A Choice of Gods

26

He had killed that last bear when it had been so close that there had been no time to get off a decent shot. He had killed all the others, too—one bear for each of the claws in the necklace that hung about his throat. Some of the others, perhaps all of them, had been killed by the arrows he had fired—stout, true, well-fletched arrows driven by a powerful bow. But now he could not be sure, not absolutely sure, about the arrows.

Although it was not only killing. It was healing, too.

He had killed the bears, but he had healed the trees. He had thought so at the time and now he was sure he had. He had sensed something wrong with them and he had made it right, although he had never really known what had been wrong with them.

The alien came hobbling through the moonlit trees and squatted close to him. It made the worms go round and round and tumble all about. It had been following him for days and he was weary of it.

"Get out of here," he yelled. "Go away," he shouted.

It paid no attention. It stayed there, redistributing the worms. He had been tempted at times to do to it whatever it was he had done to the bears. But he told himself that it would not be right to do it to the alien. The alien was no real threat, or at least he didn't think it was; it was just a nuisance.

The alien squirmed closer.

"I gave you what you wanted," shouted David Hunt at it. "I fixed up what was wrong with you. I took away the ache. Now leave me alone."

The alien backed away.

David crouched at the foot of the mighty maple and tried to think it out—although, actually, there was not too much to think about. The record seemed quite clear: He had cured the trees, he had cured this strange creature which continually came sneaking up on him, he had cured the bird of its broken wing and an old black bear of an aching tooth and he had purged a bed of asters of a deadly thing that sucked the life from them (and was not quite easy in his mind on that one, for in helping the asters it appeared that he had killed some other form of life—a lowly life perhaps, but it still was life). As if a great compassion came rolling out of him to make all things well and whole and yet, quite strangely, he felt no great compassion. Rather, he felt an uneasiness when he sensed an unwell or aching thing and somehow he must make it right again. Right, perhaps, so he'd not be bothered with it. Was he to go through life, he wondered, sensing all the wrongness with the world? He had been all right until that night he had listened to the trees—until he had sensed the wrongness in them, he had been oblivious to wrongness, had not been aware of wrongness and quite carefree because he did not know of it. Something in the music, he wondered. Something in the robot that had stood beside him? And what did it mean, he wondered—that he must go stumbling through life aware of every little trouble, every little ill, and could get no rest or peace until he bad fixed them all?

Out of the corner of his eye, David Hunt saw the alien creeping closer. He waved his hands at it in a pantomime of pushing it away.

"Get out of here!" he yelled.