lament," she said. "Rigid posturing, then a little dance step or two, then they throw up their arms and howl."
Ezra nodded gravely. "They are devoted but misguided men," he said.
Cushing growled at him. "How the hell do you know? You are right, of course, but tell me how you know. I don't mind telling you that I have a belly full of your posturing, which is as bad as anything the wardens may be doing."
"You do me wrong," said Ezra. "I was the one who got us through the Trees. I spoke to them and they opened a way for us; then I spoke to them again and they let us out."
"That's your version," said Cushing. "Mine is that Meg got us in, then got us out again. All you did was mumble."
"Laddie boy," said Meg, "let's not quarrel among ourselves It doesn't really matter who got us through the Trees. The important thing is they did let us through."
Elayne looked at Cushing and for once her eyes had no blankness in them. They were cold with hatred. "You have never liked us," she said. "You have patronized us, made fun of us. I'm sorry that we joined you.
"Now, now, my pet," said Ezra, "we all are under tension, but the tension now is gone, or should be. I'll admit that I may have been over-clowning to a small degree, although I swear to you that my belief in my own ability has not faded; that I believe, as always, that I can talk with plants. I did talk with the Trees; I swear I talked with them and they talked to me. In a different way from the way any plant has ever talked with me before. A sharper conversation, not all of which I understood, a great part of which I did not understand. They talked of concepts that I have never heard before, and though I knew they were new and important, I could grasp but the very edges of them. They looked deep inside of me and let me look, for a little distance, into them. It was as if they were examining me—not my body but my soul—and offered me a chance to do the same with them. But I did not know how to go about it; even with them trying to show me, I did not know the way to go about it."
"Space is an illusion," said Elayne, speaking in a precise textbook voice, as if she were speaking not to them, nor indeed to anyone, but was merely reciting something that she knew or had newly learned, speaking as if it were a litany. "Space is an illusion, and time as well. There is no such factor as either time or space. We have been blinded by our own cleverness, blinded by false perceptions of those qualities that we term eternity and infinity. There is another factor that explains it all, and once this universal factor is recognized, everything grows simple. There is no longer any mystery, no longer any wonder, no longer any doubt; for the simplicity of it all lies before us—the simplicity… the simplicity… the simplicity.
Her voice ran down on the single word and she lapsed into silence. She sat staring out beyond the campfire circle, her hands folded in her lap, her face again assuming the look of horrifying emptiness and terrible innocence.
The rest of them sat silent, stricken, and from somewhere a chill came off the slope of ground above them and held them motionless with an uncomprehending dread.
Cushing shook himself, asked in a strained voice, "What was that all about?"
Ezra made a motion of resignation. "I don't know. She has never done a thing like that before."
"Poor child," said Meg.
Ezra spoke angrily. "I've told you before, I tell you now:
never pity her; rather, it is she who should pity us. Meg said, "No pity was intended."
"There are more wardens out there," said Rollo. "A new band of them just showed up. Six or seven, this time. And from
far to the east there seems to be others coming in. A great dust cloud, but I can see no more.
"It was a shame about the wardens," said Meg. "We messed them up after all their years of watching. All those generations and no one had ever got through."
"Perhaps there has never been anyone before who wanted to," said Rollo.
"That may be true," said Meg. "No one who wanted to get through as badly as we wanted to. No one with a purpose.
"If it hadn't been for the bear," said Rollo, "we might not have made it, either. The bear provided a distraction. And they lost their horses. They were naked and defenseless without the horses."
"The bear shook them up," said Ezra. "No man in his right mind goes against a bear with nothing but a spear."
"I'm not a man," said Rollo, reasonably, "and I was not alone. Cushing put some arrows in the beast and even Andy came in on the kill."
"My arrows did nothing," said Cushing. "They only irritated him."
He rose from where he was sitting and went up the slope, climbing until the campfire was no more than a small red eye glowing in the dusk. He found a small rock-ledge that cropped out from the slope, and sat upon it. The dusk was deepening into night. The Trees were a hump of blackness and out beyond them what must have been the campfires of the wardens flickered on and off, sometimes visible, sometimes not.
Sitting on the ledge, Cushing felt an uneasy peace. After miles of river valley and of high dry plains, they had finally reached the place where they were going. The goal had been reached and the daily expectation of reaching it had vanished and there seemed to be little to fill the void that was left by the lapsing of the expectations. He wondered about that, a bit confused. When one reached a goal, there should be, if nothing else, at least self-congratulation.
Below him, something grated on a stone, and when he looked in that direction, he made out the dull gleam of something moving. Watching, he saw that it was Rollo.
The robot came up the last few paces and without a word sat down on the ledge beside Cushing. They sat for a moment in silence; then Cushing said, "Back there, a while ago, you called me boss. You should not have done that. I'm not any boss."
"It just slipped out," said Rollo. "You ran a good safari—is that the right word? I heard someone use it once. And you got us here."
"I've been sitting here and thinking about getting here," said Cushing. "Worrying a little about it."
"You shouldn't be doing any worrying," said Rollo. "This is the Place of Going to the Stars."
"That's what I'm worrying about. I'm not so sure it is. It's something, but I'm fairly sure it's not the Place of Stars. Look, to go to the stars, to send ships into space, you need launching pads. This is not the kind of place to build launching pads. Up on top of the butte, perhaps, if there is any level ground up there, you might build launching pads. But why on top of a butte? The height of the land would be no advantage. The job of getting materials up to the launching site… It would be ridiculous to put pads up there when out on the plains you have thousands of acres of level ground."
"Well, I don't know," said Rollo. "I don't know about such things."
"I do," said Cushing. "Back at the university, I read about the moon shots and the Mars shots and all the other shots. There were a number of articles and books that told how it was done, and it was not done from atop a hill."
"The Trees," said Rollo. "Someone put the Trees around the butte-all around the butte-to protect whatever may be here. Maybe before the Time of Trouble, the people got up in arms against going to the stars."
"That might have been so," said Cushing. "Protection might have been needed in the last few hundred years or so before the world blew up, but they could have put the Trees around level ground just as well."
"Place of Going to the Stars or not," said Rollo, "there is something here, something protected by the Trees."
"Yes, I suppose you're right. But it was the Place of Stars I wanted."
"The thing that bothers me is why they passed us through. The Trees, I mean. They could have kept us Out. The rocks were out there waiting. All the Trees would have had to do was give the word, and the rocks would have moved in and flattened us."
"I've wondered, too. But I'm glad they let us in."
"Because they wanted to let us in. Because they decided it was best to let us in. Not just because they could see no harm in us, but because they wanted us, almost as if they had been waiting all these years for us. Cushing, what did they see in us?"
"Damned if I know," said Cushing. "Come on. I'm going back to camp.
Ezra was huddled close to the fire, fast asleep and snoring. Meg sat beside the fire, wrapped in a blanket against the chill of night. Andy stood a little distance off, hip-shot, head drooping, slack-kneed. Across the fire from Meg, Elayne sat bolt upright, feet tucked under her, hands folded in her lap, her face a blank, eyes fixed on nothing.
"So you're back," said Meg. "See anything, laddie boy?"
"Not a thing," said Cushing. He sat down beside her.
"Hungry? I could cook a slice of venison. Might as well eat it while we can. Another day and it won't be fit to eat."
"I'll get something tomorrow," said Cushing. "There must be deer about."
"I saw a small herd in a break to the west," said Rollo.