The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

couldn’t get through or over and have to turn back and hunt another way. You’d lose a lot of time and time would work against you.”
    â€œHow about food?”
    â€œIf you weren’t fussy, food would be no trouble. You could find food along the way. Not the right kind. Your belly might not like it. You’d probably have dysentery. But you wouldn’t starve.”
    â€œThis swamp,” asked Alden, “where is it?”
    â€œPart in Mataloosa county. Part in Fairview. It’s a local Limbo. They all are local Limbos. There aren’t any big ones. Just a lot of little ones.”
    Alden shook his head. “I can see this swamp from the windows of my house. I never heard of a Limbo being in it.”
    â€œIt’s not advertised,” said Eric. “It’s not put on maps. It’s not something you’d hear of.”
    â€œHow many miles? How far to the edge of it?”
    â€œStraight line, maybe thirty, maybe forty. You’d not be traveling a straight line.”
    â€œAnd the perimeter is guarded.”
    â€œPatrols flying overhead. Watching for people in the swamp. They might not spot you. You’d do your best to stay under cover. But chances are they would. And they’d be waiting for you when you reached the edge.”
    â€œAnd even if they weren’t,” Kitty said, “where would you go? A monitor would catch you. Or someone would spot you and report. No one would dare to help a refugee from Limbo.”
    The tree beneath which Eric sat was a short distance from the collection of huddled huts that served as shelter for the inhabitants of Limbo.
    Someone, Alden saw, had built up the community cooking fire and a bent and ragged man was coming up from the water’s edge, carrying a morning’s catch of fish. A man was lying in the shade of one of the huts, stretched out on a pallet. Others, both men and women, sat in listless groups.
    The sun had climbed only part way up the eastern sky, but the heat was stifling. Insects buzzed shrilly in the air and high in the light blue sky birds were swinging in great and lazy circles.
    â€œDoc would let us see his maps?”
    â€œMaybe,” Eric said. “You could ask him.”
    â€œI spoke to him last night,” said Alden. “He said it was insane.”
    â€œHe is right,” said Eric.
    â€œDoc has funny notions,” Kitty said. “He doesn’t blame the robots. He says they’re just doing a job that men have set for them. It was men who made the laws. The robots do no more than carry out the laws.”
    And Doc, thought Alden, once again was right.
    Although it was hard to puzzle out the road by which man had finally come to his present situation. It was overemphasis again, perhaps, and that peculiar social blindness which came as the result of overemphasis.
    Certainly, when one thought of it, it made no particular sense. A man had a right to be ill. It was his own hard luck if he happened to be ill. It was no one’s business but his own. And yet it had been twisted into an action that was on a par with murder. As a result of a well-intentioned health crusade which had gotten out of hand, what at one time had been misfortune had now become a crime.
    Eric glanced at Alden. “Why are you so anxious to get out? It’ll do no good. Someone will find you, someone will turn you in. You’ll be brought back again.”
    â€œMaybe a gesture of defiance,” Kitty said. “Sometimes a man will do a lot to prove he isn’t licked. To show he can’t be licked.”
    â€œHow old are you?” asked Eric.
    â€œFifty four,” said Alden.
    â€œToo old,” said Eric. “I am only forty and I wouldn’t want to try it.”
    â€œIs it defiance?” Kitty asked.
    â€œNo,” Alden told her, “not that. I wish it was. But it’s not as brave as that. There is something that’s unfinished.”
    â€œAll of