A Choice of Gods

25

The concert came to a crashing close and the music trees stood silent in the autumn moonlight, Down in the river valley owls were chuckling back and forth to one another and a faint breeze sent a rustle through the leaves. Jason stirred in his chair, glancing over his shoulder at the great antenna that had been installed upon the roof, then settled back again.

Martha rose from her chair. "I am going in," she said. "Are you coming, Jason?"

"I think I'll stay here for a while," he said. "We don't get too many nights like this, this late in the year. It's a shame to miss it. Do you happen to know where John is? He didn't come out tonight."

"John is getting restless with the waiting," Martha said. "One of these days he will be off to the stars again. He has found, I imagine, this is home no longer. He has been gone too long."

Jason grumbled at her. "No place is home to John. He hasn't got a home. He doesn't want a home. He simply wants to wander. He's like all the rest of them. None of them, no single one of them, cares what happens to the Earth."

"They all are most sympathetic. All of those I talked with. If they could do anything, they said…»

"Knowing," Jason said, "there is nothing they can do."

"I suppose so. Don't take it so hard, Jason. You may be worrying about something that will never come about."

"It's not us I'm worried over," he told her. "It is Red Cloud's people and the robots. Yes, even the robots. They've made a new start of sorts. They should have their chance. There should be no interference,"

"But they refused to help."

"They installed the radio and the beam," he said. "But no real help."

"No real help," he agreed. "I can't understand the robots. I never have been able to."

"Our own robots…"

"Our own robots are different," Jason said. "They are a part of us. They're doing what they were intended for. They have not changed, but the others have. Hezekiah, for example…"

"They had to change," said Martha. "They had no choice. They couldn't hunker down and wait."

"I suppose you're right," said Jason. "I am going in now. Don't stay out too long. It will be getting cold soon…"

"Where is Evening Star? She didn't come out, either. Just the two of us tonight."

"Evening Star is worrying. About that funny boy. I don't know what she sees in him,"

"She has no idea what happened to him? Where he may have gone?"

"If she had, she'd not be worrying. I imagine that she thinks he ran away from her."

"You talked with her?"

"Not about the boy."

"He was a strange one," Jason said. "Well, I'm going in. You'll be coming soon?"

He sat and listened to her footsteps going across the patio, heard the door shut behind her.

Strange about the boy, he thought, strange that he should disappear. The alien in the glen had disappeared as well. He'd gone down to see it and talk with it again and there had been no sign of it, no matter tow he'd hunted. Had it grown tired of waiting and gone away, he wondered. Or could there be some connection between its disappearance and that of David Hunt? It seemed impossible that there should be; David Hunt had not known about the creature in the glen. There was this story that the lad had told of the Dark Walker and it had been quite apparent he was afraid of it and, although he did not say so, he might have crossed the continent to get away from it, to shake it from his footsteps. He might be fleeing it still—from a thing that more than likely did not exist. But that was not strange, Jason told himself. He'd not be the first to flee from a nonexistent thing.

Could it be, he wondered, that his own fear was based upon a nonexistent premise? Might it be that a reconnaissance ship carrying representatives of the People posed no actual threat to Earth? And even should it carry the seeds of change for Earth, who was he to decide that it was a threat? But that must be wrong, he thought; it could be nothing but a threat. No threat, of course, to those people who had gone out to the stars, for they had cut their ties with Earth, they no longer cared for Earth and whatever might happen on the Earth would have no impact upon them. Learning this had been something of a shock, he admitted to himself. For all the years he had fostered the idea that he had been the anchor man of Earth, that he had held in trust the home base of humanity. Now it seemed that this had been a self-sustained illusion he had nourished carefully to bolster a sense of his own importance. So far as the people of this house might be concerned, there were only he and Martha who could be harmed if the People should decide to recolonize the Earth.

And no matter how he might rebel against the thought of it, to the two of them it would not matter too much. So far as he and Martha were concerned, the People could be held at arm's length—certainly they could not interfere with this house and these few acres if it were amply apparent that they were not welcome. The very thought of them being here upon the planet would be gall upon his tongue, but it was selfishness, an utter arrogance and selfishness.

What did matter, he told himself, were the Indians, the descendants of the old aborigines who at one time had called this continent their home—and the robots as well as the Indians. Neither of them had asked for the kind of culture and civilization that had been forced upon them; the robots had not even asked for life. Enough injustice had been visited upon each of them in the past; it was more than decency could bear that they be made the victims of a new injustice. They had to have their chance. And if the People came they would have no chance.

What was this fatal disease that his own race carried? Fatal not to itself, but to all others that came in contact with it, although in the end, perhaps, fatal even to itself. It had all begun, he told himself, when the first man had scratched the ground and planted seed and must, therefore, secure to himself the ground in which to plant the seed. It had started with the concept of ownership—ownership of land, ownership of natural resources, ownership of labor. And perhaps from the concept of security as well, the erecting of fences against the adversities of life, the protection of one's station in life and the ambition to improve that station and, obtaining that improvement, to fortify it so well against one's neighbors that they could never wrest it from one. Thinking of it, he felt certain that the idea of security must, in its first instance, have risen from the concept of ownership. The two sprang from the same roots, really were the same. The man who owned was safe.

The Indians owned not one foot of ground, would spurn such ownership, for ownership would have meant they were tied to what they owned. And the robots, he wondered—did they in some manner which he had not noticed, have some idea of ownership? He doubted it very much. Their society must be even more a communistic one than the society of Red Cloud's people. It was only his own people who held to ownership, and that was the sickness in them. But it was from this sickness, built upon the basis of this sickness, that a most complicated social structure had been built up through the ages.

The social structure, swept away by the Disappearance, might be reestablished now on Earth, and what could be done about it? What could he, Jason Whitney, do to prevent it being reestablished? There was no answer, none that he could find.

The robots were a puzzle. Stanley had said that he and his fellows were deeply concerned and yet when the Project had decided against offering help they had accepted the decision without question. Although they had been helpful in a most important way. They had supplied and installed the directional beam and the radio and batteries that operated them. Without such a setup it would have been impossible to contact the People when they arrived. Without the directional beam it would have been highly probable that they could arrive and leave without ever knowing there were people on the planet. They would land, perhaps at several places, make their surveys and then return to their new home planets to report that Earth was uninhabited. And it was important, Jason told himself—terribly important—that he have a chance to talk with them. What he could do by talking he had no idea, but at least he must have this chance to talk with those men on the ship that must, by now, be coming near to Earth. With the homing beam reaching out in space they would know there still were people here and would have means to seek them out.

Jason sat huddled in his chair. He felt lonely and forsaken; once again he wondered if he could be mistaken in all of this, and brushed the thought away. Mistaken for himself, perhaps, even mistaken for the robots, but certainly not mistaken for Red Cloud and his people—and perhaps not for himself or the robots, either.

He tried deliberately to wipe his mind clear of the whole affair. Perhaps if he could wipe it clean and keep it clean for a little while, he could think the clearer when the time came to think again. He sat as easily as he could, not thinking, willing the tenseness in him to soften and relax. He saw the moon glinting off the roofs of the monastery buildings and making slim white ghosts of the music trees. The last few nights, he thought, the trees had done much better, as good or even better than in the days of long ago. Their improvement had come about, he recalled, in the middle of the concert on the evening of the day his brother John had come home from the stars. He had noticed it then and had wondered over it for a little time, but there had been too much to do, too much to worry over, to think of it for long. On the night of the day John came home, he thought, but the fact of the homecommg could not have a thing to do with it. John's coming home could have made no difference to the music trees.

A foot crunched on the paving stones and Jason swung around in his chair. Thatcher was hurrying toward him.

"Mr. Jason, sir," the robot said, "there is someone calling on the radio. I told him to wait and I would put you on."

Jason rose from the chair. He was aware of a weakness in his knees, a goneness in his belly. This was it, he thought, this was it at last. He wasn't ready for it. He would never, he realized, have been ready for it.

"Thank you, Thatcher," he said. "There is something I'd like you to do for me."

"Anything at all, sir." Thatcher was excited. Jason looked at him curiously—he had never thought he'd see Thatcher excited.

"Would you please send one of the robots down to Red Cloud's camp. Tell him what has happened. Tell him that I need him. Ask him if he'll come."

"Immediately," said Thatcher. "I'll make the trip myself."

"That is fine," said Jason. "I had hoped you would. Horace knows you. He might resent any other robot yelling him awake."

Thatcher turned and started off.

"Just a moment," Jason said. "There is something further. Would you ask Red Cloud to send someone up the river and fetch Stanley down. We should have him here. And Hezekiah, too. One of the other robots can rout out Hezekiah."