Destiny Doll

NINETEEN

It was a place out of the ancient Greece I had read about in school, the instructor trying to inspire in us some feeling for the history and the culture of the planet of mankind’s first beginning. And while I had not cared at all about that distant planet nor the factors concerned with the rise of Man, I had been struck by the classical beauty of the Grecian concept. It had struck me at the time as a heritage in which any race could take a certain pride and then I’d forgotten it and not thought of it for years. But now here, at last, it was, just as I had imagined it when I had read that textbook many years ago.

The trail continued through a rugged, rock-bound valley with a small and rapid mountain stream running through it, flashing in the sun where its waters tumbled down the sharp inclines of its boulder-strewn bed. The landscape itself was harsh and barren, mostly rocky surfaces, but here and there a patch of green with twisted, weather-beaten trees thrusting from the crevasses in the rocky slopes. The trail led down the valley, sometimes close beside the stream, sometimes twisting sharply to negotiate a spur of rocky headland that came close down against the stream. And perched here and there along the rugged, rock-bound slopes that hung above the valley were tiny villas built of gleaming marble-or at least it looked from where we stood like marble-all designed in the clean, clear-cut lines of Grecian architecture.

Even the sun seemed to be the sun of Greece, or the sun of Greece as I had imagined it to be. Gone was the blueness of the great plateau we had climbed to reach the mountains, gone the purple of the mountains; in their place was the pure hard sunlight, white sunlight, beating down upon an arid land that was all angular and harsh.

This was it-the place we’d hunted for, not knowing what we hunted for, thinking, perhaps, it might be a man or a thing or simply an idea. Hunting blind. Although it might be, after all, a man, for here in this valley we might find, if not the man himself, perhaps the grave or at least some indication of what had happened to that legended man of space.

For looking at this rugged valley, I had no doubt at all that the trail we had followed had had no other purpose than to lead us here-not us alone, of course, but any who might follow it.

None of us had spoken when we’d come out of the notch into the Grecian sunlight. There was actually nothing one might say. And now Sara started down the path and Hoot and I followed on behind her.

We came to a path that lunged upward toward the first of the villas perched on the rocky hillside that rose above the stream and beside the path was a post with a sign affixed to it, bearing a line of script that we could not read.

Sara stopped.

“A nameplate?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded. It could be a nameplate, the name of some creature that lived in the villa perched there on the hillside.

But if it were a nameplate, there was no sign of the one who lived up there in the villa. There was, in fact, no sign of any life at all. Nothing stirred to mar the smooth placidity of the valley. No one peeked out at us. No creature of the air flew overhead. There was no shrilling sound of insects or the equivalent of insects. For all the signs we saw, for all we heard, we might be the only life there was.

“It makes sense,” said Sara, “that it should be a nameplate.”

“Let’s pretend it is,” I said. “Let’s proceed and look for one that says Lawrence Arlen Knight.”

“Even now,” she said, “can’t you be serious about it? You said we’d never find him. You said he was just a story. You said he would be dead . . .

“Don’t look at me,” I told her. “I could be wrong. I don’t think I am, but there is nothing that makes sense anymore.”

“This was your idea. . .”

“And you were against it from the start.”

“Not against it,” I said. “Just not a true believer.”

“We’ve come all this way,” she said, almost plaintively.

“Sara,” I said, “so help me, I don’t know. Let’s just go ahead and keep an eye on the signs.”

We went ahead, plunging down the inclines, toiling up the slopes. There were other villas and other signs, each of them in different alphabets, if some of them in fact could be called alphabets, and none that we could read.

The sun beat down, a liquid flood that shattered off the stones and sparkled off the water. Except for the bubble and the chuckle of the water, the silence held. There was nothing stirring.

And then another sign in solid block letters that we could read:

LAWRENCE ARLEN KNIGHT

It was all insane, of course. You did not cross a galaxy to find a man-and find him. You did not find a man who should have years ago been dead. You did not trace a legend to its end. But there it was, the sign that said Lawrence Arlen Knight.

And then, as I stood there, the thought crossed my mind-not the home of, but the grave of, not a villa, but a tomb.

“Sara,” I said, but already she was scrambling up the path, sobbing in excitement and relief, all the tension of the long search resolved at last.

And coming out on the porch of that white-shining structure was a man-an old man, but a man still hale, snow-white hair and beard, but with shoulders still unstooped, with his stride still steady. He was dressed in a white toga, and that was no surprise at all. With a setup such as this he could have worn nothing but a toga.

“Sara!” I cried, scrambling after her, with Hoot close upon my heels.

She didn’t hear. She paid me no attention.

And now the old man was speaking. “Visitors!” he said, holding out his hand. “My own people! I never thought I’d lay eyes on such again.”

The sound of that voice swept all my doubts away. Here was no illusion, no apparition, no magic. Here was a man, a human, the voice deep and somber, filled with human gladness at the sight of fellowmen.

Sara held out her hands and the old man grasped them and the two of them stood there, looking into one another’s eyes.

“It’s been long,” the old man said. “Too long. The trail is far, the way is hard and no one knew. You-how did you know?”

“Sir,” said Sara, still gasping from her climb, “you are- you must be Lawrence Arlen Knight.”

“Why, yes,” he said, “of course I am. Who did you expect?”

“Expect?” said Sara. “You, of course. But we could only hope.”

“And these good people with you?”

“Captain Michael Ross,” said Sara, “and Hoot, a good friend met along the way.”

Knight bowed to Hoot. “You servant, sir,” he said. Then he reached out a hand to me, grasping my hand in a warm, hard grip. In that moment, when there were other more important things to note, I could only see that his hand, despite the firmness of the grip, was an old and wrinkled hand, blotched with liver spots.

“Captain Ross,” he said, “you are welcome. There are places here for you, for all of you. And this young lady-I do not have your name.”

“Sara Foster,” Sara said.

“To think,” he said, “that no longer need I be alone. Wonderful as it all has been, I have missed the sound of human voices and the sight of human faces. There are many others here, creatures of great character and fine sensitivity, but one never quite outgrows the need of his own species.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked, trying to figure in my mind how far back the legend of this man might run.

“When a man lives each day to the full,” he told me, “and with the close of one day looks forward to the next, there is no counting of one’s times each day, each minute becomes a part of all eternity. I have thought about it and I am not sure there is such a thing as time. It is an abstract concept, a crude measuring device, a perspective structure built up by certain intelligences, and by no means all of them, because they feel a need to place themselves into what they call a spacetime framework. Time as such is lost in foreverness and there is no need to search for beginning or for end because they never did exist and under a situation such as here exists the meticulous measuring of ridiculously small slices of eternity becomes a task that has no meaning in it. Not, I must make haste to say, that one can slice eternity. . .”

He went on and on and I wondered, looking off across the valley from where I stood on the marble-columned porch, if he were unbalanced by his loneliness, or he might know some part of what he said. For this place, this valley that sprang out of nowhere, did have a look of eternity about it. Although as I thought this, I wondered how any man might know how eternity would look-but be that as it may, there was a feel of the unchanging in this place of bright white sunlight.

“But I ramble on,” the old man was saying. “The trouble is I have too much to say, too much stored up to say. Although there is no reason why I should try to say it all at once. I apologize for keeping you out here, standing. Won’t you please come in.”

We stepped through the open doorway into quiet and classic elegance. There were no windows, but from somewhere in the roof the sunlight came slanting in, to highlight with a classic brilliance the chairs and sofa, the writing desk with a small wooden chest and scattered sheets of paper on its top, the polished tea service on the smaller table in one corner.

“Please,” he said, “have chairs. I hope that you can spend some time with me.” (And there, I thought, he talked of time when he had said there might be no such thing as time.) “And that is foolish of me, of course, for you have the time. You hold in the hollow of your hand all the time there is. Having gotten here, there is no place else to go, no place else that you would care to go. Once one gets here, he never wants to leave, never needs to leave.”

It was all too sleek and smooth, too much like a play, well-written, and yet there was nothing wrong with it-just an old and lonely man with the gates of suppressed talk unlatched by the unexpected appearance of people of his race. Yet, underneath it all, underneath my own acceptance of this place and of this man (for here were both of them), I felt a prickling uneasiness.

“There are places here for you, of course,” he said. “There are always places waiting. Very few even win their way here and there is always room. In another day or two I’ll take you around and we’ll call upon the others. Very formal calls, for we are formal here. But the thing about it, the best thing, is that once protocol has been observed, you need not call again, although you may find some of them you’ll want to visit now and then. Here dwells a select company called from all the stars and some may be amusing and others you will find instructive and there will be much that they do, I must warn you, you will not understand. And some of it you may find disturbing and disgusting. Which need not perturb you in the slightest, for each one keeps his counsel and his place and. . .”

“What is this place?” asked Sara. “How did you hear of it? How did you. . .”

“What is this place?” he asked, with a muffled gasp.

“Yes, what is this place? What do you call it?”

“Why,” he said, “I’ve never even wondered. I’ve never thought of it. I have never asked.”

“You mean,” I said, “that you have been here all this time and you’ve never wondered where you were?”

He looked at me aghast, as if I had committed some unwitting heresy.

“What would be the need to ask?” he said. “What the need to wonder? Would it make any difference if it had a name or did not have a name?”

“We are sorry,” Sara said. “We are new here. We did not mean to upset you.”

And that was all right for her to say, but I had meant to upset him and in the process perhaps jar some sense from him. If this were a nameless place I wanted, illogically perhaps, to know why it had no name and, even more, how it had come about he had never asked the name.

“You said the days were full,” I said. “Exactly how do you fill them? How do you pass the time?”

“Mike!” said Sara sharply.

“I want to know,” I said. “Does he sit and contemplate his navel. Does he. . .”

“I write,” said Lawrence Arlen Knight.

“Sir,” said Sara, “I, apologize. This cross-examination is bad manners.”

“Not for me,” I told her. “I am the roughneck type who wants to get some answers. He says no one who gets here ever wants to leave. He said the days are full. If we are to be stuck here, I want to know. . .”

“Each one,” Knight said softly, “does what he wants to do. He does it for the sheer joy that he finds in the doing of it. He has no motive other than the satisfaction of doing very well either the thing he wants to do or the thing he does the best. There is no economic pressure and no social pressure. He does not work for praise or money or for fame. Here one realizes how empty all those motives are. He remains true only to himself.”

“And you write?”

“I write,” said Knight.

“What do you write?”

“The things I want to write. The thoughts inside myself. I try to express them as best I can. I write and rewrite them. I polish them. I seek the exact word and phrase. I try to put down the total experience of my life. I try to see what kind of creature I am and why I am the way I am and try to extend. . .”

“And how are you getting along?” I asked.

He gestured at the wooden box upon the table. “It is all there,” he said. “The bare beginning of it. It has taken long, but it is a task I never tire of. It will take much longer to finish it, if I ever finish it. Although that is silly of me to say, for I have all the time there is. Others may paint, still others compose music, others play it. Or many other things, of which I had never heard before. One of my near neighbors, a most peculiar creature if I may say so, is making up a most complicated game, played with many sets of pieces and many different counters on a board that is three dimensional and, at times, I suspect it may be four, and. . .”

“Stop it!” Sara cried. “Stop it! You need not explain yourself to us.”

She shriveled me with a look.

“I do not mind,” said Lawrence Arlen Knight. “In fact, I think I may enjoy it. There is so much to tell, so much that is so wondrous. I can quite understand how someone coming here might be puzzled and might have many questions ,he would want to ask. It is a difficult thing to absorb.”

“Mike,” said Hoot.

“Hush,” said Sara.

“Difficult,” said Knight. “Yes, very difficult. Hard to understand that here time stands still and that except for the going and the coming of the light, which fools us into measuring time into artificial days, there is no such thing as time. To realize that yesterday is one with today and that tomorrow is, as well, one with yesterday, that one walks in an unchanging lake of foreverness and that there is no change, that here one can escape the tyranny of time and. . .”

Hoot honked loudly at me: “Mike!”

Sara came to her feet and so did I and as I rose, the place changed-the place and man.

I stood in a hovel with a broken roof and dirt floor. The chairs were rickety and the table, lacking one leg, was propped against the wall. On it stood the wooden box and the litter of papers.

“It is beyond human experience,” said Knight. “It is, indeed, beyond human imagination. I sometimes wonder if someone in some distant age, by some process which I cannot even begin to understand, caught a glimpse and the meaning of this place and called it Heaven. . .”

He was old. He was incredibly old and filthy, a walking corpse. The skin was drawn tight over his cheekbones and pulled back from his lips, revealing yellowed, rotting teeth. Through a great rent in his robe, caked with filth, his ribs stood out like those of a winter-starved horse. His hands were claws. His beard was matted with dirt and drool and his hooded eyes gleamed with a vacant light, eyes half-dead and yet somehow sharp, too sharp to be housed in such an ancient, tottering body.

“Sara,” I shouted.

For she was standing in complete and polite absorption, listening ecstatically to the words mouthed by the filthy old wreck who sat huddled in his chair.

She whirled on me. “For the last time, Mike. . .”

By the look of cold fury on her face, I knew that she still saw him as he had appeared before, that the change was not apparent to her, that she still was trapped in whatever enchantment had ensnared us.

I moved fast, scarcely thinking. I clipped her on the chin, hard and accurately and without pity, and I caught her as she fell. I slung her over my shoulder and as I did I saw that Knight was struggling to push himself out of the chair and even as he continued his efforts, his mouth kept moving and he never stopped his talk.

“What is the trouble, my friends?” he asked. “Have I done some unwitting thing to offend you? It is so hard at times to know and appreciate the mores of the people that one meets. It is easy to perform one misguided act or say one unguarded word...”

I turned to go and as I did I saw that wooden box on the table top and reached out to grab it.

Hoot was pleading with me. “Mike, delay do not. Stand not on ceremony. Flee, please, with all alacrity.”

We fled with all alacrity.