* * * * *
Eric landed in the canyon and made sure that the aircar was hidden under
a ledge, with branches drawn about it so that no one could spot it from
above. Then he turned and started for the slope, and as he reached it
Lisa ran down to meet him.
"You're late," she called.
"Am I? Have you really been waiting for me?"
"Of course." She came over to meet him, laughing, openly glad that he
had come.
He smiled back at her and walked along beside her, having to take long
strides to match her skipping ones, and he too was glad that he'd come.
Lately he felt like this every day. It was a feeling he couldn't
analyze. Nothing had changed. The girl was still too thin and too brown
and too dirty, although now she had begun to wash her dress and her body
in the mountain stream and to comb the snarls from her hair. But it
didn't make her attractive to him. It only made her less unattractive.
"Will you always have to go away every night?" she asked guilelessly.
"I suppose so."
He looked down at her and smiled, wondering why he came. There was still
an air of unreality about the whole situation. He felt numb. He had felt
that way ever since the first day, and the feeling had grown, until now
he moved and spoke and smiled and ate and it was as if he were someone
else and the person he had been was gone completely. He liked coming
here. But there was no triumph in being with these people, no sense of
having found his own kind, no purpose, nothing but a vague contentment
and an unwillingness to search any farther.
"You're very quiet," Lisa said.
"I know. I was thinking."
She reached out and touched his arm, her fingers strong and muscular. He
smiled at her but made no move toward her, and after a moment she sighed
and took her hand away.
"Why are you so different, Eric?"
"Perhaps because I was raised by the others, the normal ones. Perhaps
just because I've read so many books about the old race...."
They came up to the boulders that blocked the entrance of the little
gorge where the hut was. Lisa started toward them, then stopped
abruptly.
"Let's go on up the hill. I want to talk to you, without them."
"All right."
He followed her without speaking, concentrating all his effort on
scrambling over the rougher spots in the trail. She didn't say anything
more until they had come out on a high ledge that overlooked the whole
canyon and she had sat down and motioned for him to sit down too.
"Whew," he panted. "You're a mountain goat, Lisa."
She didn't smile. "I've liked your coming to see us," she said. "I like
to listen to you talk. I like the tales you tell of the old ones. But
Mag and Nell are upset."
He knew what was coming. His eyes met hers, and then he looked away and
reddened and felt sorry for her and what he would have to tell her. This
was a subject they had managed to avoid ever since that first day,
although the older women brought it up whenever he saw them.
"Mag says I must have a man," Lisa said. Her voice was tight. He
couldn't tell if she was crying because he couldn't bear to look at her.
He could only stare out over the canyon and listen and wait.
"She says if it isn't you I'll have to find someone else, later on, but
she says it ought to be you. Because _they're_ dangerous, and besides,
if it's you our children will be sure to be like us."
"What?" He swung around, startled. "Do you mean that if one parent were
normal the child might be too?"
"Yes," she said. "It might. They say that's happened. Sometimes. No one
knows why we're born. No one knows why some are one way and some
another."
"Lisa...." He stopped.
"I know. You don't want me. I've known that all the time."
"It isn't just that."
He tried to find the words to express what he felt, but anything he
might say would be cold and cruel and not quite true. He felt the
contentment drain out of him, and he felt annoyed, because he didn't
want to have to think about her problem, or about anything.
"Why do they want you to have a child?" he said roughly. "Why do they
want our kind to go on, living here like animals, or taken to the
valleys and separated from each other and put into institutions until we
die? Why don't they admit that we've lost, that the normals own the
Earth? Why don't they stop breeding and let us die?"
"Your parents were normal, Eric. If all of us died, others would be
born, someday."
He nodded and then he closed his eyes and fought against the despair
that rose suddenly within him and blotted out the last of the
contentment and the unreality. He fought against it and lost. And
suddenly Lisa was very real, more real even than the books had ever
been. And the dirty old women were suddenly people--individuals, not
savages. He tried to pity them, to retreat into his pity and his
loneliness, but he couldn't even do that.
The people he had looked for were imaginary. He would never find them,
because Mag and Nell and Lisa were his people. They were like him, and
the only difference between him and them was one of luck. They were
dirty and ignorant. They had been born in the mountains and hunted like
beasts. He was more fortunate; he had been born in the valley.
He was a snob. He had looked down on them, when all the time he was one
of them. If he had been born among them, he would have been as they
were. And, if Lisa had lived in another age, she too would have sought
the stars.
Eric sat very still and fought until a little of the turmoil quieted
inside of him. Then he opened his eyes again and stared across the
canyon, at the rock slides and the trees growing out from the slopes at
twisting, precarious angles, and he saw everything in a new light. He
saw the old race as it had been far earlier than the age of
space-travel, and he knew that it had conquered many environments on
Earth before it had gained a chance to try for those of space. He felt
humble, suddenly, and proud at the same time.
Lisa sat beside him, not speaking, drawing away from him and letting him
be by himself, as if she knew the conflicts within him and knew enough
not to interrupt. He was grateful both for her presence there beside
him and for her silence.
Much later, when afternoon shadows had crept well out from the rocks,
she turned to him. "Will you take me to the valley someday, Eric?"
"Maybe. But no one must know about you. You know what would happen if
any of them found out you even existed."
"Yes," she said. "We'd have to be careful, all right. But you could take
me for a ride in the aircar sometime and show me things."
Before, he would have shrugged off her words and forgotten them. Now he
couldn't. Decision crystalized quickly in his mind.
"Come on, Lisa," he said, getting to his feet and reaching down to help
her up also. "I'll take you to the valley right now."
She looked up at him, unable to speak, her eyes shining, and then she
was running ahead of him, down the slope toward the aircar.
* * * * *
The car climbed swiftly away from the valley floor, up between the
canyon walls and above them, over the crest of the hills. He circled it
for a moment, banking it over on its side so that she could look down at
the gorge and the rocks and the cascading stream.
"How do you like it, Lisa?"
"I don't know." She smiled, rather weakly, her body braced against the
seat. "It feels so strange."
He smiled back and straightened the car, turning away from the mountains
until the great, gardened valley stretched out before them, all the way
to the foot of the western hills.
"I'll show you the museum," he said. "I only wish I could take you
inside."
She moved away from him, nearer to the window, and looked down at the
scattered houses that lay below them, at the people moving in the
gardens, at the children.
"I never dreamed it was like this," she said. "I never could picture it
before."
There was a longing in her face he'd never noticed before. He stared at
her, and she was different suddenly, and her thin muscular body was
different too.
Pioneer--that was the word he wanted.
The girls of the new race could never be pioneers.
"Look, Eric. Over there. Aircars."
The words broke in on his thoughts and he looked away from her,
following her gaze incuriously, not much interested. And then his
fingers stiffened on the controls and the peacefulness fell away from
him as if it had never been.
"Lots of them," she said.
Aircars. Eight or ten of them, more than he had ever seen at one time,
spread out in a line and flying eastward, straight toward him.
[Illustration]
They mustn't see Lisa. They mustn't get close enough to realize who he
was.
He swung away from them, perpendicular to their course, angling so that
he would be out of perception range, and then he circled, close to the
ground, as they swept by, undeviating, purposeful, toward the mountains.
_Toward the mountains._
Fear. Sudden, numbing fear and the realization of his own carelessness.
"What's the matter, Eric?"
He had swung about and now followed them, far behind them and off to one
side, much too far away for them to try to perceive him. Perhaps, he
thought, perhaps they don't know. But all the time he remembered his own
trips to the canyon, taken so openly.
"Oh, Eric, they're not--"
He swung up over the last ridge and looked down, and her words choked
off in her throat. Below them lay the canyon, and in it, the long line
of aircars, landed now, cutting off the gorge, the light reflecting off
them, bronze in the sunset. And the tiny figures of men were even now
spreading out from the cars.
"What'll we do, Eric?"
Panic. In her voice and in her eyes and in her fingers that bit into his
arm, hurting him, steadying him against his own fear and the twisting
realization of his betraying lack of caution.
"Run. What else can we do?"
Down back over the ridge, out of sight of the aircars and into the
foothills, and all the while knowing that there was nowhere to run to
now.
"No, Eric! We've got to go back. We've got to find Mag and Nell--" Her
voice rose in anguish, then broke, and she was crying.
"We can't help them by going back," he said harshly. "Maybe they got
away. Maybe they didn't. But the others would catch us for sure if they
got near us."
Run. It was all they could do, now. Run to other hills and leave the
aircar and hide, and live as Lisa had lived, as others of their kind had
lived.
"We've got to think of ourselves, Lisa. It's all we can do, now."
Down through the foothills, toward the open valley, and the future, the
long blind race to other mountains, and no choice left, no alternative,
and the books lost and the starship left behind, forever....
Lisa cried, and her fingers bit into his arm. Ahead of him, too close to
flee or deceive, was another line of aircars, flying in from the valley,
their formation breaking as they veered toward him.
"Land, Eric. Land and run!"
"We can't, Lisa. There's not enough time."
Everything was lost now--even the hills.
Unless ... one chance. The only chance, and it was nearly hopeless.
"Get in the back, Lisa," he said. "Climb over the seat and hide in that
storage compartment. And stay there."
The two nearest cars had swung about now and paralleled his course,
flanking him, drifting in nearer and nearer.
"Why?" Lisa clung to him. "What are you going to do?"
"They don't know you're with me. They probably don't even know I went
back to the canyon. They think I'll land at the museum, not suspecting
anything's wrong. So I'll do just what they expect me to. Go back, and
pretend I don't know a thing."
"You're mad."
"It's our only chance, Lisa. If only they don't lock me up tonight...."
She clung to him for still another minute and then she climbed over the
seat and he heard the luggage compartment panel slide open and, a moment
later, shut.
The nearest aircar drifted still closer to him, escorting him west-ward,
toward the museum. Behind him, other cars closed in.
* * * * *
Walden and Prior were waiting for him at the entrance of the main
building, just as they had waited so often before. He greeted them
casually, trying to act exactly as he usually did, but their greetings
to him were far from casual. They stared at him oddly, Prior even
drawing back a little as he approached. Walden looked at him for a long
moment, very seriously, as if trying to tell him something, but what it
was Eric didn't know. Both men were worried, their anxiety showing in
their manner, and Eric wondered if he himself showed the fear that
gripped him.
They must know what had happened. By now probably every normal person
within a hundred miles of the museum must know.
At the entrance he glanced back idly and saw that one of the aircars
that had followed him had landed and that the others were angling off
again, leaving. It was too dark to see how many men got out of the car,
but Walden and Prior were facing in that direction, communicating, and
Eric knew that they knew. Everything.
It was like a trap around him, with each of their minds a strand of the
net, and he was unable to see which strands were about to entangle him,
unable to see if there were any holes through which he might escape. All
he could do was pretend that he didn't even know the net existed, and
wait.
Half a dozen men came up to Prior and Walden. One of them was Abbot. His
face was very stern, and when he glanced over at where Eric stood in the
building entrance his face grew even sterner.
Eric watched them for a moment; then he went inside, the way he usually
did when there were lots of people around. He wished he knew what they
were saying. He wished he knew what was going to happen.
He went on into the library and pulled out a book at random and sat down
and started turning the pages. He couldn't read. He kept waiting for
them to come in, for one of them to lay a hand on his shoulder and tell
him to come along, that they knew he had found other people like himself
and that he was a danger to their race and that they were going to lock
him up somewhere.
What would happen to Lisa? They'd find her, of course. She could never
escape alone, on foot, to the hills.
What had happened to Mag and Nell?
No one came. He knew that their perceptions lay all around him, but he
could sense no emotions, no thoughts but his own.
He sat and waited, his eyes focused on the book but not seeing it. It
seemed hours before anyone came. Then Prior and Abbot and Walden were in
the archway, looking across at him. Prior's face was still worried,
Abbot's stern, Walden's reassuring....
Eric forced himself to smile at them and then turn another page and
pretend to go on reading. After a moment he heard their footsteps
retreating, and when he looked up again they were gone.
He sat a while longer and then he got up and walked down the ramp and
stood for a few minutes looking at the ship, because that too would be
expected of him. He felt nothing. The ship was a world away now, mocking
him, for his future no longer lay in the past, with the old race, but
out in the hills. If he had a future at all....
He went up the ramp again, toward his own room. No one else was in
sight. They had all gone to bed, perhaps. They wouldn't expect him to
try to run away now.
He began to walk, as aimlessly as he could, in the direction of the
aircar. He saw no one. Perhaps it wasn't even guarded. He circled around
it, still seeing no one; then, feeling more secure suddenly, he went
directly toward it and reached up to open the panel and climb in.
"Is that you, Eric?"
Walden's voice. Quiet as always. And it came from inside the car.
* * * * *
Eric stood frozen, looking up at the ship, trying to see Walden's face
and unable to find it in the darkness. He didn't answer--couldn't
answer. He listened, and heard nothing except Walden, there above him,
moving on the seat.
Where was Lisa?
"I thought you'd come back here," Walden said. He climbed down out of
the aircar and stood facing Eric, his body a dim shadow.
"Why are you here?" Eric whispered.
"I wanted to see you. Without the others knowing it. I was sure you'd
come here tonight."
Walden. Always Walden. First his teacher and then his friend, and now
the one man who stood between him and freedom. For a second Eric felt
his muscles tense and he stiffened, ready to leap upon the older man and
knock him down and take the ship and run. Then he relaxed. It was a
senseless impulse, primitive and useless.
"The others don't know you have any idea what's happened, Eric. But I
could tell. It was written all over you."
"What did they find, Walden?"
The old man sighed, and when he spoke his voice was very tired. "They
found two women. They tried to capture them, but the women ran out on a
ledge. The older one slipped and fell and the other tried to catch her
and she fell too. They were dead when the men reached them."
Eric listened, and slowly his tension relaxed, replaced by a dull ache
of mourning. But he knew that he was glad to hear that they were dead
and not captured, not dragged away from the hills to be bathed and well
fed and imprisoned forever under the eyes of the new race.
"The old one was blind," Walden said. "It may have been her blindness
that caused her to fall."
"It wasn't."
"No, Eric, it probably wasn't."
They were silent for a moment, and there was no sound at all except for
their own breathing. Eric wondered if Lisa still hid in the aircar, if
she was listening to them, afraid and hopeless and crying over the death
of her people.
"Why did you come out here, Walden?"
"To see you. I came today, when I realized how suspicious the council
had grown. I was going to warn you, to tell you to keep away from the
hills, that they wanted an excuse to lock you up. I was too late."
"I was careless, Walden." He felt guilt twist inside of him.
"No. You didn't know the danger. I should have warned you sooner. But I
never dreamed you would find anyone in the hills, Eric. I never dreamed
there were any more without perception, this generation."
Eric moved nearer the car and leaned against it, the cold plastic next
to his body cooling him a little, steadying him against the feverish
trembling that shook his legs and sent sweat down over him and made him
too weak, suddenly, to want to struggle further.
"Let me go, Walden. Let me take the car and go."
Walden didn't move. He stood quietly, a tall thin shape in the darkness.
"There are other people the searchers didn't find, aren't there? And
you're going to them."
Eric didn't answer. He looked past Walden, at the car, wishing he could
somehow call to Lisa, wishing they could perceive so that he could
reassure her and promise her that somehow he'd still take her to
freedom. But it would be an empty promise....
"I've warned you too late. You've found your people, but it won't do you
any good. They'll hunt you through the hills, and I won't be able to
help you any more."
Eric looked back at him, hearing the sadness in his voice. It was real
sadness, real emotion. He thought of the years he had spent with Walden,
learning, absorbing the old race knowledge, and he remembered that all
through those years Walden had never once made him feel uncomfortable
because of the difference between them.
He looked at the old man for a long time, wishing that it was day so he
could read the other's expression, wondering how he had managed to take
this man for granted for so long.
"Why?" he whispered. "Why are you helping me? Why aren't you like the
others?"
"I never had a son, Eric. Perhaps that's the reason."
Eric thought of Myron and shook his head. "No, it isn't that. My father
doesn't feel the way you do. He can't forget that I'm not normal. With
him, I'm always aware of the difference."
"And you're not with me?"
"No," Eric said. "I'm not. Why?" And he wondered why he had never asked
that question before.
"The final question," Walden said softly. "I wondered how long it would
be before you asked it. I wondered if you'd ever ask it.
"Haven't you ever thought about why I never married, Eric? Haven't you
ever asked yourself why I alone learned to read, and collected books,
and studied the old race?"
"No," Eric admitted. "I just accepted you."
"Even though I can perceive and you can't." Walden paused and Eric
waited, not knowing what was coming and yet sure that nothing could
surprise him now.
"My father was normal," Walden said slowly. "But I never saw him. My
mother was like you. So was my brother. We lived in the hills and I was
the only one who could perceive. I learned what it was to be different."
Eric stared. He couldn't stop staring. And yet he should have realized,
long ago, that Walden was different too, in his own way.
Walden smiled back, his face, shadowed in moonlight, as quiet and as
understanding as ever. For a moment neither spoke, and there was only
the faraway sound of crickets chirping and the rustling of the wind in
the gardens.
And then, from within the aircar, there was a different rustling, that
of a person moving.
"Lisa!"
Eric pushed the compartment panel back. The soft light came on
automatically, framing her where she curled against the far wall.
"You heard us?"
She nodded. Tears had dried on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge in her
thin face.
"We'd better go, Lisa."
He reached in to help her out.
They didn't see the aircar dropping in for a landing until it was almost
upon them, until its lights arced down over the museum walls.
"Hide, Eric. In here--" Lisa pulled him forward.
Behind them, Walden's voice, suddenly tired in the darkness. "It's too
late. They know I'm here. And they're wondering why."
The three of them stood frozen, watching each other, while the dark
shape of the car settled to the ground some thirty yards away.
"It's Abbot," Walden said. He paused, intent for a moment, and added,
"He doesn't know about you. Get out of sight somewhere, both of you,
away from here--"
"Come on, Lisa--" Eric swung away from the car, toward the shelter of
the building and whatever hiding place there might be. "Hurry!"
They ran, and the museum rose in front of them, and the door was open.
They were through it and into the dim corridor, and there was no one
around; Walden's figure was lost in the night outside. Beyond the
libraries the great ramp spiraled downward.
"This way, Lisa!"
They came out into the bottom of the well and there in front of them the
starship rested. Still reaching upward. Still waiting, as it had waited
for so many uncounted years.
Their ship--if only it could be their ship....
"Oh, Eric!"
Side by side they stood staring at it, and Eric wished that they could
get into it and go, right now, while they were still free and there was
no one to stop them. But they couldn't. There was no food in the ship,
no plant tanks, none of the many provisions the books listed.
Besides, if they took off now they would destroy the museum and all the
people in it, and probably kill themselves as well.
"Eric! We know you're down there!" It wasn't Walden's voice.
Lisa moved closer. Eric put his arm around her and held her while
footsteps hurried toward them down the ramp. The council. Abbot and Drew
and the others. Prior, shaking his head. Walden.
"Let us go," Eric cried. "Why won't you let us go?"
Walden turned to the others. His eyes pleaded with them. His lips moved
and his hands were expressive, gesturing. But the others stood without
moving, without expression.
Then Abbot pushed Walden aside and started forward, his face hard and
determined and unchangeable.
"You won't let us go," Eric said.
"No. You're fools, both of you."
There was one answer, only one answer, and with it, a hot violence in
his blood as the old race pattern came into focus, as the fear and the
futility fell away.
It was only a few steps to the ship. Eric caught Lisa's arm and pulled
her after him and ran toward it, reaching up to the door. In one motion
he flung it open and lifted her through it, then he swung about to face
the others.
"Let us go!" he shouted. "Promise to let us go, or we'll take off anyway
and if we die at least you'll die too!"
Abbot stopped. He looked back at Walden, his face scornful. "You see?"
he said aloud. "They're mad. And you let this happen."
He turned away, dismissing Walden, and came toward the ship. The others
followed him.
Eric waited. He stood with his back to the door, waiting, as Abbot
strode toward him, ahead of the other councilmen, alone and unprotected.
"You're the fool!" Eric said. He laughed as he leaped forward.
Abbot's eyes went wide suddenly; he tried to dodge, gave a little grunt,
and went limp in Eric's grasp.
Eric laughed again, swung Abbot into the ship and leaped in himself. The
old race and its violence had never been nearer.
He slammed the door shut, bolted it, and turned back to where the
councilman was struggling to his feet.
"Now will you let us go?" Eric said softly. "Or must we take off now,
with you--for the stars?"
For a long moment Abbot looked at him, and then his lips trembled and
his whole body went slack in defeat.
"The ship is yours," he whispered. "Just let me go."
Outside the ship, Walden chuckled wryly.
* * * * *
The Vacuum Suit was strange against Eric's body, as strange as the
straps that bound him to the couch. He looked over at Lisa and she too
was unrecognizable, a great bloated slug tied down beside him. Only her
face, frightened behind the helmet, looked human.
He reached for the controls, then paused, glancing down through the view
screens at the ground, at the people two hundred feet below, tiny ants
scurrying away from the ship, running to shelter but still looking up at
him. He couldn't see his parents or Walden.
His fingers closed about the control lever but still he stared down.
Everything that had been familiar all his life stood out sharply now,
because he was leaving and it would never be there again for him. And he
had to remember what it was like....
Then he looked up. The sky was blue and cloudless above him, and there
were no stars at all. But he knew that beyond the sky the stars were
shining.
And perhaps, somewhere amid the stars, the old race waited.