Way Station

25

The ginseng man was waiting at the spring.

Enoch saw him while still some distance down the trail and wondered, with a quick flash of anger, if he might be waiting there to tell him that he could not return the body of the Hazer, that something had come up, that he had run into unexpected difficulties.

And thinking that, Enoch remembered how he'd threatened the night before to kill anyone who held up the return of the body. Perhaps, he told himself, it had not been smart to say that. Wondering whether he could bring himself to kill a man-not that it would be the first man he had ever killed. But that had been long ago and it had been a matter then of kill or being killed.

He shut his eyes for a second and once again could see that slope below him, with the long lines of men advancing through the drifting smoke, knowing that those men were climbing up the ridge for one purpose only, to kill himself and those others who were atop the ridge.

And that had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment-not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him.

It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death of misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle.

Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.

Lewis had been sitting on a fallen log and now, as Enoch neared, he rose.

"I waited for you here," he said. "I hope you don't mind."

Enoch stepped across the spring.

"The body will be here sometime in early evening," Lewis said.

"Washington will fly it out to Madison and truck it here from there."

Enoch nodded. "I am glad to hear that."

"They were insistent," Lewis said, "that I should ask you once again what the body is."

"I told you last night," said Enoch, "that I can't tell you anything. I wish I could. I've been figuring for years how to get it told, but there's no way of doing it."

"The body is something from off this Earth," said Lewis. "We are sure of that."

"You think so," Enoch said, not making it a question.

"And the house," said Lewis, "is something alien, too."

"The house," Enoch told him, shortly, "was built by my father."

"But something changed it," Lewis said. "It is not the way be built it."

"The years change things," said Enoch.

"Everything but you."

Enoch grinned at him. "So it bothers you," he said. "You figure it's indecent."

Lewis shook his head. "No, not indecent. Not really anything. After watching you for years, I've come to an acceptance of you and everything about you. No understanding, naturally, but complete acceptance. Sometimes I tell myself I'm crazy, but that's only momentary. I've tried not to bother you. I've worked to keep everything exactly as it was. And now that I've met you, I am glad that is the way it was. But we're going at this wrong. We're acting as if we were enemies, as if we were strange dogs-and that's not the way to do it. I think that the two of us may have a lot in common. There's something going on and I don't want to do a thing that will interfere with it."

"But you did," said Enoch. "You did the worst thing that you could when you took the body. If you'd sat down and planned how to do me harm, you couldn't have done worse. And not only me. Not really me, at all. It was the human race you harmed."

"I don't understand," ‘said Lewis. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand.

There was the writing on the stone…"

"That was my fault," said Enoch. "I should never have put up that stone. But at the time it seemed the thing to do. I didn't think that anyone would come snooping around and…"

"It was a friend of yours?"

"A friend of mine? Oh, you mean the body. Well, not actually. Not that particular person."

"Now that it's done," Lewis said, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't help," said Enoch.

"But isn't there something-isn't there anything that can be done about it? More than just bringing back the body?"

"Yes," Enoch told him, "there might be something. I might need some help."

"Tell me," Lewis said quickly. "If it can be done…"

"I might need a truck," said Enoch. "To haul away some stuff. Records and other things like that. I might need it fast."

"I can have a truck," said Lewis. "I can have it waiting. And men to help you load."

"I might want to talk to someone in authority. High authority. The President. Secretary of State. Maybe the U.N. I don't know. I have to think it out. And not only would I need a way to talk to them, but some measure of assurance that they would listen to what I had to say."

"I'll arrange," said Lewis, "for mobile short-wave equipment. I'll have it standing by."

"And someone who will listen?"

"That's right," said Lewis. "Anyone you say."

"And one thing more."

"Anything," said Lewis.

"Forgetfulness," said Enoch. "Maybe I won't need any of these things. Not the truck or any of the rest of it. Maybe I'll have to let things go just as they're going now. And if that should be the case, could you and everyone else concerned forget I ever asked?"

"I think we could," said Lewis. "But I would keep on watching."

"I wish you would," said Enoch. "Later on I might need some help. But no further interference."

"Are you sure," asked Lewis, "that there is nothing else?"

Enoch shook his head. "Nothing else. All the rest of it I must do myself."

Perhaps, he thought, he'd already talked too much. For how could he be sure that he could trust this man? How could he be sure he could trust anyone?

And yet, if he decided to leave Galactic Central and cast his lot with Earth, he might need some help. There might be some objection by the aliens to his taking along his records and the alien gadgets. If he wanted to get away with them, he might have to make it fast.

But did he want to leave Galactic Central? Could he give up the galaxy? Could he turn down the offer to become the keeper of another station on some other planet? When the time should come, could he cut his tie with all the other races and all the mysteries of the other stars?

Already he had taken steps to do those very things. Here, in the last few moments, without too much thought about it, almost as if he already had reached his decision, he had arranged a setup that would turn him back to Earth.

He stood there, thinking, puzzled at the steps he'd taken.

"There'll be someone here," said Lewis. "Someone at this spring. If not myself, then someone else who can get in touch with me."

Enoch nodded absent-mindedly.

"Someone will see you every morning when you take your walk," said Lewis. "Or you can reach us here any time you wish."

Like a conspiracy, thought Enoch. Like a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers.

"I have to be getting on," he said. "It's almost time for mail. Wins will be wondering what has happened to me."

He started up the hill.

"Be seeing you," said Lewis.

"Yeah," said Enoch. "I'll be seeing you."

He was surprised to find the warm glow spreading in him-as if there had been something wrong and now it was all right, as if there had been something lost that now had been recovered.