Citizen Jell
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine August 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The problem with working wonders
is they must be worked—even when
they're against all common sense!
None of his neighbors knew Mr. Jell's great problem. None of hisneighbors, in truth, knew Mr. Jell at all. He was only an odd old manwho lived alone in a little house on the riverbank. He had the usuallittle mail box, marked "E. Jell," set on a post in front of his house,but he never got any mail, and it was not long before people beganwondering where he got the money he lived on.
Not that he lived well, certainly; all he ever seemed to do was justfish, or just sit on the riverbank watching the sky, telling tallstories to small children. And none of that took any money to do.
But still, he was a little odd; people sensed that. The stories hetold all his young friends, for instance—wild, weird tales aboutspacemen and other planets—people hardly expected tales like thatfrom such an old man. Tales about cowboys and Indians they might haveunderstood, but spaceships?
So he was definitely an odd old man, but just how odd, of course, noone ever really knew. The stories he told the children, stories aboutspace travel, about weird creatures far off in the Galaxy—thosestories were all true.
Mr. Jell was, in fact, a retired spaceman.
Now that was part of Mr. Jell's problem, but it was not all of it.He had very good reasons for not telling anybody the truth abouthimself—no one except the children—and he had even more excellentreasons for not letting his own people know where he was.
The race from which Mr. Jell had sprung did not allow this sort ofthing—retirement to Earth. They were a fine, tolerant, extremelyadvanced people, and they had learned long ago to leave undevelopedraces, like the one on Earth, alone. Bitter experience had taught themthat more harm than good came out of giving scientific advances tobackward races, and often just the knowledge of their existence causedtrouble among primitive peoples.
No, Mr. Jell's race had for a long while quietly avoided contact withplanets like Earth, and if they had known Mr. Jell had violated thelaw, they would have come swiftly and taken him away—a thing Mr. Jellwould have died rather than let happen.
Mr. Jell was unhuman, yes, but other than that he was a very gentle,usual old man. He had been born and raised on a planet so overpopulatedthat it was one vast city from pole to pole. It was the kind ofplace where a man could walk under the open sky only on rooftops,where vacant lots were a mark of incredible wealth. Mr. Jell hadpassed most of his long life under unbelievably cramped and crowdedconditions—either in small spaceships or in the tiny rooms of unendingapartment buildings.
When Mr. Jell had happened across Earth on a long voyage some yearsago, he had recognized it instantly as the place of his dreams. He hadhad to plan very carefully, but when the time came for his retirement,he was able to slip away. The language of Earth was already on record;he had no trouble learning it, no trouble buying a small cottage on theriver in a lovely warm place called Florida. He settled down quietly, aretired old man of one hundred and eighty-five, looking forward to thebest days of his life.
And Earth turned ou