Highway of Eternity (17 page)

“But not your people, not everyone …”

“We were the minority,” said David. “The stupid fools who couldn't understand and wouldn't go along. We were the troublemakers, the thorn in the side of decent people, the loudmouths …”

“But, as I understand it, you weren't really troublemakers.”

“No,” said David. “We just set a bad example.”

They were walking up a low hill. When he reached the crest, David stopped. Corcoran came up to him, and he nodded down the hill.

“There's the village,” he said.

It was a small, neat village. A few of the houses were of respectable size, but the others were rather small. There were not many of them, perhaps more than a dozen, but not more than twenty. A narrow road formed the village street. A bridge spanned the stream, and the road beyond the stream snaked its way across flat bottomland checkered by fields and gardens. Beyond the bottomland, hills rose up again.

“A self-contained community,” said Corcoran. “Isolated. The robots, I imagine, grow the food and tend the herds.”

“Exactly. And yet the humans here, with their scaled-down needs, have everything they want.”

They went down the hill and came to the road that formed the village street. There an old man walked, making his slow and careful way. No one else was in sight.

A robot came out of a small building that stood at the edge of the village. He headed directly for them, striding purposefully. When he came close, he stopped and stood facing them. He was a plain robot, businesslike, and with no fanciness to him.

“Welcome to our village,” he said, without any preamble to cover social niceties. “We are glad you came. Will you step in with me and enjoy a bowl of soup? That is all we have today, that and honest bread, but there is plenty of it. We have been out of coffee for some time, but can offer you a stoup of our finest ale.”

“We accept your hospitality with deep gratitude,” David said, stiffly. “We hunger for companionship. We are on an extended walking tour and have fallen in with few. When we heard of your village, we came out of our way to visit you.”

“There are gentlemen here,” the robot told them, “who will be glad of discourse with you. We are a contented place and isolated, which affords us time for weighty cogitation. We have thinkers here we would array against any in the land.”

He turned about and led them to the small building from which he had emerged. He held the door to let them in.

A counter ran along one wall, with stools arranged before it. In the center of the room stood a large, round table on which sat several flaring candles. A half-dozen men sat about the table. Large soup bowls had been pushed to one side and replaced with steins. Despite the candles, the room was dark and stifling. In all the building, there were only two small windows to let in the light.

“Gentlemen,” said the robot, in a voice of somber pronouncement, “we have visitors. If you will, please to make elbow room for them.”

The men at the table shoved their chairs closer together to make room for their visitors.

For some time after the two sat down, there was silence, with the others at the table looking them over closely and perhaps a bit suspiciously. In turn, Corcoran studied the faces before him. Most of them were older men and most wore beards. But they were cleanly, respectable men. He thought that he could catch the scent of bath soap; their clothing was plain and clean, although patched here and there.

An old man with a shock of snow white hair and a beard of alarming frostiness finally said to them, “We have been discussing the escape of mankind from the treadmill on which we had been placed by our former economic and social circumstances. All of us are convinced the escape came barely in time. This seems to be the one thing on which we are agreed, for each of us has developed divergent viewpoints on how and why it all came about. The world, we are agreed to start with, had become so artificial, so air-conditioned, so sterilized and comfortable, that a human no longer was a human, but a pet, computer-kept. Have either of you, perchance, had any thoughts on this?”

Bingo, thought Corcoran. Just like that. No introductions, no questions about who you are and what you might be doing, nothing about how glad we are that you happened to drop in, no small talk at all, no preliminaries. These men are fanatics, he told himself, and yet there was no sign of fanaticism—no wild gleam in their eyes, no tenseness in their bodies. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be calm and easy men.

“We have thought on it, of course, from time to time,” said David, speaking as quietly as the old man with the frosty beard. “But our thoughts have been more directed toward why mankind, to start with, had gotten itself so trapped. We have sought for cause but there are so many factors and all of them so jumbled that true assessments are very hard to come by. In the last few months we have been hearing some snatches of rumors about a new school of thought which urges incorporeality as the final answer to all of mankind's problems. This is new to us. Being out of touch for too long, we may only now have stumbled on a thought that has been spoken for some time. We are hard pressed to arrive at the sense of it.”

All the others at the table leaned forward with interest.

“Tell us what you know of it,” said the frosty beard. “What have you heard of it?”

“Almost nothing,” said David. “Only whispers here and there. No explanations. No details of what is going on. It has left us puzzled. We have heard a strange designation mentioned—Infinites. But we do not know what is meant by that.”

A man with a head entirely lacking hair, but with a huge black walrus mustache, said, “We have heard of it as well, probably not a great deal more than you have heard. Wanderers passing through have brought the word. There was one who held that incorporeality would finally bestow upon mankind the immortality that has been always sought.”

The robot brought two large bowls of soup and set them down in front of Corcoran and David. Corcoran picked up a spoon and tried the soup. It was warm and tasty. Some sort of meat, beef from the taste of it, noodles, carrots, potatoes, and onions. He swallowed a second spoonful with fine appreciation.

A third man, this time one with a wispy beard, was saying, “It is not hard to appreciate why such a notion should have wide appeal. Death has always seemed a shameful thing. Attempts to arrive at longevity have been a partial protest against the shameful ending of a life.”

“As I understand it, incorporeality would, or at least could, mean the loss of individuality,” a somewhat younger man said disapprovingly.

“What have you got against togetherness?” asked the wispy beard.

“What we are talking about,” said Frosty Beard, “is the human mind. If it were possible to achieve incorporeality, the human mind would survive and the body be discarded. If one were to think about the proposal deeply, he might come to see that the human mind, the human intelligence, is all that really matters.”

The younger man asked, “But what would the mind be without a body? The mind may need a vehicle.”

“I'm not certain the mind needs a vehicle,” said Frosty Beard. “The mind may be something entirely outside the parameters of the physical universe. We have, it seems to me, been able to explain all but mind and time. Facing these, mankind falters.”

The robot brought steins of ale to David and Corcoran. He put down a cutting board and knife and slapped a loaf of brown bread onto the board. “Eat,” he said. “It is good and healthful food. There is more soup, if you wish it. More ale, too.”

Corcoran cut a thick slice of bread for David, another for himself. He dipped the bread into the soup and took a bite. It was excellent. So was the ale. He settled down to enjoyment.

David was speaking again. “There was this matter of the Infinites. We've heard the term, but nothing whatever of what the Infinites may be.”

The old man with the frosty beard answered. “Like you, we have heard only rumors. It sounds like a cult, but there are suggestions it is not entirely human. There is a whisper of alien missionaries.”

“There is little evidence to support a full discussion of this matter,” said Wispy Beard. “Notions arise at times, flourish for a while, and then flicker out. Incorporeality, you say—but how is it to be accomplished?”

“I would think that, if mankind wishes to become incorporeal, a way can be found,” said Walrus Mustache. “There have been many times when man has accomplished matters which it would have been better for him not to have tried.”

“It all goes back,” said Frosty Beard, speaking in a judiciary tone, “to a human characteristic we have pondered on many a long evening—the insatiable push of mankind toward a state of happiness …”

Corcoran let the talk go drifting on. He mopped up the last of his soup with a swab of bread, then emptied the stein. He straightened in his chair with his gut as full as possible, short of stuffing it.

He glanced around the room and saw for the first time that it was a hovel. It was small and bleak, without ornament, with little thought of comfort, a robot's idea of a dwelling place, simply an area of space enclosed against the weather. The workmanship was good; it would be good if put together by robotic labor. The table and the chairs were made of solid, honest wood. They would last for centuries. But aside from honest labor and honest wood, there was nothing else. The soup bowls and steins were the simplest pottery; the candles were homemade. Even the soup spoons were fashioned from carved and polished wood.

Yet these men of the village sat at this rude table in this rude hovel and discoursed on matters that were far beyond their ability or power to influence in any way at all, happily mumbling over considerations when they well might have no information on which to fabricate the basis of their talks—although, he told himself, he could be no proper judge of that. But it was, he thought, nothing to be greatly wondered at. It was all done in an ancient and honorable tradition that ranged back as far as history ran. In ancient Athens, idle men had met in the agora to engage in pompous talk; centuries later, idle men had sat on the porches of American country stores and talked as pompously as any old Athenian on matters they did not understand. In English clubs other men had sat over their drinks, mumbling to one another.

Idleness ran to talk, he thought, and men were entranced by the brilliance of their own thoughts. These men here were idle, made so by a computer-robotic society.

David was rising from his chair, saying, “I fear that it is time for us to go. We would tarry longer if we could, but we must be on our way. Thank you for the food and drink and for all the talk.”

The men at the table did not rise. They did not offer hands to say good-bye. They looked up briefly and nodded, then went back to their interminable discussion.

Corcoran rose with David and started for the door. The robot, there before them, held it open.

“Thanks for the soup and ale,” said David.

“Any time,” the robot said. “You are welcome any time.”

Then they were out in the street, the door closing behind them. The street was empty.

“We found what we came for,” said David. “We know now that the Infinites are here, that they are in place and beginning their mission.”

“I feel sorry for those men back there,” said Corcoran. “Such pitiful bastards. Nothing to do but sit around and talk.”

“You have no need to pity them,” said David. “They may not realize it, but they have found their happiness. They are truly happy men.”

“Maybe so, but it's a horrible way for the human race to end.”

“It may be what the race was driving for all the time. Through all of history man was always looking for some method that would do his work for him. First the dog, the ox, the horse. Then machines and after that computers and robots.”

Dusk was just beginning to creep into the valley when they reached the meadow where the traveler lay.

As they approached the traveler, a misty scatter of shining motes moved out to meet them. Corcoran, the first to notice it, stopped short. He felt the hair at the nape of the neck begin to bristle in atavastic fear, then suddenly realized what was taking place.

“David,” he said, speaking softly, “we have a visitor.”

David drew his breath in sharply, then he said, “Henry, we are glad you turned up. I had hoped you would.”

Henry floated across the grass and came up close to them.

You laid me a long trail, he said. I had far to go.

“How about the others? What traveler were you in?”

I was in no traveler, said Henry. I remained at Hopkins Acre. I knew you'd all go separately and I'd have to track you all.

“So you planned to start from scratch.”

That I did. It is well I did. There have been complications.

“Well, you found us. That's a start. But why did you track us? You must have known we'd be able to take care of ourselves. You should have taken Enid's trail. She had the least experience, would be at the greatest risk.”

That is what I did, said Henry. She has disappeared.

“How could that be? She would have waited for you. She would have known you would track her down.”

She did not wait. She reached her first destination, then left. I fear she fled the monster. At her first destination lies the monster, dead.

“Dead? Who would have killed the monster?”

“Perhaps Boone,” said Corcoran. “Boone was with her. He was running for her traveler with the monster close behind him. I tried to go to help him, but you seized hold of me and tossed me in the traveler.”

You will not let me tell it all, wailed Henry. You must break in with all your jabbering. There is more to say.

“Well, say it then,” said David, somewhat impatiently.

She left alone. I am sure of that. Boone was left behind.

“That doesn't sound right. She'd not have deserted him.”