Read Online No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) by Clifford D. Simak - Free Book Online Page B

and dumfounded, but he said nothing back. I sure had shut him up.
    Fancy Pants’ Pa had floated up while I was telling it and he said I told the truth, for he’d been there and seen it.
    Everyone began to talk at once, but Fancy Pants’ Pa floated up a little higher and held up his hand to command attention.
    “Just a moment, if you please,” he said. “Before we get down to more serious business, I have something you must hear. As you may suspect, knowing the episode of the skunk, my family undoubtedly has a great deal to answer for in this incident.”
    A human saying things like that would sound silly and pompous, but Fancy Pants’ Pa could get away with it.
    “So,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “I now announce to you that my malefactor son, for the forthcoming thirty days, must walk upon his feet. He must not float an inch. If the punishment does not seem sufficient—”
    “It’s enough,” Pa cut in. “The boy has to learn his lesson, but there is no use being harsh with him.”
    “Now, sir,” said Nature Boy’s Pa, being very formal, “it is not necessary—”
    “I insist,” Fancy Pants’ Pa said. “I really must insist. It can be no other way.”
    “Say,” bawled the sheriff, “will someone explain to me what this is all about?”
    “Sheriff,” Pa said to him, “your understanding of this matter is of no great importance and it would take too long to explain. We have more important business we should be attending to.” He turned around a bit so he faced the crowd. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do next? It appears to me that we have some guests. And remembering that these critters are bearers of good luck, it would seem to me we should treat them as kindly as we can.”
    “Pa,” I said, tugging at his coat sleeve, “I know how we can get them over on our side. Every one of them wants a live-it set.”
    “That’s right,” spoke up Nature Boy. “All the time I was in there, they pestered me and pestered me about how to get the sets. All the time they squabbled over who would get to use Steve’s set next.”
    “You mean,” the sheriff asked, in a weak voice, “that these things can talk?”
    “Why, sure they can,” said Nature Boy. “They learn a lot more back in that world of theirs than you could ever guess.”
    “Well, now,” Pa said with a lot of satisfaction, “if that is all they want, it’s not too great a price for us to pay to get us some good luck. We’ll just buy a lot of live-it sets. We can probably get them wholesale—”
    “But if we get the live-its,” objected Butch’s Pa, “they’ll just lie around and use them and be of no help to us at all. They won’t need us any more. They’ll have all these patterns they need from the live-it sets.”
    “Well, anyhow,” said Pa, “even if that should be true, we’ll get them off our necks. They won’t pester us with this bad luck they commit.”
    “It won’t do us any good however you look at it,” declared Butch’s Pa, who had a mighty low opinion of the halflings. “They all live together. That’s the way it’s always been. They never helped an entire neighborhood, but just one man or family in the neighborhood. A whole tribe of them comes in and they give one family all the benefit. You couldn’t get them to split up and work for all of us.”
    “If you jerks would listen,” said the halfling with the live-it on his head, “I can get you straightened out.”
    It was a shock, I tell you, to hear him speak at all. He was the kind of thing you’d figure shouldn’t speak at all—just a sort of dummy. And the way he spoke and the tone he used made it even worse. It was the way Andy Carter always talked—either wild and blustering, or out of the corner of his mouth, sarcastic. After listening to Andy all these years, that poor halfling didn’t know any different.
    Everyone just stood there, staring at the halfling who had spoken, while all the other halflings were nodding their heads in such mad