“That did it. That snapped the inhibition. Killing once, I could kill again. I rendered the fat of this old grizzly and I found a sandy creek. For days I camped beside the creek, using sand to scrape off the few rust spots that had developed on me and keeping myself well greased. Ever since I’ve kept well greased. I never run out of grease. There are a lot of bear.
“But I have been running on so that I haven’t asked you who you are. That is, if you want to tell me. A lot of people would just as soon not tell you who they are. But you come along and rescue me and I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who to thank.”
“I’m Tom Cushing. And there need not be any thanks. Let’s get out of here. I have a camp just a step away. Have you got all your things?”
“Just the bag and spear. That was all I had. I had a knife and it’s still in the sheath.”
“Now that you are free,” said Cushing, “what plans do you have?”
“Why, no plans at all,” said Rollo. “I never have a plan. I simply wander. I have wandered with no purpose for more years than I can count. At one time it troubled me—this lack of purpose. But it does no longer. Although I suppose that if I were offered a purpose, I would gratefully accept it. Does it happen, friend, that you may have a purpose you would share with me? For I do owe you something.”
“You owe me nothing,” Cushing said, “but I do have a purpose. We can talk about it.”
10
The Trees ringed the great butte, having watched through the night as they had watched through centuries, through cold and heat, wet and dry, noon and midnight, cloud and sun. Now the sun came up over the eastern horizon and as its warmth and light fell on them, they greeted it with all the holy ecstasy and thankfulness they had felt when it first had fallen on them, as new-planted saplings put out to serve the purpose they had served through the years, their sensitivity and emotion undimmed by time.
They took the warmth and light and sucked it in and used it. They knew the movement of the dawn breeze and rejoiced in it, fluttering their leaves in response to it. They adjusted themselves to take and use the heat, monitored the limited amount of water that their roots could reach, conserving it, taking up in their roots only what they needed, for this was dryland and water must be used most wisely. And they watched; they continued watching. They noted all that happened. They knew the fox that skulked back to its den with the coming of dawn; the owl that flew back home, half blinded by the morning light (it had stayed out too long) to the small grove of cottonwoods that lined the tiny stream where water flowed begrudgingly along a rocky course; the mice that, having escaped the fox and owl, ran squealing in their grassy burrows; the lumbering grizzly that humped across the desiccated plain, the great lord of the land that brooked no interference from anything alive, including those strange, two-legged, upright creatures the Trees glimpsed occasionally; the distant herd of wild cattle that grazed on scanty pasturage, ready to gallop in a calculated frenzy should the lumbering bear head in their direction; the great bird of prey that sailed high in the air, viewing the vast territory that was its own, hungry now, but confident that before the day was out it would find the dead or dying that would give it meat.
The Trees knew the structure of the snowflake, the chemistry of the raindrop, the molecular pattern of the wind. They realized the fellowship of grasses, of other trees and bushes, the springtime brilliance of the prairie flowers that bloomed briefly in their season; had friendship for the birds that nested in their branches; were aware of ant and bee and butterfly.
They gloried in the sun and knew all that went on around them and talked with one another, not so much a matter of relaying information (although they could do that if need be) as a matter of acknowledging one another’s presence, of making themselves known, of saying all was well—a time of comradely contact to know that all was well.
Above them, on the butte, the ancient buildings stood high against the skyline, against the paleness of the blue that held no single cloud, a sky burnished by the rising sun and scrubbed clean by the summer.
11
The small fire burned with no smoke. Meg knelt beside it to cook the pan of bread. Off to one side, Rollo sat absorbed in the ritual of greasing himself, pouring ill-smelling bear oil out of a bottle fashioned from a gourd. Andy stamped and swished his tail to keep away the flies while paying serious attention to the spotty clumps of grass that were scattered here and there. A short distance away the unseen river gurgled and chuckled as it surged between its banks. The sun was halfway up the eastern sky and the day would get warmer later on, but here, in their hiding place beneath the fallen trees, the temperature was still pleasant.
“You say, laddie,” said Meg, “that the band you sighted numbered only twenty?”
“Thereabouts,” said Cushing. “I could not be sure. No more than that, I think.”
“A scout party, more than likely. Sent out, no doubt, to probe the city. To spot the locations of the tribes. Mayhaps we should stay here for a while. This is a snug retreat and not easily found.”
Cushing shook his head. “No, we’ll push on, come night. If the horde is moving east and we are going west, we should soon be free of them.”
She inclined her head toward the robot. “And what of him?” she asked.
“If he wishes, he can go with us. I’ve not talked with him about it.”
“I sense about this enterprise,” said Rollo, “a seeming urgency and purpose. Even not knowing what it is, I would be willing for the chance to associate myself with it. I pride myself that I might be of some small service. Not needing sleep myself, I could keep a watch while others slept. Being sharp of eye and swift of movement, I could do some scouting. I am well acquainted with the wilds, since I have been forced to live in them, well beyond the haunts of men. I would consume no supplies, since I live on solar energy alone. Give me a few days’ sunshine and I have energy stored against a month or more. And I am a good companion, for I never tire of talk.”
“That is right,” said Cushing. “He has not stopped talking since the minute I found him.”
“Reduced, at many times, I’ve been,” said Rollo, “to talking to myself. Which is not bad if there is no one else to talk with. Talking with oneself, it’s possible to find many areas of precise agreement, and one need never talk on subjects that are not agreeable.
“The best year I ever spent was long ago when, in the depths of the Rockies, I chanced upon an old mountain man who stood in need of help. He was an ancient personage who had fallen victim to a strange disease of stiffening muscles and aching joints, and had it not been for my coming accidentally upon him, he would not have lasted out the winter, since when the cold came he would not have been capable of hunting meat or bringing in the wood that was needed to keep his cabin warm. I stayed with him and brought in game and wood, and since he was as starved for talk as I was, we talked away the winter, he telling of great events in which he had participated or to which he had been a witness, and in many of them there may have been something less than truth, although I never questioned them, for so far as I was concerned, talk, not truth, was paramount. And I spinning tales for him, but little ornamented, of the days I’d spent since the Time of Trouble. Early the next summer, when the pain in him was less and he was able to make his way about, he set off for what he called a ‘rendezvous,’ a summer place of meeting for others such as he. He asked me to go with him, but I declined, for truth to tell, I no longer have any love of man. Excepting the present company, which seems well intentioned, I have had nothing except trouble in those few times I have blundered into men.”
“You can remember the Time of Trouble, then?” said Cushing. “You have lived through it all, and your memory’s clear?”
“Oh, clear enough,” said Rollo. “I recall the things that happened, but it would be bootless for you to ask me the meaning of it, for I had no understanding of it then, and despite much thinking on it, have no understanding of it now. You see, I was a common yard robot,
a runner of errands and a performer of chores. I had no training except in simple tasks, although I understand there were many of my kind who did have some special training, who were skilled technicians and many other things. My memories mostly are unpleasant, although in recent centuries I have learned to live with existing situations, taking each day as it comes and not ranting against conditions as they are. I was not designed to be a lonely mechanism, but that is what I have been forced to become. I have, through bitter circumstances, become able to live for and of myself, although I am never really happy of it. That is why I have so willingly suggested that I associate myself with your enterprise.”
“Not even knowing,” Meg asked, “what the enterprise might be?”
“Even so,” said Rollo, “if it so happens later on that I do not like the look or smell of it, I can simply walk away.”
“It’s no evil enterprise,” said Cushing. “It’s a simple search. We are looking for a Place of Going to the Stars.”
Rollo nodded sagely. “I have heard of it. Not extensively. Nothing that is greatly known, but of which one hears occasionally, many years apart. It is situated, as best I can determine, on a mesa or a butte somewhere in the West. The mesa or the butte is ringed in by an extensive growth of Trees that legend says keep watch upon the place and will allow no one to enter. And there are other devices, it is said, that guard it, although of those devices I have no true and certain knowledge.”
“Then there is such a place?”
Rollo spread his hands. “Who knows. There are many tales of strange places, strange things, strange people. The old man I spent the winter with mentioned it—I think only once. But he told many stories and not all of them were truth. He said the place was called Thunder Butte.”
“Thunder Butte,” said Cushing. “Would you know where Thunder Butte might be?”
Rollo shook his head. “Somewhere in the Great Plains country. That is all I know. Somewhere beyond the great Missouri.”
12
Excerpt from Wilson’s History:
One of the strange evolutions which seems to have followed the Collapse and which has developed in the centuries since is the rise of special human faculties and abilities. There are many stories of certain personalities who possess these abilities, some of them surpassing all belief, although as to the truth of them, there is none to say.
On the shelves at this university is an extensive literature on the possibilities of the paranormal and, in fact, some case histories that would appear to indicate the realization of such possibilities. It is only fair to point out, however, that a great part of this literature is theoretical and in some instances controversial. On a close examination of the pre-Collapse literature (which is all we have, of course), it would appear reasonable to conclude that there are enough convincing instances reported of the psychic or the paranormal to lend some substance to a belief that some of the theories may be correct.
Since the Collapse, although there has been no documentation upon which a judgment can be founded, it appears that a greater concentration of paranormal and psychic phenomena has been observed than was the case before. One must realize, certainly, that none of these reports can be subjected to the kind of critical examination and survey as was possible in the past. For this reason, that none of them is weeded out, they may appear to be more frequent than they really are. Each instance, once it is reported, becomes a story to be told in wondering amazement and with no great concern as to whether it be true or not. But even taking all this into account, the impression still holds that this type of phenomenon is, indeed, increasing.
There are those at this university, with whom I’ve talked, who feel that this increase may be due, in part at least, to the lifting and the shattering of the physically scientific and technological mold which prior to the Collapse encased all humanity. If a man (or a woman), these colleagues of mine point out, is told often enough that something is impossible, or worse, is foolishness, then there is a lessening of the willingness to believe in it, or to subscribe to it. This might mean that those pre-Collapse people who had a bent toward the psychic or the paranormal may have squelched their own abilities or (much to the same point) any dedicated belief in their abilities (for who would fly in the face of impossibility or engage in foolish practices?), with the result that any progress in the field was thwarted. The end result would be that an entire field of human endeavors and abilities may have been sidetracked, if not eliminated, in the face of the technologically minded dictum that they were either foolish or impossible.
Today no such dictum remains. Technological thinking was at least discredited, if not entirely wiped out, with the destruction of the machines and the social systems they had built. Which, after a century or two, left the human race free to carry out that foolishness which before had been frowned upon, if not, indeed, proscribed, by a technological mentality. It may be, too, that the present situation created a climate and environment in which nontechnological thinking and approaches to human problems have a chance to thrive. One wonders, thinking of it, what the world might have been if the science that man had subscribed to had not been almost exclusively a physical and a biological science and if, in such a case, technology had not come about. The best situation, of course, would have been if all sciences and the ideas deriving from them had been allowed equality, so that all could work together and interact. The way it turned out, however, was that the arrogance of one way of thought served to strangle all other ways of thought…
13
They traveled up the river, moving in daylight now since there were two of them to watch the prairie—either Cushing or Rollo scouting the blufftops, on lookout for war parties or for other dangers. In the first few days they spotted several bands; none of these were interested in the river valley, but were moving eastward. Watching them, Cushing felt a pang of worry about the university, but told himself it was unlikely it would be attacked. Even if it were, its high wall would hold off any attacker except one that would be more persistent than a nomad band.
The Minnesota River, up which they moved, was a more placid stream than the Mississippi. It meandered through its wooded valley as a lazy man might walk, not exactly loitering, but in no hurry either. By and large it was a narrow stream, although at times it spread out through low-lying marshes and they were forced to make their way around.
To begin with, Cushing fretted at the slow time they were making. Alone he could have covered twice the ground in half the time, but as the days went on and no more war bands appeared, the urgency fell away. After all, he realized, there was no time limit imposed upon the journey.
Having shed his fretfulness, he settled down to enjoying the trip. During the years at the university, he somehow had forgotten the exhilaration of the free life that he now followed once again: the early, foggy chill of mornings; the climb of the sun up the eastern sky; the sound of wind among the leaves; the V-shaped wake traced by a swimming muskrat; the sudden beauty of a hidden patch of flowers; the hooting of the owls once dusk settled on the river; the whicker of raccoons; the howling of the blufftop wolves. They lived high on the hog: fish from the river, squirrel and dumplings, plump fried rabbit, an occasional partridge or duck.
“This is better eating, laddie boy,” said Meg, “than chewing on that chunk of jerky you carry in your knapsack.”
He growled at her. “There may come a time,” he said, “when we’ll be glad to have the jerky.”
For this was the trip’s easy part, he knew, the fat time. When they had to leave the river valley and strike west across the plains, they would face hard going.
After a few days Rollo’s Shivering Snake came back again and danced around him. It was an elusive and ridiculous thing, a tiny pinch of Stardust shimmering in the sunlight, shining with a strange light of its own in the darkness of the night.
“Once I thought it was a friend of mine,” said Rollo. “A strange thing, you might say, to look upon a little shimmer of light as a friend, but to
one who has been alone and friendless over many centuries, even such an unsubstantial thing as a sparkle in the sunshine can seem to be a friend. I came to find, however, that it was a fair-weather friend. When I was pinned beneath the tree, it deserted me and did not come back till now. During all those days, I could have used it; had it been there, I could have told myself that I was not alone. Don’t ask me what it is, for I have no idea. I have spent many hours puzzling out some sort of rationalization so I could put an explanation to it. But I never found one. And don’t ask me when it first attached itself to me, for the time runs back so far that I would be tempted to say it was always with me. Although that would not be right, for I can recall the time when it was not with me.”
The robot talked incessantly. He ran on and on, as if all the years of loneliness had dammed up a flood of words that must now come out.
“I can recall what you term the Time of Trouble,” he told them, sitting around the meager campfire (meager and well hidden, so it would not show too great a light), “but I can throw no great understanding on it, for I was in no position to know what the situation might have been. I was a yard robot at a great house that stood high on a hill above a mighty river, although it was not this river you call the Mississippi, but another river somewhere in the East. I’m not sure I ever knew the river’s name nor the name of those who owned the house, for there were things a yard robot would not have been required to know, so would not have been told. But after a time, perhaps some time after it all started, although I can’t be sure, the word came to me and other robots that people were smashing machines. This we could not understand. After all, we did know that everyone placed great reliance on machines. I recall that we talked about it and speculated on it and we found no answers. I don’t think we expected any answers. By this time the people who lived in the house had fled; why they fled or where they might have gone we had no way of knowing. No one, you must understand, ever told us anything. We were told what to do and that was all we ever needed to know. We continued to do our familiar and accustomed tasks, although now there was no one to tell us what to do, and whether we did our tasks or not did not really matter.