s, across the table from
him.
"You?" he asked. "You are going home?"
"Why, of course," Ulysses told him. "Now that my job is nearly done. I
have got a home. Did you think I hadn't?"
"I don't know," said Enoch weakly. "I had never thought of it."
And that was it, he knew. It had not occurred to him to connect a being
such as this with a thing like home. For it was only human beings that had a
place called home.
"Some day," Ulysses said, "I shall tell you about my home. Some day you
may even visit me."
"Out among the stars," said Enoch.
"It seems strange to you now," Ulysses said. "It will take a while to
get used to the idea. But as you come to know us-all of us-you will
understand. And I hope you like us. We are not bad people, really. Not any
of the many different kinds of us."
The stars, Enoch told himself, were out there in the loneliness of
space and how far they were he could not even guess, nor what they were nor
why. Another world, he thought-no, that was wrong-many other worlds. There
were people there, perhaps many other people; a different kind of people,
probably, for every different star. And one of them sat here in this very
kitchen, waiting for the coffeepot to boil, for the ham and eggs to fry.
"But why?" he asked. "But why?"
"Because," Ulysses said, "we are a traveling people. We need a travel
station here. We want to turn this house into a station and you to keep the
station."
"This house?"
"We could not build a station, for then we'd have people asking who was
building it and what it might be for. So we are forced to use an existing
structure and change it for our needs. But inside only. We leave the outside
as it is, in appearance, that is. For there must be no questions asked.
There must be ..."
"But traveling ..."
"From star to star," Ulysses said. "Quicker than the thought of it.
Faster than a wink. There is what you would call machinery, but it is not
machinery-not the same as the machinery you think of."
"You must excuse me," Enoch said, confused. "It seems so impossible."
"You remember when the railroad came to Millville?"
"Yes, I can remember that. I was just a kid."
"Then think of it this way. This is just another railroad and the Earth
is just another town and this house will be the station for this new and
different railroad. The only difference is that no one on Earth but you will
know the railroad's here. For it will be no more than a resting and a
switching point. No one on the Earth can buy a ticket to travel on the
railroad."
Put that way, of course, it had a simple sound, but it was, Enoch
sensed, very far from simple.
"Railroad cars in space?" he asked.
"Not railroad cars," Ulysses told him. "It is something else. I do not
know how to begin to tell you ..."
"Perhaps you should pick someone else. Someone who would understand."
"There is no one on this planet who could remotely understand. No,
Enoch, we'll do with you as well as anyone. In many ways, much better than
with anyone."
"But ..."
"What is it, Enoch?"
"Nothing," Enoch said.
For he remembered now how he had been sitting on the steps thinking how
he was alone and about a new beginning, knowing that he could not escape a
new beginning, that he must start from scratch and build his life anew.
And here, supenly, was that new beginning-more wondrous and fearsome
than anything he could have dreamed even in an insane moment.
11
Enoch filed the message and sent his confirmation:
NO. 406302 RECEIVED. COFFEE ON THE FIRE. ENOCH.
Clearing the machine, he walked over to the No. 3 liquid tank he'd
prepared before he left. He checked the temperature and the level of the
solution and made certain once again that the tank was securely positioned
in relation to the materializer.
From there he went to the other materializer, the official and
emergency materializer, positioned in the corner, and checked it over
closely. It was all right, as usual. It always was all right, but before
each of Ulysses's visits he never failed to check it. There was nothing he
could have done about it had there been something wrong other than send an
urgent message to Galactic Central. In which case someone would have come in
on the regular materializer and put it into shape.
For the official and emergency materializer was exactly what its name
implied. It was used only for official visits by personnel of Galactic
Center or for possible emergencies and its operation was entirely outside
that of the local station.
Ulysses, as an inspector for this and several other stations, could
have used the official materializer at any time he wished without prior
notice. But in all the years that he had been coming to the station he had
never failed, Enoch remembered with a touch of pride, to message that he was
coming. It was, he knew, a courtesy which all the other stations on the
great galactic network might not be accorded, although there were some of
them which might be given equal treatment.
Tonight, he thought, he probably should tell Ulysses about the watch
that had been put upon the station. Perhaps he should have told him earlier,
but he had been reluctant to admit that the human race might prove to be a
problem to the galactic installation.
It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present
the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were
neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely
grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even
understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.
But if they had the chance, Enoch told himself, if they ever got a
break, if they only could be told what was out in space, then they'd get a
grip upon themselves and they would measure up and then, in the course of
time, would be admitted into the great cofraternity of the people of the
stars.
Once admitted, they would prove their worth and would pull their
weight, for they were still a young race and full of energy-at times, maybe,
too much energy.
Enoch shook his head and went across the room to sit down at his desk.
Drawing the bundle of mail in front of him, he slid it out of the string
which Winslowe had used to tie it all together.
There were the daily papers, a news weekly, two journals-Nature and
Science-and the letter.
He pushed the papers and the journals to one side and picked up the
letter. It was, he saw, an air mail sheet and was postmarked London and the
return apress bore a name that was unfamiliar to him. He puzzled as to why
an unknown person should be writing him from London. Although, he reminded
himself, anyone who wrote from London, or indeed from anywhere, would be an
unknown person. He knew no one in London nor elsewhere in the world.
He slit the air sheet open and spread it out on the desk in front of
him, pulling the desk lamp close so the light would fall upon the writing.
Dear sir [he read], I would suspect I am unknown to you. I am one of
several editors of the British journal, Nature, to which you have been a
subscriber for these many years. I do not use the journal's letterhead
because this letter is personal and unofficial and perhaps not even in the
best of taste.
You are, it may interest you to know, our eldest subscriber. We have
had you on our mailing lists for more than eighty years.
While I am aware that it is no appropriate concern of mine, I have
wondered if you, yourself, have subscribed to our publication for this
length of time, or if it might be possible that your father or someone close
to you may have been the original subscriber and you simply have allowed the
subscription to continue in his name.
My interest undoubtedly constitutes an unwarranted and inexcusable
curiosity and if you, sir, choose to ignore the query it is entirely within
your rights and proper that you do so. But if you should not mind replying,
an answer would be appreciated.
I can only say in my own defense that I have been associated for so
long with our publication that I feel a certain sense of pride that someone
has found it worth the having for more than eighty years. I doubt that many
publications can boast such long time interest on the part of any man.
May I assure, you, sir, of my utmost respect.
Sincerely yours.
And then the signature.
Enoch shoved the letter from him.
And there it was again, he told himself. Here was another watcher,
although discreet and most polite and unlikely to cause trouble.
But someone else who had taken notice, who had felt a twinge of wonder
at the same man subscribing to a magazine for more than eighty years.
As the years went on, there would be more and more. It was not only the
watchers encamped outside the station with whom he must concern himself, but
those potential others. A man could be as self-effacing as he well could
manage and still he could not hide. Soon or late the world would catch up
with him and would come crowding around his door, agog to know why he might
be hiding.
It was useless, he knew, to hope for much further time. The world was
closing in.
Why can't they leave me alone? he thought. If he only could explain how
the situation stood, they might leave him alone. But he couldn't explain to
them. And even if he could, there would be some of them who'd still come
crowding in.
Across the room the materializer beeped for attention and Enoch swung
around.
The Thuban had arrived. He was in the tank, a shadowy globular blob of
substance, and above him, riding sluggishly in the solution, was a cube of
something.
Luggage, Enoch wondered. But the message had said there would be no
luggage.
Even as he hurried across the room, the clicking came to him-the Thuban
talking to him.
"Presentation to you," said the clicking. "Deceased vegetation."
Enoch peered at the cube floating in the liquid.
"Take him," clicked the Thuban. "Bring him for you."
Fumblingly, Enoch clicked out his answer, using tapping fingers against
the glass side of the tank: "I thank you, gracious one." Wondering as he did
it, if he were using the proper form of apress to this blob of matter. A
man, he told himself, could get terribly tangled up on that particular point
of etiquette. There were some of these beings that one apressed in flowery
language (and even in those cases, the floweriness would vary) and others
that one talked with in the simplest, bluntest terms.
He reached into the tank and lifted out the cube and be saw that it was
a block of heavy wood, black as ebony and so close-grained it looked very
much like stone. He chuckled inwardly, thinking how, in listening to
Winslowe, he had grown to be an expert in the judging of artistic wood.
He put the wood upon the floor and turned back to the tank.
"Would you mind," clicked the Thuban, "revealing what you do with him?
To us, very useless stuff."
Enoch hesitated, searching desperately through his memory. What, he
wondered, was the code for "carve?"
"Well?" the Thuban asked.
"You must pardon me, gracious one. I do not use this language often. I
am not proficient."
"Drop, please, the 'gracious one.' I am a common being."
"Shape it," Enoch tapped. "Into another form. Are you a visual being?
Then I show you one."
"Not visual," said the Thuban. "Many other things, not visual."
It had been a globe when it had arrived and now it was beginning to
flatten out.
"You," the Thuban clicked, "are a biped being."
"That is what I am."
"Your planet. It is a solid planet?"
Solid? Enoch wondered. Oh, yes, solid as opposed to liquid.
"One-quarter solid," he tapped. "The rest of it is liquid."
"Mine almost all liquid. Only little solid. Very restful world."
"One thing I want to ask you," Enoch tapped.
"Ask," the creature said.
"You are a mathematician. All you folks, I mean."
"Yes," the creature said. "Excellent recreation. Occupies the mind."
"You mean you do not use it?"
"Oh, yes, once use it. But no need for use any more. Got all we need to
use, very long ago. Recreation now."
"I have heard of your system of numerical notation."
"Very different," clicked the Thuban. "Very better concept."
"You can tell me of it?"
"You know notation system used by people of Polaris VII?"
"No, I don't," tapped Enoch.
"Then no use to tell you of our own. Must know Polaris first."
So that was that, thought Enoch. He might have known. There was so much
knowledge in the galaxy and he knew so little of it, understood so little of
the little that he knew.
There were men on Earth who could make sense of it. Men who would give
anything short of their very lives to know the little that he knew, and
could put it all to use.
Out among the stars lay a massive body of knowledge, some of it an
extension of what mankind knew, some of it concerning matters which Man had
not yet suspected, and used in ways and for purposes that Man had not as yet
imagined. And never might imagine, if left on his own.
Another hundred years, thought Enoch. How much would he learn in
another hundred years? In another thousand?
"I rest now," said the Thuban. "Nice to talk with you."
12
Enoch turned from the tank and picked up the block of wood. A little
puple of liquid had drained off it and lay glistening on the floor.
He carried the block across the room to one of the windows and examined
it. It was heavy and black and close-grained and at one corner of it a bit
of bark remained. It had been sawed. Someone had cut it into a size that
would fit the tank where the Thuban rested.
He recalled an article he had read in one of the daily papers just a
day or two before in which a scientist had contended that no great
intelligence ever could develop on a liquid world.
But that scientist was wrong, for the Thuban race had so developed and
there were other liquid worlds which were members of the galactic
cofraternity. There were a lot of things, he told himself, that Man would
have to unlearn, as well as things to learn, if he ever should become aware
of the galactic culture.
The limitation of the speed of light, for one thing.
For if nothing moved faster than the speed of light, then the galactic
transport system would be impossible.
But one should not censure Man, he reminded himself, for setting the
speed of light as a basic limitation. Observations were all that Man-or
anyone, for that matter-could use as data upon which to base his premises.
And since human science had so far found nothing which consistently moved
faster than the speed of light, then the assumption must be valid that
nothing could or did consistently move faster. But valid as an assumption
only and no more than that.
For the impulse patterns which carried creatures star to star were
almost instantaneous, no matter what the distance.
He stood and thought about it and it still was hard, he admitted to
himself, for a person to believe.
Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in
another station and the materializer had built up a pattern of it-not only
of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then
the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost
instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been
used to duplicate the body and the mind and memory and the life of that
creature now lying dead many light years distant. And in the tank the new
body and the new mind and memory and life had taken almost instant form-an
entirely new being, but exactly like the old one, so that the identity
continued and the consciousness (the very thought no more than momentarily
interrupted), so that to all intent and purpose the being was the same.
There were limitations to the impulse patterns, but this had nothing to
do with speed, for the impulses could cross the entire galaxy with but
little lag in time. But under certain conditions the patterns tended to
break down and this was why there must be many stations-many thousands of
them. Clouds of dust or gas or areas of high ionization seemed to disrupt
the patterns and in those sectors of the galaxy where these conditions were
encountered, the distance jumps between the stations were considerably cut
down to keep the pattern true. There were areas that had to be detoured
because of high concentrations of the distorting gas and dust.
Enoch wondered how many dead bodies of the creature that now rested in
the tank had been left behind at other stations in the course of the journey
it was making-as this body in a few hours' time would lie dead within this
tank when the creature's pattern was sent out again, riding on the impulse
waves.
A long trail of dead, he thought, left across the stars, each to be
destroyed by a wash of acid and flushed into deep-lying tanks, but with the
creature itself going on and on until it reached its final destination to
carry out the purpose of its journey.
And those purposes, Enoch wondered-the many purposes of the many
creatures who passed through the stations scattered wide in space? There had
been certain instances when, chatting with the travelers, they had told
their purpose, but with the most of them he never learned the purpose-nor
had he any right to learn it. For he was the keeper only.
Mine host, he thought, although not every time, for there were many
creatures that had no use for hosts. But the man, at any rate, who watched
over the operation of the station and who kept it going, who made ready for
the travelers and who sent them on their way again when that time should
come. And who performed the little tasks and courtesies of which they might
stand in need.
He looked at the block of wood and thought how pleased Winslowe would
be with it. It was very seldom that one came upon a wood that was as black
or finegrained as this.
What would Winslowe think, he wondered, if he could only know that the
statuettes he carved were made of woods that had grown on unknown planets
many light years distant. Winslowe, he knew, must have wondered many times
where the wood came from and how his friend could have gotten it. But he had
never asked. And he knew as well, of course, that there was something very
strange about this man who came out to the mailbox every day to meet him.
But he had never asked that, either.
And that was friendship, Enoch told himself.
This wood, too, that he held in his hands, was another evidence of
friendship-the friendship of the stars for every humble keeper of a remote
and backwoods station stuck out in one of the spiral arms, far from the
center of the galaxy.
The word had spread, apparently, through the years and throughout
space, that this certain keeper was a collector of exotic woods-and so the
woods came in. Not only from those races he thought of as his friends, but
from total strangers, like the blob that now rested in the tank.
He put the wood down on a table top and went to the refrigerator. From
it he took a slab of aged cheese that Winslowe had bought for him several
days ago, and a small package of fruit that a traveler from Sirrah X had
brought the day before.
"Analyzed," it had told him, "and you can eat it without hurt. It will
play no trouble with your metabolism. You've had it before, perhaps? So you
haven't. I am sorry. It is most delicious. Next time, you like it, I shall
bring you more."
From the cupboard beside the refrigerator he took out a small, flat
loaf of bread, part of the ration regularly provided him by Galactic
Central. Made of a cereal unlike any known on Earth, it had a distinctly
nutty flavor with the faintest hint of some alien spice.
He put the food on what he called the kitchen table, although there was
no kitchen. Then he put the coffee maker on the stove and went back to his
desk.
The letter still lay there, spread out, and he folded it together and
put it in a drawer.
He stripped the brown folders off the papers and put them in a pile.
From the pile he selected the New York Times and moved to his favorite chair
to read.
NEW PEACE CONFERENCE AGREED UPON,
said the lead-off headline.
The crisis had been boiling for a month or more, the newest of a long
series of crises which had kept the world on edge for years. And the worst
of it, Enoch told himself, was that the most of them were manufactured
crises, with one side or the other pushing for advantage in the relentless
chess game of power politics which had been under way since the end of World
War II.
The stories in the Times bearing on the conference had a rather
desperate, almost fatalistic, ring, as if the writers of the stories, and
perhaps the diplomats and all the rest involved, knew the conference would
accomplish nothing-if, in fact, it did not serve to make the crisis deeper.
Observers in this capital [wrote one of the Times's Washington bureau
staff] are not convinced the conference will serve, in this instance, as
similar conferences sometimes have served in the past, to either delay a
showdown on the issues or to advance the prospects for a settlement. There
is scarcely concealed concern in many quarters that the conference will,
instead, fan the flames of controversy higher without, by way of
compensation, opening any avenues by which a compromise might seem possible.
A conference is popularly supposed to provide a time and place for the sober
weighing of the facts and points of arguments, but there are few who see in
the calling of this conference any indications that this may be the case.
The coffee maker was going full blast now and Enoch threw the paper
down and strode to the stove to snatch it off. From the cupboard he got a
cup and went to the table with it.
But before he began to eat, he went back to the desk and, opening a
drawer, got out his chart and spread it on the table. Once again he wondered
just how valid it might be, although in certain parts of it, at times, it
seemed to make a certain sort of sense.
He had based it on the Mizar theory of statistics and had been forced,
because of the nature of his subject, to shift some of the factors, to
substitute some values. He wondered now, for the thousandth time, if he had
made an error somewhere. Had his shifting and substitution destroyed the
validity of the system? And if so, how could he correct the errors to
restore validity?
Here the factors were, he thought: the birth rate and the total
population of the Earth, the death rate, the values of currencies, the
spread of living costs, attendance of places of worship, medical advances,
technological developments, industrial indices, the labor market, world
trade trends-and many others, including some that at first glance might not
seem too relevant: the auction price of art objects, vacation preferences
and movements, the speed of transportation, the incidence of insanity.
The statistical method developed by the mathematicians of Mizar, he
knew, would work anywhere, on anything, if applied correctly. But he had
been forced to twist it in translating an alien planet's situation to fit
the situation here on Earth-and in consequence of that twisting, did it
still apply?
He shupered as he looked at it. For if he'd made no mistake, if he'd
handled everything correctly, if his translations had done no violence to
the concept, then the Earth was headed straight for another major war, for a
holocaust of nuclear destruction.
He let loose of the corners of the chart and it rolled itself back into
a cylinder.
He reached for one of the fruits the Sirrah being had brought him and
bit into it. He rolled it on his tongue, savoring the delicacy of the taste.
It was, he decided, as good as that strange, birdlike being had guaranteed
it would be.
There had been a time, he remembered, when he had held some hope that
the chart based on the Mizar theory might show, if not a way to end all war,
at least a way to keep the peace. But the chart had never given any hint of
the road to peace. Inexorably, relentlessly, it had led the way to war.
How many other wars, he wondered, could the people of the Earth endure?
No man could say, of course, but it might be just one more. For the
weapons that would be used in the coming conflict had not as yet been
measured and there was no man who could come close to actually estimating
the results these weapons would produce.
War had been bad enough when men faced one another with their weapons
in their hands, but in any present war great payloads of destruction would
go hurtling through the skies to engulf whole cities-aimed not at military
concentrations, but at total populations.
He reached out his hand for the chart again, then pulled it back. There
was no further need of looking at it. He knew it all by heart. There was no
hope in it. He might study it and puzzle over it until the crack of doom and
it would not change a whit. There was no hope at all. The world was
thundering once again, in a blind red haze of fury and of helplessness, down
the road to war.
He went on with his eating and the fruit was even better than it had
been at first bite. "Next time," the being had said, "I will bring you
more." But it might be a long time before he came again, and he might never
come. There were many of them who passed through only once, although there
were a few who showed up every week or so-old, regular travelers who had
become close friends.
And there had been, he recalled, that little group of Hazers who, years
ago, had made arrangements for extra long stopovers at the station so they
could sit around this very table and talk the hours away, arriving laden
with hampers and with baskets of things to eat and drink, as if it were a
picnic.
But finally they had stopped their coming and it had been years since
he'd seen any one of them. And he regretted it, for they'd been the best of
companions.
He drank an extra cup of coffee, sitting idly in the chair, thinking
about those good old days when the band of Hazers came.
His ears caught the faint rustling and he glanced quickly up to see her
sitting on the sofa, dressed in the demure hoop skirts of the 1860s.
"Mary!" he said, surprised, rising to his feet.
She was smiling at him in her very special way and she was beautiful,
he thought, as no other woman ever had been beautiful.
"Mary," he said, "it's so nice to have you here."
And now, leaning on the mantelpiece, dressed in Union blue, with his
belted saber and his full black mustache, was another of his friends.
"Hello, Enoch," David Ransome said. "I hope we don't intrude."
"Never," Enoch told him. "How can two friends intrude?"
He stood beside the table and the past was with him, the good and
restful past, the rose-scented and unhaunted past that had never left him.
Somewhere in the distance was the sound of fife and drum and the jangle
of the battle harness as the boys marched off to war, with the colonel
glorious in his full-dress uniform upon the great black stallion, and the
regimental flags snapping in the stiff June breeze.
He walked across the room and over to the sofa. He made a little bow to
Mary.
"With your permission, ma'am," he said.
"Please do," she said. "If you should happen to be busy ..."
"Not at all," he said. "I was hoping you would come."
He sat down on the sofa, not too close to her, and he saw her hands
were folded, very primly, in her lap. He wanted to reach out and take her
hands in his and hold them for a moment, but he knew he couldn't.
For she wasn't really there.
"It's been almost a week," said Mary, "since I've seen you. How is your
work going, Enoch?"
He shook his head. "I still have all the problems. The watchers still
are out there. And the chart says war."
David left the mantel and came across the room. He sat down in a chair
and arranged his saber.
"War, the way they fight it these days," he declared, "would be a sorry
business. Not the way we fought it, Enoch."
"No," said Enoch, "not the way we fought it. And while a war would be
bad enough itself, there is something worse. If Earth fights another war,
our people will be barred, if not forever, at least for many centuries, from
the cofraternity of space."
"Maybe that's not so bad," said David. "We may not be ready to join the
ones in space."
"Perhaps not," Enoch admitted. "I rather doubt we are. But we could be
some day. And that day would be shoved far into the future if we fight
another war. You have to make some pretense of being civilized to join those
other races."
"Maybe," Mary said, "they might never know. About a war, I mean. They
go no place but this station."
Enoch shook his head. "They would know. I think they're watching us.
And anyhow, they would read the papers."
"The papers you subscribe to?"
"I save them for Ulysses. That pile over in the corner. He takes them
back to Galactic Central every time he comes. He's very interested in Earth,
you know, from the years he spent here. And from Galactic Central, once he'd
read them, I have a hunch they travel to the corners of the galaxy."
"Can you imagine," David asked, "what the promotion departments of
those newspapers might have to say about it if they only knew their depth of
circulation."
Enoch grinned at the thought of it.
"There's that paper down in Georgia," David said, "that covers Dixie
like the dew. They'd have to think of something that goes with galaxy."
"Glove," said Mary quickly. "Covers the galaxy like a glove. What do
you think of that?"
"Excellent," said David.
"Poor Enoch," Mary said contritely. "Here we make our jokes and Enoch
has his problems."
"Not mine to solve, of course," Enoch told her. "I'm just worried by
them. All I have to do is stay inside the station and there are no problems.
Once you close the door here, the problems of the world are securely locked
outside."
"But you can't do that."
"No, I can't," said Enoch.
"I think you may be right," said David, "in thinking that these other
races may be watching us. With an eye, perhaps, to some day inviting the
human race to join them. Otherwise, why would they have wanted to set up a
station here on Earth?"
"They're expanding the network all the time," said Enoch. "They needed
a station in this solar system to carry out their extension into this spiral
arm."
"Yes, that's true enough," said David, "but it need not have been the
Earth. They could have built a station out on Mars and used an alien for a
keeper and still have served their purpose."
"I've often thought of that," said Mary. "They wanted a station on the
Earth and an Earthman as its keeper. There must be a reason for it."
"I had hoped there was," Enoch told her, "but I'm afraid they came too
soon. It's too early for the human race. We aren't grown up. We still are
juveniles."
"It's a shame," said Mary. "We'd have so much to learn. They know so
much more than we. Their concept of religion, for example."
"I don't know," said Enoch, "whether it's actually a religion. It seems
to have few of the trappings we associate with religion. And it is not based
on faith. It doesn't have to be. It is based on knowledge. These people
know, you see."
"You mean the spiritual force."
"It is there," said Enoch, "just as surely as all the other forces that
make up the universe. There is a spiritual force, exactly as there is time
and space and gravitation and all the other factors that make up the
immaterial universe. It is there and they can establish contact with it ..."
"But don't you think," asked David, "that the human race may sense
this? They don't know it, but they sense it. And are reaching out to touch
it. They haven't got the knowledge, so they must do the best they can with
faith. And that faith goes back a far way. Back, perhaps, deep into the
prehistoric days. A crude faith, then, but a sort of faith, a grasping for
faith."
"I suppose so," Enoch said. "But it actually wasn't the spiritual force
I was thinking of. There are all the other things, the material things, the
methods, the philosophies that the human race could use. Name almost any
branch of science and there is something there for us, more than what we
have."
But his mind went back to that strange business of the spiritual force
and the even stranger machine which had been built eons ago, by means of
which the galactic people were able to establish contact with the force.
There was a name for that machine, but there was no word in the English
language which closely approximated it. "Talisman" was the closest, but
Talisman was too crude a word. Although that had been the word that Ulysses
had used when, some years ago, they had talked of it.
There were so many things, so many concepts, he thought, out in the
galaxy which could not be adequately expressed in any tongue on Earth. The
Talisman was more than a talisman and the machine which had been given the
name was more than a mere machine. Involved in it, as well as certain
mechanical concepts, was a psychic concept, perhaps some sort of psychic
energy that was unknown on Earth. That and a great deal more. He had read
some of the literature on the spiritual force and on the Talisman and had
realized, he remembered, in the reading of it, how far short he fell, how
far short the human race must fall, in an understanding of it.
The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain
types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with
certain kinds of souls?). "Sensitives" was the word he had used in his
mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he
could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed
in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most
devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it
from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the
people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force
through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian.
He found that he was shivering at the thought of it-the pure ecstasy of
reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy
and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he
thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of
existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant,
still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time.
"What is the trouble, Enoch?" Mary asked.
"Nothing," he said. "I was just thinking. I am sorry. I will pay
attention now."
"You were talking," David said, "about what we could find in the
galaxy. There was, for one thing, that strange sort of math. You were
telling us of it once and it was something ..."
"The Arcturus math, you mean," said Enoch. "I know little more than
when I told you of it. It is too involved. It is based on behavior
symbolism."
There was some doubt, he told himself, that you could even call it
math, although, by analysis, that was probably what it was. It was something
that the scientists of Earth, no doubt, could use to make possible the
engineering of the social sciences as logically and as efficiently as the
common brand of math had been used to build the gadgets of the Earth.
"And the biology of that race in Andromeda," Mary said. "The ones who
colonized all those crazy planets."
"Yes, I know. But Earth would have to mature a bit in its intellectual
and emotional outlook before we'd venture to use it as the Andromedans did.
Still, I suppose that it would have its applications."
He shupered inwardly as he thought of how the Andromedans used it. And
that, he knew, was proof that he still was a man of Earth, kin to all the
bias and the prejudice and the shibboleths of the human mind. For what the
Andromedans had done was only common sense. If you cannot colonize a planet
in your present shape, why, then you change your shape. You make yourself
into the sort of being that can live upon the planet and then you take it
over in that alien shape into which you have changed yourself. If you need
to be a worm, then you become a worm-or an insect or a shellfish or whatever
it may take. And you change not your body only, but your mind as well, into
the kind of mind that will be necessary to live upon that planet.
"There are all the drugs," said Mary, "and the medicines. The medical
knowledge that could apply to Earth. There was that little package Galactic
Central sent you."
"A packet of drugs," said Enoch, "that could cure almost every ill on
Earth. That, perhaps, hurts me most of all. To know they're up there in the
cupboard, actually on this planet, where so many people need them."
"You could mail out samples," David said, "to medical associations or
to some drug concern."
Enoch shook his bead. "I thought of that, of course. But I have the
galaxy to consider. I have an obligation to Galactic Central. They have
taken great precautions that the station not be known. There are Ulysses and
all my other alien friends. I cannot wreck their plans. I cannot play the
traitor to them. For when you think of it, Galactic Central and the work
it's doing is more important than the Earth."
"Divided loyalties," said David with slight mockery in his tone.
"That is it, exactly. There had been a time, many years ago, when I
thought of writing papers for submissions to some of the scientific
journals. Not the medical journals, naturally, for I know nothing about
medicine. The drugs are there, of course, lying on the shelf, with
directions for their use, but they are merely so many pills or powders or
ointments, or whatever they may be. But there were other things I knew of,
other things I'd learned. Not too much about them, naturally, but at least
some hints in some new directions. Enough that someone could pick them up
and go on from there. Someone who might know what to do with them."
"But look here," David said, "that wouldn't have worked out. You have
no technical nor research background, no educational record. You're not tied
up with any school or college. The journals just don't publish you unless
you can prove yourself."
"I realize that, of course. That's why I never wrote the papers. I knew
there was no use. You can't blame the journals. They must be responsible.
Their pages aren't open to just anyone. And even if they had viewed the
papers with enough respect to want to publish them, they would have had to
find out who I was. And that would have led straight back to the station."
"But even if you could have gotten away with it," David pointed out,
"you'd still not have been clear. You said a while ago you had a loyalty to
Galactic Central."
"If," said Enoch, "in this particular case I could have got away with
it, it might have been all right. If you just threw out ideas and let some
Earth scientists develop them, there'd be no harm done Galactic Central. The
main problem, of course, would be not to reveal the source."
"Even so," said David, "there'd be little you actually could tell them.
What I mean is that generally you haven't got enough to go on. So much of
this galactic knowledge is off the beaten track."
"I know," said Enoch. "The mental engineering of Mankalinen III, for
one thing. If the Earth could know of that, our people undoubtedly could
find a clue to the treatment of the neurotic and the mentally disturbed. We
could empty all the institutions and we could tear them down or use them for
something else. There'd be no need of them. But no one other than the people
out on Mankalinen Ill could ever tell us of it. I only know they are noted
for their mental engineering, but that is all I know. I haven't the faintest
inkling of what it's all about. It's something that you'd have to get from
the people out there."
"What you are really talking of," said Mary, "are all the nameless
sciences-the ones that no human has ever thought about."
"Like us, perhaps," said David.
"David!" Mary cried.
"There is no sense," said David angrily, "in pretending we are people."
"But you are," said Enoch tensely. "You are people to me. You are the
only people that I have. What is the matter, David?"
"I think," said David, "that the time has come to say what we really
are. That we are illusion. That we are created and called up. That we exist
only for one purpose, to come and talk with you, to fill in for the real
people that you cannot have."
"Mary," Enoch cried, "you don't think that way, too! You can't think
that way!"
He reached out his arms to her and then he let them drop-terrified at
the realization of what he'd been about to do. It was the first time he'd
ever tried to touch her. It was the first time, in all the years, that he
had forgotten.
"I am sorry, Mary. I should not have done that."
Her eyes were bright with tears.
"I wish you could," she said. "Oh, how I wish you could!"
"David," he said, not turning his head.
"David left," said Mary.
"He won't be back," said Enoch.
Mary shook her head.
"What is the matter, Mary? What is it all about? What have I done!"
"Nothing," Mary said, "except that you made us too much like people. So
that we became more human, until we were entirely human. No longer puppets,
no longer pretty dolls, but really actual people. I think David must resent
it-not that he is people, but that being people, he is still a shadow. It
did not matter when we were dolls or puppets, for we were not human then. We
had no human feeling."
"Mary, please," he said. "Mary, please forgive me." She leaned toward
him and her face was lighted by deep tenderness. "There is nothing to
forgive," she said. "Rather, I suppose, we should thank you for it. You
created us out of a love of us and a need of us and it is wonderful to know
that you are loved and needed."
"But I don't create you any more," Enoch pleaded. "There was a time,
long ago, I had to. But not any longer. Now you come to visit me of your own
free will."
How many years? he wondered. It must be all of fifty. And Mary had been
the first, and David had been second. Of all the others of them, they had
been the first and were the closest and the dearest.
And before that, before he'd even tried, he'd spent other years in
studying that nameless science stemming from the thaumaturgists of Alphard
XXII.
There had been a day and a state of mind when it would have been black
magic, but it was not black magic. Rather, it was the orderly manipulation
of certain natural aspects of the universe as yet quite unsuspected by the
human race. Perhaps aspects that Man never would discover. For there was
not, at least at the present moment, the necessary orientation of the
scientific mind to initiate the research that must precede discovery.
"David felt," said Mary, "that we could not go on forever, playing out
our little sedate visits. There had to be a time when we faced up to what we
really are."
"And the rest of them?"
"I am sorry, Enoch. The rest of them as well."
"But you? How about you, Mary?"
"I don't know," she said. "It is different with me. I love you very
much."
"And I ..."
"No, that's not what I mean. Don't you understand! I'm in love with
you."
He sat stricken, staring at her, and there was a great roaring in the
world, as if he were standing still and the world and time were rushing
swiftly past him.
"If it only could have stayed," she said, "the way it was at first.
Then we were glad of our existence and our emotions were so shallow and we
seemed to be so happy. Like little happy children, running in the sun. But
then we all grew up. And I think I the most of all."
She smiled at him and tears were in her eyes.
"Don't take it so hard, Enoch. We can ..."
"My dear," he said, "I've been in love with you since the first day
that I saw you. I think maybe even before that."
He reached out a hand to her, then pulled it back, remembering.
"I did not know," she said. "I should not have told you. You could live
with it until you knew I loved you, too."
He noped dumbly.
She bowed her head. "Dear God, we don't deserve this. We have done
nothing to deserve it."
She raised her head and looked at him. "If I could only touch you."
"We can go on," he said, "as we have always done. You can come to see
me any time you want. We can..."
She shook her bead. "It wouldn't work," she said. "There could neither
of us stand it."
He knew that she was right. He knew that it was done. For fifty years
she and the others had been dropping in to visit. And they'd come no more.
For the fairyland was shattered and the magic spell was broken. He'd be left
alone-more alone than ever, more alone than before he'd ever known her.
She would not come again and he could never bring himself to call her
up again, even if he could, and his shadow world and his shadow love, the
only love he'd ever really had, would be gone forever.
"Good bye, my dear," he said.
But it was too late. She was already gone.
And from far off, it seemed, he heard the moaning whistle that said a
message had come in.
13
She had said that they must face up to the kind of things they were.
And what were they? Not, what did he think they were, but what were
they, actually? What did they think themselves to be? For perhaps they knew
much better than did he.
Where had Mary gone? When she left this room, into what kind of limbo
did she disappear? Did she still exist? And if so, what kind of an existence
would it be? Would she be stored away somewhere as a little girl would store
away her doll in a box pushed back into the closet with all the other dolls?
He tried to imagine limbo and it was a nothingness, and if that were
true, a being pushed into limbo would be an existence within a
non-existence. There would be nothing-not space nor time, nor light, nor
air, no color, and no vision, just a never ending nothing that of necessity
must lie at some point outside the universe.
Mary! he cried inside himself. Mary, what have I done to you?
And the answer lay there, hard and naked.
He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had,
furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand.
And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to
make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its
consequences.
With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume
more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral
responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about
some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing.
They hated him and resented him and he did not blame them, for he'd led
them out and shown them the promised land of humanity and then had led them
back. He had given them everything that a human being had with the one
exception of that most important thing of all-the ability to exist within
the human world.
They all hated him but Mary, and for Mary it was worse than hate. For
she was condemned, by the very virtue of the humanity he had given her, to
love the monster who had created her.
Hate me, Mary, he pleaded. Hate me like the others! He had thought of
them as shadow people, but that had been just a name he'd thought up for
himself, for his own convenience, a handy label that he had tagged them with
so that he would have some way of identifying them when he thought of them.
But the label had been wrong, for they were not shadowy or ghostlike.
To the eyes they were solid and substantial, as real as any people. It was
only when you tried to touch them that they were not real-for when you tried
to touch them, there was nothing there.
A figment of his mind, he'd thought at first, but now he was not sure.
At first they'd come only when he'd called them up, using the knowledge and
the techniques that he had acquired in his study of the work done by the
thaumaturgists of Alphard XXII. But in recent years he had not called them
up. There had been no occasion to. They had anticipated him and come before
he could call them up. They sensed his need of them before he knew the need
himself. And they were there, waiting for him, to spend an hour or evening.
Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them,
perhaps at the time unconsciously, not knowing why he shaped them so, but in
recent years he'd known, although he had tried not to know, would have been
the better satisfied if he had not known. For it was a knowledge that he had
not admitted, but kept pushed back, far within his mind. But now, when all
was gone, when it no longer mattered, he finally did admit it.
David Ransome was himself, as he had dreamed himself to be, as he had
wished himself to be-but, of course, as he had never been. He was the
dashing Union officer, of not so high a rank as to be stiff and stodgy, but
a fair cut above the man of ordinary standing. He was trim and debonair and
definitely dare-devilish, loved by all the women, admired by all the men. He
was a born leader and a good fellow all at once, at home alike in the field
or drawing room.
And Mary? Funny, he thought, he had never called her anything but Mary.
There had never been a surname. She had been simply Mary.
And she was at least two women, if not more than that. She was Sally
Brown, who had lived just down the road-and how long had it been, he
wondered, since he'd thought of Sally Brown? It was strange, he knew, that
he had not thought of her, that he now was shocked by the memory of a
one-time neighbor girl named Sally Brown. For the two of them once had been
in love, or only thought, perhaps, that they had been in love. For even in
the later years, when he still remembered her, he had never been quite
certain, even through the romantic mists of time, if it had been love or no
more than the romanticism of a soldier marching off to war. It had been a
shy and fumbling, an awkward sort of love, the love of the farmer's daughter
for the next-door farmer's son. They had decided to be married when he came
home from war, but a few days after Gettysburg he had received the letter,
then more than three weeks written, which told him that Sally Brown was dead
of diphtheria. He had grieved, he now recalled, but he could not recall how
deeply, although it probably had been deeply, for to grieve long and deeply
was the fashion in those days.
So Mary very definitely was partly Sally Brown, but not entirely Sally.
She was as well that tall, stately daughter of the South, the woman he had
seen for a few moments only as he marched a dusty road in the hot Virginia
sun. There had been a mansion, one of those great plantation houses, set
back from the road, and she had been standing on the portico, beside one of
the great white pillars, watching the enemy march past. Her hair was black
and her complexion whiter than the pillar and she had stood so straight and
proud, so defiant and imperious, that he had remembered her and thought of
her and dreamed of her-although he never knew her name-through all the
dusty, sweaty, bloody days of war. Wondering as he thought and dreamed of
her if the thinking and the dreaming might be unfaithful to his Sally.
Sitting around the campfire, when the talk grew quiet, and again, rolled in
his blankets, staring at the stars, he had built up a fantasy of how, when
the war was ended, he'd go back to that Virginia house and find her. She
might be there no longer, but he still would roam the South and find her.
But he never did; he had never really meant to find her. It had been a
campfire dream.
So Mary had been both of these-she had been Sally Brown and the unknown
Virginia belle standing by the pillar to watch the troops march by. She had
been the shadow of them and perhaps of many others as yet unrealized by him,
a composite of all he had ever known or seen or admired in women. She had
been an ideal and perfection. She had been his perfect woman, created in his
mind. And now, like Sally Brown, resting in her grave; like the Virginia
belle, lost in the mists of time; like all the others who may have
contributed to his molding of her, she was gone from him.
And he had loved her, certainly, for she had been a compounding of his
loves-a cross section, as it were, of all the women he had ever loved (if he
actually had loved any) or the ones he had thought he loved, even in the
abstract.
But that she should love him was something that had never crossed his
mind. And until he knew her love for him, it had been quite possible to
nurse his love of her close inside the heart, knowing that it was a hopeless
love and impossible, but the best that he could manage.
He wondered where she might be now, where she had retreated-into the
limbo he had attempted to imagine or into some strange non-existence,
waiting all unknowing for the time she'd come to him again.
He put up his hands and lowered his head in them and sat in utter
misery and guilt, with his face cupped in his fingers.
She would never come again. He prayed she'd never come. It would be
better for the both of them if she never came.
If he only could be sure, he thought, of where she might be now. If he
only could be certain that she was in a semblance of death and untortured by
her thoughts. To believe that she was sentient was more than one could bear.
He heard the hooting of the whistle that said a message waited and he
took his head out of his hands. But he did not get up off the sofa.
Numbly his hand reached out to the coffee table that stood before the
sofa, its top covered with some of the more colorful of the gewgaws and
gimcracks that had been left as gifts by travelers.
He picked up a cube of something that might have been some strange sort
of glass or of translucent stone-he had never been able to decide which it
was, if either-and cupped it in his hands. Staring into it, he saw a tiny
picture, three-dimensional and detailed, of a faery world. It was a prettily
grotesque place set inside what might have been a forest glade surrounded by
what appeared to be flowering toadstools, and drifting down through the air,
as if it might have been a part of the air itself, came what looked for all
the world like a shower of jeweled snow, sparkling and glinting in the
violet light of a great blue sun. There were things dancing in the glade and
they looked more like flowers than animals, but they moved with a grace and
poetry that fired one's blood to watch. Then the faery place was wiped out
and there was another place-a wild and dismal place, with grim, gaunt,
beetling cliffs rearing high against a red and angry sky, while great flying
things that looked like flapping dishrags beat their way up and down the
cliffs, and there were others of them roosting, most obscenely, upon the
scraggly projections that must have been some sort of misshapen trees
growing from the very wall of rock. And from far below, from some distance
that one could only guess, came the lonesome thundering of a rushing river.
He put the cube back upon the table. He wondered what it was that one
saw within its depths. It was like turning the pages of a book, with each
page a picture of a different place, but never anything to tell where that
place might be. When he first had been given it, he had spent fascinated
hours, watching the pictures change as he held it in his hands. There had
never been a picture that looked even faintly like any other picture and
there was no end to them. One got the feeling that these were not pictures,
actually, but that one was looking at the scene itself and that at any
moment one might lose his perch upon wherever he was roosting and plunge
head first down into the place itself.
But it had finally palled upon him, for it bad been a senseless
business, gawking at a long series of places that had no identity. Senseless
to him, of course, he thought, but not senseless, certainly, to that native
of Enif V who had given it to him. It might, for all he knew, Enoch told
himself, be of great significance and a treasure of great value.
That was the way it was with so many of the things he had. Even the
ones that had given pleasure, he knew, be might be using wrongly, or, at
least, in a way that had not been intended.
But there were some-a few, perhaps-that did have a value he could
understand and appreciate, although in many instances their functions were
of little use to him. There was the tiny clock that gave the local times for
all the sectors of the galaxy, and while it might be intriguing, and even
essential under certain circumstances, it had little value to him. And there
was the perfume mixer, which was as close as he could come in naming it,
which allowed a person to create the specific scent desired. Just get the
mixture that one wanted and turn it on and the room took on that scent until
one should turn it off. He'd had some fun with it, remembering that bitter
winter day when, after long experimenting, he had achieved the scent of
apple blossoms, and had lived a day in spring while a blizzard howled
outside.
He reached out and picked up another piece-a beautiful thing that
always had intrigued him, but for which he had never found a use-if, indeed,
it had a use. It might be, he told himself, no more than a piece of art, a
pretty thing that was meant to look at only. But it had a certain feel (if
that were the word) which had led him to believe that it might have some
specific function.
It was a pyramid of spheres, succeeding smaller spheres set on larger
spheres. Some fourteen inches tall, it was a graceful piece, with each of
the spheres a different color-and not just a color painted on, but each
color so deep and true that one knew instinctively the color was intrinsic
to each sphere, that the entire sphere, from the center of it out to the
surface, was all of its particular color.
There was nothing to indicate that any gluelike medium had been used to
mount the spheres and hold them in their places. It looked for all the world
as if someone had simply piled the spheres, one atop the other, and they had
stayed that way.
Holding it in his hands, he tried to recall who had given it to him,
but he had no memory of it.
The whistle of the message machine still was calling and there was work
to do. He could not sit here, he told himself, mooning the afternoon away.
He put the pyramid of spheres back on the table top, and rising, went across
the room.
The message said:
NO. 406,302 TO STATION 18327. NATIVE OF VEGA XXI ARRIVING AT 16532.82.
DEPARTURE INDETERMINATE. NO LUGGAGE. CABINET ONLY, LOCAL CONDITIONS.
CONFIRM.
Enoch felt a glow of happiness, looking at the message. It would be
good to have a Hazer once again. It had been a month or more since one had
passed through the station.
He could remember back to that first day he had ever met a Hazer, when
the five of them had come. It must have been, he thought, back in 1914 or
maybe 1915. World War I, which everyone then was calling the Great War, was
under way, he knew.
The Hazer would be arriving at about the same time as Ulysses and the
three of them could spend a pleasant evening. It was not too often that two
good friends ever visited here at once.
He stood a bit aghast at thinking of the Hazer as a friend, for more
than likely the being itself was one he had never met. But that made little
difference, for a Hazer, any Hazer, would turn out to be a friend.
He got the cabinet in position beneath a materializer unit and
double-checked to be sure that everything was exactly as it should be, then
went back to the message machine and sent off the confirmation.
And all the time his memory kept on nagging at him. Had it been 1914,
or perhaps a little later?
At the catalogue cabinet, he pulled out a drawer and found Vega XXI and
the first date listed was July 12, 1915. He found the record book on the
shelf and pulled it out and brought it to the desk. He leafed through it
rapidly until he found the date.
14
July 12, 1915-Arrived this afternoon (3:20 P.M.) five beings from Vega
XXI, the first of their kind to pass through this station. They are biped
and humanoid, and one gains the impression that they are not made of
flesh-that flesh would be too gross for the kind of things they are-but, of
course, they are made of flesh the same as anyone. They glow, not with a
visible light, but there is about them an aura that goes with them wherever
they may be.
They were, I gathered, a sexual unit, the five of them, although I am
not so certain I understand, for it is most confusing. They were happy and
friendly and they carried with them an air of faint amusement, not at
anything in particular, but at the universe itself, as if they might have
enjoyed some sort of cosmic and very private joke that was known to no one
else. They were on a holiday and were en route to a festival (although that
may not be the precise word for it) on another planet, where other life
forms were gathering for a week of carnival. Just how they had been invited
or why they had been invited I was unable to determine. It must surely have
been a great honor for them to be going there, but so far as I could see
they did not seem to think so, but took it as their right. They were very
happy and without a care and extremely self-assured and poised, but thinking
back on it, I would suppose that they are always that way. I found myself
just a little envious at not being able to be as carefree and gay as they
were, and trying to imagine how fresh life and the universe must seem to
them, and a little resentful that they could be, so unthinkingly, as happy
as they were.
I had, according to instructions, hung hammocks so that they could
rest, but they did not use them. They brought with them hampers that were
filled with food and drink and sat down at my table and began to talk and
feast. They asked me to sit with them and they chose two dishes and a
bottle, which they assured me would be safe for me to eat and drink, the
rest of their fare being somewhat doubtful for a metabolism such as mine.
The food was delicious and of a kind I had never tasted-one dish being
rather like the rarest and most delicate of old cheeses, and the other of a
sweetness that was heavenly. The drink was somewhat like the finest of
brandies, yellow in color and no heavier than water.
They asked me about myself and about my planet and they were courteous
and seemed genuinely interested and they were quick of understanding in the
things I told them. They told me they were headed for a planet the name of
which I had not heard before, and they talked among themselves, gaily and
happily, but in such a way that I did not seem to be left out. From their
talk I gained the fact that some form of art was being presented at the
festival on this planet. The art form was not alone of music or painting,
but was composed of sound and color and emotion and form and other qualities
for which there seem to be no words in the language of the Earth, and which
I do not entirely recognize, only gaining the very faintest inkling of what
they were talking of in this particular regard. I gained the impression of a
three-dimensional symphony, although this is not entirely the right
expression, which had been composed, not by a single being, but by a team of
beings. They talked of the art form enthusiastically and I seemed to
understand that it would last for not only several hours, but for days, and
that it was an experience rather than a listening or seeing and that the
spectators or audience did not merely sit and listen, but could, if they
wished, and must, to get the most out of it, be participants. But I could
not understand how they participated and felt I should not ask. They talked
of the people they would meet and when they had met them last and gossiped
considerably about them, although in kindly fashion, leaving the impression
that they and many other people went from planet to planet for some happy
purpose. But whether there was any purpose other than enjoyment in their
going, I could not determine. I gathered that there might be.
They spoke of other festivals and not all of them were concerned with
the one art form, but with other more specialized aspects of the arts, of
which I could gain no adequate idea. They seemed to find a great and
exuberant happiness in the festivals and it seemed to me that some certain
significances aside from the art itself contributed to that happiness. I did
not join in this part of their conversation, for, frankly, there was no
opportunity. I would have liked to ask some questions, but I had no chance.
I suppose that if I had, my questions must have sounded stupid to them, but
given the chance, that would not have bothered me too much. And yet in spite
of this, they managed somehow to make me feel I was included in their
conversation. There was no obvious attempt to do this, and yet they made me
feel I was one with them and not simply a station keeper they would spend a
short time with. At times they spoke briefly in the language of their
planet, which is one of the most beautiful I have ever heard, but for the
most part they conversed in the vernacular used by a number of the humanoid
races, a sort of pidgin language made up for convenience, and I suspect that
this was done out of courtesy to me, and a great courtesy it was. I believe
that they were truly the most civilized people I have ever met.
I have said they glowed and I think by that I mean they glowed in
spirit. It seemed that they were accompanied, somehow, by a sparkling golden
haze that made happy everything it touched-almost as if they moved in some
special world that no one else had found. Sitting at the table with them, I
seemed to be included in this golden haze and I felt strange, quiet, deep
currents of happiness flowing in my veins. I wondered by what route they and
their world had arrived at this golden state and if my world could, in some
distant time, attain it.
But back of this happiness was a great vitality, the bubbling
effervescent spirit with an inner core of strength and a love of living that
seemed to fill every pore of them and every instant of their time.
They had only two hours' time and it passed so swiftly that I had to
finally warn them it was time to go. Before they left, they placed two
packages on the table and said they were for me and thanked me for my table
(what a strange way for them to put it) then they said good bye and stepped
into the cabinet (extra-large one) and I sent them on their way. Even after
they were gone, the golden haze seemed to linger in the room and it was
hours before all of it was gone. I wished that I might have gone with them
to that other planet and its festival.
One of the packages they left contained a dozen bottles of the
brandy-like liquor and the bottles themselves were each a piece of art, no
two of them alike, being formed of what I am convinced is diamond, but
whether fabricated diamond or carved from some great stones, I have no idea.
At any rate, I would estimate that each of them is priceless, and each
carved in a disturbing variety of symbolisms, each of which, however, has a
special beauty of its own. And in the other box was a-well, I suppose that,
for lack of other name, you might call it a music box. The box itself is
ivory, old yellow ivory that is as smooth as satin, and covered by a mass of
diagrammatic carving which must have some significance which I do not
understand. On the top of it is a circle set inside a graduated scale and
when I turned the circle to the first graduation there was music and through
all the room an interplay of many-colored light, as if the entire room was
filled with different kinds of color, and through it all a far-off
suggestion of that golden haze. And from the box came, too, perfumes that
filled the room, and feeling, emotion-whatever one may call it-but something
that took hold of one and made one sad or happy or whatever might go with
the music and the color and perfume. Out of that box came a world in which
one lived out the composition or whatever it might be-living it with all
that one had in him, all the emotion and belief and intellect of which one
is capable. And here, I am quite certain, was a recording of that art form
of which they had been talking. And not one composition alone, but 206 of
them, for that is the number of the graduation marks and for each mark there
is a separate composition. In the days to come I shall play them all and
make notes upon each of them and assign them names, perhaps, according to
their characteristics, and from them, perhaps, can gain some knowledge as
well as entertainment.
15
The twelve diamond bottles, empty long ago, stood in a sparkling row
upon the fireplace mantel. The music box, as one of his choicest
possessions, was stored inside one of the cabinets, where no harm could come
to it. And Enoch thought rather ruefully, in all these years, despite
regular use of it, he had not as yet played through the entire list of
compositions. There were so many of the early ones that begged for a
replaying that he was not a great deal more than halfway through the
graduated markings.
The Hazers had come back, the five of them, time and time again, for it
seemed that they found in this station, perhaps even in the man who operated
it, some quality that pleased them. They had helped him learn the Vegan
language and had brought him scrolls of Vegan literature and many other
things, and had been, without any doubt, the best friends among the aliens
(other than Ulysses) that he had ever had. Then one day they came no more
and he wondered why, asking after them when other Hazers showed up at the
station. But he had never learned what had happened to them.
He knew far more now about the Hazers and their art forms, their
traditions and their customs and their history, than he'd known that first
day he'd written of them, back in 1915. But he still was far from grasping
many of the concepts that were commonplace with them.
There had been many of them since that day in 1915 and there was one he
remembered in particular-the old, wise one, the philosopher, who had died on
the floor beside the sofa.
They had been sitting on the sofa, talking, and he even could remember
the subject of their talk. The old one had been telling of the perverse code
of ethics, at once irrational and comic, which had been built up by that
curious race of social vegetables he had encountered on one of his visits to
an off-track planet on the other side of the galactic rim. The old Hazer had
a drink or two beneath his belt and he was in splendid form, relating
incident after incident with enthusiastic gusto.
Supenly, in mid-sentence, he had stopped his talking, and had slumped
quietly forward. Enoch, startled, reached for him, but before he could lay a
hand upon him, the old alien had slid slowly to the floor.
The golden haze had faded from his body and slowly flickered out and
the body lay there, angular and bony and obscene, a terribly alien thing
there upon the floor, a thing that was at once pitiful and monstrous. More
monstrous, it seemed to Enoch, than anything in alien form he had ever seen
before.
In life it had been a wondrous creature, but now, in death, it was an
old bag of hideous bones with a scaly parchment stretched to hold the bones
together. It was the golden haze, Enoch told himself, gulping, in something
near to horror, that had made the Hazer seem so wondrous and so beautiful,
so vital, so alive and quick, so filled with dignity. The golden haze was
the life of them and when the haze was gone, they became mere repulsive
horrors that one gagged to look upon.
Could it be, he wondered, that the goldenness was the Hazers' life
force and that they wore it like a cloak, as a sort of over-all disguise?
Did they wear that life force on the outside of them while all other
creatures wore it on the inside?
A piteous little wind was lamenting in the gingerbread high up in the
gables and through the windows he could see battalions of tattered clouds
fleeing in ragged retreat across the moon, which had climbed halfway up the
eastern sky.
There was a coldness and a loneliness in the station-a far-reaching
loneliness that stretched out and out, farther than mere Earth loneliness
could go.
Enoch turned from the body and walked stiffly across the room to the
message machine. He put in a call for a connection direct with Galactic
Central, then stood waiting, gripping the sides of the machine with both his
hands.
GO AHEAD, said Galactic Central.
Briefly, as objectively as he was able, Enoch reported what had
happened.
There was no hesitation and there were no questions from the other end.
Just the simple directions (as if this was something that happened all the
time) of how the situation should be handled. The Vegan must remain upon the
planet of its death, its body to be disposed of according to the local
customs obtaining on that planet. For that was the Vegan law, and, likewise,
a point of honor. A Vegan, when he fell, must stay where he fell, and that
place became, forever, a part of Vega XXI. There were such places, said
Galactic Central, all through the galaxy.
THE CUSTOM HERE [typed Enoch] IS TO INTER THE DEAD.
THEN INTER THE VEGAN.
WE READ A VERSE OR TWO FROM OUR HOLY BOOK.
READ ONE FOR THE VEGAN, THEN. YOU CAN DO ALL THIS?
YES. BUT WE USUALLY HAVE IT DONE BY A PRACTITIONER OF RELIGION. UNDER
THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES, HOWEVER, THAT MIGHT BE UNWISE.
AGREED [said Galactic Central] YOU CAN DO AS WELL YOURSELF?
I CAN.
IT IS BEST, THEN, THAT YOU DO.
WILL THERE BE RELATIVES OR FRIENDS ARRIVING FOR THE RITES?
NO.
YOU WILL NOTIFY THEM?
FORMALLY, OF COURSE. BUT THEY ALREADY KNOW.
HE ONLY DIED A MOMENT OR TWO AGO.
NEVERTHELESS, THEY KNOW.
WHAT ABOUT A DEATH CERTIFICATE?
NONE IS NEEDED. THEY KNOW OF WHAT HE DIED.
HIS LUGGAGE? THERE IS A TRUNK.
KEEP IT. IT IS YOURS. IT IS A TOKEN FOR THE SERVICES YOU PERFORM FOR
THE HONORED DEAD. THAT ALSO IS THE LAW.
BUT THERE MAY BE IMPORTANT MATTERS IN IT.
YOU WILL KEEP THE TRUNK. TO REFUSE WOULD INSULT THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD.
ANYTHING ELSE? [asked Enoch] THAT IS ALL?
THAT IS ALL. PROCEED AS IF THE VEGAN WERE ONE OF YOUR OWN.
Enoch cleared the machine and went back across the room. He stood above
the Hazer, getting up his nerve to bend and lift the body to place it on the
sofa. He shrank from touching it. It was so unclean and terrible, such a
travesty on the shining creature that had sat there talking with him.
Since he met the Hazers he had loved them and admired them, had looked
forward to each visit by them-by any one of them. And now he stood, a
shivering coward who could not touch one dead.
It was not the horror only, for in his years as keeper of the station,
he had seen much of pure visual horror as portrayed in alien bodies. And yet
he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward
appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as
people.
It was something else, he knew, some other unknown factor quite apart
from horror, that he felt. And yet this thing, he reminded himself, was a
friend of his. And as a dead friend, it demanded honor from him, it demanded
love and care.
Blindly he drove himself to the task. He stooped and lifted it. It had
almost no weight at all, as ii in death it had lost a dimension of itself,
had somehow become a smaller thing and less significant. Could it be, he
wondered, that the golden haze might have a weight all of its own?
He laid the body on the sofa and straightened it as best he could. Then
he went outside and, lighting the lantern in the shed, went down to the
barn.
It had been years since he had been there, but nothing much had
changed. Protected by a tight roof from the weather, it had stayed snug and
dry. There were cobwebs hanging from the beams and dust was everywhere.
Straggling clumps of ancient hay, stored in the mow above, hung down through
the cracks in the boards that floored the mow. The place had a dry, sweet,
dusty smell about it, all the odors of animals and manure long gone.
Enoch hung the lantern on the peg behind the row of stanchions and
climbed the laper to the mow. Working in the dark, for he dared not bring
the lantern into this dust heap of dried-out hay, he found the pile of oaken
boards far beneath the eaves.
Here, he remembered, underneath these slanting eaves, had been a
pretended cave in which, as a boy, he had spent many happy rainy days when
he could not be outdoors. He had been Robinson Crusoe in his desert island
cave, or some now nameless outlaw hiding from a posse, or a man holed up
against the threat of scalp-hunting Indians. He had had a gun, a wooden gun
that he had sawed out of a board, working it down later with draw-shave and
knife and a piece of glass to scrape it smooth. It had been something he had
cherished through all his boyhood days-until that day, when he had been
twelve, that his father, returning home from a trip to town, had handed him
a rifle for his very own.
He explored the stack of boards in the dark, determining by the feel
the ones that he would need. These he carried to the laper and carefully
slid down to the floor below.
Climbing down the laper, he went up the short flight of stairs to the
granary, where the tools were stored. He opened the lid of the great tool
chest and found that it was filled with long deserted mice nests. Pulling
out handfulls of the straw and hay and grass that the rodents had used to
set up their one-time housekeeping, he uncovered the tools. The shine had
gone from them, their surface grayed by the soft patina that came from long
disuse, but there was no rust upon them and the cutting edges still retained
their sharpness.
Selecting the tools he needed, he went back to the lower part of the
barn and fell to work. A century ago, he thought, he had done as he was
doing now, working by lantern light to construct a coffin. And that time it
had been his father lying in the house.
The oaken boards were dry and hard, but the tools still were in shape
to handle them. He sawed and planed and hammered and there was the smell of
sawdust. The barn was snug and silent, the depth of hay standing in the mow
drowning out the noise of the complaining wind outside.
He finished the coffin and it was heavier than he had figured, so he
found the old wheelbarrow, leaning against the wall back of the stalls that
once had been used for horses, and loaded the coffin on it. Laboriously,
stopping often to rest, he wheeled it down to the little cemetery inside the
apple orchard.
And here, beside his father's grave, he dug another grave, having
brought a shovel and a pickax with him. He did not dig it as deep as he
would have liked to dig, not the full six feet that was decreed by custom,
for he knew that if he dug it that deep he never would be able to get the
coffin in. So he dug it slightly less than four, laboring in the light of
the lantern, set atop the mound of dirt to cast its feeble glow. An owl came
up from the woods and sat for a while, unseen, somewhere in the orchard,
muttering and gurgling in between its hoots. The moon sank toward the west
and the ragged clouds thinned out to let the stars shine through.
Finally it was finished, with the grave completed and the casket in the
grave and the lantern flickering, the kerosene almost gone, and the chimney
blacked from the angle at which the lantern had been canted.
Back at the station, Enoch hunted up a sheet in which to wrap the body.
He put a Bible in his pocket and picked up the shrouded Vegan and, in the
first faint light that preceded dawn, marched down to the apple orchard. He
put the Vegan in the coffin and nailed shut the lid, then climbed from the
grave.
Standing on the edge of it, he took the Bible from his pocket and found
the place he wanted. He read aloud, scarcely needing to strain his eyes in
the dim light to follow the text, for it was from a chapter that he had read
many times:
In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have
told you...
Thinking, as he read it, how appropriate it was; how there must need be
many mansions in which to house all the souls in the galaxy-and of all the
other galaxies that stretched, perhaps interminably, through space. Although
if there were understanding, one might be enough.
He finished reading and recited the burial service, from memory, as
best he could, not being absolutely sure of all the words. But sure enough,
he told himself, to make sense out of it. Then he shoveled in the dirt.
The stars and moon were gone and the wind had died. In the quietness of
the morning, the eastern sky was pearly pink.
Enoch stood beside the grave, with the shovel in his hand.
"Good bye, my friend," he said.
Then he turned and, in the first flush of the morning, went back to the
station.
16
Enoch got up from his desk and carried the record book back to the
shelf and slid it into place.
He turned around and stood hesitantly.
There were things that he should do. He should read his papers. He
should be writing up his journal. There were a couple of papers in the
latest issues of the Journal of Geophysical Research that he should be
looking at.
But he didn't feel like doing any of them. There was too much to think
about, too much to worry over, too much to mourn.
The watchers still were out there. He had lost his shadow people. And
the world was edging in toward war.
Although, perhaps, he should not be worrying about what happened to the
world. He could renounce the world, could resign from the human race any
time he wished. If he never went outside, if he never opened up the door,
then it would make no difference to him what the world might do or what
might happen to it. For he had a world. He had a greater world than anyone
outside this station had ever dreamed about. He did not need the Earth.
But even as be thought it, he knew he could not make it stick. For, in
a very strange and funny way, he still did need the Earth.
He walked over to the door and spoke the phrase and the door came open.
He walked into the shed and it closed behind him.
He went around the corner of the house and sat down on the steps that
led up to the porch.
This, he thought, was where it all had started. He had been sitting
here that summer day of long ago when the stars had reached out across vast
gulfs of space and put the finger on him.
The sun was far down the sky toward the west and soon it would be
evening. Already the heat of the day was falling off, with a faint, cool
breeze creeping up out of the hollow that ran down to the river valley. Down
across the field, at the edge of the woods, crows were wheeling in the sky
and cawing.
It would be hard to shut the door, he knew, and keep it shut. Hard
never to feel the sun or wind again, to never know the smell of the changing
seasons as they came across the Earth. Man, he told himself, was not ready
for that. He had not as yet become so totally a creature of his own created
environment that he could divorce entirely the physical characteristics of
his native planet. He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.
He should do this oftener, Enoch thought, come out here and sit, doing
nothing, just looking, seeing the trees and the river to the west and the
blue of the Iowa hills across the Mississippi, watching the crows wheeling
in the skies and the pigeons strutting on the ridgepole of the barn.
It would be worth while each day to do it, for what was another hour of
aging? He did not need to save his hours-not now he didn't. There might come
a time when he'd become very jealous of them and when that day came, he
could hoard the hours and minutes, even the seconds, in as miserly a fashion
as he could manage.
He heard the sound of the running feet as they came around the farther
corner of the house, a stumbling, exhausted running, as if the one who ran
might have come a far way.
He leapt to his feet and strode out into the yard to see who it might
be and the runner came stumbling toward him, with her arms outstretched. He
put out an arm and caught her as she came close to him, holding her close
against him so she would not fall.
"Lucy!" he cried. "Lucy! What has happened, child?"
His hands against her back were warm and sticky and he took one of them
away to see that it was smeared with blood. The back of her dress, he saw,
was soaked and dark.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her away from him so he
could see her face. It was wet with crying and there was terror in the
face-and pleading with the terror.
She pulled away from him and turned around. Her hands came up and
slipped her dress off her shoulders and let it slide halfway down her back.
The flesh of the shoulders were ribboned by long slashes that still were
oozing blood.
She pulled the dress up again and turned to face him. She made a
pleading gesture and pointed backward down the hill, in the direction of the
field that ran down to the woods.
There was motion down there, someone coming through the woods, almost
at the edge of the old deserted field.
She must have seen it, too, for she came close against him, shivering,
seeking his protection.
He bent and lifted her in his arms and ran for the shed. He spoke the
phrase and the door came open and he stepped into the station. Behind him he
heard the door go sliding shut.
Once inside, he stood there, with Lucy Fisher cradled in his arms, and
knew that what he'd done had been a great mistake-that it was something
that, in a sober moment, he never would have done, that if he'd given it a
second thought, he would not have done it.
But he had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had
asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever
could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than
himself, should have ever crossed the threshold.
But it was done and there was no way to change it. Once across the
threshold, there was no way to change it.
He carried her across the room and put her on the sofa, then stepped
back. She sat there, looking up at him, smiling very faintly, as if she did
not know if she were allowed to smile in a place like this. She lifted a
hand and tried to brush away the tears that were upon her cheeks.
She looked quickly around the room and her mouth made an O of wonder.
He squatted down and patted the sofa and shook a finger at her, hoping
that she might understand that he meant she should stay there, that she must
go nowhere else. He swept an arm in a motion to take in all the remainder of
the station and shook his head as sternly as he could.
She watched him, fascinated, then she smiled and noped, as if she might
have understood.
He reached out and took one of her hands in his own, and holding it,
patted it as gently as he could, trying to reassure her, to make her
understand that everything was all right if she only stayed exactly where
she was.
She was smiling now, not wondering, apparently, if there were any
reason that she should not smile.
She reached out her free hand and made a little fluttering gesture
toward the coffee table, with its load of alien gadgets.
He noped and she picked up one of them, turning it admiringly in her
hand.
He got to his feet and went to the wall to take down the rifle.
Then he went outside to face whatever had been pursuing her.
17
Two men were coming up the field toward the house and Enoch saw that
one of them was Hank Fisher, Lucy's father. He had met the man, rather
briefly, several years ago, on one of his walks. Hank had explained, rather
sheepishly and when no explanation had been necessary, that he was hunting
for a cow which had strayed away. But from his furtive manner, Enoch had
deduced that his errand, rather than the hunting of a cow, had been somewhat
on the shady side, although he could not imagine what it might have been.
The other man was younger. No more, perhaps, than sixteen or seventeen.
More than likely, Enoch told himself, he was one of Lucy's brothers.
Enoch stood by the porch and waited.
Hank, he saw, was carrying a coiled whip in his hand, and looking at
it, Enoch understood those wounds on Lucy's shoulders. He felt a swift flash
of anger, but tried to fight it down. He could deal better with Hank Fisher
if he kept his temper.
The two men stopped three paces or so away.
"Good afternoon," said Enoch.
"You seen my gal?" asked Hank.
"And if I have?" asked Enoch.
"I'll take the hide off of her," yelled Hank, flourishing the whip.
"In such a case," said Enoch, "I don't believe I'll tell you anything."
"You got her hid," charged Hank.
"You can look around," said Enoch.
Hank took a quick step forward, then thought better of it.
"She got what she had coming to her," he yelled.
"And I ain't finished with her yet. There ain't no one, not even my own
flesh and blood, can put a hex on me."
Enoch said nothing. Hank stood, undecided.
"She mepled," he said. "She had no call to meple. It was none of her
damn business."
The young man said, "I was just trying to train Butcher. Butcher," he
explained to Enoch, "is a coon hound pup."
"That is right," said Hank. "He wasn't doing nothing wrong. The boys
caught a young coon the other night. Took a lot of doing. Roy, here, had
staked out the coon-tied it to a tree. And he had Butcher on a leash. He was
letting Butcher fight the coon. Not hurting anything. He'd pull Butcher off
before any damage could be done and let them rest a while. Then he'd let
Butcher at the coon again."
"It's the best way in the world," said Roy, "to get a coon dog
trained."
"That is right," said Hank. "That is why they caught the coon."
"We needed it," said Roy, "to train this Butcher pup."
"This all is fine," said Enoch, "and I am glad to hear it. But what has
it got to do with Lucy?"
"She interfered," said Hank. "She tried to stop the training. She tried
to grab Butcher away from Roy, here."
"For a dummy," Roy said, "she is a mite too uppity."
"You hush your mouth," his father told him sternly, swinging around on
him.
Roy mumbled to himself, falling back a step.
Hank turned back to Enoch.
"Roy knocked her down," he said. "He shouldn't have done that. He
should have been more careful."
"I didn't mean to," Roy said. "I just swung my arm out to keep her away
from Butcher."
"That is right," said Hank. "He swung a bit too hard. But there wasn't
any call for her doing what she did. She tied Butcher up in knots so he
couldn't fight that coon. Without laying a finger on him, mind you, she tied
him up in knots. He couldn't move a muscle. That made Roy mad."
He appealed to Enoch, earnestly, "Wouldn't that have made you mad?"
"I don't think it would," said Enoch. "But then, I'mm not a coon-dog
man."
Hank stared in wonder at this lack of understanding.
But he went on with his story. "Roy got real mad at her. He'd raised
that Butcher. He thought a lot of him. He wasn't going to let no one, not
even his own sister, tie that dog in knots. So he went after her and she
tied him up in knots, just like she did to Butcher. I never seen a thing
like it in all my born days. Roy just stiffened up and then he fell down to
the ground and his legs pulled up against his belly and he wrapped his arms
around himself and he laid there on the ground, pulled into a ball. Him and
Butcher, both. But she never touched that coon. She never tied him in no
knots. Her own folks is all she touched."
"It didn't hurt," said Roy. "It didn't hurt at all."
"I was sitting there," said Hank, "braiding this here bull whip. Its
end had frayed and I fixed a new one on it. And I seen it all, but I didn't
do a thing until I saw Roy there, tied up on the ground. And I figured then
it had gone far enough. I am a broad-minded man; I don't mind a little
wart-charming and other pipling things like that. There have been a lot of
people who have been able to do that. It ain't no disgrace at all. But this
thing of tying dogs and people into knots ..."
"So you hit her with the whip," said Enoch.
"I did my duty," Hank told him solemnly. "I ain't about to have no
witch in any family of mine. I hit her a couple of licks and her making that
dumb show of hers to try to get me stopped. But I had my duty and I kept on
hitting. If I did enough of it, I figured, I'd knock it out of her. That was
when she put the hex on me. Just like she did on Roy and Butcher, but in a
different way. She turned me blind-she blinded her own father! I couldn't
see a thing. I just stumbled around the yard, yelling and clawing at my
eyes. And then they got all right again, but she was gone. I saw her running
through the woods and up the hill. So Roy and me, we took out after her..."
"And you think I have her here?" "I know you have," said Hank.
"OK ," said Enoch "Have a look around"
"You can bet I will," Hank told him grimly. "Roy, take the barn. She
might be hiding there."
Roy headed for the barn. Hank went into the shed, came out almost
immediately, strode down to the sagging chicken house.
Enoch stood and waited, the rifle cradled on his arm.
He had trouble here, he knew-more trouble than he'd ever had before.
There was no such thing as reasoning with a man of Hank Fisher's stripe.
There was no approach, right now, that he would understand. All that he
could do, he knew, was to wait until Hank's temper had cooled off. Then
there might be an outside chance of talking sense to him.
The two of them came back.
"She ain't nowhere around," said Hank. "She is in the house."
Enoch shook his head. "There can't anyone get into that house."
"Roy," said Hank, "climb them there steps and open up that door."
Roy looked fearfully at Enoch.
"Go ahead," said Enoch.
Roy moved forward slowly and went up the steps. He crossed the porch
and put his hand upon the front door knob and turned. He tried again. He
turned around.
"Pa," he said, "I can't turn it. I can't get it open."
Hell," said Hank, disgusted, "you can't do anything." Hank took the
steps in two jumps, paced wrathfully across the porch. His hand reached out
and grasped the knob and wrenched at it powerfully. He tried again and yet
again. He turned angrily to face Enoch.
"What is going on here?" he yelled.
"I told you," Enoch said, "that you can't get in."
"The hell I can't!" roared Hank.
He tossed the whip to Roy and came down off the porch, striding over to
the woodpile that stood beside the shed. He wrenched the heavy,
double-bitted ax out of the chopping block.
"Careful with that ax," warned Enoch. "I've had it for a long time and
I set a store by it."
Hank did not answer. He went up on the porch and squared off before the
door.
"Stand off," he said to Roy. "Give me elbow room."
Roy backed away.
"Wait a minute," Enoch said. "You mean to chop down that door?"
"You're damned right I do."
Enoch noped gravely.
"Well?" asked Hank.
"It's all right with me if you want to try."
Hank took his stance, gripping the handle of the ax. The steel flashed
swiftly, up over his shoulder, then down in a driven blow.
The edge of the steel struck the surface of the door and turned,
deflected by the surface, changed its course, bouncing from the door. The
blade came slicing down and back. It missed Hank's sprapled leg by no more
than an inch and the momentum of it spun him half around.
He stood there, foolishly, arms outstretched, hands still gripping the
handle of the ax. He stared at Enoch.
"Try again," invited Enoch.
Rage flowed over Hank. His face was flushed with anger.
"By God, I will!" he yelled.
He squared off again and this time he swung the ax, not at the door,
but at the window set beside the door.
The blade struck and there was a high singing sound as pieces of
sun-bright steel went flying through the air.
Ducking away, Hank dropped the ax. It fell to the floor of the porch
and bounced. One blade was broken, the metal sheared away in jagged breaks.
The window was intact. There was not a scratch upon it.
Hank stood there for a moment, staring at the broken ax, as if he could
not quite believe it.
Silently he stretched out his hand and Roy put the bull whip in it.
The two of them came down the stairs.
They stopped at the bottom of them and looked at Enoch. Hank's hand
twitched on the whip.
"If I were you," said Enoch, "I wouldn't try it, Hank. I can move
awfully fast."
He patted the gun butt. "I'd have the hand off you before you could
swing that whip."
Hank breathed heavily. "There's the devil in you, Wallace," he said.
"And there's the devil in her, too. You're working together, the two of you.
Sneaking around in the woods, meeting one another."
Enoch waited, watching the both of them.
"God help me," cried Hank. "My own daughter is a witch!"
"I think," said Enoch, "you should go back home. If I happen to find
Lucy, I will bring her there."
Neither of them made a move.
"You haven't heard the last of this," yelled Hank. "You have my
daughter somewhere and I'll get you for it."
"Any time you want," said Enoch, "but not now." He made an imperative
gesture with the rifle barrel. "Get moving," he said. "And don't come back.
Either one of you."
They hesitated for a moment, looking at him, trying to gauge him,
trying to guess what he might do next.
Slowly they turned and, walking side by side, moved off down the hill.
18
He should have killed the two of them, he thought. They were not fit to
live.
He glanced down at the rifle and saw that his hands had su