Highway of Eternity

  Later, when he awoke, the moon was well up the sky. The fire had burned down somewhat, but still had plenty of fuel. He let his head droop and was half asleep again when, rousing for an instant, he saw someone sitting across the fire from him. The sitter was wrapped in an indistinct covering of some sort and wore what seemed to be a conical hat that had fallen down across his face. Boone sat quietly, not moving, still fogged with sleep. Through slitted eyes he watched the one across the fire from him, wondering vaguely if there was actually someone sitting there, or was it no more than sleep-hazed hallucination? The other did not stir. A wolf so distorted by the mist of sleep that he seemed a sitting man—a wolf companionably sitting across the fire? It was no wolf, Boone assured himself. Forcing himself out of his lethargy, he struggled to his feet. At his first motion, the thing across the fire was gone. There had been nothing there, he told himself; it had been no more than a waking dream.

  Using a stick of firewood to rake scattered coals and the half-burned wood together, he piled on more fuel. Then, wrapping the blanket closely about himself, he fell asleep again.

  He woke gradually, as a man would normally wake, but with a warning growing slowly from somewhere inside himself. Tensed against the warning, he opened his eyes a slit and there was a wolf, sitting in front of him, almost nose to nose with him. Opening his eyes a little wider, he found himself staring into yellow, feral eyes that glared back unblinkingly.

  His startled mind screamed for action, but he held his body firm. If he made any sudden motion, he knew, those heavy jaws could take off his face.

  The wolf lifted its upper lip in the beginning of a snarl, then let the lip drop back. Otherwise it did not move.

  Unaccountably, Boone felt insane laughter rising in him at this grotesque situation in the midst of primordial nothingness—a wolf and a man sitting nose to nose. He spoke softly, barely moving his lips. “Hiya, pup.” At the sound, the wolf wriggled back a little on its seat, increasing the distance between them by a foot or so.

  The fire was almost out, Boone saw. The alarm clock inside his brain had failed him and he had overslept.

  The wolf’s lip twitched as if to begin another snarl, but there was no snarl. Its ears, which had been laid back, tipped forward, like those of an inquisitive dog. Boone felt the urge to reach out a hand to pat the seemingly friendly head. Good, hard sense restrained the impulse. The wolf wriggled back a little farther, sliding on its bottom.

  Out some distance beyond the fire stood several other wolves, ears pitched forward, watching closely to see what might happen next.

  With a leisurely movement, the wolf rose to its feet and backed away. Boone stayed sitting, his fingers closing hard upon the rifle, although, he told himself, there was no need of that. The incident was over. Both he and the wolf had played it cool and there was no danger now, if there had ever been a danger. More than likely the wolf had never meant him harm. The fire had gone out, and the wolf had moved in closer, intrigued and puzzled by this new kind of animal that had suddenly appeared in its hunting ground, driven by canine curiosity to see what kind of thing it was.

  The wolf was retreating, moving easily and deliberately, with a sidewise motion. Then, with a fine nonchalance, it turned its back on him and went loping off to join the other wolves.

  Boone shook off the blanket and rose to his feet. The fire was not dead as yet. Brushing away the overlying ash, he uncovered a tiny core of fire, fed it with tiny twigs of dead juniper. It blazed up, and he fed it other fuel. When he rose from the flames, the wolves were gone.

  Exploring in the rucksack, he found a package of oatmeal. Water was still left in the saucepan, and he poured it into the skillet. He dumped oatmeal into the saucepan, added water from the skillet, found a spoon, and stirred the gruel. When Enid awoke and sat up in her blanket, he was squatted by the fire, cooking breakfast. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten and the air was chill.

  Enid came to the fire and squatted beside it, holding out her hands to warm them. “What have you there?”

  “Oatmeal. I hope you like oatmeal.”

  “Ordinarily, I like it. But I suppose there is no sugar or milk. Horace wouldn’t have thought of those.”

  “There is still some ham. Maybe other stuff as well. When I found the oatmeal, I looked no further.”

  “I can gag it down,” she said. “At least it will be warm.”

  When it was cooked, they both gagged it down. She had been right; there was no sugar or milk.

  Finished with breakfast, Boone said, “I’ll go to the spring and wash the dishes, then bring back more water.”

  “While you are doing that, I’ll pack everything back into the traveler. We don’t want to leave it lying around.”

  “Do you want me to leave the rifle with you?”

  She made a face. “I have no idea how to use it. Besides, I doubt there is any danger.”

  He hesitated, then said, “I don’t suppose there is. In case something does happen, get into the traveler and close the port.”

  At the spring he met two wolves, who were lapping water from the spring hole. They retreated politely and let him wash the dishes and fill the pan with water. After he left he glanced back. The two had moved in on the spring again and were busily lapping water.

  Back at the camp, Enid was crouched beside the fire. She waved her hand in welcome when she saw him coming. Standing beside her at the fire, he asked, “Do you have any idea what we should do?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t even thought about it. If I had some idea where the others could be, we could go there. But they probably did the same as we did—left as quickly as they could, just anywhere to get away.”

  “There’s an awful lot of time to flounder around in if we have no idea where to go,” he said. “Not much sense in leaving here, it seems to me, until we know where to go.”

  “Eventually Henry will sniff us out. I assume he is with one of the other two travelers.”

  “Eventually could be a long time,” said Boone. “I’m not about to spend the rest of my days in a continent empty of people. I’m sure you must feel the same. We could go someplace else more to our liking.”

  “Yes, we could do that,” she said. “But not for a while. If we left a trail somehow that could be followed, we should not break it. We should stay here and hope that Henry finds us.”

  He squatted down across the fire from her. “There could be worse places,” he said. “We’re in no danger here. But I suspect that after a time it could become a little boring. Just plains and buttes, buzzards in the sky, wolves, and bison on the hoof. Nothing ever taking place.”

  “We’d run out of food,” she said.

  “There is plenty of food. Bison and other meat animals.” He patted the rifle. “We’ll live as long as this holds out. After the last cartridge, we can make lances, perhaps bows and arrows.”

  “It won’t come to that,” she told him. “Before it does, we’ll leave.”

  He reached for the pile of wood, laid a few sticks on the fire. “We’ll have to go for more of this. Our supply is running low.”

  “Let’s get in a good pile of it this time,” she said. “We don’t want to have to run up to that thicket every day to bring in wood.”

  A low rumbling, from somewhere close by, brought both of them to their feet. The rumbling ceased, then came again, changing to a bellow.

  “It’s the bull,” said Boone. “He’s in some sort of trouble.”

  Enid shuddered. “The wolves are moving in.”

  “I’ll go and see,” said Boone. He started and she trotted along beside him.

  “No,” he said. “No, you stay here. I don’t know what I’ll find.”

  Loping along, he came to the sandstone outcropping, ran around it, and into the rocky pocket where they had found the bull. The bull was backed against the sharp incline of the spur, his rump pressed tight against the rock. Facing him were half a dozen wolves, darting in at him with short rushes, then spinning
about and away to escape the slashing of his horns. The bull was bellowing angrily, but with desperation in the anger. His head was held low; his bellowing came in short, hard gasps. He kept swinging his head from side to side to bring his horns in play against the menace of the wolves. His beard swept the ground as he swung his head. His flanks were quivering and it was apparent that not for much longer could he stand at bay, fighting off his enemies.

  Boone lifted the rifle, paused for a moment before he brought it to his shoulder. The bull swung its head to stare at him, its red eyes peering out of the matted fur. Boone lowered the rifle.

  “Not now, old man,” he said. “Not yet. When they close in, you’ll get one or two of them and I owe you that.”

  The bull’s stare was unblinking. His bellowing sank to a mumble. The wolves, disturbed by Boone’s intrusion, moved off.

  Boone backed slowly off, wolves and bison watching him intently. I’m the intruder here, he thought. I’m an unknown and unexpected factor introduced into this environment. And I have no business here, no right to interfere. For untold centuries old bull bison, robbed of their strength, grown slow with years, had fed the wolves. Here wolves were the certified predators, ancient bison the certified victims. It was the scheme of life, the way that things were done, and no referee was needed to pass judgment.

  “Boone!”

  At the cry Boone spun about and raced around the spur. Enid was standing by the fire and pointing up the hill. Coming down the slope rapidly, heading straight for the camp, was the unlikely monster that had driven them from Hopkins Acre. The spiderweb glinted in the morning sun. Peering over the top of the web was the huge, shining eye and some sort of dark mechanism was emerging from the web.

  He had no chance to cover the distance to the fire, Boone knew, no chance to do anything at all to stop the monster.

  “Run!” he shouted. “Into the traveler. Go!”

  “But, Boone …”

  “Save the traveler,” he bellowed at her. “Save the traveler!”

  She ran for the traveler, leaped into it. The monster was almost on top of it, not a great deal more than a hundred yards away from it.

  Sobbing, Boone raised the rifle. The eye, he thought, that great, round, shining eye. Probably not the way to do it, but the best that he could think of.

  His finger tightened on the trigger, but, even as he began the squeeze, the traveler disappeared—the space it had occupied was empty.

  Boone eased his finger and lowered the rifle. The monster overran the area where the traveler had been, then swiftly swung around so that it faced Boone. The great eye, now raised above the web, stared at him, the web glittering in the sunlight. The mechanism was receding back into the web of brightness.

  “All right,” Boone said to it. “Now I’ll take you on.”

  He had six cartridges; he could fire at least four of them before it could reach him. First the eye, then the web …

  But the monster did not come at him. It did not move at all. He knew that it must be aware of him; he could feel it seeing him.

  He waited for it and it made no move. It knew that he was here and it knew him for what he was. But would it know, he asked himself, that he was not one of those it was hunting down? If the monster was what it seemed, a hunting robot, then it was entirely possible that it could be very narrowly programmed to its targets. But on the face of it that did not appear too probable. The logical assumption would be that it would include among its targets any human associating with the people from the future.

  Boone took a slow step forward, then waited. The monster did not stir. Was it, he wondered, playing a game of cat and mouse, waiting until he was close enough to catch him in a rush before he had a chance to employ a defensive mechanism?

  He didn’t have to go back to the campfire, he remembered. There was nothing there except the saucepan and the skillet. While he had gone to the spring, Enid had packed the rest of the provisions into the traveler—the food, the blankets, the rucksack, everything they had. All he had was the rifle and the cartridges it carried.

  Realizing this, he felt a terrible nakedness. He was on his own. Enid would do her best to come back and pick him up. But would she be able to? He knew nothing about the capabilities or the operation of a traveler or how proficient Enid might be in its operation.

  The monster moved, but not toward him. It moved slowly, tentatively, out toward the plain, as if it might be uncertain what to do. Maybe, Boone told himself, it was worried. It had botched its job, that much was certain. It had failed at Hopkins Acre and here it had failed again.

  The monster moved beyond the fire and went out onto the plain, a twinkling object of sunburst glory against the drabness of the level land and the dusty buttes.

  Keeping a wary eye on it, Boone walked to the fire and piled more wood on it. Before too long he would have to climb the butte and bring in more wood from the clump of juniper. Elsewhere he might find a more convenient campsite, but he could not go too far. When Enid returned—if she returned—she would come here. When the traveler reappeared, he would have to be here, waiting for it.

  He knelt beside the fire, laying down the rifle, and went through his pockets, taking inventory. He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and spread it out, laying on it the items that he found in other pockets. A lighter, a pipe, a half-empty packet of tobacco, a jackknife that he had carried for years for sentimental reasons, a small notebook, a ball-point pen, a pencil stub, a couple of paper clips, a handful of coins, his billfold with a few bills, credit cards, his driver’s license—and that was all. He had traveled light when he had gone to the Everest with Corcoran, leaving the rest of the junk he would normally carry on his person in the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed. But he had two essentials: a lighter, which he would have to use sparingly; and a knife—a poor, cheap knife, but still a knife, a cutting edge.

  He restored the items to his pockets, then rose, dusting off his trousers.

  The monster, he saw, had changed directions. It had circled and now was moving back toward him. Boone picked up the rifle, hoping that he would not have to use it. He had only six cartridges and none of them could be wasted. But where did one shoot a robot to bring it down?

  From the other side of the spur of sandstone that extended out beyond the pocket where the bull stood at bay came occasional bellowing. The wolves must be at the bison once again.

  It was unreal, thought Boone—all of it unreal. Even knowing it was happening, he still found some intellectual difficulty in believing it. Any minute now it would go away and he would find himself in a world he knew, among friends and without any thought of a killer robot, an embattled bull, or a wolf nose to nose with him beside a dying campfire.

  The monster was much closer now, heading straight for him. It was much bigger than he had thought it was and still not quite believable. The monster seemed in no hurry. The bellowing from the direction of the sandstone spur became thunderous, filled with rage and rising desperation.

  Boone shifted his feet, planted them solidly. He raised the rifle, but did not snug it to his shoulder. He was ready now, he told himself, set for whatever happened. The great eye first and, if it seemed necessary, the center of the web.

  The bull burst into view in a mad gallop around the sandstone spur. He was no longer bellowing. His head was carried high, the sun glinting off the six-foot spread of horn. Behind him loped the wolves, not trying to close in, taking their time. They knew they had him now; out in the open they could come at him from all sides and pull him down.

  Suddenly the bull shifted direction and his head came down. The monster tried to dodge away, but its movement was too late. The full impact of the bull’s charge caught the monster low and lifted it. A vicious twist of the bison’s head speared it in midair on one sweeping horn. It spun in the air and the bull’s head twisted the other way. One horn came clear and the second caught it as it came down. The gleaming eye burst into shards, the web hung loose and twisted. The mo
nster fell to the ground and the bull rushed over it, the driving hoofs striking and shattering it still further.

  The bull stumbled and fell to his knees. With a great effort he regained his feet and swung away, bellowing in blind fear. Behind him lay the monster, a heap of shattered wreckage. The bull came to a stop, swinging its massive head from side to side in an effort to locate its tormentors. The wolves, which had retreated when the bull had struck the monster, halted their flight, turning about and waiting, tongues lolling out of the sides of their mouths. They danced in anticipation. The bull was quivering—quivering all over—weak and ready to collapse. One hind leg buckled and he almost went down, but stiffened the leg and stayed erect.

  Boone lifted the rifle, lined up the sights for a heart shot, and pressed the trigger. The bull fell so hard he bounced. Boone jacked another cartridge into the breech. He said to the bull, “I owed you that cartridge. Now they won’t eat you alive.” The wolves were scurrying, frightened by the sound of the shot. In a little while they’d come sneaking back again; there would be feasting this night out beyond the campfire.

  Boone walked slowly over to the monster, kicking aside broken fragments of it that lay in his path. It was a tangled mess. Looking down upon it, Boone was unable to reconstruct in his mind the shape that it had taken. The shock of the bull’s charge and the ripping thrusts of the horns had scrambled the robot. The gleaming eye had disappeared; the web was torn beyond recognition. Lying in distorted fashion were twisted lengths of metal that at one time could have been operable appendages.

  The monster spoke inside his mind.

  Mercy, it said.

  “The hell with you,” said Boone, speaking before astonishment could dry up his speech.

  Don’t leave me here, the monster pleaded. Not in this wilderness. I did no more than my job. I am a simple robot. I have no basic evil in me.

  Boone turned about and shuffled back to the campfire. Quite suddenly he felt drained. The tension had snapped and he was limp. The monster was dead and yet, out of the midst of its death, it spoke to him. He stood at the campfire undecided for a moment and then went up the slope to the clump of juniper. He made three trips, hauling in a good supply of wood. He broke it into proper lengths and stacked it in a neat rank. Then and not until then, he squatted beside the fire and let his mind dwell upon his predicament.