Страница:
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.
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.
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.
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 such a tense
grip on the gun that his fingers stood out white and stiff against the satin
brownness of the wood.
He gasped a little in his effort to fight down the rage that boiled
inside him, trying to explode. If they had stayed here any longer, if he'd
not run them off, he knew he'd have given in to that towering rage.
And it was better, much better, the way that it had been. He wondered a
little dully how be had managed to hold in.
And was glad he had. For even as it stood, it would be bad enough.
They would say he was a madman; that he had run them off at gunpoint.
They might even say that he had kidnapped Lucy and was holding her against
her will. They would stop at nothing to make him all the trouble that they
could.
He had no illusions about what they might do, for he knew the breed,
vindictive in their smallness-little vicious insects of the human race.
He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how
a girl so fine as Lucy could spring from such decadent stock. Perhaps her
handicap had served as a bulwark against the kind of folks they were; had
kept her from becoming another one of them.
Perhaps if she could have talked with them or listened, she would in
time have become as shiftless and as vicious as any one of them.
It had been a great mistake to get mixed up in a thing like this. A man
in his position had no business in an involvement such as this. He had too
much to lose; he should have stood aside.
And yet what could he have done? Could he have refused to give Lucy his
protection, with the blood soaking through her dress from the lashes that
lay across her shoulders? Should he have ignored the frantic, helpless
pleading in her face?
He might have done it differently, he thought. There might have been
other, smarter ways in which to handle it. But there had been no time to
think of any smarter way. There only had been time to carry her to safety
and then go outside to meet them.
And now, that he thought of it, perhaps the best thing would have been
not to go outside at all. If he'd stayed inside the station, nothing would
have happened.
It had been impulsive, that going out to face them. It had been,
perhaps, the human thing to do, but it had not been wise. But he had done it
and it was over now and there was no turning back. If he had it to do again,
he would do it differently, but you got no second chance.
He turned heavily around and went back inside the station.
Lucy was still sitting on the sofa and she held a flashing object in
her hand. She was staring at it raptly and there was in her face again that
same vibrant and alert expression he had seen that morning when she'd held
the butterfly.
He laid the rifle on the desk and stood quietly there, but she must
have caught the motion of him, for she looked quickly up. And then her eyes
once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands.
He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres and now all the spheres were
spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and
that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular
color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft,
warm light.
Enoch caught his breath at the beauty and the wonder of it-the old,
hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He
had examined it a hundred times or more and had puzzled at it and there had
been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see,
it was only something that was meant to be looked at, although there had
been that persistent feeling that it had a purpose and that, perhaps,
somehow, it was meant to operate.
And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it
figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.
He noticed the rapture with which she was regarding it. Was it
possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?
He went across the room and touched her arm and she lifted her face to
look at him and in her eyes he saw the gleam of happiness and excitement.
He made a questioning gesture toward the pyramid, trying to ask if she
knew what it might be. But she did not understand him. Or perhaps she knew,
but knew as well how impossible it would be to explain its purpose. She made
that happy, fluttery motion with her hand again, indicating the table with
its load of gadgets and she seemed to try to laugh-there was, at least, a
sense of laughter in her face.
Just a kid, Enoch told himself, with a box heaped high with new and
wondrous toys. Was that all it was to her? Was she happy and excited merely
because she supenly had become aware of all the beauty and the novelty of
the things stacked there on the table?
He turned wearily and went back to the desk. He picked up the rifle and
hung it on the pegs.
She should not be in the station. No human being other than himself
should ever be inside the station. Bringing her here, he had broken that
unspoken understanding he had with the aliens who had installed him as a
keeper. Although, of all the humans he could have brought, Lucy was the one
who could possibly be exempt from the understood restriction. For she could
never tell the things that she had seen.
She could not remain, he knew. She must be taken home. For if she were
not taken, there would be a massive hunt for her, a lost girl-a beautiful
deaf-mute.
A story of a missing deaf-mute girl would bring in newspapermen in a
day or two. It would be in all the papers and on television and on radio and
the woods would be swarming with hundreds of searchers.
Hank Fisher would tell how he'd tried to break into the house and
couldn't and there'd be others who would try to break into the house and
there'd be hell to pay.
Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
All the years of keeping out of people's way, all the years of being
unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely
ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for
all the crackpots of the world.
He went to the medicine cabinet, to get the healing ointment that had
been included in the drug packet provided by Galactic Central.
He found it and opened the little box. More than half of it remained.
He'd used it through the years, but sparingly. There was, in fact, little
need to use a great deal of it.
He went across the room to where Lucy sat and stood back of the sofa.
He showed her what he had and made motions to show her what it was for. She
slid her dress off her shoulders and he bent to look at the slashes.
The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was red and angry.
Gently he rubbed ointment into the stripes that the whip had made.
She had healed the butterfly, he thought; but she could not heal
herself.
On the table in front of her the pyramid of spheres still was flashing
and glinting, throwing a flickering shadow of color all about the room.
It was operating, but what could it be doing? It was finally operating,
but not a thing was happening as a result of that operation.
Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.
Enoch and Lucy had just finished with their supper and were sitting at
the table when Enoch heard his footsteps.
The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever
like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned
buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint
luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth baldness of
his head, the flat, pointed ears pasted tight against the skull lent him a
vicious fearsomeness.
If one did not know him for the gentle character that he was, Enoch
told himself, he would be enough to scare a man out of seven years of
growth.
"We had been expecting you," said Enoch. "The coffeepot is boiling."
Ulysses took a slow step forward, then paused.
"You have another with you. A human, I would say."
"There is no danger," Enoch told him.
"Of another gender. A female, is it not? You have found a mate?"
"No," said Enoch. "She is not my mate."
"You have acted wisely through the years," Ulysses told him. "In a
position such as yours, a mate is not the best."
"You need not worry. There is a malady upon her. She has no
communication. She can neither hear nor speak."
"A malady?"
"Yes, from the moment she was born. She has never heard or spoken. She
can tell of nothing here."
"Sign language?"
"She knows no sign language. She refused to learn it."
"She is a friend of yours."
"For some years," said Enoch. "She came seeking my protection. Her
father used a whip to beat her."
"This father knows she's here?"
"He thinks she is, but he cannot know." Ulysses came slowly out of the
darkness and stood within the light.
Lucy was watching him, but there was no terror on her face. Her eyes
were level and untroubled and she did not flinch.
"She takes me well," Ulysses said. "She does not run or scream."
"She could not scream," said Enoch, "even if she wished."
"I must be most repugnant," Ulysses said, "at first sight to any
human."
"She does not see the outside only. She sees inside of you as well."
"Would she be frightened if I made a human bow to her?"
"I think," said Enoch, "she might be very pleased."
Ulysses made his bow, formal and exaggerated, with one hand upon his
leathery belly, bowing from the waist.
Lucy smiled and clapped her hands.
"You see," Ulysses cried, delighted, "I think that she may like me."
"Why don't you sit down, then," suggested Enoch, "and we all will have
some coffee."
"I had forgotten of the coffee. The sight of this other human drove
coffee from my mind."
He sat down at the place where the third cup had been set and waiting
for him. Enoch started around the table, but Lucy rose and went to get the
coffee.
"She understands?" Ulysses asked.
Enoch shook his head. "You sat down by the cup and the cup was empty."
She poured the coffee, then went over to the sofa. "She will not stay
with us?" Ulysses asked. "She's intrigued by that tableful of trinkets. She
set one of them to going."
"You plan to keep her here?"
"I can't keep her," Enoch said. "There'll be a hunt for her. I'll have
to take her home."
"I do not like it," Ulysses said.
"Nor do I. Let's admit at once that I should not have brought her here.
But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. I had no time to think it
out."
"You've done no wrong," said Ulysses softly. "She cannot harm us," said
Enoch. "Without communication ..."
"It's not that," Ulysses told him. "She's just a complication and I do
not like further complications. I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we
are in trouble."
"Trouble? But there's not been any trouble."
Ulysses lifted his coffee cup and took a long drink of it.
"That is good," he said. "I carry back the bean and make it at my home.
But it does not taste the same."
"This trouble?"
"You remember the Vegan that died here several of your years ago."
Enoch noped. "The Hazer."
"The being has a proper name ..."
Enoch laughed. "You don't like our nicknames."
"It is not our way," Ulysses said.
"My name for them," said Enoch, "is a mark of my affection."
"You buried this Vegan."
"In my family plot," said Enoch. "As if he were my own. I read a verse
above him."
"That is well and good," Ulysses said. "That is as it should be. You
did very well. But the body's gone."
"Gone! It can't be gone!" cried Enoch.
"It has been taken from the grave."
"But you can't know," protested Enoch. "How could you know?"
"Not I. It's the Vegans. The Vegans are the ones who know."
"But they're light-years distant ..."
And then he was not too sure. For on that night the wise old one had
died and he'd messaged Galactic Central, he had been told that the Vegans
had known the moment he had died. And there had been no need for a death
certificate, for they knew of what he died.
It seemed impossible, of course, but there were too many
impossibilities in the galaxy which turned out, after all, to be entirely
possible for a man to ever know when he stood on solid ground.
Was it possible, he wondered, that each Vegan had some sort of mental
contact with every other Vegan? Or that some central census bureau (to give
a human designation to something that was scarcely understandable) might
have some sort of official linkage with every living Vegan, knowing where it
was and how it was and what it might be doing?
Something of the sort, Enoch admitted, might indeed be possible. It was
not beyond the astounding capabilities that one found on every hand
throughout the galaxy. But to maintain a similar contact with the Vegan dead
was something else again.
"The body's gone," Ulysses said. "I can tell you that and know it is
the truth. You're held accountable."
"By the Vegans?"
"By the Vegans, yes. And the galaxy."
"I did what I could," said Enoch hotly. "I did what was required. I
filled the letter of the Vegan law. I paid the dead my honor and the honor
of my planet. It is not right that the responsibility should go on forever.
Not that I can believe the body can be really gone. There is no one who
would take it. No one who knew of it."
"By human logic," Ulysses told him, "you, of course, are right. But not
by Vegan logic. And in this case Galactic Central would tend to support the
Vegans."
"The Vegans," Enoch said testily, "happen to be friends of mine. I have
never met a one of them that I didn't like or couldn't get along with. I can
work it out with them."
"If only the Vegans were concerned," said Ulysses, "I am quite sure you
could. I would have no worry. But the situation gets complicated as you go
along. On the surface it seems a rather simple happening, but there are many
factors. The Vegans, for example, have known for some time that the body had
been taken and they were disturbed, of course. But out of certain
considerations, they had kept their silence."
"They needn't have. They could have come to me. I don't know what could
have been done ..."
"Silent not because of you. Because of something else."
Ulysses finished off his coffee and poured himself another cup. He
filled Enoch's half-filled cup and set the pot aside.
Enoch waited.
"You may not have been aware of it," said Ulysses, "but at the time
this station was established, there was considerable opposition to it from a
number of races in the galaxy. There were many reasons cited, as is the case
in all such situations, but the underlying reason, when you get down to
basics, rests squarely on the continual contest for racial or regional
advantage. A situation akin, I would imagine, to the continual bickering and
maneuvering which you find here upon the Earth to gain an economic advantage
for one group or another, or one nation and another. In the galaxy, of
course, the economic considerations only occasionally are the underlying
factors. There are many other factors than the economic."
Enoch noped. "I had gained a hint of this. Nothing recently. But I
hadn't paid too much attention to it."
"It's largely a matter of direction," Ulysses said. "When Galactic
Central began its expansion into this spiral arm, it meant there was no time
or effort available for expansions in other directions. There is one large
group of races which has held a dream for many centuries of expanding into
some of the nearby globular clusters. It does make a dim sort of sense, of
course. With the techniques that we have, the longer jump across space to
some of the closer clusters is entirely possible. Another thing-the clusters
seem to be extraordinarily free of dust and gas, so that once we got there
we could expand more rapidly throughout the cluster than we can in many
parts of the galaxy. But at best, it's a speculative business, for we don't
know what we'll find there. After we've made all the effort and spent all
the time we may find little or nothing, except possibly some more real
estate. And we have plenty of that in the galaxy. But the clusters have a
vast appeal for certain types of minds."
Enoch noped. "I can see that. It would be the first venturing out of
the galaxy itself. It might be the first short step on the route that could
lead us to other galaxies."
Ulysses peered at him. "You, too," he said. "I might have known."
Enoch said smugly: "I am that type of mind."
"Well, anyhow, there was this globular-cluster faction-I suppose you'd
call it that-which contended bitterly when we began our move in this
direction. You understand-certainly you do-that we've barely begun the
expansion into this neighborhood. We have less than a dozen stations and
we'll need a hundred. It will take centuries before the network is
complete."
"So this faction is still contending," Enoch said. "There still is time
to stop this spiral-arm project."
"That is right. And that's what worries me. For the faction is set to
use this incident of the missing body as an emotion-charged argument against
the extension of this network. It is being joined by other groups that are
concerned with certain special interests. And these special interest groups
see a better chance of getting what they want if they can wreck this
project."
"Wreck it?"
"Yes, wreck it. They will start screaming, as soon as the body incident
becomes open knowledge, that a planet so barbaric as the Earth is no fit
location for a station. They will insist that this station be abandoned."
"But they can't do that!"
"They can," Ulysses said. "They will say it is degrading and unsafe to
maintain a station so barbaric that even graves are rifled, on a planet
where the honored dead cannot rest in peace. It is the kind of highly
emotional argument that will gain wide acceptance and support in some
sections of the galaxy. The Vegans tried their best. They tried to hush it
up, for the sake of the project. They have never done a thing like that
before. They are a proud people and they feel a slight to honor-perhaps more
deeply than many other races- and yet, for the greater good, they were
willing to accept dishonor. And would have if they could have kept it quiet.
But the story leaked out somehow-by good espionage, no doubt. And they
cannot stand the loss of face in advertised dishonor. The Vegan who will be
arriving here this evening is an official representative charged with
delivering an official protest."
"To me?"
"To you, and through you, to the Earth."
"But the Earth is not concerned. The Earth doesn't even know."
"Of course it doesn't. So far as Galactic Central is concerned, you are
the Earth. You represent the Earth."
Enoch shook his head. It was a crazy way of thinking. But, he told
himself, he should not be surprised. It was the kind of thinking he should
have expected. He was too hidebound, he thought, too narrow. He had been
trained in the human way of thinking and, even after all these years, that
way of thought persisted. Persisted to a point where any way of thought that
conflicted with it must automatically seem wrong.
This talk of abandoning Earth station was wrong, too. It made no sort
of sense. For abandoning of the station would not wreck the project.
Although, more than likely, it would wreck whatever hope he'd held for the
human race.
"But even if you have to abandon Earth," he said, "you could go out to
Mars. You could build a station there. If it's necessary to have a station
in this solar system there are other planets."
"You don't understand," Ulysses told him. "This station is just one
point of attack. It is no more than a toehold, just a bare beginning. The
aim is to wreck the project, to free the time and effort that is expended
here for some other project. If they can force us to abandon one station,
then we stand discredited. Then all our motives and our judgment come up for
review."
"But even if the project should be wrecked," Enoch pointed out, "there
is no surety that any group would gain. It would only throw the question of
where the time and energy should be used into an open debate. You say that
there are many special interest factions banding together to carry on the
fight against us. Suppose that they do win. Then they must turn around and
start fighting among themselves."
"Of course that's the case," Ulysses admitted, "but then each of them
has a chance to get what they want, or think they have a chance. The way it
is they have no chance at all. Before any of them has a chance this project
must go down the drain. There is one group on the far side of the galaxy
that wants to move out into the thinly populated sections of one particular
section of the rim. They still believe in an ancient legend which says that
their race arose as the result of immigrants from another galaxy who landed
on the rim and worked their way inward over many galactic years. They think
that if they can get out to the rim they can turn that legend into history
to their greater glory. Another group wants to go into a small spiral arm
because of an obscure record that many eons ago their ancestors picked up
some virtually undecipherable messages which they believed came from that
direction. Through the years the story has grown, until today they are
convinced a race of intellectual giants will be found in that spiral arm.
And there is always the pressure, naturally, to probe deeper into the
galactic core. You must realize that we have only started, that the galaxy
still is largely unexplored, that the thousands of races who form Galactic
Central still are pioneers. And as a result, Galactic Central is continually
subjected to all sorts of pressures."
"You sound," said Enoch, "as if you have little hope of maintaining
this station, here on Earth."
"Almost no hope at all," Ulysses told him. "But so far as you yourself
are concerned, there will be an option. You can stay here and live out an
ordinary life on Earth or you can be assigned to another station. Galactic
Central hopes that you would elect to continue on with us."
"That sounds pretty final."
"I am afraid," Ulysses said, "it is. I am sorry, Enoch, to be, the
bearer of bad news."
Enoch sat numb and stricken. Bad news! It was worse than that. It was
the end of everything.
He sensed the crashing down of not only his own personal world, but of
all the hopes of Earth. With the station gone, Earth once more would be left
in the backwaters of the galaxy, with no hope of help, no chance of
recognition, no realization of what lay waiting in the galaxy. Standing
alone and naked, the human race would go on in its same old path, fumbling
its uncertain way toward a blind, mad future.
The Hazer was elderly. The golden haze that enveloped him had lost the
sparkle of its youthfulness. It was a mellow glow, deep and rich-not the
blinding haze of a younger being. He carried himself with a solid dignity,
and the flaring topknot that was neither hair nor feathers was white, a sort
of saintly whiteness. His face was soft and tender, the softness and the
tenderness which in a man might have been expressed in kindly wrinkles.
"I am sorry," he told Enoch, "that our meeting must be such as this.
Although, under any circumstances, I am glad to meet you. I have heard of
you. It is not often that a being of an outside planet is the keeper of a
station. Because of this, young being, I have been intrigued with you. I
have wondered what sort of creature you might turn out to be."
"You need have no apprehension of him," Ulysses said, a little sharply.
"I will vouch for him. We have been friends for years."
"Yes, I forgot," the Hazer said. "You are his discoverer."
He peered around the room. "Another one," he said. "I did not know
there were two of them. I only knew of one."
"It's a friend of Enoch's," Ulysses said.
"There has been contact, then. Contact with the planet."
"No, there has been no contact."
"Perhaps an indiscretion."
"Perhaps," Ulysses said, "but under provocation that I doubt either you
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.
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.
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.
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 such a tense
grip on the gun that his fingers stood out white and stiff against the satin
brownness of the wood.
He gasped a little in his effort to fight down the rage that boiled
inside him, trying to explode. If they had stayed here any longer, if he'd
not run them off, he knew he'd have given in to that towering rage.
And it was better, much better, the way that it had been. He wondered a
little dully how be had managed to hold in.
And was glad he had. For even as it stood, it would be bad enough.
They would say he was a madman; that he had run them off at gunpoint.
They might even say that he had kidnapped Lucy and was holding her against
her will. They would stop at nothing to make him all the trouble that they
could.
He had no illusions about what they might do, for he knew the breed,
vindictive in their smallness-little vicious insects of the human race.
He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how
a girl so fine as Lucy could spring from such decadent stock. Perhaps her
handicap had served as a bulwark against the kind of folks they were; had
kept her from becoming another one of them.
Perhaps if she could have talked with them or listened, she would in
time have become as shiftless and as vicious as any one of them.
It had been a great mistake to get mixed up in a thing like this. A man
in his position had no business in an involvement such as this. He had too
much to lose; he should have stood aside.
And yet what could he have done? Could he have refused to give Lucy his
protection, with the blood soaking through her dress from the lashes that
lay across her shoulders? Should he have ignored the frantic, helpless
pleading in her face?
He might have done it differently, he thought. There might have been
other, smarter ways in which to handle it. But there had been no time to
think of any smarter way. There only had been time to carry her to safety
and then go outside to meet them.
And now, that he thought of it, perhaps the best thing would have been
not to go outside at all. If he'd stayed inside the station, nothing would
have happened.
It had been impulsive, that going out to face them. It had been,
perhaps, the human thing to do, but it had not been wise. But he had done it
and it was over now and there was no turning back. If he had it to do again,
he would do it differently, but you got no second chance.
He turned heavily around and went back inside the station.
Lucy was still sitting on the sofa and she held a flashing object in
her hand. She was staring at it raptly and there was in her face again that
same vibrant and alert expression he had seen that morning when she'd held
the butterfly.
He laid the rifle on the desk and stood quietly there, but she must
have caught the motion of him, for she looked quickly up. And then her eyes
once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands.
He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres and now all the spheres were
spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and
that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular
color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft,
warm light.
Enoch caught his breath at the beauty and the wonder of it-the old,
hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He
had examined it a hundred times or more and had puzzled at it and there had
been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see,
it was only something that was meant to be looked at, although there had
been that persistent feeling that it had a purpose and that, perhaps,
somehow, it was meant to operate.
And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it
figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out.
He noticed the rapture with which she was regarding it. Was it
possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?
He went across the room and touched her arm and she lifted her face to
look at him and in her eyes he saw the gleam of happiness and excitement.
He made a questioning gesture toward the pyramid, trying to ask if she
knew what it might be. But she did not understand him. Or perhaps she knew,
but knew as well how impossible it would be to explain its purpose. She made
that happy, fluttery motion with her hand again, indicating the table with
its load of gadgets and she seemed to try to laugh-there was, at least, a
sense of laughter in her face.
Just a kid, Enoch told himself, with a box heaped high with new and
wondrous toys. Was that all it was to her? Was she happy and excited merely
because she supenly had become aware of all the beauty and the novelty of
the things stacked there on the table?
He turned wearily and went back to the desk. He picked up the rifle and
hung it on the pegs.
She should not be in the station. No human being other than himself
should ever be inside the station. Bringing her here, he had broken that
unspoken understanding he had with the aliens who had installed him as a
keeper. Although, of all the humans he could have brought, Lucy was the one
who could possibly be exempt from the understood restriction. For she could
never tell the things that she had seen.
She could not remain, he knew. She must be taken home. For if she were
not taken, there would be a massive hunt for her, a lost girl-a beautiful
deaf-mute.
A story of a missing deaf-mute girl would bring in newspapermen in a
day or two. It would be in all the papers and on television and on radio and
the woods would be swarming with hundreds of searchers.
Hank Fisher would tell how he'd tried to break into the house and
couldn't and there'd be others who would try to break into the house and
there'd be hell to pay.
Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
All the years of keeping out of people's way, all the years of being
unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely
ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for
all the crackpots of the world.
He went to the medicine cabinet, to get the healing ointment that had
been included in the drug packet provided by Galactic Central.
He found it and opened the little box. More than half of it remained.
He'd used it through the years, but sparingly. There was, in fact, little
need to use a great deal of it.
He went across the room to where Lucy sat and stood back of the sofa.
He showed her what he had and made motions to show her what it was for. She
slid her dress off her shoulders and he bent to look at the slashes.
The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was red and angry.
Gently he rubbed ointment into the stripes that the whip had made.
She had healed the butterfly, he thought; but she could not heal
herself.
On the table in front of her the pyramid of spheres still was flashing
and glinting, throwing a flickering shadow of color all about the room.
It was operating, but what could it be doing? It was finally operating,
but not a thing was happening as a result of that operation.
Ulysses came as twilight was deepening into night.
Enoch and Lucy had just finished with their supper and were sitting at
the table when Enoch heard his footsteps.
The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever
like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned
buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint
luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth baldness of
his head, the flat, pointed ears pasted tight against the skull lent him a
vicious fearsomeness.
If one did not know him for the gentle character that he was, Enoch
told himself, he would be enough to scare a man out of seven years of
growth.
"We had been expecting you," said Enoch. "The coffeepot is boiling."
Ulysses took a slow step forward, then paused.
"You have another with you. A human, I would say."
"There is no danger," Enoch told him.
"Of another gender. A female, is it not? You have found a mate?"
"No," said Enoch. "She is not my mate."
"You have acted wisely through the years," Ulysses told him. "In a
position such as yours, a mate is not the best."
"You need not worry. There is a malady upon her. She has no
communication. She can neither hear nor speak."
"A malady?"
"Yes, from the moment she was born. She has never heard or spoken. She
can tell of nothing here."
"Sign language?"
"She knows no sign language. She refused to learn it."
"She is a friend of yours."
"For some years," said Enoch. "She came seeking my protection. Her
father used a whip to beat her."
"This father knows she's here?"
"He thinks she is, but he cannot know." Ulysses came slowly out of the
darkness and stood within the light.
Lucy was watching him, but there was no terror on her face. Her eyes
were level and untroubled and she did not flinch.
"She takes me well," Ulysses said. "She does not run or scream."
"She could not scream," said Enoch, "even if she wished."
"I must be most repugnant," Ulysses said, "at first sight to any
human."
"She does not see the outside only. She sees inside of you as well."
"Would she be frightened if I made a human bow to her?"
"I think," said Enoch, "she might be very pleased."
Ulysses made his bow, formal and exaggerated, with one hand upon his
leathery belly, bowing from the waist.
Lucy smiled and clapped her hands.
"You see," Ulysses cried, delighted, "I think that she may like me."
"Why don't you sit down, then," suggested Enoch, "and we all will have
some coffee."
"I had forgotten of the coffee. The sight of this other human drove
coffee from my mind."
He sat down at the place where the third cup had been set and waiting
for him. Enoch started around the table, but Lucy rose and went to get the
coffee.
"She understands?" Ulysses asked.
Enoch shook his head. "You sat down by the cup and the cup was empty."
She poured the coffee, then went over to the sofa. "She will not stay
with us?" Ulysses asked. "She's intrigued by that tableful of trinkets. She
set one of them to going."
"You plan to keep her here?"
"I can't keep her," Enoch said. "There'll be a hunt for her. I'll have
to take her home."
"I do not like it," Ulysses said.
"Nor do I. Let's admit at once that I should not have brought her here.
But at the time it seemed the only thing to do. I had no time to think it
out."
"You've done no wrong," said Ulysses softly. "She cannot harm us," said
Enoch. "Without communication ..."
"It's not that," Ulysses told him. "She's just a complication and I do
not like further complications. I came tonight to tell you, Enoch, that we
are in trouble."
"Trouble? But there's not been any trouble."
Ulysses lifted his coffee cup and took a long drink of it.
"That is good," he said. "I carry back the bean and make it at my home.
But it does not taste the same."
"This trouble?"
"You remember the Vegan that died here several of your years ago."
Enoch noped. "The Hazer."
"The being has a proper name ..."
Enoch laughed. "You don't like our nicknames."
"It is not our way," Ulysses said.
"My name for them," said Enoch, "is a mark of my affection."
"You buried this Vegan."
"In my family plot," said Enoch. "As if he were my own. I read a verse
above him."
"That is well and good," Ulysses said. "That is as it should be. You
did very well. But the body's gone."
"Gone! It can't be gone!" cried Enoch.
"It has been taken from the grave."
"But you can't know," protested Enoch. "How could you know?"
"Not I. It's the Vegans. The Vegans are the ones who know."
"But they're light-years distant ..."
And then he was not too sure. For on that night the wise old one had
died and he'd messaged Galactic Central, he had been told that the Vegans
had known the moment he had died. And there had been no need for a death
certificate, for they knew of what he died.
It seemed impossible, of course, but there were too many
impossibilities in the galaxy which turned out, after all, to be entirely
possible for a man to ever know when he stood on solid ground.
Was it possible, he wondered, that each Vegan had some sort of mental
contact with every other Vegan? Or that some central census bureau (to give
a human designation to something that was scarcely understandable) might
have some sort of official linkage with every living Vegan, knowing where it
was and how it was and what it might be doing?
Something of the sort, Enoch admitted, might indeed be possible. It was
not beyond the astounding capabilities that one found on every hand
throughout the galaxy. But to maintain a similar contact with the Vegan dead
was something else again.
"The body's gone," Ulysses said. "I can tell you that and know it is
the truth. You're held accountable."
"By the Vegans?"
"By the Vegans, yes. And the galaxy."
"I did what I could," said Enoch hotly. "I did what was required. I
filled the letter of the Vegan law. I paid the dead my honor and the honor
of my planet. It is not right that the responsibility should go on forever.
Not that I can believe the body can be really gone. There is no one who
would take it. No one who knew of it."
"By human logic," Ulysses told him, "you, of course, are right. But not
by Vegan logic. And in this case Galactic Central would tend to support the
Vegans."
"The Vegans," Enoch said testily, "happen to be friends of mine. I have
never met a one of them that I didn't like or couldn't get along with. I can
work it out with them."
"If only the Vegans were concerned," said Ulysses, "I am quite sure you
could. I would have no worry. But the situation gets complicated as you go
along. On the surface it seems a rather simple happening, but there are many
factors. The Vegans, for example, have known for some time that the body had
been taken and they were disturbed, of course. But out of certain
considerations, they had kept their silence."
"They needn't have. They could have come to me. I don't know what could
have been done ..."
"Silent not because of you. Because of something else."
Ulysses finished off his coffee and poured himself another cup. He
filled Enoch's half-filled cup and set the pot aside.
Enoch waited.
"You may not have been aware of it," said Ulysses, "but at the time
this station was established, there was considerable opposition to it from a
number of races in the galaxy. There were many reasons cited, as is the case
in all such situations, but the underlying reason, when you get down to
basics, rests squarely on the continual contest for racial or regional
advantage. A situation akin, I would imagine, to the continual bickering and
maneuvering which you find here upon the Earth to gain an economic advantage
for one group or another, or one nation and another. In the galaxy, of
course, the economic considerations only occasionally are the underlying
factors. There are many other factors than the economic."
Enoch noped. "I had gained a hint of this. Nothing recently. But I
hadn't paid too much attention to it."
"It's largely a matter of direction," Ulysses said. "When Galactic
Central began its expansion into this spiral arm, it meant there was no time
or effort available for expansions in other directions. There is one large
group of races which has held a dream for many centuries of expanding into
some of the nearby globular clusters. It does make a dim sort of sense, of
course. With the techniques that we have, the longer jump across space to
some of the closer clusters is entirely possible. Another thing-the clusters
seem to be extraordinarily free of dust and gas, so that once we got there
we could expand more rapidly throughout the cluster than we can in many
parts of the galaxy. But at best, it's a speculative business, for we don't
know what we'll find there. After we've made all the effort and spent all
the time we may find little or nothing, except possibly some more real
estate. And we have plenty of that in the galaxy. But the clusters have a
vast appeal for certain types of minds."
Enoch noped. "I can see that. It would be the first venturing out of
the galaxy itself. It might be the first short step on the route that could
lead us to other galaxies."
Ulysses peered at him. "You, too," he said. "I might have known."
Enoch said smugly: "I am that type of mind."
"Well, anyhow, there was this globular-cluster faction-I suppose you'd
call it that-which contended bitterly when we began our move in this
direction. You understand-certainly you do-that we've barely begun the
expansion into this neighborhood. We have less than a dozen stations and
we'll need a hundred. It will take centuries before the network is
complete."
"So this faction is still contending," Enoch said. "There still is time
to stop this spiral-arm project."
"That is right. And that's what worries me. For the faction is set to
use this incident of the missing body as an emotion-charged argument against
the extension of this network. It is being joined by other groups that are
concerned with certain special interests. And these special interest groups
see a better chance of getting what they want if they can wreck this
project."
"Wreck it?"
"Yes, wreck it. They will start screaming, as soon as the body incident
becomes open knowledge, that a planet so barbaric as the Earth is no fit
location for a station. They will insist that this station be abandoned."
"But they can't do that!"
"They can," Ulysses said. "They will say it is degrading and unsafe to
maintain a station so barbaric that even graves are rifled, on a planet
where the honored dead cannot rest in peace. It is the kind of highly
emotional argument that will gain wide acceptance and support in some
sections of the galaxy. The Vegans tried their best. They tried to hush it
up, for the sake of the project. They have never done a thing like that
before. They are a proud people and they feel a slight to honor-perhaps more
deeply than many other races- and yet, for the greater good, they were
willing to accept dishonor. And would have if they could have kept it quiet.
But the story leaked out somehow-by good espionage, no doubt. And they
cannot stand the loss of face in advertised dishonor. The Vegan who will be
arriving here this evening is an official representative charged with
delivering an official protest."
"To me?"
"To you, and through you, to the Earth."
"But the Earth is not concerned. The Earth doesn't even know."
"Of course it doesn't. So far as Galactic Central is concerned, you are
the Earth. You represent the Earth."
Enoch shook his head. It was a crazy way of thinking. But, he told
himself, he should not be surprised. It was the kind of thinking he should
have expected. He was too hidebound, he thought, too narrow. He had been
trained in the human way of thinking and, even after all these years, that
way of thought persisted. Persisted to a point where any way of thought that
conflicted with it must automatically seem wrong.
This talk of abandoning Earth station was wrong, too. It made no sort
of sense. For abandoning of the station would not wreck the project.
Although, more than likely, it would wreck whatever hope he'd held for the
human race.
"But even if you have to abandon Earth," he said, "you could go out to
Mars. You could build a station there. If it's necessary to have a station
in this solar system there are other planets."
"You don't understand," Ulysses told him. "This station is just one
point of attack. It is no more than a toehold, just a bare beginning. The
aim is to wreck the project, to free the time and effort that is expended
here for some other project. If they can force us to abandon one station,
then we stand discredited. Then all our motives and our judgment come up for
review."
"But even if the project should be wrecked," Enoch pointed out, "there
is no surety that any group would gain. It would only throw the question of
where the time and energy should be used into an open debate. You say that
there are many special interest factions banding together to carry on the
fight against us. Suppose that they do win. Then they must turn around and
start fighting among themselves."
"Of course that's the case," Ulysses admitted, "but then each of them
has a chance to get what they want, or think they have a chance. The way it
is they have no chance at all. Before any of them has a chance this project
must go down the drain. There is one group on the far side of the galaxy
that wants to move out into the thinly populated sections of one particular
section of the rim. They still believe in an ancient legend which says that
their race arose as the result of immigrants from another galaxy who landed
on the rim and worked their way inward over many galactic years. They think
that if they can get out to the rim they can turn that legend into history
to their greater glory. Another group wants to go into a small spiral arm
because of an obscure record that many eons ago their ancestors picked up
some virtually undecipherable messages which they believed came from that
direction. Through the years the story has grown, until today they are
convinced a race of intellectual giants will be found in that spiral arm.
And there is always the pressure, naturally, to probe deeper into the
galactic core. You must realize that we have only started, that the galaxy
still is largely unexplored, that the thousands of races who form Galactic
Central still are pioneers. And as a result, Galactic Central is continually
subjected to all sorts of pressures."
"You sound," said Enoch, "as if you have little hope of maintaining
this station, here on Earth."
"Almost no hope at all," Ulysses told him. "But so far as you yourself
are concerned, there will be an option. You can stay here and live out an
ordinary life on Earth or you can be assigned to another station. Galactic
Central hopes that you would elect to continue on with us."
"That sounds pretty final."
"I am afraid," Ulysses said, "it is. I am sorry, Enoch, to be, the
bearer of bad news."
Enoch sat numb and stricken. Bad news! It was worse than that. It was
the end of everything.
He sensed the crashing down of not only his own personal world, but of
all the hopes of Earth. With the station gone, Earth once more would be left
in the backwaters of the galaxy, with no hope of help, no chance of
recognition, no realization of what lay waiting in the galaxy. Standing
alone and naked, the human race would go on in its same old path, fumbling
its uncertain way toward a blind, mad future.
The Hazer was elderly. The golden haze that enveloped him had lost the
sparkle of its youthfulness. It was a mellow glow, deep and rich-not the
blinding haze of a younger being. He carried himself with a solid dignity,
and the flaring topknot that was neither hair nor feathers was white, a sort
of saintly whiteness. His face was soft and tender, the softness and the
tenderness which in a man might have been expressed in kindly wrinkles.
"I am sorry," he told Enoch, "that our meeting must be such as this.
Although, under any circumstances, I am glad to meet you. I have heard of
you. It is not often that a being of an outside planet is the keeper of a
station. Because of this, young being, I have been intrigued with you. I
have wondered what sort of creature you might turn out to be."
"You need have no apprehension of him," Ulysses said, a little sharply.
"I will vouch for him. We have been friends for years."
"Yes, I forgot," the Hazer said. "You are his discoverer."
He peered around the room. "Another one," he said. "I did not know
there were two of them. I only knew of one."
"It's a friend of Enoch's," Ulysses said.
"There has been contact, then. Contact with the planet."
"No, there has been no contact."
"Perhaps an indiscretion."
"Perhaps," Ulysses said, "but under provocation that I doubt either you