“Then think of it this way. This is just another railroad. The Earth is just another town and this house will be the station for this new and different railroad. The only difference is that no one on Earth but you will know the railroad’s here. For it will be no more than a resting and a switching point. No one on the Earth can buy a ticket to travel on the railroad.”
Put that way, of course, it had a simple sound. But Enoch knew it was very far from simple.
“Railroad cars in space?” he asked.
“Not railroad cars,” Ulysses told him. “It is something else.
I do not know how to begin to tell you.”
“Perhaps you should pick someone else. Someone who would understand.”
“There is no one on this planet who could understand. We’ll do with you as well as anyone.”
“But . . .”
“What is it, Enoch?”
“Nothing,” Enoch said.
For he remembered now how he had been sitting on the steps thinking how he was alone and about a new beginning, knowing that he could not escape a new beginning, that he must start from scratch and build his life anew.
And here, suddenly, was that new beginning—more wondrous and fearsome than anything he could have dreamed.
VIII
ENOCH FILED the message and sent his confirmation: NO. 406302 RECEIVED. COFFEE ON THE FIRE. ENOCH.
Clearing the machine, he walked over to the No. 3 liquid tank he’d prepared before he left. He checked the temperature and the level of the solution and made certain once again that the tank was securely positioned in relation to the materializer.
From there he went to the other materializer, the official and emergency materializer, over in the corner, and checked it over closely. It was all right, as usual. It always was all right, but before each of Ulysses’ visits he never failed to check it. There was nothing he could have done about it had there been something wrong, other than send an urgent message to Galactic Center. In which case someone would have come in on the regular materializer and put it into shape.
For the official and emergency materializer was exactly what its name implied. It was used only for official visits by personnel of Galactic Center, or for possible emergencies. Its operation was entirely outside the operation of the local station.
Ulysses, as an inspector for this and several other stations, could have used the official materializer at any time he wished without prior notice. But in all the years that he had been coming to the station he had never failed, Enoch remembered with a touch of pride, to message he was coming. Enoch knew that it was a courtesy which all the other stations on the great galactic network might not be accorded.
Tonight, he thought, he probably should tell Ulysses about the watch that had been put upon the station. Perhaps he should have told him earlier. But he had been reluctant to admit that the human race might prove to be a problem to the galactic installation.
It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither. Perhaps it was because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick, and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably on many other counts.
But if they had the chance, Enoch told himself—if they ever got a break, if they only could be told what was out in space—then they’d get a grip upon themselves and they would measure up. And then, in the course of time, they would be admitted into the great confraternity of the people of the stars.
Once admitted, they would prove their worth and pull their weight. For they were still a young race and full of energy—at times maybe too much energy.
Enoch shook his head and went across the room to sit down at his desk. Drawing the bundle of mail in front of him, he slid it out of the string which Winslowe had used to tie it all together.
There were the daily papers, a news weekly, two journals—Nature and Science—and the letter.
HE PUSHED the papers and journals to one side and picked up the letter. It was an airmail sheet, postmarked London. The return address bore a name that was unfamiliar to him. He puzzled as to why an unknown person should be writing him from London. Although anyone who wrote him, from London or indeed from anywhere, would be an unknown person. He knew no one in the world outside this tiny community.
He slit the air sheet open and spread it out on the desk in front of him, pulling the desk lamp close so the light would fall upon the writing.
Dear sir, he read, I would suspect I am unknown to you. I am one of the editors of the British journal, Nature, to which you have been a subscriber for these many years. I do not use the journal’s letterhead because this letter is personal and unofficial—and perhaps not even in the best of taste.
You are, it may interest you to know, our eldest subscriber. We have had you on our mailing lists for more than eighty years.
While I am aware that it is no concern of mine, I have wondered if you, yourself, have subscribed to our publication for this length of time, or if it might be possible that your father or someone close to you may have been the original subscriber and you simply have allowed the subscription to continue in his name.
My interest undoubtedly constitutes an unwarranted and inexcusable curiosity and if you, sir, choose to ignore the query it is entirely within your rights and proper that you do so. But if you should not mind replying, an answer would be appreciated.
I can only say in my own defense that I have been associated for so long with our publication that I feel a certain sense of pride that Someone has found it worth the having tor more than eighty years. I doubt that many publications can boast such long time interest on the part of any man.
May I assure you, sir, of my utmost respect.
Sincerely yours.
And then the signature.
ENOCH SHOVED the letter from him.
There it was again, he told himself. Here was another watcher, although a discreet and most polite one, unlikely to cause trouble.
But someone else had taken notice, had felt a twinge of wonder at the same man subscribing to a magazine for more than eighty years.
As the years went on, there would be more and more.
It was not only the watchers encamped outside the station with whom he must concern himself, but those potential others. A man could be as self-effacing as he could manage and still he could not hide. Soon or late, the world would catch up with him and would come crowding around his door, agog to know why he might be hiding.
It was useless to hope for much further time. The world was closing in.
Why can’t they leave me alone, he thought. If he only could explain how the situation stood, they might leave him alone.
But he couldn’t explain. And even if he could, there would be some of them who’d still come crowding in.
Across the room the materializer beeped for attention and Enoch swung around.
The Thuban had arrived. He was in the tank, a shadowy, globular blob of substance. Above him, riding sluggishly in the solution, was a cube of something.
Luggage, Enoch wondered. But the message had said there would be no luggage.
Even as he hurried across the room, the clicking came to him. The Thuban was talking to him.
Presentation to you, said the clicking. Deceased fibrous vegetation.
Enoch peered at the cube floating in the liquid.
Take him, clicked the Thuban. Bring him for you.
Fumblingly Enoch clicked out his answer, using tapping fingers against the glass side of the tank: I thank you, gracious one. He wondered as he did it if he were using the proper form of address to this blob of matter. A man could get terribly tangled up on that particular point of etiquette. There were some of these beings that one addressed in flowery language (and even in those cases, the floweriness would vary) and others that one talked with in the simplest, bluntest, most forthright terms.
He reached into the tank and lifted out the cube
. It was a block of heavy wood, black as ebony and so close-grained it looked very much like stone. He chuckled inwardly, thinking how, in listening to Winslowe, he had grown to be an expert in the judging of artistic wood.
He put the wood upon the floor and turned back to the tank.
Would you mind, clicked the Thuban, revealing what you do with him? To us, very useless stuff.
ENOCH HESITATED, searching desperately through his memory. What, he wondered, was the code for “carve?”
Well? the Thuban asked.
You must pardon me, gracious one. I do not use this language often. I am not proficient.
Drop, please, the gracious one. I am a common being.
Shape it, Enoch tapped. Into another form. Are you a visual being? Then I show you one.
Not visual, said the Thuban. Many other things, not visual.
It had been a globe when it had arrived and now it was beginning to flatten out.
You, the Thuban clicked, are a biped being.
That is what I am.
Your planet. It is a solid planet?
Solid? Enoch wondered. Oh, yes, solid as opposed to liquid.
One quarter solid, he tapped. The rest of it is liquid.
Mine almost all liquid. Only little solid. Very restful world.
One thing I want to ask you, Enoch tapped.
Ask, the creature said.
You are a mathematician. All you folks, I mean.
Yes, the creature said. Excellent recreation. Occupies the mind.
You mean you do not use it? Oh, yes, once use it. But no need for use any more. Got all we need to use, very long ago. Recreation now.
I have heard of your system of numerical notation.
Very different, clicked the Thuban. Very better concept.
You can tell me of it?
You know notation system used by people of Polaris VII?
No, I don’t, tapped Enoch.
Then no. use to tell you of our own. Must know Polaris first.
So that was that, thought Enoch. He might have known. There was so much knowledge in the galaxy and he knew so little of it, understood so little of the little that he knew.
There were men on Earth who could make sense of it. Men who would give anything short of their very lives to know the little that he knew, and could put it all to use.
Out among the stars lay a massive body of wisdom, some of it an extension of what mankind knew, some of it concerning matters which Man had not yet suspected, and used in ways and for purposes that Man has not as yet imagined. And never might imagine, if left on his own.
Another hundred years, thought Enoch. How much would he learn in another hundred years? In another thousand? Would he learn enough?
I rest now, said the Thuban. Nice to talk with you.
IX
ENOCH TURNED from the tank and picked up the block of wood. A little puddle of liquid had drained off it and lay glistening on the floor.
He carried the block across the room to one of the windows and examined it. At one corner of it a bit of bark remained. It had been sawed; someone had cut it into a size that would fit the tank where the Thuban rested.
He recalled an article he had read in one of the daily papers just a day or two before in which a scientist had contended that no great intelligence ever could develop on a liquid world.
But that scientist was wrong, for the Thuban race had so developed. There were other liquid worlds which were members of the galactic confraternity. There were a lot of things that Man would have to unlearn, as well as learn, if he ever should become aware of the galactic culture.
The limitation of the speed of light, for one thing.
For if nothing moved faster than the speed of light, then the galactic transport system would be impossible.
But one should not censure Man, he reminded himself, for setting the speed of light as a basic limitation. Observations were all that Man—or anyone, for that matter—could use at data upon which to base his premises. And human science had so far found nothing to suggest a faster speed than light.
But the impulse patterns which carried creatures from star to star were almost instantaneous, no matter what the distance.
It was hard to believe. Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in another station. The materializer had built up a pattern of it—not only of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been used to duplicate the body and the mind and memory and the life of that creature now lying dead many light years distant. And in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life had taken almost instant form. An entirely new being; but exactly like the old one, so that the identity continued and the consciousness (the very thought no more than momentarily interrupted), so that to all intent and purpose the being was the same.
THERE WERE limitations to the impulse patterns, but they had nothing to do with speed. The impulses could cross the entire galaxy with but little lag in time. But under certain conditions the patterns tended to break down. This was why there must be many stations—many thousands of them. Clouds of dust or gas or areas of high ionization seemed to disrupt the patterns. In the sectors of the galaxy where these conditions were encountered, the distance jumps between the stations were considerably cut down to keep the pattern true. There were areas that had to be detoured because of high concentrations of the distorting gas and dust.
Enoch wondered how many dead bodies of the creature that now rested in the tank had been left behind at other stations in the course of the journey it was making—as this body in a few hours’ time would lie dead within this tank when the creature’s pattern was sent out again, riding on the impulse waves.
A long trail of dead, left across the stars. Each to be destroyed by a wash of acid and flushed into deep-lying tanks, but with the creature itself going on and on until it reached its final destination, to carry out the purpose of its journey.
And those purposes, Enoch wondered—the many purposes of the many creatures who passed through the stations scattered wide in space? There had been certain instances when, chatting with the travelers, they had told their purpose. But with most of them he never learned the purpose. Nor had he any right to learn it. For he was the keeper only.
Mine host, he thought. Although not every time, for there were many creatures that had no use for hosts. But the man, at any rate, who watched over the operation of the station and who kept it going, who made ready for the travelers and who sent them on their way again when that time should come. And who performed the little tasks and courtesies of which they might stand in need.
He looked at the block of wood and thought how pleased Winslowe would be with it. It was very seldom that one came upon wood as black or fine-grained as this.
What would Winslowe think, he wondered, if he could only know that the statuettes he carved were made of woods that had grown on unknown planets many light-years distant? Winslowe must have wondered many times where the wood came from. But he had never asked. And he knew as well, of course, that there was something very strange about this man who came out to the mail box every day to meet him. But he had never asked that, either.
That was what he meant by friendship.
THIS WOOD that he held in his hands was another evidence of friendship—the friendship of the stars for a very humble keeper of a remote and backwoods station stuck out in one of the spiral arms, far from the center of the galaxy.
The word had spread, apparently, through the years and throughout space, that this certain keeper was a collector of exotic woods. And so the woods came in. Not only from those races he thought of as his friends, but from total strangers, like the blob that now rested in the tank.
He put the wood down on a table top and went to the refrigerator. From it he took a slab of aged cheese that Winslowe had bought for him several days ago, and
a small package of fruit that a traveler from Sirrah X had brought the day before.
“Analyzed,” it had told him, “and you can eat it without hurt. It will play no trouble with your metabolism. You’ve had it before, perhaps? So you haven’t. I am sorry. It is most delicious. Next time, you like it, I shall bring you more.”
From the cupboard beside the refrigerator he took out a small, flat loaf of bread, part of the ration regularly provided him by Galactic Central. Made of a cereal unlike any known on Earth, it had a nutty flavor with the hint of some alien spice.
He put the food on what he called the kitchen table, although there was no kitchen. Then he put the coffee maker on the stove and went back to his desk.
The letter still laid there, spread out. He folded it together and put it in a drawer.
He stripped the brown folders off the papers and put them in a pile. From the pile he selected The New York Times and moved to his favorite chair to read.
NEW PEACE CONFERENCE AGREED UPON, said the lead-off headline.
The crisis had been boiling for a month or more, the newest of a long series of crises which had kept the world on edge for years. The worst of it was that the most of them were manufactured crises. One side or the other was merely pushing for advantage in the relentless chess game of power politics which had been underway since the end of World War II.
The stories in The Times bearing on the conference had a rather desperate, almost fatalistic, ring, as if the writers of the stories, and perhaps the diplomats and all the rest involved, knew the conference would accomplish nothing—if, in fact, it did not serve to make the crisis deeper.
Observers in this capital, wrote on of The Times’ Washington bureau staff, are not convinced the conference will serve, in this instance, as similar conferences sometimes have served in the past, either to delay a showdown on the issues or to advance the prospects for a settlement. There is scarcely concealed concern in many quarters that the conference will, instead, fan the flames of controversy higher without, by way of compensation, opening any avenues by which a compromise might seem possible. A conference is popularly supposed to provide a time and place for the sober weighing of the facts and points of argument. But there are few who see in the calling of this conference any indications that this may be the case.
The Complete Serials Page 89