Mastodonia (25 page)

“It is headquarters,” said Catface. “Galactic headquarters. I thought that to understand it, you should see it.”

“Thank you for showing it to me,” I said. “It does help me understand.”

I was not surprised at all that Catface had spoken to me. I was in that state where I'd have been surprised at nothing.

About this time, too, I realized that the little lipping minnows were no longer bumping against my mind. Apparently, they had finished their job, gotten all there was to be gotten, all the flaky skin, all the little bloody scabs, and had gone away.

“This is where you were born?” I asked.

“No,” said Catface. “Not where I began. I began on another planet, very far from here. I will show it to you some day if you have the time to look.”

“But you were here,” I said.

“I came as a volunteer,” he said. “Or rather, I was summoned as a volunteer.”

“Summoned? How summoned? Who would summon you? If you're summoned, you're not a volunteer.”

I tried to figure out if Catface and I were actually speaking words, and it seemed to me we weren't, although it made no difference, for we were understanding one another just as well as if we had been speaking words.

“You have the concept of a god,” said Catface. “Through the history of your race, men have worshipped many gods.”

“I understand the concept,” I said. “I'm not sure I worship any god. Not the way most men would mean if they said they worshipped a god.”

“Nor I,” said Catface. “But if you saw who summoned me, and not only me, but many other creatures, you'd be convinced that they are gods. Which they are not, of course, although there are those who think they are. They are simply a life form, biological or otherwise—of that I can't be certain—that got an early start at intelligence and over millions of years were wise enough or lucky enough to avoid those catastrophic events that so often cause the downfall and decay of intelligence. They may have been biological at one time; certainly, they must have been. I'm not certain what they are now, over the long millennia, they may have changed themselves.…”

“Then you have seen them? Met them?”

“No one ever meets them. They are above all mingling with other creatures. They disdain us, or they may fear us, an unworthy thought that I had at one time. I must have been the only one, for no other has ever spoken to me of such a thing. But I saw one once, or think I saw one once, although I could not see him clearly. To impress the volunteers, they afford them all this glimpse—although care is taken not to let volunteers see too clearly—either through a veil of some sort or a shadow of one of them, I have no idea which.”

“And you were not impressed?”

“At the time, I may have been. It was so long ago, it is difficult to remember. In your numerology, perhaps a million years ago. But I have thought about it since and have concluded that if I was impressed, I should not have been.”

“This is their city? The so-called gods' city?”

“If you want to think of it that way. It was planned by them, although it was not built by them. It is not a city, really. It is a planet covered by buildings and installations. If that's a city, then it is a city.”

“You said a galactic headquarters.”

“That is right. A galactic headquarters, not the galactic headquarters. There may be others we do not know about. Other gods we do not know about. It seems credible to me that there may be other galactic groups that function exactly as this city does, but without the benefit of a central headquarters. Nothing nearly so formal as a headquarters, but perhaps some other plan that may perform much better.”

“You're just guessing there may be another headquarters. You don't know.”

“A galaxy is large. I don't know.”

“These people, these gods, take over planets and exploit them?”

“Exploit? I snare the meaning, but the concept is hazy. You mean own? Use?”

“Yes.”

“Not that,” said Catface. “Information only. The knowing, that's the thing.”

“Gathering knowledge, you mean?”

“That is right. Your comprehension amazes me. They send out ships, with many study groups. Drop one study group here, another there. Later, another ship comes and picks them up, each one in turn. I was of one study group, the last one. We had dropped four others.”

“Then your ship crashed?”

“Yes. I do not understand how it could have happened. Each of us is a specialist. Knows his job, nothing else. The creatures that operated the ship were also specialists. They should have known, should have foreseen. The crash should not have happened.”

“You told Hiram, or was it Rila, you told one of them that you do not know the location of this planet that you came from. That's why you don't know; it was not your specialty to know. Only the pilot or the pilots knew.”

“My specialty was only to go into time. To observe and record the past of the planet under study.”

“You mean your planetary surveys not only included what the planet was at the present moment, but what it had been in the past. You studied each planet's evolution.”

“Must do so. The present is only a part of it. How the present came to be is important, too.”

“The others were killed when the ship crashed. But you …”

“I was lucky,” said Catface.

“But once you got here, you did not study the past. You stayed in Willow Bend, or what was about to become Willow Bend.”

“I made a few excursions only. My observations alone would have been worthless. I made the way for others. And something else—I knew another ship would come to pick us up. They would not know of the crash; they would come expecting to find us. And I told myself if the ship should come, I must be here to meet it. I could not leave. If I went into the past, there would not be others here to call me if the ship should come. The ship would have found evidence of the crash, would assume that all were dead, would not wait. To be picked up, to be rescued as you call it, I knew I must stay close to the crash site so I could be found.”

“But you opened roads for Bowser, roads for us.”

“If I cannot use roads myself, why not let others use them? Why not let my friends use them?”

“You thought of us as friends?”

“Bowser first,” he said, “then the rest of you.”

“Now you are concerned there'll be no ship to pick you up.”

“Long,” said Catface. “Too long. And yet, they may look. Not many of my kind. We are valuable. They would not lightly give us up.”

“You still have hope?”

“Very feeble hope.”

“That is why you spend so much time in the old home orchard? So you will be there if they come to pick you up.”

“That is why,” said Catface.

“You are happy here?”

“What is happy? Yes, I suppose I'm happy.”

What is happy? he had asked, making out that he did not know what happiness might be. But he knew all right. At one time, he had been happy, exalted, overawed—on that day, when on summons, he had come to that great galactic headquarters, joining the elite company that was legend through those parts of the star system touched by the great confederation.

Unquestionably, not asking how it could be so, I moved with him through that fantastic city, fresh from a backwoods planet, agape at all I saw, filled with wonderment not only at what I saw, but at the fact I should be there at all. And I went with him to other planets as well, catching only glimpses of them, burrowing briefly into the kinds of places they had been in ages past. I stood before glories that put a pang into my heart, glimpsed miseries that engulfed my soul in sadness, worried over mysteries as a dog would worry an ancient bone, grasped frantically at sciences and cultures that were beyond my capacity to understand.

Then, quite suddenly, it was all gone, and I was back in the crab-apple patch, face to face with Catface. My mind still seethed with wonder and I had lost all track of time.

“Hiram?” I asked. “Did Hiram …”

“No,” said Catface. “Hiram could not understand.”

And that was right, of course. Hiram could not have understood. He had complained, I remembered, that Catface had said many things he could not understand.

“No one else,” said Catface. “No one else but you.”

“But I'm confused,” I said. “Many things I do not understand.”

“Your understanding,” he said, “is greater than you know.”

“I'll be back again,” I said. “We will talk again.”

I went up the hillside, and when I got back to the mobile home, there was no one there. I wondered if that last safari might have come out while I had been with Catface. I had not worried about it when I'd left because I felt that if they came out, most certainly I'd hear them. But during my conversation with Catface, I doubted I'd have heard anything at all. So I went down to the mouth of time road number one and there were no tracks coming out. That meant they were two days overdue. If they didn't come out tomorrow, I told myself, Ben and I probably should go in to see what was delaying them. Not that I was worried. Percy Aspinwall had struck me as a man who was entirely competent. Yet I found myself uneasy.

I went back to the mobile home and sat on the steps. Bowser crawled from underneath the house and clambered up the steps to sit beside me, plastered close against me. It was almost like the old days, before Rila had arrived and all this business of time travel had started.

I had been half numbed at first after what had happened with Catface, but now I could begin to think about it. At first, while it had been happening, the whole thing had seemed almost routine, nothing to be greatly astounded at, the sort of circumstance that one could confidently have anticipated. But now, with time to think about it, I began to feel cold spider feet walking up and down my spine, and while I knew that it had really happened, I began to feel a flood of denial welling up in me. The old human game of saying that something had not happened so that it would not have happened.

But despite the automatic denial, I knew damn well that it had happened, and I sat there on the steps trying to get it straight in my mind. But I didn't have the chance to do much straightening out because just when I had got settled down to it, Rila came driving up the ridge and beside her sat Hiram.

Hiram leaped down as soon as the car had stopped and made straight for Bowser. He didn't waste any words on me; I'm not sure he even saw me. Bowser came down off the steps at the sight of him and Hiram went down on his knees, throwing his arms around the dog, while Bowser, whimpering and whining in his happiness, washed Hiram's face with a busy tongue.

Rila rushed up to me and threw her arms around me and there were the four of us, Hiram hugging Bowser and Rila hugging me.

“Isn't it nice to have Hiram back?” she asked. “The hospital said it was all right for him to leave, but that he had to take it easy and build up his strength. It seems he lost a lot of strength. He's not to do much work and he …”

“That's all right,” I said. “Hiram never was what you might call addicted to work.”

“He should take some exercise every day,” she said. “Walking is the best. And he should have a high-protein diet and there is some medicine that he has to take. He doesn't like the medicine. Says it tastes awful bad. But he promised to take it if they let him leave. And, oh, Asa, you should see the kind of house we're going to build. I haven't got the plans as yet, but I can draw you a rough sketch of it. All fieldstone and lots of big chimneys—there'll be fireplaces in almost every room. And a lot of glass. Entire walls of thermoglass so that we can look out on this world of ours. Just like we were sitting outdoors. There will be a patio and an outdoor broiler, built of stone just like the house and a stone chimney to carry off the smoke and a swimming pool if it's something that you'd like. I think that I would like it. Water from the spring to fill it and that water's awfully cold, but the contractor said that in a day or two, the sun will warm it and then there's …”

I saw Hiram and Bowser walking off, heading down the ridge, and they either didn't hear me shout at them or paid no attention, so I went running after them.

I caught Hiram by the shoulder and turned him around.

“Where do you think you're going?” I asked. “Rila says you have to take it easy, not too much exertion.”

“But Mr. Steele,” said Hiram, in all reasonableness, “I just have to see how Stiffy is getting along. I have to let him know I'm back.”

“Not today,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe. We'll take a car and see if we can find him.”

I herded the two of them back, Hiram protesting all the way.

“And you,” said Rila, “how did you spend your day?”

“Talking with Catface,” I said.

She laughed gaily. “What did you find to talk about?”

“Quite a lot,” I said.

Then she was off on the matter of the house and I never got a word in edgewise. She talked about it until we went to bed. I'd never seen her so happy and excited.

I told myself that I'd tell her about Catface in the morning, but it didn't work out that way. Ben got me out of bed, pounding on the door and yelling for me to get out of there.

I staggered out bias-eyed, not dressed.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. “What is it that can't wait?”

“The Safari bunch is on the prod,” he said. “They are getting nervous. They want us to go in and see what is holding up Aspinwall and his outfit.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ben had more to worry about than the overdue safari. He told me about it as we got ready for the trip.

“That goddamn Hotchkiss,” he said, “opened up a can of worms. Churches and church organizations are lining up. One newspaper writer the other day said there's been nothing like it since the Reformation. The Vatican is expected to make a statement in another week or two. I meant to bring you this morning's paper, but I got busy with other things and forgot it. Petitions are being circulated to ask Congress to pass a law about going back into the early Christian era. The congressmen are running for cover. They want no part of it. They cite the separation of church and state; because of that, they say, they have no authority to pass any kind of law bearing on the matter. A couple of them pointed out, too, that we are the only ones who can send anyone into time and they have no authority here, either, because Mastodonia is not a part of the United States. I'm afraid there'll be an argument over that, too, if this controversy keeps on. I think everyone's confused. They don't know if we're part of the USA or not.”