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be losing something by this provincialism.
But it was not in himself, he knew, to turn his back on Earth. It was a
place he loved too well-loving it more, most likely, than those other humans
who had not caught his glimpse of far and unguessed worlds. A man, he told
himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity.
The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.
A lark sailed out of a grassy plot and soared high into the sky, and
seeing it, he waited for the trill of liquid song to spray out of its throat
and drip out of the blue. But there was no song, as there would have been in
spring.
He ploped down the road and now, ahead of him, he saw the starkness of
the station, reared upon its ridge.
Funny, he thought, that he should think of it as station rather than as
home, but it had been a station longer than it had been a home.
There was about it, he saw, a sort of ugly solidness, as if it might
have planted itself upon that ridgetop and meant to stay forever.
It would stay, of course, if one wanted it, as long as one wanted it.
For there was nothing that could touch it.
Even should he be forced some day to remain within its walls, the
station still would stand against all of mankind's watching, all of
mankind's prying. They could not chip it and they could not gouge it and
they could not break it down. There was nothing they could do. All his
watching, all his speculating, all his analyzing, would gain Man nothing
beyond the knowledge that a highly unusual building existed on that
ridgetop. For it could survive anything except a thermonuclear explosion-
and maybe even that.
He walked into the yard and turned around to look back toward the clump
of trees from which the flash had come, but there was nothing now to
indicate that anyone was there.
Inside the station, the message machine was whistling plaintively.
Enoch hung up his gun, dropped the mail and statuette upon his desk and
strode across the room to the whistling machine. He pushed the button and
punched the lever and the whistling stopped.
Upon the message plate he read:
NO. 406,302 TO STATION 18327. WILL ARRiVE EARLY EVENING YOUR TIME. HAVE
THE COFFEE HOT. ULYSSES.
Enoch grinned. Ulysses and his coffee! He was the only one of the
aliens who had ever liked any of Earth's foods or drinks. There had been
others who had tried them, but not more than once or twice.
Funny about Ulysses, he thought. They had liked each other from the
very first, from that afternoon of the thunderstorm when they had been
sitting on the steps and the mask of human form had peeled off the alien's
face.
It had been a grisly face, graceless and repulsive. The face, Enoch had
thought, of a cruel clown. Wondering, even as he thought it, what had put
that particular phrase into his head, for clowns were never cruel. But here
was one that could be-the colored patchwork of the face, the hard, tight set
of jaw, the thin slash of the mouth.
Then he saw the eyes and they canceled all the rest. They were large
and had a softness and the light of understanding in them, and they reached
out to him, as another being might hold out its hands in friendship.
The rain had come hissing up the land to thrum across the machine-shed
roof, and then it was upon them, slanting sheets of rain that hammered
angrily at the dust which lay across the yard, while surprised, bedraggled
chickens ran frantically for cover.
Enoch sprang to his feet and grasped the other's arm, pulling him to
the shelter of the porch.
They stood facing one another, and Ulysses had reached up and pulled
the split and loosened mask away, revealing a bullet head without a hair
upon it- and the painted face. A face like a wild and rampaging Indian,
painted for the warpath, except that here and there were touches of the
clown, as if the entire painting job had been meant to point up the
inconsistent grotesqueries of war. But even as he stared, Enoch knew it was
not paint, but the natural coloration of this thing which had come from
somewhere among the stars.
Whatever other doubt there was, or whatever wonder, Enoch had no doubt
at all that this strange being was not of the Earth. For it was not human.
It might be in human form, with a pair of arms and legs, with a head and
face. But there was about it an essence of inhumanity, almost a negation of
humanity.
In olden days, perhaps, he thought, it might have been a demon, but the
days were past (although, in some areas of the country, not entirely past)
when one believed in demons or in ghosts or in any of the others of that
ghastly tribe which, in man's imagination, once had walked the Earth.
From the stars, he'd said. And perhaps he was. Although it made no
sense. It was nothing one ever had imagined even in the purest fantasy.
There was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to hang on to. There was no
yardstick for it and there were no rules. And it left a sort of blank spot
in one's thinking that might fill in, come time, but now was no more than a
tunnel of great wonder that went on and on forever.
"Take your time," the alien said. "I know it is not easy. And I do not
know of a thing that I can do to make it easier. There is, after all, no way
for me to prove I am from the stars."
"But you talk so well."
"In your tongue, you mean. It was not too difficult. If you only knew
of all the languages in the galaxy, you would realize how little difficult.
Your language is not hard. It is a basic one and there are many concepts
with which it need not deal."
And, Enoch conceded, that could be true enough. "If you wish," the
alien said, "I can walk off somewhere for a day or two. Give you time to
think. Then I could come back. You'd have thought it out by then."
Enoch smiled, woodenly, and the smile had an unnatural feel upon his
face.
"That would give me time," he said, "to spread alarm throughout the
countryside. There might be an ambush waiting for you."
The alien shook its head. "I am sure you wouldn't do it. I would take
the chance. If you want me to ..."
"No," said Enoch, so calmly he surprised himself. "No, when you have a
thing to face, you face it. I learned that in the war."
"You'll do," the alien said. "You will do all right. I did not misjudge
you and it makes me proud."
"Misjudge me?"
"You do not think I just came walking in here cold? I know about you,
Enoch. Almost as much, perhaps, as you know about yourself. Probably even
more."
"You know my name?"
"Of course I do."
"Well, that is fine," said Enoch. "And what about your own?"
"I am seized with great embarrassment," the alien told him. "For I have
no name as such. Identification, surely, that fits the purpose of my race,
but nothing that the tongue can form."
Supenly, for no reason, Enoch remembered that slouchy figure perching
on the top rail of a fence, with a stick in one hand and a jackknife in the
other, whittling placidly while the cannon balls whistled overhead and less
than half a mile away the muskets snarled and crackled in the billowing
powder smoke that rose above the line.
"Then you need a name to call you by," he said, "and it shall be
Ulysses. I need to call you something,"
"It is agreeable," said that strange one. "But might one ask why the
name Ulysses?"
"Because it is the name," said Enoch, "of a great man of my race."
It was a crazy thing, of course. For there was no resemblance between
the two of them-that slouchy Union general whittling as he perched upon the
fence and this other who stood upon the porch.
"I am glad you chose it," said this Ulysses, standing on the porch. "To
my hearing it has a dignified and noble sound and, between the two of us, I
shall be glad to bear it. And I shall call you Enoch, as friends of the
first names, for the two of us shall work together for many of your years."
It was beginning to come straight now and the thought was staggering.
Perhaps it was as well, Enoch told himself, that it had waited for a while,
that he had been so dazed it had not come on him all at once.
"Perhaps," said Enoch, fighting back the realization that was crowding
in on him, crowding in too fast, "I could offer you some victuals. I could
cook up some coffee..."
"Coffee," said Ulysses, smacking his thin lips. "Do you have the
coffee?"
"I'll make a big pot of it. I'll break in an egg so it will settle
clear ..."
"Delectable," Ulysses said. "Of all the drinks that I have drank on all
the planets I have visited, the coffee is the best."
They went into-the kitchen and Enoch stirred up the coals in the
kitchen range and then put in new wood. He took the coffeepot over to the
sink and ladled in some water from the water pail and put it on to boil. He
went into the pantry to get some eggs and down into the cellar to bring up
the ham.
Ulysses sat stiffly in a kitchen chair and watched him as he worked.
"You eat ham and eggs?" asked Enoch.
"I eat anything," Ulysses said. "My race is most adaptable. That is the
reason I was sent to this planet as a-what do you call it?-a looker-out,
perhaps."
"A scout," suggested Enoch.
"That is it, a scout."
He was an easy thing to talk with, Enoch told himself-almost like
another person, although, God knows, he looked little like a person. He
looked, instead, like some outrageous caricature of a human being.
"You have lived here, in this house," Ulysses said, "for a long, long
time. You feel affection for it."
"It has been my home," said Enoch, "since the day that I was born. I
was gone from it for almost four years, but it was always home."
"I'll be glad," Ulysses told him, "to be getting home again myself.
I've been away too long. On a mission such as this one, it always is too
long."
Enoch put down the knife he had been using to cut a slice of ham and
sat down heavily in a chair. He stared at Ulysses, 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.
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."
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
But it was not in himself, he knew, to turn his back on Earth. It was a
place he loved too well-loving it more, most likely, than those other humans
who had not caught his glimpse of far and unguessed worlds. A man, he told
himself, must belong to something, must have some loyalty and some identity.
The galaxy was too big a place for any being to stand naked and alone.
A lark sailed out of a grassy plot and soared high into the sky, and
seeing it, he waited for the trill of liquid song to spray out of its throat
and drip out of the blue. But there was no song, as there would have been in
spring.
He ploped down the road and now, ahead of him, he saw the starkness of
the station, reared upon its ridge.
Funny, he thought, that he should think of it as station rather than as
home, but it had been a station longer than it had been a home.
There was about it, he saw, a sort of ugly solidness, as if it might
have planted itself upon that ridgetop and meant to stay forever.
It would stay, of course, if one wanted it, as long as one wanted it.
For there was nothing that could touch it.
Even should he be forced some day to remain within its walls, the
station still would stand against all of mankind's watching, all of
mankind's prying. They could not chip it and they could not gouge it and
they could not break it down. There was nothing they could do. All his
watching, all his speculating, all his analyzing, would gain Man nothing
beyond the knowledge that a highly unusual building existed on that
ridgetop. For it could survive anything except a thermonuclear explosion-
and maybe even that.
He walked into the yard and turned around to look back toward the clump
of trees from which the flash had come, but there was nothing now to
indicate that anyone was there.
Inside the station, the message machine was whistling plaintively.
Enoch hung up his gun, dropped the mail and statuette upon his desk and
strode across the room to the whistling machine. He pushed the button and
punched the lever and the whistling stopped.
Upon the message plate he read:
NO. 406,302 TO STATION 18327. WILL ARRiVE EARLY EVENING YOUR TIME. HAVE
THE COFFEE HOT. ULYSSES.
Enoch grinned. Ulysses and his coffee! He was the only one of the
aliens who had ever liked any of Earth's foods or drinks. There had been
others who had tried them, but not more than once or twice.
Funny about Ulysses, he thought. They had liked each other from the
very first, from that afternoon of the thunderstorm when they had been
sitting on the steps and the mask of human form had peeled off the alien's
face.
It had been a grisly face, graceless and repulsive. The face, Enoch had
thought, of a cruel clown. Wondering, even as he thought it, what had put
that particular phrase into his head, for clowns were never cruel. But here
was one that could be-the colored patchwork of the face, the hard, tight set
of jaw, the thin slash of the mouth.
Then he saw the eyes and they canceled all the rest. They were large
and had a softness and the light of understanding in them, and they reached
out to him, as another being might hold out its hands in friendship.
The rain had come hissing up the land to thrum across the machine-shed
roof, and then it was upon them, slanting sheets of rain that hammered
angrily at the dust which lay across the yard, while surprised, bedraggled
chickens ran frantically for cover.
Enoch sprang to his feet and grasped the other's arm, pulling him to
the shelter of the porch.
They stood facing one another, and Ulysses had reached up and pulled
the split and loosened mask away, revealing a bullet head without a hair
upon it- and the painted face. A face like a wild and rampaging Indian,
painted for the warpath, except that here and there were touches of the
clown, as if the entire painting job had been meant to point up the
inconsistent grotesqueries of war. But even as he stared, Enoch knew it was
not paint, but the natural coloration of this thing which had come from
somewhere among the stars.
Whatever other doubt there was, or whatever wonder, Enoch had no doubt
at all that this strange being was not of the Earth. For it was not human.
It might be in human form, with a pair of arms and legs, with a head and
face. But there was about it an essence of inhumanity, almost a negation of
humanity.
In olden days, perhaps, he thought, it might have been a demon, but the
days were past (although, in some areas of the country, not entirely past)
when one believed in demons or in ghosts or in any of the others of that
ghastly tribe which, in man's imagination, once had walked the Earth.
From the stars, he'd said. And perhaps he was. Although it made no
sense. It was nothing one ever had imagined even in the purest fantasy.
There was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to hang on to. There was no
yardstick for it and there were no rules. And it left a sort of blank spot
in one's thinking that might fill in, come time, but now was no more than a
tunnel of great wonder that went on and on forever.
"Take your time," the alien said. "I know it is not easy. And I do not
know of a thing that I can do to make it easier. There is, after all, no way
for me to prove I am from the stars."
"But you talk so well."
"In your tongue, you mean. It was not too difficult. If you only knew
of all the languages in the galaxy, you would realize how little difficult.
Your language is not hard. It is a basic one and there are many concepts
with which it need not deal."
And, Enoch conceded, that could be true enough. "If you wish," the
alien said, "I can walk off somewhere for a day or two. Give you time to
think. Then I could come back. You'd have thought it out by then."
Enoch smiled, woodenly, and the smile had an unnatural feel upon his
face.
"That would give me time," he said, "to spread alarm throughout the
countryside. There might be an ambush waiting for you."
The alien shook its head. "I am sure you wouldn't do it. I would take
the chance. If you want me to ..."
"No," said Enoch, so calmly he surprised himself. "No, when you have a
thing to face, you face it. I learned that in the war."
"You'll do," the alien said. "You will do all right. I did not misjudge
you and it makes me proud."
"Misjudge me?"
"You do not think I just came walking in here cold? I know about you,
Enoch. Almost as much, perhaps, as you know about yourself. Probably even
more."
"You know my name?"
"Of course I do."
"Well, that is fine," said Enoch. "And what about your own?"
"I am seized with great embarrassment," the alien told him. "For I have
no name as such. Identification, surely, that fits the purpose of my race,
but nothing that the tongue can form."
Supenly, for no reason, Enoch remembered that slouchy figure perching
on the top rail of a fence, with a stick in one hand and a jackknife in the
other, whittling placidly while the cannon balls whistled overhead and less
than half a mile away the muskets snarled and crackled in the billowing
powder smoke that rose above the line.
"Then you need a name to call you by," he said, "and it shall be
Ulysses. I need to call you something,"
"It is agreeable," said that strange one. "But might one ask why the
name Ulysses?"
"Because it is the name," said Enoch, "of a great man of my race."
It was a crazy thing, of course. For there was no resemblance between
the two of them-that slouchy Union general whittling as he perched upon the
fence and this other who stood upon the porch.
"I am glad you chose it," said this Ulysses, standing on the porch. "To
my hearing it has a dignified and noble sound and, between the two of us, I
shall be glad to bear it. And I shall call you Enoch, as friends of the
first names, for the two of us shall work together for many of your years."
It was beginning to come straight now and the thought was staggering.
Perhaps it was as well, Enoch told himself, that it had waited for a while,
that he had been so dazed it had not come on him all at once.
"Perhaps," said Enoch, fighting back the realization that was crowding
in on him, crowding in too fast, "I could offer you some victuals. I could
cook up some coffee..."
"Coffee," said Ulysses, smacking his thin lips. "Do you have the
coffee?"
"I'll make a big pot of it. I'll break in an egg so it will settle
clear ..."
"Delectable," Ulysses said. "Of all the drinks that I have drank on all
the planets I have visited, the coffee is the best."
They went into-the kitchen and Enoch stirred up the coals in the
kitchen range and then put in new wood. He took the coffeepot over to the
sink and ladled in some water from the water pail and put it on to boil. He
went into the pantry to get some eggs and down into the cellar to bring up
the ham.
Ulysses sat stiffly in a kitchen chair and watched him as he worked.
"You eat ham and eggs?" asked Enoch.
"I eat anything," Ulysses said. "My race is most adaptable. That is the
reason I was sent to this planet as a-what do you call it?-a looker-out,
perhaps."
"A scout," suggested Enoch.
"That is it, a scout."
He was an easy thing to talk with, Enoch told himself-almost like
another person, although, God knows, he looked little like a person. He
looked, instead, like some outrageous caricature of a human being.
"You have lived here, in this house," Ulysses said, "for a long, long
time. You feel affection for it."
"It has been my home," said Enoch, "since the day that I was born. I
was gone from it for almost four years, but it was always home."
"I'll be glad," Ulysses told him, "to be getting home again myself.
I've been away too long. On a mission such as this one, it always is too
long."
Enoch put down the knife he had been using to cut a slice of ham and
sat down heavily in a chair. He stared at Ulysses, 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.
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."
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