Страница:
he'd had to tell them what a rifle was and how it operated and for what it
might be used. He had told them about hunting squirrels on sunny autumn
mornings and shaking rabbits out of brush piles with the first coming of the
snow (although one did not use a rifle, but a shotgun, on the rabbits),
about hunting coons of an autumn night, and waiting for the deer along the
run that went down to the river. But he was dishonest and he did not tell
them about that other use to which he'd put a rifle during four long years.
He'd told them (since they were easy folks to talk with) about his
youthful dream of some day going on a hunt in Africa, although even as he
told them he was well aware of how unattainable it was. But since that day
he'd hunted (and been hunted by) beasts far stranger than anything that
Africa could boast.
From what these beasts might have been patterned, if indeed they came
from anywhere other than the imagination of those aliens who had set up the
tapes which produced the target scene, he had no idea. There had not, so far
in the thousands of times that he had used the range, been a duplication
either in the scene nor in the beasts which rampaged about the scene.
Although, perhaps, he thought, there might be somewhere an end of them, and
then the whole sequence might start over and run its course once more. But
it would make little difference now, for if the tapes should start rerunning
there'd be but little chance of his recalling in any considerable detail
those adventures he had lived so many years ago.
He did not understand the techniques nor the principle which made
possible this fantastic rifle range. Like many other things, he accepted it
without the need of understanding. Although, some day, he thought, he might
find the clue which in time would turn blind acceptance into
understanding-not only of the range, but of many other things.
He had often wondered what the aliens might think about his fascination
with the rifle range, with that primal force that drove a man to kill, not
for the joy of killing so much as to negate a danger, to meet force with a
greater and more skillful force, cunning with more cunning. Had he, he
wondered, given his alien friends concern in their assessment of the human
character by his preoccupation with the rifle? For the understanding of an
alien, how could one draw a line between the killing of other forms of life
and the killing of one's own? Was there actually a differential that would
stand up under logical examination between the sport of hunting and the
sport of war? To an alien, perhaps, such a differentiation would be rather
difficult, for in many cases the hunted animal would be more closely allied
to the human hunter in its form and characteristics than would many of the
aliens.
Was war an instinctive thing, for which each ordinary man was as much
responsible as the policy makers and the so-called statesmen? It seemed
impossible, and yet, deep in every man was the combative instinct, the
aggressive urge, the strange sense of competition-all of which spelled
conflict of one kind or another if carried to conclusion.
He put the rifle underneath his arm and walked over to the panel.
Sticking from a slot in the bottom of it was a piece of tape.
He pulled it out and puzzled out the symbols. They were not reassuring.
He had not done so well.
He had missed that first shot he had fired at the charging wolf-thing
with the old man's face, and back there somewhere, in that dimension of
unreality, it and its companion were snarling over the tangled, torn mass of
ribboned flesh and broken bone that had been Enoch Wallace.
He went back through the gallery, with its gifts stacked there as other
gifts, in regular human establishments, might be stacked away in dry and
dusty attics.
The tape nagged at him, the little piece of tape which said that while
he had made all his other shots, he had missed that first one back there on
the hillock. It was not often that he missed. And his training had been for
that very type of shooting-the you-never-know-what-will-happen-next, the
totally unexpected, the kill-or-be-killed kind of shooting that thousands of
expeditions into the target area had taught him. Perhaps, he consoled
himself, he had not been as faithful in his practice lately as he should
have been. Although there actually was no reason that he should be faithful,
for the shooting was for recreation only and his carrying of the rifle on
his daily walks was from force of habit only and for no other reason. He
carried the rifle as another man might take along a cane or walking stick.
At the time he had first done it, of course, it had been a different kind of
rifle and a different day. It then was no unusual thing for a man to carry a
gun while out on a walk. But today was different and he wondered, with an
inner grin, how much talk his carrying a gun might have furnished the people
who had seen him with it.
Near the end of the gallery he saw the black bulk of a trunk projecting
from beneath the lower shelf, too big to fit comfortably beneath it, jammed
against the wall, but with a foot or two of it still projecting out beyond
the shelf.
He went on walking past it, then supenly turned around. That trunk, he
thought-that was the trunk which had belonged to the Hazer who had died
upstairs. It was his legacy from that being whose stolen body would be
brought back to its grave this evening.
He walked over to the shelving and leaned his rifle against the wall.
Stooping he pulled the trunk clear of its resting place.
Once before, prior to carrying it down the stairs and storing it here
beneath the shelves, he had gone through its contents, but at the time, he
recalled, he'd not been too interested. Now, supenly, he felt an absorbing
interest in it.
He lifted the lid carefully and tilted it back against the shelves.
Crouching above the open trunk, and without touching anything to start
with, he tried to catalogue the upper layer of its contents.
There was a shimmering cloak, neatly folded, perhaps some sort of
ceremonial cloak, although he could not know. And atop the cloak lay a tiny
bottle that was a blaze of reflected light, as if someone had taken a
large-sized diamond and hollowed it out to make a bottle of it. Beside the
cloak lay a nest of balls, deep violet and dull, with no shine at all,
looking for all the world like a bunch of table-tennis balls that someone
had cemented together to make a globe. But that was not the way it was,
Enoch remembered, for that other time he had been entranced by them and had
picked them up, to find that they were not cemented, but could be freely
moved about, although never outside the context of their shape. One ball
could not be broken from the mass, no matter how hard one might try, but
would move about, as if buoyed in a fluid, among all the other balls. One
could move any, or all, of the balls, but the mass remained the same. A
calculator of some sort, Enoch wondered, but that seemed only barely
possible, for one ball was entirely like another, there was no way in which
they could be identified. Or at least, no way to identify them by the human
eye. Was it possible, he wondered, that identification might be possible to
a Hazer's eye? And if a calculator, what kind of a calculator? Mathematical?
Or ethical? Or philosophical? Although that was slightly foolish, for who
had ever heard of a calculator for ethics or philosophy? Or, rather, what
human had ever heard? More than likely it was not a calculator, but
something else entirely. Perhaps a sort of game-a game of solitaire?
Given time, a man might finally get it figured out. But there was no
time and no incentive at the moment to spend upon one particular item any
great amount of time when there were hundreds of other items equally
fantastic and incomprehensible. For while one puzzled over a single item,
the edges of his mind would always wonder if he might not be spending time
on the most insignificant of the entire lot.
He was a victim of museum fatigue, Enoch told himself, overwhelmed by
the many pieces of the unknown scattered all about him.
He reached out a hand, not for the globe of balls, but for the shining
bottle that lay atop the cloak. As he picked it up and brought it closer, he
saw that there was a line of writing engraved upon the glass (or diamond?)
of the bottle. Slowly he studied out the writing. There had been a time,
long ago, when he had been able to read the Hazer language, if not fluently,
at least well enough to get along. But he had not read it for some years now
and he had lost a good deal of it and he stumbled haltingly from one symbol
to another. Translated very freely, the inscription on the bottle read: To
be taken when the first symptoms occur.
A bottle of medicine! To be taken when the first symptoms occur. The
symptoms, perhaps, that had come so quickly and built up so rapidly that the
owner of this bottle could make no move to reach it and so had died, falling
from the sofa.
Almost reverently, he put the bottle back in its place atop the cloak,
fitting it back into the faint impression it had made from lying there.
So different from us in so many ways, thought Enoch, and then in other
little ways so like us that it is frightening. For that bottle and the
inscription on its face was an exact parallel of the prescription bottle
that could be compounded by any corner drugstore.
Beside the globe of balls was a box, and he reached out and lifted it.
It was made of wood and had a rather simple clasp to hold it shut. He
flipped back the lid and inside he saw the metallic sheen of the material
the Hazers used as paper.
Carefully he lifted out the first sheet and saw that it was not a
sheet, but a long strip of the material folded in accordion fashion.
Underneath it were more strips, apparently of the same material.
There was writing on it, faint and faded, and Enoch held it close to
read it.
To my -,-- friend: (although it was not "friend." "Blood brother,"
perhaps, or "colleague." And the adjectives which preceded it were such as
to escape his sense entirely.)
The writing was hard to read. It bore some resemblance to the
formalized version of the language, but apparently bore the imprint of the
writer's personality, expressed in curlicues and flourishes which obscured
the form. Enoch worked his way slowly down the paper, missing much of what
was there, but picking up the sense of much that had been written.
The writer had been on a visit to some other planet, or possibly just
some other place. The name of the place or planet was one that Enoch did not
recognize. While he had been there he had performed some sort of function
(although exactly what it was was not entirely clear) which had to do with
his approaching death.
Enoch, startled, went back over the phrase again. And while much of the
rest of what was written was not clear, that part of it was. My approaching
death, he had written, and there was no room for mistranslation. All three
of the words were clear.
He urged that his good (friend?) do likewise. He said it was a comfort
and made clear the road.
There was no further explanation, no further reference. Just the calm
declaration that he had done something which he felt must be arranged about
his death. As if he knew death was near and was not only unafraid, but
almost unconcerned.
The next passage (for there were no paragraphs) told about someone he
had met and how they'd talked about a certain matter which made no sense at
all to Enoch, who found himself lost in a terminology he did not recognize.
And then: I am most concerned about the mediocrity (incompetence?
inability? weakness?) of the recent custodian of (and then that cryptic
symbol which could be translated, roughly, as the Talisman.) For (a word,
which from the context, seemed to mean a great length of time), ever since
the death of the last custodian, the Talisman has been but poorly served. It
has been, in all reality, (another long time term), since a true
(sensitive?) has been found to carry out its purpose. Many have been tested
and none has qualified, and for the lack of such a one the galaxy has lost
its close identification with the ruling principle of life. We here at the
(temple? sanctuary?) all are greatly concerned that without a proper linkage
between the people and (several words that were not decipherable) the galaxy
will go down in chaos (and another line that he could not puzzle out).
The next sentence introduced a new subject-the plans that were going
forward for some cultural festival which concerned a concept that, to Enoch,
was hazy at the best.
Enoch slowly folded up the letter and put it back into the box. He felt
a faint uneasiness in reading what he had, as if he'd pried into a
friendship that he had no right to know. We here at the temple, the letter
had said. Perhaps the writer had been one of the Hazer mystics, writing to
his old friend, the philosopher. And the other letters, quite possibly, were
from that same mystic-letters that the dead old Hazer had valued so highly
that he took them along with him when he went traveling.
A slight breeze seemed to be blowing across Enoch's shoulders; not
actually a breeze, but a strange motion and a coldness to the air.
He glanced back into the gallery and there was nothing stirring,
nothing to be seen.
The wind had quit its blowing, if it had ever blown. Here one moment,
gone the next. Like a passing ghost, thought Enoch.
Did the Hazer have a ghost?
The people back on Vega XXI had known the moment he had died and all
the circumstances of his death. They had known again about the body
disappearing. And the letter had spoken calmly, much more calmly than would
have been in the capacity of most humans, about the writer's near approach
to death.
Was it possible that the Hazers knew more of life and death than had
ever been spelled out? Or had it been spelled out, put down in black and
white, in some depository or depositories in the galaxy?
Was the answer there? he wondered.
Squatting there, he thought that perhaps it might be, that someone
already knew what life was for and what its destiny. There was a comfort in
the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe
that some intelligence might have solved the riple of that mysterious
equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might
tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and
space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.
He tried to imagine what one might feel if he were in contact with the
force, and could not. He wondered if even those who might have been in
contact with it could find the words to tell. It might, he thought, be
impossible. For how could one who had been in intimate contact all his life
with space and time tell what either of these meant to him or how they felt?
Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman.
He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it,
but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been
dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people
and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure
had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity. Whatever might be
happening now had not happened in the last few years; it had been building
up for a longer time than most aliens would admit. Although, come to think
of it, most aliens probably did not know.
Enoch closed the box lid and put it back into the trunk. Some day, he
thought, when he was in the proper frame of mind, when the pressure of
events made him less emotional, when he could dull the guilt of prying, he
would achieve a scholarly and conscientious translation of those letters.
For in them, he felt certain, he might find further understanding of that
intriguing race. He might, he thought, then be better able to gauge their
humanity-not humanity in the common and accepted sense of being a member of
the human race of Earth, but in the sense that certain rules of conduct must
underlie all racial concepts even as the thing called humanity in its narrow
sense underlay the human concept.
He reached up to close the lid of the trunk and then he hesitated.
Some day, he had said. And there might not be a some day. It was a
state of mind to be always thinking some day, a state of mind made possible
by the conditions inside this station. For here there were endless days to
come, forever and forever there were days to come. A man's concept of time
was twisted out of shape and reason and he could look ahead complacently
down a long, almost never ending, avenue of time. But that might be all over
now. Time might supenly snap back into its rightful focus. Should he leave
this station, the long procession of days to come would end.
He pushed back the lid again until it rested against the shelves.
Reaching in, he lifted out the box and set it on the floor beside him. He'd
take it upstairs, he told himself, and put it with the other stuff that he
must be prepared immediately to take along with him if he should leave the
station.
If? he asked himself. Was there a question any longer? Had he, somehow,
made that hard decision? Had it crept upon him unaware, so that he now was
committed to it?
And if he had actually arrived at that decision, then he must, also,
have arrived at the other one. If he left the station, then he could no
longer be in a position to appear before Galactic Central to plead that
Earth be cured of war.
You are the representative of the Earth, Ulysses had told him. You are
the only one who can represent the Earth. But could he, in reality,
represent the Earth? Was he any longer a true representative of the human
race? He was a nineteenth-century man and how could he, being that,
represent the twentieth? How much, he wondered, does the human character
change with each generation? And not only was he of the nineteenth century,
but he had, as well, lived for almost a hundred years under a separate and a
special circumstance.
He knelt there, regarding himself with awe, and a little pity, too,
wondering what he was, if he were even human, if, unknown to himself, he had
absorbed so much of the mingled alien viewpoint to which he had been
subjected that he had become some strange sort of hybrid, a queer kind of
galactic half-breed.
Slowly he pulled the lid down and pushed it tight. Then he shoved the
trunk back underneath the shelves.
He tucked the box of letters underneath his arm and rose, picking up
his rifle, and headed for the stairs.
He found some empty cartons stacked in the kitchen corner, boxes that
Winslowe had used to bring out from town the supplies that he had ordered,
and began to pack.
The journals, stacked neatly in order, filled one large box and a part
of another. He took a stack of old newspapers and carefully wrapped the
twelve diamond bottles off the mantel and packed them in another box,
thickly paped, to guard against their breakage. Out of the cabinet he got
the Vegan music box and wrapped it as carefully. He pulled out of another
cabinet the alien literature that he had and piled it in the fourth box. He
went through his desk, but there wasn't too much there, only ops and ends
tucked here and there throughout the drawers. He found his chart and,
crumpling it, threw it in the wastebasket that stood beside his desk.
The already filled boxes he carried across the room and stacked beside
the door for easy reaching. Lewis would have a truck, but once he let him
know he needed it, it still might take a while for it to arrive. But if he
had the important stuff all packed, he told himself, he could get it out
himself and have it waiting for the truck.
The important stuff, he thought. Who could judge importance? The
journals and the alien literature, those first of all, of course. But the
rest of it? Which of the rest of it? It was all important; every item should
be taken. And that might be possible. Given time and with no extra
complications, it might be possible to haul it all away, all that was in
this room and stored down in the basement. It all was his and he had a right
to it, for it had been given him. But that did not mean, he knew, that
Galactic Central might not object most strenuously to his taking any of it.
And if that should happen, it was vital that he should be able to get
away with those most important items. Perhaps he should go down into the
basement and lug up those tagged articles of which he knew the purpose. It
probably would be better to take material about which something might be
known than a lot of stuff about which there was nothing known.
He stood undecided, looking all about the room. There were all the
items on the coffee table and those should be taken, too, including the
little flashing pyramid of globes that Lucy had set to working.
He saw that the Pet once again had crawled off the table and fallen on
the floor. He stooped and picked it up and held it in his hands. It had
grown an extra knob or two since the last time he had looked at it and it
was now a faint and delicate pink, whereas the last time he had noticed it
had been a cobalt blue.
He probably was wrong, he told himself, in calling it the Pet. It might
not be alive. But if it were, it was a sort of life he could not even guess
at. It was not metallic and it was not stone, but very close to both. A file
made no impression on it and he'd been tempted a time or two to whack it
with a hammer to see what that might do, although he was willing to bet it
would have no effect at all. It grew slowly, and it moved, but there was no
way of knowing how it moved. But leave it and come back and it would have
moved-a little, not too much. It knew it was being watched and it would not
move while watched. It did not eat so far as he could see and it seemed to
have no wastes. It changed colors, but entirely without season and with no
visible reason for the change.
A being from somewhere in the direction of Sagittarius had given it to
him just a year or two ago, and the creature, Enoch recalled, had been
something for the books. He probably wasn't actually a walking plant, but
that was what he'd looked like-a rather spindly plant that had been shorted
on good water and cheated on good soil, but which had sprouted a crop of
dime-store bangles that rang like a thousand silver bells when he made any
sort of motion.
Enoch remembered that he had tried to ask the being what the gift might
be, but the walking plant had simply clashed its bangles and filled the
place with ringing sound and didn't try to answer.
So he had put the gift on one end of the desk and hours later, after
the being was long gone, he found that it had moved to the other end of the
desk. But it had seemed too crazy to think that a thing like that could
move, so he finally convinced himself that he was mistaken as to where he'd
put it. It was not until days later that he was able to convince himself it
moved.
He'd have to take it when he left and Lucy's pyramid and the cube that
showed you pictures of other worlds when you looked inside of it and a great
deal of other stuff.
He stood with the Pet held in his hand and now, for the first time, he
wondered at why he might be packing.
He was acting as if he'd decided he would leave the station, as if he'd
chosen Earth as against the galaxy. But when and how, he wondered, had he
decided it? Decision should be based on weighing and on measuring and he had
weighed and measured nothing. He had not posed the advantages and the
disadvantages and tried to strike a balance. He had not thought it out.
Somehow, somewhere, it had sneaked up on him-this decision which had seemed
impossible, but now had been reached so easily.
Was it, he wondered, that he had absorbed, unconsciously, such an op
mixture of alien thought and ethics that he had evolved, unknown to himself,
a new way in which to think, perhaps some subconscious way of thought that
had lain inoperative until now, when it had been needed.
There was a box or two out in the shed and he'd go and get them and
finish up the packing of what he'd pick out here. Then he'd go down into the
basement and start lugging up the stuff that he had tagged. He glanced
toward the window and realized, with some surprise, that he would have to
hurry, for the sun was close to setting. It would be evening soon.
He remembered that he'd forgotten lunch, but he had no time to eat. He
could get something later.
He turned to put the Pet back on the table and as he did a faint sound
caught his ear and froze him where he stood.
It was the slight chuckle of a materializer operating and he could not
mistake it. He had heard the sound too often to be able to mistake it.
And it must be, he knew, the official materializer, for no one could
have traveled on the other without the sending of a message.
Ulysses, he thought. Ulysses coming back again. Or perhaps some other
member of Galactic Central. For if Ulysses had been coming, he would have
sent a message.
He took a quick step forward so he could see the corner where the
materializer stood and a dark and slender figure was stepping out from the
target circle.
"Ulysses!" Enoch cried, but even as he spoke he realized it was not
Ulysses.
For an instant he had the impression of a top hat, of white tie and
tails, of a jauntiness, and then he saw that the creature was a rat that
walked erect, with sleek, dark fur covering its body and a sharp, axlike
rodent face. For an instant, as it turned its head toward him, he caught the
red glitter of its eyes. Then it turned back toward the corner and he saw
that its hand was lifted and was pulling out of a harnessed holster hung
about its miple something that glinted with a metallic shimmer even in the
shadow.
There was something very wrong about it. The creature should have
greeted him. It should have said hello and come out to meet him. But instead
it had thrown him that one red-eyed glance and then turned back to the
corner.
The metallic object came out of the holster and it could only be a gun,
or at least some sort of weapon that one might think of as a gun.
And was this the way, thought Enoch, that they would close the station?
One quick shot, without a word, and the station keeper dead upon the floor.
With someone other than Ulysses, because Ulysses could not be trusted to
kill a long-time friend.
The rifle was lying across the desk top and there wasn't any time.
But the ratlike creature was not turning toward the room. It still was
facing toward the corner and its hand was coming up, with the weapon
glinting in it.
An alarm twanged within Enoch's brain and he swung his arm and yelled,
hurling the Pet toward the creature in the corner, the yell jerked out of
him involuntarily from the bottom of his lungs.
For the creature, he realized, had not been intent on the killing of
the keeper, but the disruption of the station. The only thing there was to
aim at in the corner was the control complex, the nerve center of the
station's operation. And if that should be knocked out, the station would be
dead. To set it in operation once again it would be necessary to send a crew
of technicians out in a spaceship from the nearest station-a trip that would
require many years to make.
At Enoch's yell, the creature jerked around, dropping toward a crouch,
and the flying Pet, tumbling end for end, caught it in the belly and drove
it back against the wall.
Enoch charged, arms outspread to grapple with the creature. The gun
flew from the creature's hand and pinwheeled across the floor. Then Enoch
was upon the alien and even as he closed with it, his nostrils were assailed
by its body stench-a sickening wave of nastiness.
He wrapped his arms about it and heaved, and it was not as heavy as he
had thought it might be. His powerful wrench jerked it from the corner and
swung it around and sent it skiping out across the floor.
It crashed against a chair and came to a stop and then like a steel
coil it rose off the floor and pounced for the gun.
Enoch took two great strides and had it by the neck, lifting it and
shaking it so savagely that the recovered gun flew from its hand again and
the bag it carried on a thong across its shoulder pounded like a vibrating
trip hammer against its hairy ribs.
The stench was thick, so thick that one could almost see it, and Enoch
gagged on it as he shook the creature. And supenly it was worse, much worse,
like a fire raging in one's throat and a hammer in one's head. It was like a
physical blow that hit one in the belly and shoved against the chest. Enoch
let go his hold upon the creature and staggered back, doubled up and
retching. He lifted his hands to his face and tried to push the stench away,
to clear his nostrils and his mouth, to rub it from his eyes.
Through a haze he saw the creature rise and, snatching up the gun, rush
toward the door. He did not hear the phrase that the creature spoke, but the
door came open and the creature spurted forward and was gone. And the door
slammed shut again.
Enoch wobbled across the room to the desk and caught at it for support.
The stench was diminishing and his head was clearing and he scarcely could
believe that it all had happened. For it was incredible that a thing like
this should happen. The creature had traveled on the official materializer,
and no one but a member of Galactic Central could travel by that route. And
no member of Galactic Central, he was convinced, would have acted as the
ratlike creature had. Likewise, the creature had known the phrase that would
operate the door. No, one but himself and Galactic Central would have known
that phrase.
He reached out and picked up his rifle and hefted it in his fist.
It was all right, he thought. There was nothing harmed. Except that
there was an alien loose upon the Earth and that was something that could
not be allowed. The Earth was barred to aliens. As a planet which had not
been recognized by the galactic cofraternity, it was off-limit territory.
He stood with the rifle in his hand and knew what he must do-he must
get that alien back, he must get it off the Earth.
He spoke the phrase aloud and strode toward the door and out and around
the corner of the house
The alien was running across the field and had almost reached the line
of woods.
Enoch ran desperately, but before he was halfway down the field, the
ratlike quarry had plunged into the woods and disappeared.
The woods was beginning to darken .The slanting rays of light from the
setting sun still lighted the upper canopy of the foliage, but on the forest
floor the shadows had begun to gather.
As he ran into the fringe of the woods, Enoch caught a glimpse of the
creature angling down a small ravine and plunging up the other slope, racing
through a heavy cover of ferns that reached almost to its miple.
If it kept on in that direction, Enoch told himself, it might work out
all right, for the slope beyond the ravine ended in a clump of rocks that
lay above an outthrust point that ended in a cliff, with each side curving
in, so that the point and its mass of boulders lay isolated, a place hung
out in space. It might be a little rough to dig the alien from the rocks if
it took refuge there, but at least it would be trapped and could not get
away. Although, Enoch reminded himself, he could waste no time, for the sun
was setting and it would soon be dark.
Enoch angled slightly westward to go around the head of the small
ravine, keeping an eye on the fleeing alien. The creature kept on up the
slope and Enoch, observing this, put on an extra burst of speed. For now he
had the alien trapped. In its fleeing, it had gone past the point of no
return. It could no longer turn around and retreat back from the point. Soon
it would reach the cliff edge and then there'd be nothing it could do but
hole up in the patch of boulders.
Running hard, Enoch crossed the area covered by the ferns and came out
on the sharper slope some hundred yards or so below the boulder clump. Here
the cover was not so dense. There was a scant covering of spotty underbrush
and a scattering of trees. The soft loam of the forest floor gave way to a
footing of shattered rock which through the years had been chipped off the
boulders by the winters' frost, rolling down the slope. They lay there now,
covered with thick moss, a treacherous place to walk.
As he ran, Enoch swept the boulders with a glance, but there was no
sign of the alien. Then, out of the corner of his vision, he saw the motion,
and threw himself forward to the ground behind a patch of hazel brush, and
through the network of the bushes he saw the alien outlined against the sky,
its head pivoting back and forth to sweep the slope below, the weapon half
lifted and set for instant use.
Enoch lay frozen, with his outstretched hand gripping the rifle. There
was a slash of pain across one set of knuckles and he knew that he had
skinned them on the rock as he had dived for cover.
The alien dropped from sight behind the boulders and Enoch slowly
pulled the rifle back to where he would be able to handle it should a shot
present itself.
Although, he wondered, would he dare to fire? Would he dare to kill an
alien?
The alien could have killed him back there at the station, when he had
been knocked silly by the dreadful stench. But it had not killed him; it had
fled instead. Was it, he wondered, that the creature had been so badly
frightened that all that it could think of had been to get away? Or had it,
perhaps, been as reluctant to kill a station keeper as he himself was to
kill an alien?
He searched the rocks above him and there was no motion and not a thing
to see. He must move up that slope, and quickly, he told himself, for time
would work against him and to the advantage of the alien. Darkness could not
be more than thirty minutes off and before dark had fallen this issue must
be settled. If the alien got away, there'd be little chance to find it.
And why, asked a second self, standing to one side, should you worry
about alien complications? For are you yourself not prepared to inform the
Earth that there are alien peoples in the galaxy and to hand to Earth,
unauthorized, as much of that alien lore and learning as may be within your
power? Why should you have stopped this alien from the wrecking of the
station, insuring its isolation for many years-for if that had been done,
then you'd have been free to do as you might wish with all that is within
the station? It would have worked to your advantage to have allowed events
to run their course.
But I couldn't, Enoch cried inside himself. Don't you see I couldn't?
Don't you understand?
A rustle in the bushes to his left brought him around with the rifle up
and ready.
And there was Lucy Fisher, not more than twenty feet away.
"Get out of here!" he shouted, forgetting that she could not hear him.
But she did not seem to notice. She motioned to the left and made a
sweeping motion with her hand and pointed toward the boulders.
Go away, he said underneath his breath. Go away from here.
And made rejection motions to indicate that she should go back, that
this was no place for her.
She shook her head and sprang away, in a running crouch, moving further
to the left and up the slope.
Enoch scrambled to his feet, lunging after her, and as he did the air
behind him made a frying sound and there was the sharp bite of ozone in the
air.
He hit the ground, instinctively, and farther down the slope he saw a
square yard of ground that boiled and steamed, with the ground cover swept
away by a fierce heat and the very soil and rock turned into a simmering
puping.
A laser, Enoch thought. The alien's weapon was a laser, packing a
terrific punch in a narrow beam of light.
He gathered himself together and made a short rush up the hillside,
throwing himself prone behind a twisted birch clump.
The air made the frying sound again and there was an instant's blast of
heat and the ozone once again. Over on the reverse slope a patch of ground
was steaming. Ash floated down and settled on Enoch's arms. He flashed a
quick glance upward and saw that the top half of the birch clump was gone,
sheared off by the laser and reduced to ash. Tiny coils of smoke rose lazily
from the severed stumps.
No matter what it may have done, or failed to do, back there at the
station, the alien now meant business. It knew that it was cornered and it
was playing vicious.
Enoch hupled against the ground and worried about Lucy. He hoped that
she was safe. The little fool should have stayed out of it. This was no
place for her. She shouldn't even have been out in the woods at this time of
day. She'd have old Hank out looking for her again, thinking she was
kidnapped. He wondered what the hell had gotten into her.
The dusk was deepening. Only the far peak of the treetops caught the
last rays of the sun. A coolness came stealing up the ravine from the valley
far below and there was a damp, lush smell that came out of the ground. From
some hipen hollow a whippoorwill called out mournfully.
Enoch darted out from behind the birch clump and rushed up the slope.
He reached the fallen log he'd picked as a barricade and threw himself
behind it. There was no sign of the alien and there was not another shot
from the laser gun.
Enoch studied the ground ahead. Two more rushes, one to that small pile
of rock and the next to the edge of the boulder area itself, and he'd be on
top of the hiding alien. And once he got there, he wondered, what was he to
do.
Go in and rout the alien out, of course.
There was no plan that could be made, no tactics that could be laid out
in advance. Once he got to the edge of the boulders, he must play it all by
ear, taking advantage of any break that might present itself He was at a
disadvantage in that he must not kill the alien, but must capture it instead
and drag it back, kicking and screaming, if need be, to the safety of the
station.
Perhaps, here in the open air, it could not use its stench defense as
effectively as it had in the confines of the station, and that, he thought,
might make it easier. He examined the clump of boulders from one edge to the
other and there was nothing that might help him to locate the alien.
Slowly he began to snake around, getting ready for the next rush up the
slope, moving carefully so that no sound would betray him.
Out of the tail of his eye he caught the moving shadow that came
flowing up the slope. Swiftly he sat up, swinging the rifle. But before he
could bring the muzzle round, the shadow was upon him, bearing him back,
flat upon the ground, with one great splay-fingered hand clamped upon his
mouth.
"Ulysses!" Enoch gurgled, but the fearsome shape only, hissed at him in
a warning sound.
Slowly the weight shifted off him and the hand slid from his mouth.
Ulysses gestured toward the boulder pile and Enoch noped.
Ulysses crept closer and lowered his head toward Enoch's. He whispered
with his mouth inches from the Earthman's ear: "The Talisman! He has the
Talisman!"
"The Talisman!" Enoch cried aloud, trying to strangle off the cry even
as he made it, remembering that he should make no sound to let the watcher
up above know where they might be.
From the ridge above a loose stone rattled as it was dislodged and
began to roll, bouncing down the slope. Enoch hunkered closer to the ground
behind the fallen log.
"Down!" he 'shouted to Ulysses. "Down! He has a gun."
But Ulysses' hand gripped him by the shoulder.
"Enoch!" he cried. "Enoch, look!"
Enoch jerked himself erect and atop the pile of rock, dark against the
skyline, were two grappling figures.
"Lucy!" he shouted.
For one of them was Lucy and the other was the alien.
She sneaked up on him, he thought. The damn little fool, she sneaked up
on him! While the alien had been distracted with watching the slope, she had
slipped up close and then had tackled him. She had a club of some sort in
her hand, an old dead branch, perhaps, and it was raised above her head,
ready for a stroke, but the alien had a grip upon her arm and she could not
strike.
"Shoot," said Ulysses, in a flat, dead voice.
Enoch raised the rifle and had trouble with the sights because of the
deepening darkness. And they were so close together! They were too close
together.
"Shoot!" yelled Ulysses.
"I can't," sobbed Enoch. "It's too dark to shoot."
"You have to shoot," Ulysses said, his voice tense and hard. "You have
to take the chance."
Enoch raised the rifle once again and the sights seemed clearer now and
he knew the trouble was not so much the darkness as that shot which he had
missed back there in the world of the honking thing that had strode its
world on stilts. If he had missed then, he could as well miss now.
The bead came to rest upon the head of the ratlike creature, and then
the head bobbed away, but was bobbing back again.
"Shoot!" Ulysses yelled.
Enoch squeezed the trigger and the rifle coughed and up atop the rocks
the creature stood for a second with only half a head and with tattered
gouts of flesh flying briefly like dark insects zooming against the
half-light of the western sky.
Enoch dropped the gun and sprawled upon the earth, clawing his fingers
into the thin and mossy soil, sick with the thought of what could have
happened, weak with the thankfulness that it had not happened, that the
years on that fantastic rifle range had at last paid off.
How strange it is, he thought, how so many senseless things shape our
destiny. For the rifle range had been a senseless thing, as senseless as a
billiard table or a game of cards-designed for one thing only, to please the
keeper of the station. And yet the hours he'd spent there had shaped toward
this hour and end, to this single instant on this restricted slope of
ground.
The sickness drained away into the earth beneath him and a peace came
stealing in upon him-the peace of trees and woodland soil and the first
faint hush of nightfall. As if the sky and stars and very space itself had
leaned close above him and was whispering his essential oneness with them.
And it seemed for a moment that he had grasped the edge of some great truth
and with this truth had come a comfort and a greatness he'd never known
before.
"Enoch," Ulysses whispered. "Enoch, my brother..."
There was something like a hipen sob in the alien's voice and he had
never, until this moment, called the Earthman brother.
Enoch pulled himself to his knees and up on the pile of tumbled
boulders was a soft and wondrous light, a soft and gentle light, as if a
giant firefly had turned on its lamp and had not turned it off, but had left
it burning.
The light was moving down across the rocks toward them and he could see
Lucy moving with the light, as if she were walking toward them with a
lantern in her hand.
Ulysses' hand reached out of the darkness and closed hard on Enoch's
arm.
"Do you see?" he asked.
"Yes, I see. What is ..."
"It is the Talisman," Ulysses said, enraptured, his breath rasping in
his throat. "And she is our new custodian. The one we've hunted through the
years."
You did not become accustomed to it, Enoch told himself as they tramped
up through the woods. There was not a moment you were not aware of it. It
was something that you wanted to hug close against yourself and hold it
there forever, and even when it was gone from you, you'd probably not forget
it, ever.
It was something that was past all description - a mother's love, a
father's pride, the adoration of a sweetheart, the closeness of a comrade,
it was all of these and more. It made the farthest distance near and turned
might be used. He had told them about hunting squirrels on sunny autumn
mornings and shaking rabbits out of brush piles with the first coming of the
snow (although one did not use a rifle, but a shotgun, on the rabbits),
about hunting coons of an autumn night, and waiting for the deer along the
run that went down to the river. But he was dishonest and he did not tell
them about that other use to which he'd put a rifle during four long years.
He'd told them (since they were easy folks to talk with) about his
youthful dream of some day going on a hunt in Africa, although even as he
told them he was well aware of how unattainable it was. But since that day
he'd hunted (and been hunted by) beasts far stranger than anything that
Africa could boast.
From what these beasts might have been patterned, if indeed they came
from anywhere other than the imagination of those aliens who had set up the
tapes which produced the target scene, he had no idea. There had not, so far
in the thousands of times that he had used the range, been a duplication
either in the scene nor in the beasts which rampaged about the scene.
Although, perhaps, he thought, there might be somewhere an end of them, and
then the whole sequence might start over and run its course once more. But
it would make little difference now, for if the tapes should start rerunning
there'd be but little chance of his recalling in any considerable detail
those adventures he had lived so many years ago.
He did not understand the techniques nor the principle which made
possible this fantastic rifle range. Like many other things, he accepted it
without the need of understanding. Although, some day, he thought, he might
find the clue which in time would turn blind acceptance into
understanding-not only of the range, but of many other things.
He had often wondered what the aliens might think about his fascination
with the rifle range, with that primal force that drove a man to kill, not
for the joy of killing so much as to negate a danger, to meet force with a
greater and more skillful force, cunning with more cunning. Had he, he
wondered, given his alien friends concern in their assessment of the human
character by his preoccupation with the rifle? For the understanding of an
alien, how could one draw a line between the killing of other forms of life
and the killing of one's own? Was there actually a differential that would
stand up under logical examination between the sport of hunting and the
sport of war? To an alien, perhaps, such a differentiation would be rather
difficult, for in many cases the hunted animal would be more closely allied
to the human hunter in its form and characteristics than would many of the
aliens.
Was war an instinctive thing, for which each ordinary man was as much
responsible as the policy makers and the so-called statesmen? It seemed
impossible, and yet, deep in every man was the combative instinct, the
aggressive urge, the strange sense of competition-all of which spelled
conflict of one kind or another if carried to conclusion.
He put the rifle underneath his arm and walked over to the panel.
Sticking from a slot in the bottom of it was a piece of tape.
He pulled it out and puzzled out the symbols. They were not reassuring.
He had not done so well.
He had missed that first shot he had fired at the charging wolf-thing
with the old man's face, and back there somewhere, in that dimension of
unreality, it and its companion were snarling over the tangled, torn mass of
ribboned flesh and broken bone that had been Enoch Wallace.
He went back through the gallery, with its gifts stacked there as other
gifts, in regular human establishments, might be stacked away in dry and
dusty attics.
The tape nagged at him, the little piece of tape which said that while
he had made all his other shots, he had missed that first one back there on
the hillock. It was not often that he missed. And his training had been for
that very type of shooting-the you-never-know-what-will-happen-next, the
totally unexpected, the kill-or-be-killed kind of shooting that thousands of
expeditions into the target area had taught him. Perhaps, he consoled
himself, he had not been as faithful in his practice lately as he should
have been. Although there actually was no reason that he should be faithful,
for the shooting was for recreation only and his carrying of the rifle on
his daily walks was from force of habit only and for no other reason. He
carried the rifle as another man might take along a cane or walking stick.
At the time he had first done it, of course, it had been a different kind of
rifle and a different day. It then was no unusual thing for a man to carry a
gun while out on a walk. But today was different and he wondered, with an
inner grin, how much talk his carrying a gun might have furnished the people
who had seen him with it.
Near the end of the gallery he saw the black bulk of a trunk projecting
from beneath the lower shelf, too big to fit comfortably beneath it, jammed
against the wall, but with a foot or two of it still projecting out beyond
the shelf.
He went on walking past it, then supenly turned around. That trunk, he
thought-that was the trunk which had belonged to the Hazer who had died
upstairs. It was his legacy from that being whose stolen body would be
brought back to its grave this evening.
He walked over to the shelving and leaned his rifle against the wall.
Stooping he pulled the trunk clear of its resting place.
Once before, prior to carrying it down the stairs and storing it here
beneath the shelves, he had gone through its contents, but at the time, he
recalled, he'd not been too interested. Now, supenly, he felt an absorbing
interest in it.
He lifted the lid carefully and tilted it back against the shelves.
Crouching above the open trunk, and without touching anything to start
with, he tried to catalogue the upper layer of its contents.
There was a shimmering cloak, neatly folded, perhaps some sort of
ceremonial cloak, although he could not know. And atop the cloak lay a tiny
bottle that was a blaze of reflected light, as if someone had taken a
large-sized diamond and hollowed it out to make a bottle of it. Beside the
cloak lay a nest of balls, deep violet and dull, with no shine at all,
looking for all the world like a bunch of table-tennis balls that someone
had cemented together to make a globe. But that was not the way it was,
Enoch remembered, for that other time he had been entranced by them and had
picked them up, to find that they were not cemented, but could be freely
moved about, although never outside the context of their shape. One ball
could not be broken from the mass, no matter how hard one might try, but
would move about, as if buoyed in a fluid, among all the other balls. One
could move any, or all, of the balls, but the mass remained the same. A
calculator of some sort, Enoch wondered, but that seemed only barely
possible, for one ball was entirely like another, there was no way in which
they could be identified. Or at least, no way to identify them by the human
eye. Was it possible, he wondered, that identification might be possible to
a Hazer's eye? And if a calculator, what kind of a calculator? Mathematical?
Or ethical? Or philosophical? Although that was slightly foolish, for who
had ever heard of a calculator for ethics or philosophy? Or, rather, what
human had ever heard? More than likely it was not a calculator, but
something else entirely. Perhaps a sort of game-a game of solitaire?
Given time, a man might finally get it figured out. But there was no
time and no incentive at the moment to spend upon one particular item any
great amount of time when there were hundreds of other items equally
fantastic and incomprehensible. For while one puzzled over a single item,
the edges of his mind would always wonder if he might not be spending time
on the most insignificant of the entire lot.
He was a victim of museum fatigue, Enoch told himself, overwhelmed by
the many pieces of the unknown scattered all about him.
He reached out a hand, not for the globe of balls, but for the shining
bottle that lay atop the cloak. As he picked it up and brought it closer, he
saw that there was a line of writing engraved upon the glass (or diamond?)
of the bottle. Slowly he studied out the writing. There had been a time,
long ago, when he had been able to read the Hazer language, if not fluently,
at least well enough to get along. But he had not read it for some years now
and he had lost a good deal of it and he stumbled haltingly from one symbol
to another. Translated very freely, the inscription on the bottle read: To
be taken when the first symptoms occur.
A bottle of medicine! To be taken when the first symptoms occur. The
symptoms, perhaps, that had come so quickly and built up so rapidly that the
owner of this bottle could make no move to reach it and so had died, falling
from the sofa.
Almost reverently, he put the bottle back in its place atop the cloak,
fitting it back into the faint impression it had made from lying there.
So different from us in so many ways, thought Enoch, and then in other
little ways so like us that it is frightening. For that bottle and the
inscription on its face was an exact parallel of the prescription bottle
that could be compounded by any corner drugstore.
Beside the globe of balls was a box, and he reached out and lifted it.
It was made of wood and had a rather simple clasp to hold it shut. He
flipped back the lid and inside he saw the metallic sheen of the material
the Hazers used as paper.
Carefully he lifted out the first sheet and saw that it was not a
sheet, but a long strip of the material folded in accordion fashion.
Underneath it were more strips, apparently of the same material.
There was writing on it, faint and faded, and Enoch held it close to
read it.
To my -,-- friend: (although it was not "friend." "Blood brother,"
perhaps, or "colleague." And the adjectives which preceded it were such as
to escape his sense entirely.)
The writing was hard to read. It bore some resemblance to the
formalized version of the language, but apparently bore the imprint of the
writer's personality, expressed in curlicues and flourishes which obscured
the form. Enoch worked his way slowly down the paper, missing much of what
was there, but picking up the sense of much that had been written.
The writer had been on a visit to some other planet, or possibly just
some other place. The name of the place or planet was one that Enoch did not
recognize. While he had been there he had performed some sort of function
(although exactly what it was was not entirely clear) which had to do with
his approaching death.
Enoch, startled, went back over the phrase again. And while much of the
rest of what was written was not clear, that part of it was. My approaching
death, he had written, and there was no room for mistranslation. All three
of the words were clear.
He urged that his good (friend?) do likewise. He said it was a comfort
and made clear the road.
There was no further explanation, no further reference. Just the calm
declaration that he had done something which he felt must be arranged about
his death. As if he knew death was near and was not only unafraid, but
almost unconcerned.
The next passage (for there were no paragraphs) told about someone he
had met and how they'd talked about a certain matter which made no sense at
all to Enoch, who found himself lost in a terminology he did not recognize.
And then: I am most concerned about the mediocrity (incompetence?
inability? weakness?) of the recent custodian of (and then that cryptic
symbol which could be translated, roughly, as the Talisman.) For (a word,
which from the context, seemed to mean a great length of time), ever since
the death of the last custodian, the Talisman has been but poorly served. It
has been, in all reality, (another long time term), since a true
(sensitive?) has been found to carry out its purpose. Many have been tested
and none has qualified, and for the lack of such a one the galaxy has lost
its close identification with the ruling principle of life. We here at the
(temple? sanctuary?) all are greatly concerned that without a proper linkage
between the people and (several words that were not decipherable) the galaxy
will go down in chaos (and another line that he could not puzzle out).
The next sentence introduced a new subject-the plans that were going
forward for some cultural festival which concerned a concept that, to Enoch,
was hazy at the best.
Enoch slowly folded up the letter and put it back into the box. He felt
a faint uneasiness in reading what he had, as if he'd pried into a
friendship that he had no right to know. We here at the temple, the letter
had said. Perhaps the writer had been one of the Hazer mystics, writing to
his old friend, the philosopher. And the other letters, quite possibly, were
from that same mystic-letters that the dead old Hazer had valued so highly
that he took them along with him when he went traveling.
A slight breeze seemed to be blowing across Enoch's shoulders; not
actually a breeze, but a strange motion and a coldness to the air.
He glanced back into the gallery and there was nothing stirring,
nothing to be seen.
The wind had quit its blowing, if it had ever blown. Here one moment,
gone the next. Like a passing ghost, thought Enoch.
Did the Hazer have a ghost?
The people back on Vega XXI had known the moment he had died and all
the circumstances of his death. They had known again about the body
disappearing. And the letter had spoken calmly, much more calmly than would
have been in the capacity of most humans, about the writer's near approach
to death.
Was it possible that the Hazers knew more of life and death than had
ever been spelled out? Or had it been spelled out, put down in black and
white, in some depository or depositories in the galaxy?
Was the answer there? he wondered.
Squatting there, he thought that perhaps it might be, that someone
already knew what life was for and what its destiny. There was a comfort in
the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe
that some intelligence might have solved the riple of that mysterious
equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might
tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and
space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together.
He tried to imagine what one might feel if he were in contact with the
force, and could not. He wondered if even those who might have been in
contact with it could find the words to tell. It might, he thought, be
impossible. For how could one who had been in intimate contact all his life
with space and time tell what either of these meant to him or how they felt?
Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman.
He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it,
but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been
dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people
and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure
had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity. Whatever might be
happening now had not happened in the last few years; it had been building
up for a longer time than most aliens would admit. Although, come to think
of it, most aliens probably did not know.
Enoch closed the box lid and put it back into the trunk. Some day, he
thought, when he was in the proper frame of mind, when the pressure of
events made him less emotional, when he could dull the guilt of prying, he
would achieve a scholarly and conscientious translation of those letters.
For in them, he felt certain, he might find further understanding of that
intriguing race. He might, he thought, then be better able to gauge their
humanity-not humanity in the common and accepted sense of being a member of
the human race of Earth, but in the sense that certain rules of conduct must
underlie all racial concepts even as the thing called humanity in its narrow
sense underlay the human concept.
He reached up to close the lid of the trunk and then he hesitated.
Some day, he had said. And there might not be a some day. It was a
state of mind to be always thinking some day, a state of mind made possible
by the conditions inside this station. For here there were endless days to
come, forever and forever there were days to come. A man's concept of time
was twisted out of shape and reason and he could look ahead complacently
down a long, almost never ending, avenue of time. But that might be all over
now. Time might supenly snap back into its rightful focus. Should he leave
this station, the long procession of days to come would end.
He pushed back the lid again until it rested against the shelves.
Reaching in, he lifted out the box and set it on the floor beside him. He'd
take it upstairs, he told himself, and put it with the other stuff that he
must be prepared immediately to take along with him if he should leave the
station.
If? he asked himself. Was there a question any longer? Had he, somehow,
made that hard decision? Had it crept upon him unaware, so that he now was
committed to it?
And if he had actually arrived at that decision, then he must, also,
have arrived at the other one. If he left the station, then he could no
longer be in a position to appear before Galactic Central to plead that
Earth be cured of war.
You are the representative of the Earth, Ulysses had told him. You are
the only one who can represent the Earth. But could he, in reality,
represent the Earth? Was he any longer a true representative of the human
race? He was a nineteenth-century man and how could he, being that,
represent the twentieth? How much, he wondered, does the human character
change with each generation? And not only was he of the nineteenth century,
but he had, as well, lived for almost a hundred years under a separate and a
special circumstance.
He knelt there, regarding himself with awe, and a little pity, too,
wondering what he was, if he were even human, if, unknown to himself, he had
absorbed so much of the mingled alien viewpoint to which he had been
subjected that he had become some strange sort of hybrid, a queer kind of
galactic half-breed.
Slowly he pulled the lid down and pushed it tight. Then he shoved the
trunk back underneath the shelves.
He tucked the box of letters underneath his arm and rose, picking up
his rifle, and headed for the stairs.
He found some empty cartons stacked in the kitchen corner, boxes that
Winslowe had used to bring out from town the supplies that he had ordered,
and began to pack.
The journals, stacked neatly in order, filled one large box and a part
of another. He took a stack of old newspapers and carefully wrapped the
twelve diamond bottles off the mantel and packed them in another box,
thickly paped, to guard against their breakage. Out of the cabinet he got
the Vegan music box and wrapped it as carefully. He pulled out of another
cabinet the alien literature that he had and piled it in the fourth box. He
went through his desk, but there wasn't too much there, only ops and ends
tucked here and there throughout the drawers. He found his chart and,
crumpling it, threw it in the wastebasket that stood beside his desk.
The already filled boxes he carried across the room and stacked beside
the door for easy reaching. Lewis would have a truck, but once he let him
know he needed it, it still might take a while for it to arrive. But if he
had the important stuff all packed, he told himself, he could get it out
himself and have it waiting for the truck.
The important stuff, he thought. Who could judge importance? The
journals and the alien literature, those first of all, of course. But the
rest of it? Which of the rest of it? It was all important; every item should
be taken. And that might be possible. Given time and with no extra
complications, it might be possible to haul it all away, all that was in
this room and stored down in the basement. It all was his and he had a right
to it, for it had been given him. But that did not mean, he knew, that
Galactic Central might not object most strenuously to his taking any of it.
And if that should happen, it was vital that he should be able to get
away with those most important items. Perhaps he should go down into the
basement and lug up those tagged articles of which he knew the purpose. It
probably would be better to take material about which something might be
known than a lot of stuff about which there was nothing known.
He stood undecided, looking all about the room. There were all the
items on the coffee table and those should be taken, too, including the
little flashing pyramid of globes that Lucy had set to working.
He saw that the Pet once again had crawled off the table and fallen on
the floor. He stooped and picked it up and held it in his hands. It had
grown an extra knob or two since the last time he had looked at it and it
was now a faint and delicate pink, whereas the last time he had noticed it
had been a cobalt blue.
He probably was wrong, he told himself, in calling it the Pet. It might
not be alive. But if it were, it was a sort of life he could not even guess
at. It was not metallic and it was not stone, but very close to both. A file
made no impression on it and he'd been tempted a time or two to whack it
with a hammer to see what that might do, although he was willing to bet it
would have no effect at all. It grew slowly, and it moved, but there was no
way of knowing how it moved. But leave it and come back and it would have
moved-a little, not too much. It knew it was being watched and it would not
move while watched. It did not eat so far as he could see and it seemed to
have no wastes. It changed colors, but entirely without season and with no
visible reason for the change.
A being from somewhere in the direction of Sagittarius had given it to
him just a year or two ago, and the creature, Enoch recalled, had been
something for the books. He probably wasn't actually a walking plant, but
that was what he'd looked like-a rather spindly plant that had been shorted
on good water and cheated on good soil, but which had sprouted a crop of
dime-store bangles that rang like a thousand silver bells when he made any
sort of motion.
Enoch remembered that he had tried to ask the being what the gift might
be, but the walking plant had simply clashed its bangles and filled the
place with ringing sound and didn't try to answer.
So he had put the gift on one end of the desk and hours later, after
the being was long gone, he found that it had moved to the other end of the
desk. But it had seemed too crazy to think that a thing like that could
move, so he finally convinced himself that he was mistaken as to where he'd
put it. It was not until days later that he was able to convince himself it
moved.
He'd have to take it when he left and Lucy's pyramid and the cube that
showed you pictures of other worlds when you looked inside of it and a great
deal of other stuff.
He stood with the Pet held in his hand and now, for the first time, he
wondered at why he might be packing.
He was acting as if he'd decided he would leave the station, as if he'd
chosen Earth as against the galaxy. But when and how, he wondered, had he
decided it? Decision should be based on weighing and on measuring and he had
weighed and measured nothing. He had not posed the advantages and the
disadvantages and tried to strike a balance. He had not thought it out.
Somehow, somewhere, it had sneaked up on him-this decision which had seemed
impossible, but now had been reached so easily.
Was it, he wondered, that he had absorbed, unconsciously, such an op
mixture of alien thought and ethics that he had evolved, unknown to himself,
a new way in which to think, perhaps some subconscious way of thought that
had lain inoperative until now, when it had been needed.
There was a box or two out in the shed and he'd go and get them and
finish up the packing of what he'd pick out here. Then he'd go down into the
basement and start lugging up the stuff that he had tagged. He glanced
toward the window and realized, with some surprise, that he would have to
hurry, for the sun was close to setting. It would be evening soon.
He remembered that he'd forgotten lunch, but he had no time to eat. He
could get something later.
He turned to put the Pet back on the table and as he did a faint sound
caught his ear and froze him where he stood.
It was the slight chuckle of a materializer operating and he could not
mistake it. He had heard the sound too often to be able to mistake it.
And it must be, he knew, the official materializer, for no one could
have traveled on the other without the sending of a message.
Ulysses, he thought. Ulysses coming back again. Or perhaps some other
member of Galactic Central. For if Ulysses had been coming, he would have
sent a message.
He took a quick step forward so he could see the corner where the
materializer stood and a dark and slender figure was stepping out from the
target circle.
"Ulysses!" Enoch cried, but even as he spoke he realized it was not
Ulysses.
For an instant he had the impression of a top hat, of white tie and
tails, of a jauntiness, and then he saw that the creature was a rat that
walked erect, with sleek, dark fur covering its body and a sharp, axlike
rodent face. For an instant, as it turned its head toward him, he caught the
red glitter of its eyes. Then it turned back toward the corner and he saw
that its hand was lifted and was pulling out of a harnessed holster hung
about its miple something that glinted with a metallic shimmer even in the
shadow.
There was something very wrong about it. The creature should have
greeted him. It should have said hello and come out to meet him. But instead
it had thrown him that one red-eyed glance and then turned back to the
corner.
The metallic object came out of the holster and it could only be a gun,
or at least some sort of weapon that one might think of as a gun.
And was this the way, thought Enoch, that they would close the station?
One quick shot, without a word, and the station keeper dead upon the floor.
With someone other than Ulysses, because Ulysses could not be trusted to
kill a long-time friend.
The rifle was lying across the desk top and there wasn't any time.
But the ratlike creature was not turning toward the room. It still was
facing toward the corner and its hand was coming up, with the weapon
glinting in it.
An alarm twanged within Enoch's brain and he swung his arm and yelled,
hurling the Pet toward the creature in the corner, the yell jerked out of
him involuntarily from the bottom of his lungs.
For the creature, he realized, had not been intent on the killing of
the keeper, but the disruption of the station. The only thing there was to
aim at in the corner was the control complex, the nerve center of the
station's operation. And if that should be knocked out, the station would be
dead. To set it in operation once again it would be necessary to send a crew
of technicians out in a spaceship from the nearest station-a trip that would
require many years to make.
At Enoch's yell, the creature jerked around, dropping toward a crouch,
and the flying Pet, tumbling end for end, caught it in the belly and drove
it back against the wall.
Enoch charged, arms outspread to grapple with the creature. The gun
flew from the creature's hand and pinwheeled across the floor. Then Enoch
was upon the alien and even as he closed with it, his nostrils were assailed
by its body stench-a sickening wave of nastiness.
He wrapped his arms about it and heaved, and it was not as heavy as he
had thought it might be. His powerful wrench jerked it from the corner and
swung it around and sent it skiping out across the floor.
It crashed against a chair and came to a stop and then like a steel
coil it rose off the floor and pounced for the gun.
Enoch took two great strides and had it by the neck, lifting it and
shaking it so savagely that the recovered gun flew from its hand again and
the bag it carried on a thong across its shoulder pounded like a vibrating
trip hammer against its hairy ribs.
The stench was thick, so thick that one could almost see it, and Enoch
gagged on it as he shook the creature. And supenly it was worse, much worse,
like a fire raging in one's throat and a hammer in one's head. It was like a
physical blow that hit one in the belly and shoved against the chest. Enoch
let go his hold upon the creature and staggered back, doubled up and
retching. He lifted his hands to his face and tried to push the stench away,
to clear his nostrils and his mouth, to rub it from his eyes.
Through a haze he saw the creature rise and, snatching up the gun, rush
toward the door. He did not hear the phrase that the creature spoke, but the
door came open and the creature spurted forward and was gone. And the door
slammed shut again.
Enoch wobbled across the room to the desk and caught at it for support.
The stench was diminishing and his head was clearing and he scarcely could
believe that it all had happened. For it was incredible that a thing like
this should happen. The creature had traveled on the official materializer,
and no one but a member of Galactic Central could travel by that route. And
no member of Galactic Central, he was convinced, would have acted as the
ratlike creature had. Likewise, the creature had known the phrase that would
operate the door. No, one but himself and Galactic Central would have known
that phrase.
He reached out and picked up his rifle and hefted it in his fist.
It was all right, he thought. There was nothing harmed. Except that
there was an alien loose upon the Earth and that was something that could
not be allowed. The Earth was barred to aliens. As a planet which had not
been recognized by the galactic cofraternity, it was off-limit territory.
He stood with the rifle in his hand and knew what he must do-he must
get that alien back, he must get it off the Earth.
He spoke the phrase aloud and strode toward the door and out and around
the corner of the house
The alien was running across the field and had almost reached the line
of woods.
Enoch ran desperately, but before he was halfway down the field, the
ratlike quarry had plunged into the woods and disappeared.
The woods was beginning to darken .The slanting rays of light from the
setting sun still lighted the upper canopy of the foliage, but on the forest
floor the shadows had begun to gather.
As he ran into the fringe of the woods, Enoch caught a glimpse of the
creature angling down a small ravine and plunging up the other slope, racing
through a heavy cover of ferns that reached almost to its miple.
If it kept on in that direction, Enoch told himself, it might work out
all right, for the slope beyond the ravine ended in a clump of rocks that
lay above an outthrust point that ended in a cliff, with each side curving
in, so that the point and its mass of boulders lay isolated, a place hung
out in space. It might be a little rough to dig the alien from the rocks if
it took refuge there, but at least it would be trapped and could not get
away. Although, Enoch reminded himself, he could waste no time, for the sun
was setting and it would soon be dark.
Enoch angled slightly westward to go around the head of the small
ravine, keeping an eye on the fleeing alien. The creature kept on up the
slope and Enoch, observing this, put on an extra burst of speed. For now he
had the alien trapped. In its fleeing, it had gone past the point of no
return. It could no longer turn around and retreat back from the point. Soon
it would reach the cliff edge and then there'd be nothing it could do but
hole up in the patch of boulders.
Running hard, Enoch crossed the area covered by the ferns and came out
on the sharper slope some hundred yards or so below the boulder clump. Here
the cover was not so dense. There was a scant covering of spotty underbrush
and a scattering of trees. The soft loam of the forest floor gave way to a
footing of shattered rock which through the years had been chipped off the
boulders by the winters' frost, rolling down the slope. They lay there now,
covered with thick moss, a treacherous place to walk.
As he ran, Enoch swept the boulders with a glance, but there was no
sign of the alien. Then, out of the corner of his vision, he saw the motion,
and threw himself forward to the ground behind a patch of hazel brush, and
through the network of the bushes he saw the alien outlined against the sky,
its head pivoting back and forth to sweep the slope below, the weapon half
lifted and set for instant use.
Enoch lay frozen, with his outstretched hand gripping the rifle. There
was a slash of pain across one set of knuckles and he knew that he had
skinned them on the rock as he had dived for cover.
The alien dropped from sight behind the boulders and Enoch slowly
pulled the rifle back to where he would be able to handle it should a shot
present itself.
Although, he wondered, would he dare to fire? Would he dare to kill an
alien?
The alien could have killed him back there at the station, when he had
been knocked silly by the dreadful stench. But it had not killed him; it had
fled instead. Was it, he wondered, that the creature had been so badly
frightened that all that it could think of had been to get away? Or had it,
perhaps, been as reluctant to kill a station keeper as he himself was to
kill an alien?
He searched the rocks above him and there was no motion and not a thing
to see. He must move up that slope, and quickly, he told himself, for time
would work against him and to the advantage of the alien. Darkness could not
be more than thirty minutes off and before dark had fallen this issue must
be settled. If the alien got away, there'd be little chance to find it.
And why, asked a second self, standing to one side, should you worry
about alien complications? For are you yourself not prepared to inform the
Earth that there are alien peoples in the galaxy and to hand to Earth,
unauthorized, as much of that alien lore and learning as may be within your
power? Why should you have stopped this alien from the wrecking of the
station, insuring its isolation for many years-for if that had been done,
then you'd have been free to do as you might wish with all that is within
the station? It would have worked to your advantage to have allowed events
to run their course.
But I couldn't, Enoch cried inside himself. Don't you see I couldn't?
Don't you understand?
A rustle in the bushes to his left brought him around with the rifle up
and ready.
And there was Lucy Fisher, not more than twenty feet away.
"Get out of here!" he shouted, forgetting that she could not hear him.
But she did not seem to notice. She motioned to the left and made a
sweeping motion with her hand and pointed toward the boulders.
Go away, he said underneath his breath. Go away from here.
And made rejection motions to indicate that she should go back, that
this was no place for her.
She shook her head and sprang away, in a running crouch, moving further
to the left and up the slope.
Enoch scrambled to his feet, lunging after her, and as he did the air
behind him made a frying sound and there was the sharp bite of ozone in the
air.
He hit the ground, instinctively, and farther down the slope he saw a
square yard of ground that boiled and steamed, with the ground cover swept
away by a fierce heat and the very soil and rock turned into a simmering
puping.
A laser, Enoch thought. The alien's weapon was a laser, packing a
terrific punch in a narrow beam of light.
He gathered himself together and made a short rush up the hillside,
throwing himself prone behind a twisted birch clump.
The air made the frying sound again and there was an instant's blast of
heat and the ozone once again. Over on the reverse slope a patch of ground
was steaming. Ash floated down and settled on Enoch's arms. He flashed a
quick glance upward and saw that the top half of the birch clump was gone,
sheared off by the laser and reduced to ash. Tiny coils of smoke rose lazily
from the severed stumps.
No matter what it may have done, or failed to do, back there at the
station, the alien now meant business. It knew that it was cornered and it
was playing vicious.
Enoch hupled against the ground and worried about Lucy. He hoped that
she was safe. The little fool should have stayed out of it. This was no
place for her. She shouldn't even have been out in the woods at this time of
day. She'd have old Hank out looking for her again, thinking she was
kidnapped. He wondered what the hell had gotten into her.
The dusk was deepening. Only the far peak of the treetops caught the
last rays of the sun. A coolness came stealing up the ravine from the valley
far below and there was a damp, lush smell that came out of the ground. From
some hipen hollow a whippoorwill called out mournfully.
Enoch darted out from behind the birch clump and rushed up the slope.
He reached the fallen log he'd picked as a barricade and threw himself
behind it. There was no sign of the alien and there was not another shot
from the laser gun.
Enoch studied the ground ahead. Two more rushes, one to that small pile
of rock and the next to the edge of the boulder area itself, and he'd be on
top of the hiding alien. And once he got there, he wondered, what was he to
do.
Go in and rout the alien out, of course.
There was no plan that could be made, no tactics that could be laid out
in advance. Once he got to the edge of the boulders, he must play it all by
ear, taking advantage of any break that might present itself He was at a
disadvantage in that he must not kill the alien, but must capture it instead
and drag it back, kicking and screaming, if need be, to the safety of the
station.
Perhaps, here in the open air, it could not use its stench defense as
effectively as it had in the confines of the station, and that, he thought,
might make it easier. He examined the clump of boulders from one edge to the
other and there was nothing that might help him to locate the alien.
Slowly he began to snake around, getting ready for the next rush up the
slope, moving carefully so that no sound would betray him.
Out of the tail of his eye he caught the moving shadow that came
flowing up the slope. Swiftly he sat up, swinging the rifle. But before he
could bring the muzzle round, the shadow was upon him, bearing him back,
flat upon the ground, with one great splay-fingered hand clamped upon his
mouth.
"Ulysses!" Enoch gurgled, but the fearsome shape only, hissed at him in
a warning sound.
Slowly the weight shifted off him and the hand slid from his mouth.
Ulysses gestured toward the boulder pile and Enoch noped.
Ulysses crept closer and lowered his head toward Enoch's. He whispered
with his mouth inches from the Earthman's ear: "The Talisman! He has the
Talisman!"
"The Talisman!" Enoch cried aloud, trying to strangle off the cry even
as he made it, remembering that he should make no sound to let the watcher
up above know where they might be.
From the ridge above a loose stone rattled as it was dislodged and
began to roll, bouncing down the slope. Enoch hunkered closer to the ground
behind the fallen log.
"Down!" he 'shouted to Ulysses. "Down! He has a gun."
But Ulysses' hand gripped him by the shoulder.
"Enoch!" he cried. "Enoch, look!"
Enoch jerked himself erect and atop the pile of rock, dark against the
skyline, were two grappling figures.
"Lucy!" he shouted.
For one of them was Lucy and the other was the alien.
She sneaked up on him, he thought. The damn little fool, she sneaked up
on him! While the alien had been distracted with watching the slope, she had
slipped up close and then had tackled him. She had a club of some sort in
her hand, an old dead branch, perhaps, and it was raised above her head,
ready for a stroke, but the alien had a grip upon her arm and she could not
strike.
"Shoot," said Ulysses, in a flat, dead voice.
Enoch raised the rifle and had trouble with the sights because of the
deepening darkness. And they were so close together! They were too close
together.
"Shoot!" yelled Ulysses.
"I can't," sobbed Enoch. "It's too dark to shoot."
"You have to shoot," Ulysses said, his voice tense and hard. "You have
to take the chance."
Enoch raised the rifle once again and the sights seemed clearer now and
he knew the trouble was not so much the darkness as that shot which he had
missed back there in the world of the honking thing that had strode its
world on stilts. If he had missed then, he could as well miss now.
The bead came to rest upon the head of the ratlike creature, and then
the head bobbed away, but was bobbing back again.
"Shoot!" Ulysses yelled.
Enoch squeezed the trigger and the rifle coughed and up atop the rocks
the creature stood for a second with only half a head and with tattered
gouts of flesh flying briefly like dark insects zooming against the
half-light of the western sky.
Enoch dropped the gun and sprawled upon the earth, clawing his fingers
into the thin and mossy soil, sick with the thought of what could have
happened, weak with the thankfulness that it had not happened, that the
years on that fantastic rifle range had at last paid off.
How strange it is, he thought, how so many senseless things shape our
destiny. For the rifle range had been a senseless thing, as senseless as a
billiard table or a game of cards-designed for one thing only, to please the
keeper of the station. And yet the hours he'd spent there had shaped toward
this hour and end, to this single instant on this restricted slope of
ground.
The sickness drained away into the earth beneath him and a peace came
stealing in upon him-the peace of trees and woodland soil and the first
faint hush of nightfall. As if the sky and stars and very space itself had
leaned close above him and was whispering his essential oneness with them.
And it seemed for a moment that he had grasped the edge of some great truth
and with this truth had come a comfort and a greatness he'd never known
before.
"Enoch," Ulysses whispered. "Enoch, my brother..."
There was something like a hipen sob in the alien's voice and he had
never, until this moment, called the Earthman brother.
Enoch pulled himself to his knees and up on the pile of tumbled
boulders was a soft and wondrous light, a soft and gentle light, as if a
giant firefly had turned on its lamp and had not turned it off, but had left
it burning.
The light was moving down across the rocks toward them and he could see
Lucy moving with the light, as if she were walking toward them with a
lantern in her hand.
Ulysses' hand reached out of the darkness and closed hard on Enoch's
arm.
"Do you see?" he asked.
"Yes, I see. What is ..."
"It is the Talisman," Ulysses said, enraptured, his breath rasping in
his throat. "And she is our new custodian. The one we've hunted through the
years."
You did not become accustomed to it, Enoch told himself as they tramped
up through the woods. There was not a moment you were not aware of it. It
was something that you wanted to hug close against yourself and hold it
there forever, and even when it was gone from you, you'd probably not forget
it, ever.
It was something that was past all description - a mother's love, a
father's pride, the adoration of a sweetheart, the closeness of a comrade,
it was all of these and more. It made the farthest distance near and turned