Highway of Eternity

by Clifford D. Simak

  The soup was excellent, a rich broth with vegetables, strips of ham, and noodles. With the first spoonful of the soup, hunger came upon him and, forgetting good manners, he ladled it into his mouth with unseemly speed.

  “Good, isn’t it?” asked Hugo. “That Becky is turning into a cook of no mean skill, but it took a lot of training.”

  He chattered on. “Your ménage does not have the command of the language that I have. They can understand the simpler words and can speak after a fashion, but are beyond any real conversation. It is a pity that you are not telepathic, but then I would not have the pleasure of being in your service.”

  “Are most people in this community telepathic?” Timothy asked.

  “No, but a good percentage of them are, and we have the Basic. But you don’t know the Basic, and it would take some time to learn.”

  “The Basic?”

  “A common language. A contrived language combining easily spoken words from many languages. Lacking in grammar, of course, and not elegant, but one speaking Basic can be understood. There are many species here who do not communicate by sound, nor, in fact, by telepathy. However, ways have been worked out by which all can be understood.”

  They finished their meal and pushed back from the table. “Now,” said Timothy, “would you mind telling me exactly where we are? What sort of place is this?”

  “That might take some extensive explanation,” said Hugo. “For now, let me say that we are a galactic center composed of many cultures from widely scattered planets. We are thinkers and investigators. We try to make some sense of the universe. Here in this center, we meet and converse, in whatever way, as equals. We pool our thinking and our theories and discoveries. Questions are posed and defined, and ways are sought to answer.”

  “Then you missed with me; you came up a blank. I’m no great thinker and I am slow. I chew on thoughts before I write them down or spit them out. Mathematics is a complete mystery to me and I know no science. What little I have figured out, I did on my own. I had no training. I hold no academic degrees. My fascination is with history and philosophy. I tried, during many years, to come to an understanding of how my race took the course it did, and I came up with very little. I can’t imagine how Spike …”

  “He saw more in you than you see in yourself.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Spike always seemed a silly thing. He played silly games. He had one game where he jumped from square to square, except that there weren’t any squares. They were imaginary.”

  “Much of what we see in the universe,” said Hugo, “starts out as imaginary. Often you must imagine something before you can come to terms with it.”

  “We are mumbling in circles,” said Timothy. “We are getting nowhere. I accept this place as what you say it is and I realize that I’m a misfit in it. So tell me why I’m here.”

  “You are to provide us evidence.”

  “What kind of evidence? What is expected of me?”

  “I can tell no more,” said Hugo. “I have been instructed to tell you no more of it. Tomorrow I shall take you where you are supposed to go. But it grows late, and I believe we should retire.”

  For hours Timothy lay in bed before he went to sleep, his thoughts spinning in his skull as he went over, time after time, what little he had been told by Hugo.

  It was rational, of course, that there should be a galactic center where the intelligences of the galaxy could pool their knowledge and work together toward their mutual good. But what would the problems be, what the questions asked? Thinking on what they might be, he could marshal many in his mind, but on examination of them, some seemed lacking in necessary depth and others sounded plain ridiculous. His human view was too narrow; human culture had been shaped by tunnel vision. Although, he thought, that must necessarily have been true, originally, of all the cultures that were represented here.

  Finally he went to sleep. Then someone was shaking him awake. “I am sorry, sir,” said Hugo, leaning over him. “You were so sound asleep it seemed a shame to wake you. Yet breakfast is ready and we must be on our way. I have a surface vehicle and it is a very pleasant drive.”

  Grunting with displeasure, Timothy roused himself and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for the clothes that he had hung on the chair.

  “I’ll be right down,” he said.

  Breakfast was bacon and eggs, both done as he liked them. The coffee was acceptable.

  “Do you grow coffee here?” he asked.

  “No, we don’t,” said Hugo. “We had to scurry around to find it on one of the planets colonized by your people millennia ago.”

  “Those colonies were successful and still exist?”

  “They are thriving. After a hard initial period, of course.”

  “You got all this food from those colonies?”

  “Enough for a while,” said Hugo. “We also got cattle, hogs, chickens, and the seed to grow corn, wheat, and a long list of vegetable crops. We have resources and a vast file of information. We were told to spare no effort. We spared none.”

  “Just to feed one man? Or are there other humans here?”

  “You’re the only one,” said Hugo.

  The ground car was waiting outside, and they got into it, with Hugo at the controls. Other residences showed up along the road, mostly screened by heavy growth. On the lawn of one that seemed to be mostly underground, half a dozen woolly creatures rolled and tumbled happily in childish play.

  “You’ll meet all sorts of people here,” Hugo told him. “You’ll be surprised how quickly you become accustomed to them.”

  “You sound as if I’m to be a permanent resident. I had the feeling that you would throw me out, once you used me.”

  “Never that. Once the interview is over, we’ll supply you with informational material so you can get to work again. Your work will probably involve thinking about problems and solving them or suggesting approaches by which to tackle them.”

  Timothy grunted.

  “You don’t like it?” Hugo asked.

  “You shanghaied me—you and that unspeakable Spike who must have spied on us for years.”

  “You were not singled out. We seek information and talent on many planets. Information can be garnered from most worlds, but talent is rare.”

  “You think I’m talent?”

  “You could be.”

  “But the talent you find often could turn out not to be at all what you expected of it. What do you do then?”

  “We keep them on. We owe them something. We always pay our debts.”

  They passed a miniature pink castle standing on a hill, all gussied up with battlements and towers, with brave pennons flying.

  “A fairy castle,” said Hugo. “I think I have the right word. Up in that castle are an accomplished people who see the universe as a complex mathematical structure and are working on it. There is some hope that in time they may supply the necessary key.”

  The road now joined a hard-surface highway and there were other cars—not many of them; there was nothing like a traffic jam. In the distance loomed a clutter of tall buildings, rising clean and crisp, with no fanciness about them.

  “That is where we’re going?”

  Hugo nodded. “In your language, you’d call it an administration center. That’s where much of the work is done, although many of our people work in their homes or in retreats tucked among the hills. But here is where it all comes together. There are laboratories, observatories, libraries, instrument and machine shops, and conference rooms. And certain other facilities that in your language I cannot put in words.”

  They came into the center and wheeled along the wide boulevards. Cars were parked upon the streets. Vast parks opened up, separating the buildings. A few monstrosities moved along the sidewalks, some of them arrayed in colorful and outrageous clothing, others innocent of clothing. There were humpers, crawlers, skitterers, and striders. Some carried bags and cases, and one of the humpers dragged a cart laden with stacked parap
hernalia.

  “This place,” said Timothy, “seems almost like Earth—the streets, the parks, the buildings …”

  “The problem of partitioning working areas is quite a simple one,” said Hugo. “You take so many cubic feet of space and enclose it. Here the buildings were erected with one thing in mind: to make them as simple and functional as might be possible. To have been anything but simple might have offended some of the cultures that are represented here. There was no pleasing everyone, so we’ve done our best to please no one, using humdrum architecture with straight and simple lines.”

  He pulled over and stopped in front of the entrance to one building. “Here is where you go. I’ll walk you to your place of appointment, but I can’t go in with you. You enter alone. You’ll be in a small room with one chair. Sit down and wait. Don’t be uneasy. After a few moments, it will seem all right.”

  The room was close to the entrance. The building seemed nearly empty. They halted in front of a door, and Hugo turned back toward the entrance. Timothy pushed gently at the door, and it swung open easily.

  A small room, Hugo had said; and it was a small room, but an attractive one. Carpeting covered the floor and there were decorations on the walls. The chair faced a wall entirely covered by one such decoration. Timothy walked across the room and sat in the chair, studying the decoration. It was a gaggle of soft colors. It was loaded with designs, but all of them were small and tangled up with one another. He could not tell where one ended and another began.

  A voice spoke to him, seeming to come out of the wall. “Welcome to the Center. Your name is Timothy. Do you have another?”

  “I have a family name, but my family never used it in recent years. First names were enough. The family name is Evans.”

  “Very well, Mr. Evans,” the voice said, “this is an inquiry into a situation concerning which you have some knowledge. We have heard many witnesses, but none whose testimony should bear more weight than yours. Please answer frankly and forthrightly.”

  “To the best of my knowledge and ability, yes.”

  “Fine, then we’ll proceed. For the record, you are Timothy Evans, human from a planet you call Earth. Until recently, you have lived there all your life.”

  “That’s correct. Why don’t you show yourself? I dislike talking with a wall.”

  “My not facing you directly is a courtesy, Mr. Evans. You have been here only a short time and have met only Hugo. Given a few more days to meet others, you may understand. While I am, I assure you, a friendly and compassionate creature, I would appear to you a monster. There are others. A panel of us is listening to you, although I am the only one who talks with you. Most of the panel would also be monsters in your eyes. A row of monsters staring at you. Now can you appreciate our attitude?”

  “I can,” said Timothy. “It is considerate of you.”

  “So let us get on with the questions. You are acquainted with certain missionaries your people called the Infinites. What did those missionaries preach or advocate?”

  “They sought to convince people that it would be advantageous to trade their corporeal bodies for an incorporeal state.”

  “In instances where they convinced people of their thinking, did they have the ability to affect this transformation?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say that as if you are positive.”

  “I am. I came upon a place recently where many incorporeal beings were affixed—or seemed to be affixed—to some kind of lattice in the sky. Also, a brother of mine entered the transformation process, but it didn’t take …”

  “You mean the Infinites failed in your brother’s case?”

  “Either that or he pulled out of the process. I never quite got the straight of it. He would say one thing one time, then something else the next.”

  “What effect did that have upon your brother?”

  “He became a shadowy person, composed of many shiny sparkles. My understanding is that if he had continued in his transformation, he would have been condensed to a single sparkle.”

  “The incorporeal beings you saw upon the lattice that you mentioned were single sparkles?”

  “There were many single sparkles. They were located above a former Infinite dwelling place which we called a monastery.”

  “Please explain that to me.”

  “Monasteries are houses occupied by clerical orders that we call monks. Monks wear distinctive habits, and the Infinites looked like little monks, so we called their places of residence monasteries.”

  “We may come back,” said the voice, “to certain specifics once again. But I would like to get to the crux of the matter now. It appears from what we have learned that the greater part of Earth’s human population indeed became incorporeal. Your family didn’t. How did that come about?”

  “We fled the Infinites. We fled into the past. My family were not the only fugitives. There were many others. I have no idea how many.”

  “You fled in time. That means you had time machines.”

  “We stole the process for constructing the machines from the Infinites. We had no part in developing time travel. We simply blindly followed a pattern. We knew almost nothing of the technology.”

  “Why should you have fled? The vast majority of the Earth’s population did not flee.”

  “We were a different kind of people, different in our outlook. We were the outlanders—the hillbillies, if you know that term?”

  “I think I do. The disadvantaged people who, because of environmental factors and cultural outlook, lagged behind. Perhaps with reason.”

  “Entirely with reason,” said Timothy. “We kept sight of the old values which the rest of the population had abandoned.”

  “Therefore you could not accept the philosophy of the Infinites?”

  “We gagged on their philosophy. It went against our grain.”

  “Yet, once again, most of Earth’s people accepted it.”

  “The rest of the people completely abandoned the old values. They rejected technology, which in many ways, had served them in good stead and could have served them better if they had bothered to develop a stronger ethical code. They walked away from progress. In all fairness, I must say that progress, in certain instances, was detrimental. Yet it lifted us from beasts to a fairly reasonable and decent society. We scrapped nationalism, we conquered almost every disease, and we arrived at an equitable economic policy.”

  “Still these other people walked away from what you describe as the old values at the very point when they could have brought about a nearly perfect society. What happened? Did the race grow old and tired?”

  “I’ve wondered about that off and on. There were, I would suspect, no data upon which a conclusion could be based. The strangest thing about it is that there seemed to be no one who was preaching it; there were no advocates of the change in attitudes, no one pushing for a new life style. The idea seems to have dribbled along until, after some years, everyone seemed to be doing nothing except sitting around and talking. They had the idea that they were engaged in great philosophical discussions, but actually all they were doing was talking. Through the history of mankind there have always been cults. They’d spring up here and there and would flourish briefly, but in the end they all faded out. But the abandonment of progress was not a cult. Each man seemed to decide suddenly for himself that progress was meaningless and technology not worth the cost. It was almost as if a contagious disease had struck.”

  “Could it have been a disease?”

  “No one ever hinted that it was. In fact, there was almost no discussion about it. The attitude was accepted and that was the end of it.”

  “So the society was ripe for the Infinites.”

  “Apparently. Not too much attention was paid to them at first. Then their philosophy began catching on quietly. There was never any great uproar about it. It went slowly, but grew in strength as the years went on. It was, you might say, a quiet catastrophe. The human race, in its history, had face
d a number of possible catastrophes. There was a time when we nearly poisoned our world environment by the use of chemicals, but came to our senses just in time to escape that fate. We could have been wiped out by war, but found the way to peace at the last possible moment. But in the Infinite catastrophe, we lined up and went willingly to our doom.”

  “There were people, however, who did not go willingly.”

  “Not too many. A few. A few thousands went out into space to find other planets. Some of us fled into time. By the time we fled, the Infinites had started to push hard. They saw the chance, I suppose, of converting an entire race of people. By the time I was born it was beginning to get rough for dissidents like us. All I have told you of events before that is the history I was told.”

  “The history could have been colored by prejudice.”

  “To some extent, I suppose. We were becoming defensive in my day.”

  “What arguments were used by the Infinites to persuade members of your race to accept the transformation?”

  “They offered a certain kind of immortality. An incorporeal being could not die. It could survive the death of the universe. It would be immune from all physical ills. Free of the body, the mind would soar. That, the Infinites said, was the true goal of any intellectual being. Intelligence was the only quality that counted. Why contend, they asked, with the physical world—all its dangers and disappointments? Slough it off, they said, and be really free.”

  “That must have been compelling logic for many.”

  “For most of them,” said Timothy.

  “But not for you and your fellows? You still thought of it as wrong?”

  “I find it hard to characterize exactly what our feelings might have been. I can only sum it up by saying we felt a great revulsion at what the Infinites were doing.”

  “You feared and hated them? You thought of them as enemies?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about it now that it apparently is over, that the Infinites have accomplished what they set out to do?”

  “It’s not all over,” said Timothy. “The human race still lives. There are human colonies on other planets that I am told are doing well, and there are a few dissidents hiding in the past.”