could not hear it fall to the ground. One by one, he tossed all the other agates as he had tossed the first. None of them hit the tree, none fell to the ground. To make sure, he went around the tree to the right and, crouching down, crawled behind the boulder. He carefully went over the ground. There were no agates there.

Shaken, his mind a seething turmoil of mingled doubt and wonder, he went back up the hill and sat in the chair again. Thinking the situation over as calmly as he could, there seemed to be no doubt that he had found a rift of some sort in - what would you call it? - the time continuum, perhaps. And if you wriggled through the rift or threw yourself through the rift, you'd not be here. He had thrown the agates and they were no longer here; they had gone elsewhere. But where would you go? Into some other time, most likely, and the best guess would seem to be back into the time from which he had been snatched. He had come from there to here, and if there were a rift in the time continuum, it would seem to be reasonable to believe the rift would lead back into present time again. There was a chance it wouldn't, but the chance seemed small, for only two times had been involved in the interchange.

And if he did go back, what could he do? Maybe not a lot, but he damn well could try. His first move would be to disappear, to get away from the locality and lose himself. Whoever was involved in this trapping scheme would try to find him, but he would make it his business to be extremely hard to find. Then, once he had done that, he would start digging, to ferret out the managers Jonathon had mentioned, or if not them, then whoever might he behind all this.

He could not tell the others here what he suspected. Inadvertently, one of them might tip off a staff member, or worse, might try to prevent him from doing what he meant to do, having no wish to change the even tenor of the life they enjoyed here.

When Underwood and Charlie came up the hill with their guns, their hunting coats bulging with the woodcock they had bagged, he went inside with them, where the others had gathered in the drawing room for a round of before-dinner drinks.

At dinner, there was, as Jonathon had said there would be, broiled woodcock and blackberry pie, both of which were exceptionally tasty, although the pie was very full of seeds.

After dinner, they collected once again before the fire and talked of inconsequential things. Later on Alice played and again it was Chopin.

In his room, he pulled a chair over to the window and sat there, looking out at the birch clump. He waited until he could hear no one stirring about, and then two more hours after that, to make sure all were safely in their beds, if not asleep. Then he went softly down the stairs and out the back door. A half-moon lighted the lawn so that he had little trouble locating the birch clump. Now that he was there, he was assailed by doubt.

It was ridiculous to think, he told himself, what he had been thinking. He would climb up on the boulder and throw himself out toward the third tree that stood behind the boulder and he would tumble to the ground between the tree and boulder and nothing would have happened. He would trudge sheepishly up the slope again and go to bed, and after a time he would manage to forget what he had done and it would be as if he had never done it. And yet, he remembered, he had thrown the agates, and when he had looked, there had not been any agates.

He scrambled up the face of the boulder and perched cautiously on its rounded top. He put out his hands to grasp the third birch and save himself from falling. Then he launched himself toward the tree.

He fell only a short distance, but landed hard upon the ground. There had not been any birch to catch to break his fall.

A hot sun blazed down upon him. The ground beneath him was not a greasy lawn, but a sandy loam with no grass at all. There were some trees, but not any birches.

He scrambled to his feet and turned to look at the house. The hilltop stood bare; there was no house. Behind him, he could hear the booming of the surf as it battered itself to spray against the rocky coastline.

Thirty feet away, to his left, stood a massive poplar, its leaves whispering in the wind that blew off the sea. Beyond it grew a scraggly pine tree and just down the slope, a cluster of trees that he thought were willows. The ground was covered - not too thickly covered, for rain runneled soil showed through - by a growth of small ferns and other low-growing plants he could not identify.

He felt the perspiration starting from his body, running in rivulets from his armpits down his ribs - but whether from fear or sun, he did not know.

For he was afraid, stiff and aching with the fear.

In addition to the poplar and the pine, low-growing shrubs were rooted in the ground among the ferns and other ground cover. Birds flew low, from one clump of shrubbery to another, chirping as they flew. From below him, their cries muted by the pounding of the surf, other birds were squalling. Gulls, he thought, or birds like gulls.

Slowly the first impact of the fear drained from him and he was able to move. He took a cautious step and then another and then was running toward the hilltop where the house should be, but wasn't.

Ahead of him, something moved and he skidded to a halt, poised to go around whatever had moved in the patch of shrubbery. A head poked out of the patch and stared at him with unblinking eyes. The nose was blunt and scaly and farther hack the scales gave way to plates of armor. The thing mumbled at him disapprovingly and lurched forward a step or two, then halted.

It stood there, staring at him with its unblinking eyes. Its hack was covered by overlapping plates. Its front legs were bowed. It stood four feet at the shoulder. It did not seem to be threatening; rather, it was curious.

His breath caught in his throat. Once, long ago, he had seen a drawing, an artist's conception, of this tiling -not exactly like it, but very much the same. An anky, he thought - what was it? - an ankylosaurus, that was what it was, he realized, amazed that he should remember, an ankylosaurus. A creature that should have been dead for millions of years. But the caption had said six feet at the shoulder and fifteen feet long, and this one was nowhere near that big. A small one, he thought, maybe a young one, maybe a different species, perhaps a baby ankywhatever-the-hell-it-was.

Cautiously, almost on tiptoe, he walked around it, while it kept turning its head to watch him. It made no move toward him. He kept looking over his shoulder to be sure it hadn't moved. Herbivorous, he assured himself, an eater of plants - posing no danger to anything at all, equipped with armor plate to discourage the meat eaters that might slaver for its flesh. He tried hard to remember whether the caption had said it was herbivorous, but his mind, on that particular point, was blank.