_No one took Old Arch seriously; he was just an
ancient, broken-down wanderer who went about seeking
alms and spreading tales of the great Outside. But
sometimes children are curious and believing when
adults are cynical and doubting...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There have always been the touched, the blessés, God's poor. Such a one
was Old Arch. Archer Jakes, the Wanderer of the Plains.
They say he was born on Earth in 3042 and taken to Mazzeppa as a child.
That he learned pilotage and mining. But that he was injured in a
cave-in on Hurretni in 3068 or thereabouts, and then his wife died in a
landing accident and his child was taken from him and adopted by people
he never could find.
Those things are too far distant in time and space to be verified now.
But it is a fact that by 4000, when my grandfather Hockington Hammer
was growing up in New Oshkosh, Old Arch was a familiar figure in all
the Domed Cities of the Plains.
He looked ancient then, with his deformed back that people touched for
luck, and his wild hair and beard, and ragged castoff clothing. On his
back he carried a roll of cloth he called his bed, though it looked
like no bed any City man had ever seen. In his right hand he carried
a staff of wood, unless someone bought it from him and gave him a
plastic rod in its place. And in his left he carried what he called a
billy can, which was a food container with a loop of wire across the
top for a handle, and the bottom blackened by what he said was fire.
It would have been like no fire any City man had ever seen. Even the
water in the can would be poison to a City man. When he came in the
airlocks the guards would make him throw it away.
"Why the lock?" he'd demand, coming into a City. "Why the lock and why
the plastic bubble over all and why the guards? There's no pollution.
Am I not alive?"
The guards would touch his hump and make circular motions at the sides
of their heads and raise their eyebrows as if to say, "Yes, you're
alive. But are you not crazy?"
Still they would admit him, the only nonresident to walk between the
Domed Cities of the Plains and enter all of them; the only man to pass
unharmed through the camps of the Outsiders who lived in the open on
the Plains at the heart of the North American Continent of Earth.
And Old Arch would go to the residence buildings and he'd knock on
someone's door--any door, chosen at random--and he'd say, "Have you
seen the sky and do you know it's blue? Have you felt the soft kiss of
the breezes? I can show you where to breathe fresh air."
Maybe the people would say, "Phew! Does it smell like you, this fresh
air?" and slam the door in his face.
Or maybe they'd say, "Come on around to the back, Old Man, and we'll
find you something to eat."
Then Old Arch would shoulder his bed and pick up his billy can and his
staff and walk down the stairs and go around to the back and walk up
the stairs to the rear door.
It might be an hour before he appeared there--it might be two. When he
did, the people would ask, "Why didn't you say something? You should
have known they wouldn't let you in the elevator! And twenty flights
down and twenty flights up again is too much for a man of your years."
Then, the next time he came they would do the same thing again.
In the kitchen he would refuse all the pills and potions and shots, and
insist on bulky foods. These he would eat neatly, holding aside the
long white hair around his mouth and brushing the crumbs from it often.
What he couldn't eat right away would go into his blackened billy can.
The children would come before he finished--those of the household,
and neighbor kids too. First they'd stand shyly and watch him from a
doorway. Then they'd press closer. By the time he got through they'd
be fighting to sit on his lap.
The winner would climb up and sit there proudly. One of the losers,
trying to prove he hadn't lost much, might wrinkle up his nose and say,
"What's that awful stink, Old Man?"