A Choice of Gods

5

The alien was a can of worms. It huddled among the boulders, close up against the clump of birch that grew from one side of the gorge, the trees bent and tilted to hang above the dry stream bed. Leaf-filtered sunlight shattered itself against the twisted alien and the substance of the alien's body refracted the rays so that it seemed to sit in a pool of broken rainbows.

Jason Whitney, sitting on a mossy bank, leaned back against a small ash tree, settling himself comfortably, letting himself relax. The faint, delicate smell of dying autumn leaves filled the glen.

It was a horror, he thought, and then tried to erase the horror from his mind. Some of them weren't bad; others of them were. This was the worst he had ever seen. If it would just be still, he thought, so a man could familiarize himself with it and thus become at least partially accustomed to it. But it wouldn't be still, it kept moving that can of worms around, the movement serving to emphasize its repulsiveness.

He started to put out his mind cautiously, reaching out to touch it, then, suddenly frightened, pulled back his mind and tucked it securely inside himself.

He had to settle down before he tried to talk with this thing. An old alien hand like himself, he thought, should be up to almost anything, but this one had him down.

He sat quietly, smelling the dying leaves in the secluded silence, not letting himself think of much of anything at all. That was the way you did it— you sneaked up on it somehow, pretending not to notice.

But the alien didn't wait. It reached out and touched him with a mental probe that was firm and calm and warm, totally unlike the visual image of the thing.

— Welcome, it said, to this snug retreat. I trust I violate no convention in addressing myself to you and that I do not trespass. I know what you are. I have seen another of you. You are a human creature.

— Yes, said Jason, I am human. And you are most welcome here. You violate no convention, for we have few of them. And you do not trespass.

— You are one of the travelers, said the can of worms. You rest on your planet now, but at times you travel far.

— Not I, said Jason. Some of the others have, but I stay at home.

— Then truly I have arrived at my destination. This is the planet of the traveler I communicated very far ago. I could not be sure.

— This is the planet Earth, said Jason.

— That is the designation, said the creature, happily. I could not recall it. This other described it to me and I sought it far and wide, having only a general idea of the direction that it lay. But I was sure when I arrived that it was the proper planet.

— You mean you sought our Earth? You aren't simply stopping off to rest?

— I came to seek a soul.

— You came to seek a what?

— A soul, the creature said. This other one I communicated with said that humans once had souls and probably still did have them, although he could not be sure, professing much ignorance of the matter. He piqued my interest with what he told of souls, but could give me no adequate idea of what a soul might be. I say to myself, quite secretly, of course, so wonderful a thing is worth the seeking of. So I began my search.

— It might interest you to know, said Jason, that many humans have sought their souls as assiduously as do you.

And, he wondered, by what strange combination of circumstances one of the clan might have come to talk with this creature about the concept of the soul. Surely not a likely topic, he told himself, and one in which there might be certain dangers. But more than likely it had not been serious talk, or certainly had not been meant to be, although this can of worms seemed to have taken it seriously enough to send it on a search of no one could guess how many years to track it to its source.

— I sense a strangeness in your presence, the alien said. Can you tell me if you have a soul?

— No, I can't, said Jason.

— Surely if you had one, you'd be aware of it.

— Not necessarily, Jason told it.

— You sound, the creature said, very much like that one of your kind I sat with an entire afternoon on a hilltop of my own most lovely planet. We talked of many things, but the last half of our talk had much to do with souls. He didn't know if he had one, either, and was not sure that other humans had, now or in the past, and he could not tell me what a soul was or how a being, not having one, might go about the acquisition of a soul. He seemed to think he was acquainted with the advantages of possessing one, but I thought his talk on that point was somehow very hazy. It was, in many ways, a most unsatisfactory explanation that he gave me, but I thought I could detect a germ of truth in it. Surely, I thought, if I could win my way to his native planet there would be someone there who could supply the information that I seek.

— I am sorry, Jason said. Terribly sorry that you came so far and wasted so much time.

— There is nothing you can tell me? There is no one else?

— There might be, Jason told him, adding quickly, I can't be really sure.

He made a slip and knew it. He couldn't turn Hezekiah loose on a thing like this. Loopy as Hezekiah was, he would go hog wild.

— But there must be others.

— There are only two of us.

— You must be mistaken, said the alien. There were two others came. Neither one was you. They stood and looked at me and then they went away. They did not notice when I tried to communicate.

— They could not hear you, Jason said. They could not have answered. They use their minds for other things. They were the ones who told me. They knew I could talk with you.

— Then there only is one other who can communicate.

— That is all. The rest of us are gone, far among the stars. It was one of them who you talked with,

— This other one?

— I do not know, said Jason. She has never talked with people other than her own. She talks well with them, no matter how distant they may be.

— Then you are the only one. And you can tell me nothing.

— Look, said Jason, it is an old idea. There was never any proof. There was only faith. I have a soul, one would tell himself. He believed it because he had been told by others. Told authoritatively. Without any question. He was told so often and he told himself so often that there was no question in his mind that he had a soul. But there was never any evidence. There was never any proof.

— But honored sir, the alien pleaded, you will tell me, will you not, what a soul might be.

— I can tell you, Jason said, what it is supposed to be. It is a part of you. Unseen and undetectable. Not of your body. Not even of your mind. It lives on, eternally, after you are dead. Or, at least, it is supposed to live on eternally and the condition in which it finds itself once you are dead depends on what kind of creature you have been.

— Who judges what land of creature you have been?

— A deity, said Jason.

— And this deity?

— I do not know, said Jason. I simply do not know.

— You have been honest with me, then. I must thank you most heartily for your honesty. You say much the same as the other one I talked with.

— There may be someone else, said Jason. If I can find him, I will talk with him.

— But you said…

— I know what I said. This is not another human. Another being that may be wiser than I am.

— I will talk with him?

— No, you cannot talk with him. There is no way you can talk with him. You'll have to leave it to me.

— I trust you, said the can of worms.

— In the meantime, said Jason, will you be my guest? I have a dwelling place. There is room for you. We would be glad to have you.

— I detect, the alien said, an uneasiness in you at the sight of me.

— I would not lie to you, said Jason. There is an uneasiness in me. But I tell myself there may be as well an uneasiness in you at the sight of me.

There was no use in lying, Jason knew. It did not take his words to tell the creature the uneasiness he felt.

— Not at all in me, the creature said. I am tolerant. But it might be best if we stay apart. I shall wait here for you.

— Is there anything you need? asked Jason. Anything you lack? Something that I could supply for nourishment or comfort?

— No, thank you. I am quite all right. I am sufficient to myself.

Jason rose and turned to leave.

— You have a lovely planet, said the alien. Such a restful place. And so filled with the strangeness of its beauty.

— Yes, said Jason, we think so, too. A very lovely planet.

He clambered up the deep-cut path he had followed down into the gorge. The sun, he saw, had passed the zenith and was slanting toward the west. Great storm clouds boiled up far off and in a little time, he knew, the sun would be hidden by them. The coming of the clouds, it seemed, had deepened the silence of the woods. He could hear the little raining sounds made by the falling leaves as they came floating down to the forest floor. Somewhere, far to the left, a squirrel was cluttering, disturbed, more than likely, by some woodland fantasy that had crossed its fuzzy mind.

It had been a splendid day, he thought, a splendid day even if it rained—it still would be a splendid day in every way but one and it was a shame that it should be marred by the problem that had been thrust upon his, shoulders.

To keep faith with the creature waiting in the glen, he should talk with Hezekiah, but if he talked with the self-styled robot-abbot, there was no telling what might happen. Although maybe the use of self-styled as a characterization of the robot might be a bit unfair. Who was there anymore to say that, lacking humans who were interested, robots had no grounds to assume the task of keeping alive the spark of mankind's ancient faith?

And what of that ancient faith, he wondered. Why had mankind turned away from it? It had still existed in some measure in that day when the human race had been taken elsewhere. There still were traces of it in the early writings that his grandfather had made in the first of the record books. Perhaps it existed, in a slightly different context, among the Indians, although his contact with them never had revealed it. Some, perhaps all, of the young men formed secret symbolic associations with objects in the natural world, but it was questionable that this sort of behavior could be described as any sort of faith. It was something that was never talked about and so, naturally, he had only the most meager information on it.

The wrong people had been left behind, he thought. Given another segment of the population untouched by whatever agency had carried off the human race, and the ancient human faith might still be flourishing, perhaps stronger than it had ever been. But among his people and the other people who had been in the big house above the rivers on that fateful night, the faith already had been eroded, remaining as no more than a civilized convention to which they had conformed in a lukewarm manner. There had been a time, perhaps, when it had been meaningful. In the centuries after it had been conceived in all its glory, it had been allowed to fade, to become a shadow of its former force and strength.

It had been a victim of man's mismanagement, of his overwhelming concept of property and profit. It had been manifested in lordly buildings filled with pomp and glitter rather than being nourished in the human heart and mind. And now it came to this—that it was kept alive by beings that were not even human, machines that had been accorded a measure of seeming humanness purely as a matter of man's technology and pride.

He gained the ridgetop and noticed, now that the woods fell away and his view was clear, that the storm clouds were piling ever higher in the western sky and had engulfed the sun. The house lay ahead of him and he set out toward it at a somewhat more rapid rate than he was accustomed in his walking. He had opened the record book this morning and it was still lying open on his desk, but not written in. There had been nothing to write in it this morning, but now there would be much to write—the visit of Horace Red Cloud, the alien in the glen and its strange request, the wish of Evening Star to read the books and his invitation for her to come and live with him and Martha. He would get in some writing before the hour for dinner and after the evening concert would sit down at his desk again and finish his account of the happenings of the day.

The music trees were tuning up and there was one young sapling that was doing badly. Out back a robot blacksmith was hammering noisily on metal— more than likely he was working on a plow. Thatcher, he recalled, had told him that all the plowshares had been brought in for work against the coming of the spring and another planting season.

The door off the patio opened and Martha came out and down the path toward him. She was beautiful, he thought, watching her—more beautiful, in many ways, than that long-gone day when they had been married. Their life together had been good. A man couldn't ask for better. A warm glow of thankfulness for the fullness of their life surged through him.

"Jason," she cried, hurrying to meet him. "Jason, it is John! Your brother, John, is home!"