Highway of Eternity (36 page)

“He was a traitor,” Horace stated. “When he heard there might be trouble for us, he deserted us.”

“As I say,” said Timothy, “we'll probably never know. Are you fairly sure,” he asked Horseface, “that you got rid of him? He'll not rise again to plague us?”

“He is trapped,” said Horseface. “Without a traveler, there is nowhere he can go.”

“We all feel better now that you've told us what you did with him,” said Enid. “Thanks for telling us. There is one more thing you can do for us.”

“Name it, Miss Enid,” Horseface said. “My debt to you never will be paid in full.”

“Could you pick up the traveler we left on the Highway of Eternity and bring it back to us? A traveler is a handy thing to have.”

“Also,” said Timothy, “Center would like a look at it.”

Wolf emerged from a corner where he had been sleeping off a plate of beef, bumbling across the room to collapse beside Boone's chair.

“He wants out,” said Enid.

“He isn't asking yet,” said Boone. “Just thinking about it. Making up his mind. When he's made it up, he'll ask.”

Horace heaved himself up and crossed the room for another refill of brandy.

“One thing I forgot to tell you,” Timothy said. “Something that I ran across while going through some tapes and papers. A copy of a document dating from the twenty-fourth or -fifth century. It's the first reference to Earth that I have run across since coming here. Earth isn't mentioned by name, of course, but certain internal evidence indicates that it was the Earth. The document tells of the rise of a religion that centered around a mysterious artifact. The account is not clear on its actual nature, but it seems to have served as a sort of messiah that railed against technology and preached a philosophic attitude of reaching within to find one's true self and rejecting materialistic progress. Does that sound familiar?”

“Of course it does,” said Enid. “It was that attitude that undermined the human race and set us up for the Infinites.”

“The time span's too long,” Boone objected. “Ideas don't survive a million years. They lose validity and become obsolete.”

“I'm not so sure,” Timothy told him. “If the cult spread widely at first, it would survive among some—particularly if the artifact endured for a long time. And when certain social stresses occurred—as they tend to do repeatedly—the hard core of the cult that survived could spread it further. Look at the belief in magic, which kept being put down by rationalism and popping up in various guises almost to our time.”

“I suppose it could happen,” Corcoran admitted. “Certainly, cults related to belief in magic were multiplying in my period.”

“Our people never knew of it,” said Emma. “If it was there, we should have heard of it.”

“But the attitudes it taught were there,” Timothy told her. “Maybe in time it did die out—because its purpose was accomplished. The people had already accepted its teaching. It could have gradually become a part of the public consciousness. People could have forgotten the origin of it and believed that the philosophy developed from it was the result of their own inescapable logic, their own finely tuned intelligence.”

“I don't believe a word of it,” said Emma. “It's just an ancient myth.”

“It may well be,” Timothy conceded. “But it's more than commonly interesting.”

“You seem to have fallen into a niche that was made especially for you,” Corcoran told Timothy.

“I was afraid at first,” said Timothy, “that all the work of the Center would be so strange that I could find no place where I could fit in. But even my sketchy knowledge of Earth's history seems valuable to the study being made of how cultures grow or fail. Center is deeply concerned with what enabled the Infinites to succeed in their efforts. Time travel is another matter in which Center is concerned. There were rumors that the Infinites had it, of course, but they never revealed its nature. And now that the Rainbow People have taken them over, all contact with them has been cut. But if we could secure the traveler that was left on the Highway of Eternity …”

“I pledge you,” Horseface promised, “that it will be placed within your hands.”

“Better yet,” suggested Timothy, “if we could have your net for just a little time. Just to look at it.”

Horseface shook his head. “I'm sorry, but I will not let it go, even for a moment. It is a heritage of my people. Sages from my deepest past rose up in my mind to help me gain it, and I could not ask them to give that help to others.”

“I understand,” said Timothy. “In your place I would do the same.”

“Was it difficult,” asked Enid, “to work with the aliens at the Center?”

“At the beginning,” said Timothy, “but not now. I have become accustomed to them and they to me. At my first direct contact with them, I was not allowed to see them because they feared I would think them monsters.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Many of them still are monsters; but face to face, I no longer shrink from them, nor do they shrink from me. I work with them in comfort.”

Wolf rose to his feet, wriggling closer to Boone, laying his muzzle in Boone's lap.

“Now he's asking,” said Enid.

“I do believe he is. I'll open the door for him.”

“No,” said Enid. “I'll take him out. It is getting stuffy in here. I need a breath of air.”

She rose and spoke to Wolf. He followed her appreciatively.

“I'll be right back,” she said. “A breath is all I need.”

Boone spoke to Wolf. “Be a decent animal,” he said. “Don't chase anything. Behave yourself. Don't you raise a ruckus.”

Then the two of them were gone.

Horace rose, heading again for the brandy bottle.

“Don't you think you've had enough?” suggested Timothy. “It's still early in the day.”

Emma blazed at him. “Why do you have to keep on humiliating him?” she asked. “You humiliated him when you brought us here. You've kept on ever since. You talk to him exactly as Boone talked just now to Wolf. Behave yourself, he said.”

“That's what I did tell him,” said Timothy. “It was part of the bargain that we made. I couldn't leave you out there in that howling wilderness and you wouldn't leave without him. So I talked with the council at Center …”

“He worried about Conrad and the robots,” Emma said. “He had grown very close to them.”

“I couldn't have convinced Center,” Timothy told her, “to allow that gang of robots in. In any case, they would not have come. They'd be miserable here. Out there they are doing all right by themselves. They're breaking a large acreage on a virgin prairie that they found and they'll be raising food for Center.”

Horace, paying no attention to the argument, was refilling his glass. Emma went over to him and took him by the elbow. “Come on,” she said. “We don't need to stay here and be insulted. We'll go upstairs. Maybe you can catch a nap.”

Without protest, Horace went up the stairs with her. He took along the bottle.

When they had disappeared, Timothy stirred uncomfortably. “I must apologize,” he told the others, “for this unseemly family squabble. It or other versions of it happen all the time. What I said to Emma is true. I couldn't leave her outside the walls. It took a lot of persuading for the council to agree to letting Horace in. He'd been making a nuisance of himself for months.”

“Think nothing of it so far as we are concerned,” said Corcoran. “Boone and I, back at Hopkins Acre, saw Horace at his finest. We can understand.”

“Center is happy with the robots,” said Timothy. “They'll solve some awkward food problems. They have a pair of steam engines and have built some gang plows. They're plowing the prairie and harrowing it—several thousand acres, if I remember correctly. By this time next year, they'll be raising tons of produce.”

Corcoran changed the subject. “You've told us of what happened to you after you left Hopkins Acre, landing on the rim of the crater, with the monastery down on the floor. What I don't understand is who moved the monastery here while you were in it.”

“It must have been the Infinites,” said Timothy. “They left it booby-trapped, set for anyone who walked into the monastery. We were the ones who sprang it.”

“It seems strange that they would set it to come here,” Corcoran objected. “Has it occurred to you that the trap could have been set by those here at the Galactic Center?”

“I asked, and they claim no knowledge of it. I guess we'll never know who did it,” Timothy said. He shrugged and changed the subject. “When Horseface brings us Enid's traveler, it should be possible to pick up the other two machines we know about. But, while Horace read the dials when he landed at the crater, he can't remember. What about the machine you left near the ruined city?”

Corcoran shook his head. “I can't help you. I had the logbook David kept, but I left it in the traveler.”

“Well, we'll keep working on it,” Timothy said. “We may find some way to locate at least one of them.”

Corcoran asked, “What about the Rainbow People? You said the Center had never heard of them until we brought word.”

“We were totally unaware,” Timothy admitted. “I think some effort may now be made to contact them, but it may prove to be too difficult.”

“I would think it might,” said Corcoran. “The Hat said they were the oldest intelligence in the universe.”

Boone pushed himself out of his chair. “If you'll excuse me,” he said, “I think I should go out and see if Wolf is causing any trouble. He requires some looking after.”

He waited for a moment, but none of the others seemed to have an urge to join him. They were content to remain exactly where they were.

Once out the door, he saw that Enid was sitting in one of the several lawn chairs that stood halfway down the parklike slope that lay before the house.

When he reached the chair, he bent over to kiss her. She put up her arms and held him there. He kissed her again—a much longer kiss.

“I was waiting for you,” she whispered. “Why did you take so long?”

“We got to talking.”

“When you're with Timothy, you always get to talking.”

“I like the man,” said Boone. “He's an easy man to like.”

“Pull over a chair and sit down here beside me,” she said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Far down the slope, just above the road that ran at the bottom of the property, Wolf was nosing around, investigating shrubbery.

“Tom,” asked Enid, “how much do you remember of what the Rainbow People forced into our heads?”

“A little,” said Boone. “It's coming back to me in bits and pieces. They packed it into us in an indigestible mass, but now it's beginning to float up.”

“They gave us a body of knowledge,” she told him, “that should have taken days to absorb. We haven't talked about it, but maybe it's time we did.”

Boone nodded. “Maybe. I still can't understand why they chose us.”

“They must have discerned that I had been pondering on the significance of the universe for years. You, I think, were recognized as a trained information gatherer. What do you remember?”

“Not too much yet. What I seem to remember most clearly,” said Boone, “is that certain very special conditions are needed in a universe to produce life. Most of the physics and chemistry still escape me, but there was something about the ways unstable stars were possible. In addition to stable ones, such stars were needed to go supernova to spray out the heavier elements that made life possible.”

Enid crinkled her forehead. “I remember some of that. But it makes my head ache just to think of it. They seemed to be telling us that the universe was formed as a sort of factory to create life, out of which—at least out of some life—intelligence would sprout. They seemed to regard the universe as a machine to produce life and consciousness. Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.”

“They also talked about the origin of the universe—not as theory, but as if they knew. But it's beyond me, although, even in my time, the astrophysicists were tracing things back to a fraction of a microsecond after the beginning of the universe. In your time, Enid, had that final fraction been traced?”

“I don't know. Remember, Tom, we were the hillbillies of our culture,” she said. “The Rainbow People spoke about a higher order of intelligence, an instinctive intelligence that did not rely on reason. They spoke as if they had reached that higher level. Maybe we can't ever understand all of what they said.”

“Perhaps. But more will become apparent and understandable as time goes by, I think,” he told her. “We have to wait.”

And maybe, he thought, they could never understand fully. Maybe even the Rainbow People could not reach a full understanding of life and the universe. But he knew they were still searching. Here, at the Galactic Center, others were seeking answers in different ways. The end was still hidden. Yet the drive to know existed. So long as the drive to learn existed, there was hope that the puzzle of universal purpose would eventually be solved.

They sat quietly side by side, holding hands. The warmth of the sun beat down on them, and they could smell the perfume of the flowers blooming in scattered beds. There was contentment in the sweep of the lawn.

“Corcoran and Horseface will soon be leaving,” Enid said. “I hate to see them go. Timothy told me that Center could use them, and he will also miss them. I thought you might be leaving, too, even when you said you would stay. But today, you promised Center you would remain to study here.”

“That was my excuse to stay. I had to tell them something,” said Boone. “I couldn't bring myself to tell them the real reason—that I'm staying because there is a woman I found in time and have learned to love.”