Leg. Forst.
Clifford D. Simak
When it was time for the postman to have come and gone, old Clyde Packer quit working on his stamps and went into the bathroom to comb his snow-white hair and beard. It was an everlasting bother, but there was no way out of it. He’d he sure to meet some of his neighbors going down and coming back and they were a snoopy lot. He felt sure that they talked about him; not that he cared, of course. And the Widow Foshay, just across the hall, was the worst one of them all.
Before going out, he opened a drawer in the big desk in the middle of the cluttered living room, upon the top of which was piled an indescribable array of litter, and found the tiny box from Unuk al Hay. From the box he took a pinch of leaf and tucked it in his cheek.
He stood for a moment, with the drawer still open, and savored the flavorful satisfaction of the taste within his mouth – not quite like peppermint, nor like whiskey, either, but with some taste akin to both and with some other tang that belonged entirely to itself. It was nothing like another man had ever tasted and he suspected that it might be habit-forming, although PugAlNash had never informed him that it was.
Perhaps, he told himself, even if Pug should so try to inform him, he could not make it out, for the Unukian’s idea of how Earth’s language should be written, and the grammar thereof, was a wonder to behold and could only be believed by someone who had tried to decipher one of his flowery little notes.
The box, he saw, was nearly empty, and he hoped that the queer, faithful, almost wistful little correspondent would not fail him now. But there was, he told himself, no reason to believe he would; PugAlNash, in a dozen years, had not failed him yet. Regularly another tiny box of leaf arrived when the last one was quite finished, accompanied by a friendly note – and all franked with the newest stamps from Unuk.
Never a day too soon, nor a day too late, but exactly on the dot when the last of the leaf was finished. As if PugAlNash might know, by some form of intelligence quite unknown to Earth, when his friend on Earth ran out of the leaf.
A solid sort, Clyde Packer told himself. Not humanoid, naturally, but a very solid sort.
And he wondered once again what Pug might actually be like. He always had thought of him as little, but he had no idea, of course, whether he was small or large or what form his body took. Unuk was one of those planets where it was impossible for an Earthman to go, and contact and commerce with the planet had been accomplished, as was the case on so many other worlds, by an intermediary people.
And he wondered, too, what Pug did with the cigars that he sent him in exchange for the little boxes of leaf – eat them, smoke them, smell them, roll in them or rub them in his hair? If he had hair, of course.
He shook his head and closed the door and went out into the hall, being doubly sure that his door was locked behind him. He would not put it past his neighbors, especially the Widow Foshay, to sneak in behind his back.
The hall was empty and he was glad of that. He rang almost stealthily for the elevator, hoping that his luck would hold.
It didn’t.
Down the hall came the neighbor from next door. He was the loud and flashy kind, and without any encouragement at all, he’d slap one on the back.
“Good morning, Clyde!” he bellowed happily from afar.
“Good morning, Mr. Morton,” Packer replied, somewhat icily. Morton had no right to call him Clyde. No one ever called him Clyde, except sometimes his nephew, Anton Camper, called him Uncle Clyde, although he mostly called him Unk. And Tony, Packer reminded himself, was a worthless piece – always involved in some fancy scheme, always talking big, but without much to show for it. And besides, Tony was crooked – as crooked as a cat.
Like myself, Packer thought, exactly like myself. Not like the most of the rest of them these days, who measured to no more than just loud-talking boobies.
_In my day_, he told himself with fond remembrance, _I could have skinned them all and they’d never know it until I twitched their hides slick off_.
“How is the stamp business this morning?” yelled Morton, coming up and clapping Packer soundly on the back.
“I must remind you, Mr. Morton, that I am not in the stamp business,” Packer told him sharply. “I am interested in stamps and I find it most absorbing and I could highly recommend it -”
“But that is not what I meant,” explained Morton, rather taken aback “I didn’t mean you dealt in stamps…”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Packer, “to a limited extent. But not as a regular thing and certainly not as a regular business. There are certain other collectors who are aware of my connections and sometimes seek me out -”
“That’s the stuff!” boomed Morton, walloping him on the back again in sheer good fellowship. “If you have the right connections, you get along okay. That works in any line. Now, take mine, for instance…”
The elevator arrived and rescued Packer.
In the lobby, he headed for the desk.
“Good morning, Mr. Packer,” said the clerk, handing him some letters. “There is a bag for you and it runs slightly heavy. Do you want me to get someone to help you with it?”
“No, thank you,” Packer said. “I am sure that I can manage.”
The clerk hoisted the bag atop the counter and Packer seized it and let it fall to the floor. It was fairly large – it weighed, he judged, thirty pounds or so – and the shipping tag, he saw with a thrill of anticipation, was almost covered with stamps of such high denominations they quite took his breath away.
He looked at the tag and saw that his name and address were printed with painful precision, as if the Earthian alphabet was something entirely incomprehensible to the sender. The return address was a mere jumble of dots and hooks and dashes that made no sense, but seemed somewhat familiar, although Packer at the moment was unable to tell exactly what they were. The stamps, he saw, were Iota Cancri, and he had seen stamps such as them only once before in his entire life. He stood there, mentally calculating what their worth might be.
He tucked the letters under his arm and picked up the bag. It was heavier than he had expected and he wished momentarily that he had allowed the clerk to find someone to carry it for him. But he had said that he would carry it and he couldn’t very well go back and say he’d rather not. After all, he assured himself, he wasn’t quite that old and feeble yet.
He reached the elevator and let the bag down and stood facing the grillwork, waiting for the cage.
A birdlike voice sounded from behind him and he shivered at it, for he recognized the voice – it was the Widow Foshay.
“Why, Mr. Packer,” said the Widow, gushingly, “how pleasant to find you waiting here.”
He turned around. There was nothing else for it; he couldn’t just stand there, with his back to her.
“And so loaded down!” the Widow sympathized. “Here, do let me help you.”
She snatched the letters from him.
“There,” she said triumphantly, “poor man; I can carry these.”
He could willingly have choked her, but he smiled instead. It was a somewhat strained and rather ghastly smile, but he did the best he could.
“How lucky for me,” he told her, “that you came along. I’d never have made it.”
The veiled rebuke was lost on her. She kept on bubbling at him.
“I’m going to make beef broth for lunch,” she said, “and I always make too much. Could I ask you in to share it?”
“Impossible,” he told her in alarm. “I am very sorry, but this is my busy day. I have all these, you see.” And he motioned at the mail she held and the bag he clutched. He whuffled through his whiskers at her like an irate walrus, but she took no notice.
“How exciting and romantic it must be,” she gushed, “getting all these letters and bags and packages from all over the galaxy. From such strange places and from so far away. Some day you must explain to me about stamp collecting.”
“Madam,” he said a bit stiffly, “I’ve worked with stamps for more than twenty years and I’m just barely beginning to gain an understanding of what it is all about. I would not presume to explain to someone else.”