Highway of Eternity (37 page)

“You never told me that before,” she said. “I've known I loved you since you held me while I wept for David. I needed strength and you gave me strength and understanding.”

“I couldn't tell you before,” Boone told her. “I'm good with hard words, words of facts. But other words do not come easily to me.”

Down at the foot of the lawn, a commotion erupted.

Boone leaped to his feet. “Wolf!” he yelled.

“He's got something,” said Enid. “He's chasing something.”

Wolf emerged from a thicket. He tossed something in the air and caught it in his mouth, then came trotting up toward them. It was The Hat, hanging limply from his mouth.

Wolf dropped The Hat before them. He pranced with happiness.

“He's got his old plaything back,” cried Enid. “He has found his doll.”

The Hat came alive and sat up.

You do not understand, The Hat said. Then he collapsed again.

Wolf scooped up the limp doll and went serenely up the lawn.

17

Martin

Martin pulled the clanking, battered vehicle off the road and steered it down a gentle slope to the bottom of an arroyo. The battery was low again and would take some hours of recharging from the solar panels before it could be built up to even a marginal efficiency. When he braked the car to a stop on the flat floor of the gulch, he noted with some satisfaction that the machine would be fairly well hidden from the road. There was very little travel in this miserable country. But even so, it would be best to conceal the vehicle; beaten-up as this one was, it still had components that could be stripped, if its owner were unable to defend his property.

A utterly miserable world, he told himself, with no money, no credit, few, if any, opportunities, and only the slightest sense of law; each man was his own law, if he had the muscle to enforce it.

There was a worldwide economic depression, if Martin's judgement was correct. He could not be sure, since he had no data, and no one seemed to know what was going on. There still was radio, he had been told, although in the sun-scorched, shabby hamlet near which he had been deposited, no one had a radio set, let alone a television, if there still was such a thing as television. When he had asked about newspapers, the residents of the village had looked blankly at him. They had never heard of newspapers.

When, weeks before, he had come plodding down the path that led into the village, the people had shied away from him, gathering in clumps to stare at him as if he were some wild animal come from his lair among the distant buttes. After a time, one aged, tottering man, who seemed to hold some measure of leadership, had come up to him and talked in a tongue that he could understand, although filled with unfamiliar intonations and words. Hearing what Martin had to say and not believing him, the old man had thrust a finger close to his brow, moving it in circles to indicate one afflicted with a feeble mind.

They had, out of the goodness of their hearts, given him food to eat and a place to sleep. In the days that followed, he learned from talk with some of them that he was on Earth and in the twenty-third century, although they did not know the actual year. Hearing this, he inwardly damned the Horseface monstrosity, since he was sure that it had been Horseface who had hurled him off the net.

He managed for some weeks, although he was not sure how many. In that village, it was ridiculously easy to lose count of almost everything. He helped in hoeing corn, a chore little to his liking, and in carrying water to the corn from a small, reluctant stream that gurgled its slow, difficult way across the land about a half mile from the village. He learned to set snares for rabbits and tried to achieve some proficiency in archery, but with small success.

In his talk with the villagers he learned of a road, scarcely better than the track he had followed to the village, that lay some distance to the north, a track which eventually reached a wider road that ran straight east and west; by following that, one would finally come to cities. Martin suspected those would be no more than slightly larger villages, but with more people in them and somewhat easier living. From mention of less and less employment, of the slackening of trade activity, and of the disappearance of all money, he deduced that he was in a land and century deep in a worldwide economic collapse.

It had been by accident that he found the beaten-up solar-powered vehicle, sheltered in a lean-to built against one of the ramshackle huts that made up the village. Examining it, he became convinced that it still had in it some degree of operating life. When he tracked down its owner, it was apparent that the man had no further use for it; there was nowhere he wished to go and he had no idea of how to operate it. After much dickering, it cost Martin his wrist watch, for which the man had no more need than for the vehicle; the time of day was of no interest to the people of the village.

Now here he finally was, sitting in an arroyo, waiting for the beaten-up machine to recharge its batteries. Yesterday he had reached the wider road of which he had been told, recognizing it as what was left of one of the great transcontinental highways which had plunged across the nation, coast to coast. He had headed west, for he believed he had landed somewhere in the American southwest. It should thus not be too far to the Pacific area, where he might find some of the larger cities, pitiful at the best, but better than the village he had left.

During the one day he had been on the main highway, he had been passed by only three cars. One of them had been solar-powered, but a later model and much better designed than his. The other two cars had been propelled by internal combustion engines. The sweetish smell of their exhausts led him to believe that they burned alcohol as fuel.

Now off the road, parked on the flat floor of the arroyo, he climbed wearily from the single bucket seat of his car. Even on the smoother surface of the ancient freeway, his vehicle provided a rough and punishing ride. Every one of his muscles, it seemed, ached from the pounding he had taken.

He walked a few feet from the car and stretched. The arroyo was silent. There was no wind and not even any insect sounds. The high sky above him was pale blue. In it was a single high-soaring bird, maybe an eagle, more likely a buzzard. On either side of the gulch, the walls came down, sluiced and streaked by erosion, crumbling at the edges in the fierce blast of sunlight. Here and there small boulders and thin stone strata thrust partway from the soil. At the foot of the walls, where they joined the now dry streambed floor, lay scattered mounds of fallen stone.

Just beyond where he stood the arroyo bent, swinging around abruptly to take a different direction. He followed it and stopped, staring at the wall to his left. Protruding from the wall were the dead whiteness of old bone and the burnished gleam of ancient horn. A skull buried beneath the surface had been revealed by the erosion of the wall.

It was a bovine skull, but the skull was too massive and the one projecting horn too heavy and too long to ever have belonged to even the largest of the longhorns.

It had to be a bison, but not a bison of the Old West. What he was looking at, he told himself, was a prehistoric bison, one of the monstrous brutes that had been hunted by the first men in America. Looking at the floor of the arroyo beneath the skull, Martin saw the fractured whiteness of other bits of bone. How long ago, he wondered, had this buried beast cropped the prairie grass? A prairie then, but a desert now. Twenty thousand years, he told himself, probably more than that. There might have been a time when such a discovery would have the promise of some profit. But if the world of the present was actually in the shape he had deduced, there'd be no profit now.

A small buttress of the wall, a section that for the moment had resisted the power of rushing water, thrust out a few feet into the gully. As he stepped around it, the flare of reflected sunlight caught him in the eyes. He halted, puzzled. The flare had come from something embedded in the wall. The flare was gone, but whatever was embedded there still glittered.

He advanced slowly and stood in front of the shining object. It was a sphere, highly polished, looking for all the world like one of the crystal spheres used by phoney fortune tellers. It was the size of a basketball and its surface was so smooth and reflective that he saw the image of himself reflected in it with the sort of reflection that a curved mirror would project.

He raised his hands to lift it from the wall and it spoke to him.

Kind sir, it said, take me in your hands and hold me. Give me the warmth of other life and your loving kindness. I have been alone so long!

Martin froze, his hands still extended, but not moving to pick the sphere from out the wall of earth. His teeth chattered with sudden fright. Something had spoken to him, deep inside his mind, for he was sure there had been no sound of words—the same sort of speech as was used by that doll-like simpleton, The Hat.

Free me, the voice pleaded. Lift me down and keep me. I shall be a friend to you, a faithful servant to you. I ask no more than that you keep me with you. I could not bear the agony should you reject me, should you walk away from me.

Martin tried to speak. The words rattled in his throat.

Fear me not, the voice said. As I am, I have no power to harm you and, if I had, I would have no wish to do so. I have waited for so long, for a long eternity. Please, kind sir, have mercy on me. You're the last and only hope I have. There will be no other chance for me. I cannot face foreverness alone.

Words finally came to Martin, gulping, hurried words, as if he feared he could not get them out. “What are you?” he asked. “Are you really speaking to me?”

I am really speaking to you, said the sphere. I hear you in my mind and speak to you from my mind. Your spoken words mean nothing to me. I can hear no sound. Once I had an auditory sense, but that long since is gone.

“But what are you?”

My history is a long one. Suffice it now to say that I am an ancient artifact from a mysterious race of which there is now no record.

The damn thing is lying, Martin told himself.

The sphere protested: I do not lie to you. Why should I lie to you, my rescuer?

“I did not say that you were lying. I spoke not a word to you.”

The thought lay within your mind. I thought that you spoke to me.

“My God,” said Martin, “you read my mind. Can you read the minds of everyone?”

That is my manner of conversing, said the sphere. And, yes, I can read the mind of any thinking creature that is close enough.

“All right,” said Martin. “All right.”

He advanced a step and lifted the sphere from the wall. It left behind it the imprint of itself. It had a good heft to it, a feeling of solidity, but it was not heavy. He held it for a moment, then placed it gently on the smooth floor of the arroyo, squatting down beside it.

Kind sir, asked the sphere, does this mean you'll keep me?

“Yes, I think I'll keep you.”

You never shall regret it, said the sphere. I shall be the best friend you've ever had. I will be your …

“Let us not talk of it now,” said Martin. “We'll talk about it later.”

He picked up the sphere and walked along the gully, heading for the car.

Where are we going, sir?

“I'm taking you to my car,” said Martin. “I'll place you in it. Then I have a few things to do. I'll leave you there, then later I'll join you.”

You will return? Kind friend, you will return?

“You have my promise,” Martin said.

He placed the sphere in the car and walked away, back down the arroyo, well beyond the point where he'd found the sphere. This will be far enough, he told himself. It can't read my mind over such a distance. Or, at least, he hoped it couldn't. He had an idea by the tail and he needed time alone to think it out.

This was something new, he told himself. There must be profit in it. It could be the key, wisely used, to a better life in this godforsaken world. His mind skittered rapidly as he thought about it. He took the idea and turned it round and round. The sphere had possibilities, a lot of possibilities, and he had to think of them long and hard.

In this benighted world, there must be something one could offer that would have some appeal. The world was filled with hopelessness, and maybe that was it. The people could not be promised riches, for there were no riches to be given. The hope of riches would be an empty hope and everyone would know that. But hope itself—pure and naked hope—that might be something else. If there were some way to give them hope, they'd buy it. They'd flock in thousands for a whiff of hope. But it would have to be more than a namby-pamby hope. It must be such as to touch off a howling fanaticism.

He thought about fanaticism and that it was hard to come by. He paced back and forth, thinking of hope and fanaticism and what he might gain by arousing a hopeful fanaticism. Somewhat easier living, perhaps, but not a lot of money. What could be gained, perhaps, would be position and power. Given position and power, a canny man could do a lot.

He wrestled with the idea he had snared and the mystery of an ancient artifact, although he still did not entirely buy that the sphere was really an ancient artifact.

A dash of religion might turn the trick. That, by God, was it—religion! A new messiah and an ancient artifact performing in a sacred mystery atmosphere.

He squatted down and thought about it. He'd have to take it easy to start with, he told himself. No big splash, no circus background. Start small and humble and let the crusade grow by word of mouth.

To make it go, he would have to tell the people what they wished to hear. By slow degrees he must find out what they wanted, then feed them what they wanted.

There was one question still: What was the sphere? Not an ancient artifact from a long-lost race, as it had told him. Although, true or not, it was a good approach to what he had in mind. He tried to think of all the things it might be and rejected them one by one. He was wasting time, he told himself. He did not need, right now, to know what the sphere actually might be. He could use it without knowing.