"Do you think it's wise, letting him wander around alone?"
Trouble. Always trouble. Just because there was one young boy, Eric,
asking only to be let alone. And the old council members wouldn't rest
until they had managed to find an excuse to put him in an institution
somewhere, where his actions could be watched, where there wouldn't be
any more uncertainty.
"Eric's all right."
"Is he? Prior tells me he leaves the museum every day. He doesn't come
here. He doesn't visit his family."
The thin man, Drew, broke in. "He goes to the hills. Just like the
others did. Did you know that, Walden?"
Walden's mouth tightened. It wouldn't do to let them read his hostility
to their prying. It would be even worse to let them know that they
worried him.
"Besides," Drew added, "he's old enough to be thinking about women now.
There's always a chance he'll--"
"Are you crazy?" Walden shouted the words aloud. "Eric's not an animal."
"Isn't he?" Abbot answered quietly. "Weren't all the old race just
animals?"
Walden turned away from them, closing his mind to their thoughts. He
mustn't show anger. If he did, they'd probably decide he was too
emotional, not to be trusted. They'd take Eric away, to some
institution. Cage him....
"What do you want to do with the boy?" Walden forced his thoughts to
come quietly. "Do you want to put him in a zoo with the other animals?"
The sarcasm hurt them. They wanted to be fair. Abbot especially prided
himself on his fairness.
"Of course not."
They hesitated. They weren't going to do anything. Not this time. They
stood around and made a little polite conversation, about other things,
and then Abbot turned toward the door.
"We just wanted to be sure you knew what was going on." Abbot paused.
"You'll keep an eye on the boy, won't you?"
"Am I his keeper?" Walden asked softly.
They didn't answer him. Their thoughts were confused and a bit irritated
as they went out to the aircar that had brought them. But he knew they'd
be back. And they would keep track of Eric. Prior, the caretaker, would
help them. Prior was old too, and worried....
Walden walked back into his study, slowly. His legs were trembling. He
hadn't realized how upset he had been. He smiled at the intensity of his
emotions, realizing something he'd always kept hidden, even from
himself.
He was as fond of Eric as if the boy had been his own son.
* * * * *
Eric pushed the books away, impatiently. He didn't feel like studying.
The equations were meaningless. He was tired of books, and history, and
all the facts about the old race.
He wanted to be outdoors, exploring, walking along the hillsides,
looking for his own kind.
But he had already explored the hills. He had flown for miles, and
walked for miles, and searched dozens of caves in dozens of gorges. He
had found no one. He was sure that if there had been anyone he would
have discovered some sign.
He opened the book again, but he couldn't concentrate on it.
Beyond those hills, across another valley, there were even higher
mountains. He had often looked across at them, wondering what they held.
They were probably as desolate as the ones he'd searched. Still, he
would rather be out in them, looking, than sitting here, fretting,
almost hating the old race because it had somehow bequeathed him a
heritage of loneliness.
He got up abruptly and went outside to the aircar.
It was a long way to the second range of mountains. He flew there
directly, skimming over the nearer hills, the ones he had spent weeks
exploring. He dropped low over the intervening valley, passing over the
houses and towns, looking down at the gardens. The new race filled all
the valleys.
He came into the foothills and swung the car upward, climbing over the
steep mountainsides. Within a mile from the valley's edge he was in wild
country. He'd thought the other hills were wild, but here the terrain
was jagged and rock-strewn, with boulders flung about as if by some
giant hand. There were a hundred narrow canyons, opening into each
other, steep-sloped, overgrown with brambles and almost impenetrable, a
maze with the hills rising around them and cutting off all view of the
surrounding country.
Eric dropped down into one of the larger canyons. Immediately he
realized how easy it would be to get lost in those hills. There were no
landmarks that were not like a hundred jutting others. Without the
aircar he would be lost in a few minutes. He wondered suddenly if
anyone, old race or new, had ever been here before him.
He set the aircar down on the valley floor and got out and walked away
from it, upstream, following the little creek that tumbled past him over
the rocks. By the time he had gone a hundred paces the car was out of
sight.
It was quiet. Far away birds called to each other, and insects buzzed
around him, but other than these sounds there was nothing but his own
footsteps and the creek rapids. He relaxed, walking more slowly, looking
about him idly, no longer searching for anything.
He rounded another bend, climbed up over a rock that blocked his path
and dropped down on the other side of it. Then he froze, staring.
Not ten feet ahead of him lay the ashes of a campfire, still smoldering,
still sending a thin wisp of smoke up into the air.
He saw no one. Nothing moved. No tracks showed in the rocky ground.
Except for the fire, the gorge looked as uninhabited as any of the
others.
Slowly Eric walked toward the campfire and knelt down and held his hand
over the embers. Heat rose about him. The fire hadn't been out for very
long.
He turned quickly, glancing about him, but there was no sudden motion
anywhere, no indication that anyone was hiding nearby. Perhaps there was
nobody near. Perhaps whoever had built the fire had left it some time
before, and was miles away by now....
He didn't think so. He had a feeling that eyes were watching him. It was
a strange feeling, almost as if he could perceive. Wishful thinking, he
told himself. Unreal, untrue....
But _someone_ had been here. Someone had built the fire. And it was
probably, almost certainly, someone without perception. Someone like
himself.
His knees were shaking. His hands trembled, and sweat broke out on the
palms. Yet his thoughts seemed calm, icily calm. It was just a nervous
reaction, he knew that. A reaction to the sudden knowledge that people
_were_ here, out in these hills where he had searched for them but
never, deep down, expected to find them. They were probably watching him
right now, hidden up among the trees somewhere, afraid to move because
then he would see them and start out to capture them.
If there were people here, they must think that he was one of the normal
ones. That he could perceive. So they would keep quiet, because a person
with perception couldn't possibly perceive a person who lacked it. They
would remain motionless, hoping to stay hidden, waiting for him to leave
so that they could flee deeper into the hills.
They couldn't know that he was one of them.
He felt helpless, suddenly. So near, so near--and yet he couldn't reach
them. The people who lived here in the wild mountain gorges could elude
him forever.
No motion. No sound. Only the embers, smoking....
"Listen," he called aloud. "Can you hear me?"
The canyon walls caught his voice, sent it echoing back, fainter and
fainter. "... can you hear me can you hear me can you...."
No one answered.
"I'm your friend," he called. "I can't perceive. I'm one of you."